I didn’t know what I was going to do to fix the situation, but it seemed like that’s all high school was so far. Trying to figure out how you were going to make it back off the bus with your ego intact. I was hiding in a bathroom stall, smoking one of the Marlboros I’d stolen from the 7-11, reading the graffiti.

“Sarah Duprey is a PRUDE!”

With my full name written out in sharpie I felt no choice but to strike back. I wondered how many people had already seen it. As I blacked it ­­­­­­­out with my own sharpie, I knew it was too late. Rumors spread like herpes, and my best friend Erin, who had herpes, had already heard about the bathroom 311 graffiti by lunch that day. We smoked cigarettes under a tree we called “Wishkah,” its name based on a Nirvana album.

“I’m going to kick the shit out of whoever wrote that,” I seethed.

“Why not just get laid?” She laughed.

How could I tell Erin that I didn’t know how? That I had never seen a dick? That I had never even frenched? That I wanted my first time to be with someone I was going to marry? How could I tell her that even though I’d said; “it doesn’t look that bad,” when she’d shown me her herpes, I was lying? That I was terrified of getting herpes?

I had frenched, just not a boy. On summer break, my mom had bought me and my friends Ashley and Morgan a 24 pack of apple cider beer. Drunk and stoned, I’d confessed to them that I was afraid to french a boy because I didn’t know how. They’d both insisted on showing me, for educational purposes only. All that spit and twisting of tongues and none of the burning between my legs. I was disappointed and grossed out and tired, and that’s why I didn’t count it. They didn’t hang out with me after that night, and I assumed they were the ones who outed me in the girls’ room. Had they been as afraid as I was that one of us would tell about last summer? Had they struck first, tactically? Was this some shame war? How could I strike back at the situation if I wasn’t sure where it had come from?

I exhaled cigarette smoke through a toilet paper roll stuffed with dryer sheets in my bedroom, thinking … thinking … ‘So what if I was a prude? Wasn’t it bad to be a whore? Couldn’t you get a reputation? Couldn’t you get lifelong STDs? Couldn’t I be a prude and still be desirable?’ My father banged on my bedroom door, but not after trying the knob first. Marty didn’t allow smoking inside. I couldn’t hear him through the thick wood, but I screamed “I’m NOT!” and I didn’t hear him again. What were my options? Who could’ve written that? Was I strong enough to fight Morgan? No. Ashley? Maybe.

The answer to my dilemma came swiftly, though I hadn’t planned it that way. A popular boy at school, Jeff, had asked me to hang out. I thought maybe it was a joke. He was a few grades above me and pretty hot. He skateboarded over to my house that weekend. Marty was always away weekends, and so me and Jeff sat on my bed and smoked pot and talked about skateboarding. I had never skated a day in my life, yet on I went about it. Keeping up with the conversation, maintaining eye contact, deeply terrified that he might try to kiss me … planning ways to dodge him if he tried. Like he could sense my fear, he interrupted my rambling about a snowboard video I’d seen once.

“Do you want to fuck?” He was so blunt it startled me to a giggle.

“What?”

“Do you wanna fuck or not? I gotta go soon.”

With the pressure on and the weeks' earlier event jabbing at my ego I shrugged and rolled my eyes.

“Ok. Whatever.”

That was all I said and his pants were down. I thought the man was supposed to undress the lady, so I kept all my clothes on and waited. I could see his hard penis sticking up in his boxers. He looked like a little boy with a big, hard dick suffocating in Superman underwear.

“Suck it first,” he demanded.

“Duh,” I said, fumbling with his boxers, trying to navigate the band around and off of the engorged tip of his penis. He sighed, annoyed, threw my hands off of his waist and pulled his penis out from the slit in his boxers. I immediately put it in my mouth and tried to suck. It felt fake … like putting a dildo in your mouth. It tasted like soft plastic. I knew I was supposed to be giving a blow job, but I searched my brain frantically, trying to remember whether to suck or blow or alternate. I’d heard there was a way to kill a guy with a blow job if you blew wrong. Air bubbles could travel to his heart. He lifted my head up by palming my hair and pulling.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he hissed. “You’re supposed to kiss first.”

This was not at all the way I’d wanted to do this. There were supposed to be candles and incense and soft music and “I love yous.” I was supposed to be naked. I kissed him and it was worse than the summer kissing. His mouth was too wide, and his lips were too thin. We opened and closed our mouths mechanically until he pushed my head back down. I put my mouth on his penis again.

“No!” He shouted. “You’re supposed to kiss down my stomach. You make your way to it, don’t just start like that.”

Maybe he was right,’ I thought. I really was hurrying through. I just wanted to get this under my belt for notoriety and move on. I kissed down his chest to his stomach and then I was back at his bobbing penis. I started to suck. My jaw ached as I tried not to skim his dick with my teeth. He pulled my head up by the hair again and masturbated in my face. His hand moved so fast along his shaft that it was a blurry whir. He groaned and rammed his dick into my lips, and I opened my mouth like I’d seen in Marty’s pornos in the closet, and he came so hard down my throat that I threw up.

“Clean up,” he said plainly.

I got up and grabbed some paper towels. There was puke and cum dripping from my chest to the lace-latticed edge of my tank top. I was caught in between feeling triumphant and disgusted. As I wiped myself off, he grabbed his skateboard and walked out my door without a word. He’d done me a favor, but now I had another dilemma. I felt disrespected, again.

The next day, me, Erin, and a few of our guy friends were hanging out smoking pot in the woods by the river. In an effort to get the ball rolling on my new status, I told the group about the day before. I’d completed both a French and a blowey in the same day. I peppered in jokes about Jeff nearly ripping my hair out, a self-deprecating tale of wiping puke and cum off a new blouse. I waited for the praise of “Womendom,” the welcome. But my friends were pissed about how Jeff had treated me. The solution came naturally, as “blowjob instructor Jeff” came walking down the dirt path with his skateboard, right on cue. He was grabbed by the guys and they twisted his hands behind his back and made him apologize to me. He kept his face down and mumbled “Sorry.” I was about to say something sassy, like; “It’s ok, just don’t let it happen again.” But the hits I’d taken on the log had slowed my mind, and before I could figure out the best phrase to assert my dominance, he was beaten with his own skateboard until he cried. Snot hung from his nose and his mouth was bleeding. I thought about telling him; “CLEAN UP,” but I couldn’t. I felt bad for him. I felt like throwing up again. Yet, all in all, I figured it was good. I’d gotten my dick sucking medal and regained some respect. But the politics of high school, the rapid cycling of winner-loser-winner, mystified me.

That Monday at school, I was upside down before I made it to my locker. Two girls, sisters, jumped me. One had come from behind and the other from the front, like raptors. I hadn’t ever talked to them, but they were well known to be bullies and to carry knives and I’d seen them fuck up other girls throughout the school year. So, I didn’t fight back as they pummeled me.

“Fucking slut!”

“Dirty whore!”

They screamed and kicked and punched while a crowd gathered in the hall. I gathered Jeff was dating one of the sisters, and they were mad that I’d sucked his dick. After the hall monitor broke it up, after my visit to the nurse for an ice pack, I limped to the 311 girls' room to have a smoke.

New graffiti.

“Sarah Duprey is a WHORE!”

I laughed and lit up. I couldn’t win freshman year. I realized there was no “win.” The competitions were impossible and there were no textbooks on how to survive with your pride. I figured the only way I could win was by playing into the drama and sucking as much dick as I could that year. Now I had a template to go by.

French.

Kiss down the stomach.

Suck faster.

Clean up.