Sixteen

By:Vivian Lipson

Iwas dressed as a slutty nun. Staring at myself in the mirror, I felt a swagger, an insolence that almost surprised me.

It was as if my own eyes dared me to scold myself. To keep my head down. But I didn’t— I met my gaze in a way I had rarely done before. And I looked good. I felt a want for things. Things I had never let myself want before. I wanted jewelry and makeup. I wanted to be touched. I wanted to touch. I wanted to press my face into someone’s neck and bring them home with me. I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to do things that my mother would disapprove of. I wanted to do things that would make people angry because I didn’t feel afraid.

I stepped out of the house possessed. What I was doing was one of the most scandalous, boldest things anyone could do. At first, it was very hard for me to step out of the house. But then it got easier. I got to the site of the party—a big yellow house with a wrap-around porch—about an hour in. Stragglers were standing outside and smoking, and as I walked past them, I felt them notice me. They were not as dressed up as me:a few costume pieces, some cat ears and masks. I knew I stuck out. Maybe these smokers were so laid back, so infinitely cool and casual that they didn’t even notice what they were wearing, didn’t obsess over it like me.

As I stepped inside, I could feel people’s eyes on me. I felt afraid at first, then something else. Halloween was about monsters and villains, and if that’s what people saw, then that’s what I was. A villain. But tonight I felt the strength to be one.

I spied on Lucy. For weeks at lunch, she had looked at me from far away, across the lunchroom. And I saw something else where I expected to see the contempt I had grown to expect. A smile. One that was not simply friendly, but concealed something else. I could almost call it greed. She saw potential in me. Potential to sit with her and be a holder of the things that popular people have: responsibility, pride, and judgment. Could I judge? Could I keep the gates?

When she came over to my table and informed me about her party, I smiled shyly and said okay. But the thought made me restless, and excited. Things drifted through my mind and I knew I would lie to my mother about this party. The first lie that held any consequence.

“Wow!” She shouted over the noise, shaking her head and laughing. “Fuck, are you a nun? You’re crazy, I love it. Come, I’ll get you a drink.”

I smiled and kept my eyes on her. Lucy didn’t make me leave. She seemed to like my costume. She seemed to think I was bold. Maybe this is who I could be here. A wild girl. An outrageous girl. Someone who said things that no one else could. That was so far from what I thought of myself that it seemed like a lie. But I liked it. I could lie.

At my last school, I kept my head down and said very little to anyone. But now, here in a catholic school, I felt different. Maybe a more restrictive atmosphere made me braver. I was no longer the weird girl with the Jesus-freak parents. I was just a girl from public school. I was anyone. I could be anyone.

Lucy handed me a pink-colored drink in a red solo cup, and I drank it silently because I knew I wouldn’t know what to say. The bitter taste shocked me as it slid down my throat but I kept my face neutral. I didn’t want to break the illusion. I just smiled, pretending I could drink. I did drink. I did now.

People stood around me. They were girls I knew from a distance. Beautiful girls who sat with Lucy and talked loudly about things I didn’t fully understand. Things I wanted to know about. Now they were talking about their costumes.

“I’m Marilyn Monroe! I don’t know how you didn’t get that—she only has, like, one look.”

“You definitely have the tits for Marilyn”

There was a howl of laughter and I cautiously joined in.

“Oh my God, Elinor, I fucking love your costume. Literally, so many people are talking about it. If my parents saw me in that, I swear to God.”

“Wait,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “Elinor, what are you?”

It came out of my lips before I could think to stop myself.

“I’m Sister Thompson.” Their laughter was so loud I couldn’t go back on what I had just said. Sister Thompson was an elderly nun at our school who was quick to give out detentions and check skirt lengths. She was very disliked. To drive the comment home, I grabbed my boob and let out a high-pitched moan. That got a second roar of laughter. My face went red and in spite of myself, I laughed along. I poured myself another drink. Maybe if I was drunk enough, I could let myself be funny. Let more outrageous comments fly. I felt vulgar. I think vulgarity suited me.

I had gotten drunk a few times with my brother and older cousins, giggling in upstairs rooms at family events. I loved the way I felt warm, the way it made my head spin.

The way I didn’t feel like myself. The shame and embarrassment of everything I knew to be me fell away, and I could just talk. I decided that people would like me more when I was drunk. When I didn’t feel so hung up.

After a few more drinks I joined in on the shouted conversation. I yelled with the rest of them, and I didn’t care that I didn’t know what secular TV shows or teen celebrities they were talking about. No one seemed to notice. And for the first time when talking to people my age, I didn’t wince when I spoke. I didn’t brace for the “shut ups” or the eye-rolls I had come to expect. And no one did roll their eyes. They seemed to enjoy what I was saying. They seemed to really like me.

I even did something I had been thoroughly scared of since grade school: I sat with boys. Though this was an all-girls school, people brought their boyfriends and “guy friends” with them, and these boys huddled around each other awkwardly on a couch in the back of the room.

I had avoided boys ever since seventh grade when a pack of boys in my class started following me, whispering that I had Elinoritis, a disease they said spread by touching my skin. Boys would pretend to want to kiss me then run away snickering. They would tell their friends that they heard me moaning in the girls’ bathroom, screaming the name of whichever boy was telling the story that time. Anything I did that looked like desire, that looked like sexuality, was cruelly twisted into a weapon to be held at my throat. I feared boys the way one feared nuclear waste. To be around them is to have your body turned against you, for you to become sick in a way that you can’t always see but is always there, causing destruction. Their joke had lasted so long that a few people even pretended to moan when I stepped on stage for my middle school graduation.

But tonight I sat on that ripped-up couch and let my legs rub against theirs. I laughed at their jokes and ignored the harsh gaze of my grandma looking down at me from heaven. You’re selling yourself for these boys, they don’t see you as anything other than meat. Nothing more than a thing to conquer, a thing to stare and laugh at, a thing to watch and follow home, howling obscenities all the way. I looked away from her as one of them put his hand on my thigh. James was dressed as a killer from some horror movie. In the dark red light of the party, he almost looked beautiful. His face was cast in shadow, obscuring his features. It snuck up on me, how much he wanted me. I didn’t realize it until his hand moved up my thigh and I looked into his eyes and saw something unbearable. Something hungry. I tried to match his energy, but anything I did was a poor imitation.

I had barely had my first kiss, a quick brush of lips at a church retreat that ended with us sitting at separate ends of the cabin, smiling while looking down at the floor.

I thought given my sixteen years, I ought to do more, know more about sex. If I had an opportunity, I ought not to pass it up. And James was handsome, sort of. He was acceptable. He had been invited to this party where everyone seemed more beautiful than most. And he wanted me. He really wanted me with no double meanings. No irony. He wanted me. But still, I had trouble meeting his eye.

His breath was hot on my neck. “Do you…” He slurred. “I think you’re really pretty. Do you wanna go to the bedroom?”

I considered his proposition. For so long this was all I wanted—to be sexy, to have sex—but I couldn’t make myself look at him. His face had too many pores, tiny hairs, and beads of sweat that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Yes,” I whispered back softly. Across the room, Lucy was staring me down with a little smile on her face. She winked at me. This impressed her. I immensely liked the idea that I impressed her. James got up and reached for my hand to follow him. His hand was warm and heavy in mine; I held on to it so lightly that my hand was really just resting there on top of his. Others at the party noticed us leaving together and chuckled. Each step felt like a step I could not go back on. I wanted to walk slower, drag my feet like a child. But I was not a child anymore, and I had worked so hard to make myself see that. I wanted to go back, but I sensed so much in Lucy’s wink, in the feel of Jame’s hands on my thigh. This was how I could make people respect me. Keep me around.

We entered a dark room and didn’t turn on the light. I was glad. I didn’t want James to look at me. I saw his silhouette on the bed. He didn’t look like a boy; he looked like a man. I didn’t know his shape, and I didn’t know him. He seemed unpredictable, uncontrollable.

“I like your costume,” James said in a raspy voice.

I liked it, too, portraying the forbidden. I liked leaning into vulgarity and doing things that would make my mother shiver. I liked the power and freedom I had in doing things I had been taught not to do. I liked the duality of the slutty nun, the idea that someone can wield the power of sex over themselves and those around them, and still carry the symbols of God. They wouldn’t be smitten on the spot or burst into flames. Nothing is as it was taught.

James did not understand this. He just thought I looked hot in my red tights.

“Thank you,” I said to him, not knowing what else to offer. The room seemed too small, too hot. I realized how much I was sweating. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom.” I needed to freshen up. I needed to think. Alone.

I walked to a bathroom down the hall. When I switched on the lights, I saw myself in the mirror.

My eyeshadow was smudged from rubbing my eyes. I didn’t look irresistible like I had at the beginning of the night. That was an embarrassing delusion. My eyes looked too far apart, my nose too heavy. Nothing seemed to be in harmony the way other people’s faces tended to be. The way Lucy’s face was. I looked like a kid who sloppily applied makeup for the first time. I looked like myself again, the one that didn’t get invited to parties or make boys laugh, the one that nobody thought was beautiful.

I put my face in the sink and let the water run over my head. I wanted to wash away all the makeup, all the evidence that I had tried to be anyone other than who I really was. I lifted my head back up and turned toward the door to look for a towel. I gasped: In the doorway stood a girl looking to the side.

She was one of the lucky girls whose features didn’t seem like they were at war on her face. For a split second, I worried about what she thought of me, if she would judge me for my bathroom melodrama. Then we both took a step forward, and I realized that she was just my reflection.

There was another mirror on the door that reflected the mirror above the sink, catching me at a strange angle. I laughed. I looked beautiful in a way I hadn’t noticed before. The curve of my eyes, the way my cheeks rose when I smiled—

I looked like myself. I had always hated the way I looked from the side, how my chin looked weak and my nose stuck out. But as I looked at myself in this mirror, I appreciated my profile. I looked striking. I looked like my mother.

I made my decision quickly.

Instead of walking back to the room, I walked through the party crowd and out the back door. I was careful to avoid eye contact, to not let anyone see me. I needed to be gone. I didn’t want to see another person that night.

I walked down the streets quickly, flying home and glancing behind me every few minutes. It was almost 1 AM but if I bumped into anyone, I knew it would be way too embarrassing to handle. It was cold, but I left my coat at the party and I didn’t want to go back.

I made it home thirty minutes later without seeing anyone. I closed the door behind me softly, walking past my mother’s room and imagining her snoring behind the wall. I wanted to climb into bed with her but I made myself walk forward. I rushed up to my room, covered in glitter and shivering. I peeled off my costume and shoved it deep into my closet. I would wear it again. I climbed into bed and lay on my Mickey Mouse sheets in the remnants of my party makeup.