My Love, My Drug, My Release

November, 1968

So there's smut in this,  I put ** around it like I always do. In full transparency, there are a couple of single lines of "smut-like" content that seemed too small and spaced apart to denote, and I would end up circling most of the chapter. I don't think anyone will really be bothered by them.

"What kind of cancer did your mum have?" Brandon asked me one afternoon. 

We were in his shared apartment, straddling the windowsill because his landlord had a strict no smoking policy. Brandon smoked about a pack a day, give or take. I only really smoked when I was with him, and even then, I mostly just let it burn down. Occasionally, I'd take a puff, but I would just hold it in my mouth before releasing, never fully inhaling.

"Uh, well, it started in her ovaries, but then it was everywhere."

"Do you miss her?"

"No, I hated the bitch actually, glad she's dead." 

"Wow, someone's feeling sardonic today," he mumbled under his breath, tapping off his ash into one of the hanging potted plants. It had petunias in it.

"Sorry, I never know how to talk about it."

Brandon took a few more deep drags before finally stubbing out his fag and climbing back inside. "If I asked you to do something crazy, would you do it?" he asked. 

"Depends on what it is."

"Not good enough." He pulled me back into his apartment, holding my body close to him. "I'm an all or nothing kind of guy. You're either for me or against me, ride or die. Do you understand? Cause I can't be with someone who wouldn't do anything for me."

There was something in happening in my stomach that I wasn't wise enough to recognize as fear. So I just nodded.

"I want you to run away with me."

"What?"

"You heard me," he said, gripping my shoulders. "I want to go, leave the city, the country, go somewhere we don't know the language. I have friends all over, and I can make more if I need to. I don't ever want to be without you."

It was such a strange thing to say, and an even stranger way of saying it. Not that he wanted only me, or even that he loved me, but that he never wanted to be without me. As though he could just pluck me up and put me in his trunk and travel around the world with me. Eventually one day, he'd find somewhere he loves and build a special shelf to put me on. But what thirteen-year-old know the difference between being loved by someone and belonging to them?

"If you want me to, I'll go."

My hesitance didn't dull his smile. He picked me up and twirled me around in the air. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he carried me over to the bed, setting me down and lying on top of me. 

**With one hand, he undid his pants and lifted up my school skirt, pushed my panties to the side, and entered me. This was how we had sex most of the time. Whether it was in the bathroom at Uncarbonated, against the brick wall of my school at lunchtime, even when we were alone in his apartment, we rarely took off all of our clothes. I didn't know if this was normal, if everyone in a long-term relationship eventually just had sex through the fly in their jeans. It wasn't very romantic, but maybe it wasn't supposed to be.

And it was more than just impersonal. Rather than sex being an act between two people, I felt like Brandon was just masturbating with my body, using my vagina in place of his hand, and the goal seemed to be to finish as quickly as possible. We didn't use condoms. They never even crossed my mind.