“I need you to lift some Always for me.”
Terah, who couldn’t hear the word “Kotex” without blushing intense purple, simply stared. Lindsey was obviously in a great deal of discomfort, and he’d helped her with some ibuprofen, but he’d never even been able to get feminine hygiene products for Danielle. He’d actually insisted she buy his underwear. Checking out at Target with some teenage girl looking at the exaggerated genitals stuffed into the cotton sheaths, but reading the word “small” on the top was too much for him. He both wanted to say, “they sell by waist size,” and “I’m not like the models in the picture.” Why’d they have to use real photographs anyway? He stood in front of Lindsey with his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish with bronchitis.
“Me?” he stupidly asked.
“Look, I can’t. An’ if we’re tryin’ to start livin’ like normal people,” she winced as she rolled up into a ball.
Terah couldn’t bear to watch. Although the air had warmed a bit, he threw on a coat and exited the convent to think. Wouldn’t nuns have left some of those kinds of supplies? Although the building was in good repair, it had been thoroughly cleaned out. How was he going to do this?
After he’d learned what was wrong late the night before, they’d managed to get a little sleep before packing up and making their way here quickly. With Lindsey’s skill they’d found their way inside, and the convent was clearly still unoccupied.
Scotrun was a small town. There was a convenience store, a Sheetz, but it had cameras and mirrors all over the place like an omniscient pangolin. He walked down the hill, careful to keep out of sight. How was he going to lift a padded package like that? Did they have enough cash to buy some? He wasn’t sure how much they cost. He could think of nothing more embarrassing than being stopped and then caught with sanitary napkins under his coat. He could beg for some money, but Lindsey and he had an agreement. Don’t stand out. Act casual.
Eventually he came to the road leading into town. Or out of town. He strolled along as if he belonged there. He spied the Turkey Hill station. Should he go slow, scope the place out? Try to find a large person to hide behind? Snatch and run? Terah simply wasn’t that kind of guy.
Lost in thought, he stood near the propane tank bin and thought. A guy came out the doors, unwrapping a packet of Camels. As he dropped the cellophane he’d absentmindedly dropped a bill he also had in his hand. Terah’s heart leapt. He almost shouted, drawing attention to the loss. Instead, he watched as the wind caught the plastic and paper and blew them about. The stranger climbed in his car, started it up, and drove off, cigarette in mouth. The wind brought the bill to Terah. He clapped his foot on it and stood still, heart pounding. Act casual. After a miniature eternity he crouched as if to tie his shoe. A twenty. O god, that was a lot of money! The Beretta was long gone. And Terah was embarrassed enough as it was.
Back at the convent Lindsey was feeling better. He’d asked what it was like, getting a period. “I guess it’s like discovering, well, male maturity.” He cleared his throat and stared as if the empty corner held something endlessly fascinating.
“But a boy’s first erection is different,” Lindsey accused. “It’s not filled with the horror and terror of blood. You can’t always even tell if it’s the first one since it could’ve been a wet dream. But if you’re awake and you jerk off, it feels pretty good, I should imagine, since guys do it all the time.”
Terah flushed, then blushed. It felt strange to have a girl telling him what it was like to be male. His first recollection of finding an erection was traumatic in its own right. It was in church. He never told his parents—by the time you’re twelve you’ve been repeatedly told that sin lies within your trousers. Neither mother nor stepfather would talk directly about sex. The generations-long forbidden topic had to be experienced alone.
Right there during the sermon—Terah hadn’t really been paying attention, although he tried—his slacks tented. He felt the fires of hell and the whispers of heaven simultaneously. The fabric pressing back on his glans was wonderful and frustrating. He tried not to move. He was wearing a cheap suit jacket. He tried to cover it with yet another layer. The very motion made him squirm even more.
Squirming was something Shirley Economy couldn’t abide. Whether or not she discerned the ultimate cause, she reached over and give his arm a sharp pinch. The prophylactic pain might’ve saved him from hell, but only temporarily. Sunday lunch wasn’t exactly a formal affair, but since Mom had put some kind of flesh in the oven before they’d left, the Economy family, except for Fred who was excused from church, ate in their Sunday best. The surroundings were meager but the food was good. After lunch Terah was ordered to change his clothes before raring around on a Sunday afternoon.
Climbing to the attic space that served as his bedroom, young Terah again felt the unusual pressure building. As he slipped out of his Sunday clothes Mom was busy with washing dishes and Fred already had some sport or another on the television. His “tinkertoy”—neither parent ever informed him it was called a penis and he’d never heard the word—was jutting out defiantly against his white underpants again. With a little difficulty he got them off and quickly slipped under the sheet on his bed. Creating a larger tent with his knees up he stared in wonder. Apart from that morning in church he’d never known his tinkertoy to have done such a thing before. It was strictly for peeing. Mom had warned him against playing with it, though, because it was “dirty.” He touched it.
Shivers of a pleasure he could never imagine shot all through his body, ramming into his brain like the concussion from a speeding freight train passing full speed ahead. Without knowing why, or even intending to, he rubbed it and seconds later a hot, sticky, white fluid jetted out, staining the sheet tent between his knees. Although he took it all in, time focusing your attention as it does at moments of crisis and discovery, his only conscious thought was pure feeling. He’d never known ecstasy like this. All-encompassing and very powerful, he’d only done as instinct directed him. When the euphoria settled, gasping for breath, guilt immediately crept in. This had to have been sinful. Mom would wonder why he’d wet the bed. A boy his age should know better. Even now he could hear her finishing up with the dishes. His tinkertoy, still tingling, quickly shrank as the remorse spread. What had just happened here? He had no context, no experience to compare, and nobody to ask. He just hoped it would never happen again. Although he desperately wanted it to.
Terah wasn’t sure how to find out what he’d just experienced. He’d never read about sex and his parents never talked about it. There was no internet and his stepfather controlled the television. There weren’t any bookstores or even a library in town. Surprisingly, his mother said nothing about the sheets, although Monday was wash day.
Every day after that fateful Sunday, multiple times a day, Terah felt an incredible urge to repeat this wonder. It was summer, but he had to work. He’d begun a summer job back in June, and his evening absence from before the television would be missed, if he started spending too much time in his room. Everyone knew it was hot and stuffy up there. It would’ve been weird for him to start spending the afternoon-heated hours upstairs voluntarily. Families like his didn’t even dream of air conditioning. And yet the need was ever-present. What could he do?
Not stupid, he’d figured out that this was sex. How exactly girls were involved he had to guess a little. Ever religious, his mother had steered him away from “the invisible woman” models in toy stores and he had no sister to have seen accidentally. He had no clue about female anatomy. A boy Carrie White, as it were, but more naive.
“So don’t tell me you understand,” Lindsey scolded. The first time Danielle had—no, he had done it to Danielle, Terah hadn’t even looked.
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