A Bad Girl Part 1: The Awakening
Or: You gotta be cruel to be kind
I went to a Catholic girl’s school, where we were under strict orders to dress and behave with exemplary modesty. When our plaid skirts rose above the knees we considered it daring. Nowadays there’s a lot of guff about “letting children express their personalities”, but I think our personalities were well expressed. As in many other environments where uniforms were the order of the day, we expressed our personalities in our dickeys (the abbreviated tie all the girls hated), in our hair ornaments (no more than two plain barrettes were allowed, but the boldest of us wore combs), and in our shoes.
I was never the most daring, but I pushed the envelope a little, like we all did. When I was in tenth grade I was sent home to change my shoes by Sister Mary Chang, known to us all as the Dragon Lady. Sister Mary actually took a ruler and measured, determining that my heels were 3/8 of an inch too high for a Grade Ten girl (grade niners were only allowed flats).
So when, to my surprise, I graduated in the upper tenth of my class, I found the heady and comparatively permissive atmosphere of a secular college a bit confusing. It was co-ed, for a start, and I didn’t have a lot of experience with boys.
My room at college was shared with “Tennis-ball” Turner. People called her “Tennis-ball” for her corn-yellow hair, cut into a boyish bob, or sometimes “T-Ball”. I called her Jacquie, short for her full name, Jacqueline. She was, as she liked to say “fresh off the farm”, and seemed to be intent on getting into as much trouble as the city could offer her. As a “good girl” rooming with a party animal, I naturally got a bit of a reputation for being stuck up. I didn’t know it because I dedicated myself completely to my studies for the first semester. My grades were excellent, but I didn’t seem to meet a lot of friends—at least not a lot of people I wanted to hang around with.
Christmas seemed bleak. I hung around the dorm until it was time to go home. At home my mother accused me of “moping”. My father just seemed relieved that I hadn’t turned into some sort of radical, stoned lesbian. I found the whole week stifling, and wondered what I had in common with these two old, boring people. Eventually I left early: I returned to the freedom of being able to do what I chose.
Which was exactly nothing. I read and moped some more.
True to form, Jacquie showed up at two o’clock in the morning the day classes were due to start. I heard muffled giggling, and the scraping as her key missed the lock several times.
Of course she had a boy with her. I vaguely recognized his voice: It was Wayne Williams, a hulking great brute who majored in football.
“You sure yer roomie’s not home?” He asked in a drunken rumble.
“Let me check.” I heard her say, irritably.
Jacquie popped her head into the shared bedroom, and I heard her sigh. I was about to speak up, to tell her that it would be alright if the two of them came in, I’d sleep on the sofa, when she suddenly said under her breath:
“Good old Flock, you never let me down, do you, you old stick.”
I lay there with my cheeks burning as she went back to the door. I heard her whispering:
“No, Wayne. Wayne—stop it (giggle). I’d love to, but I’m really tired. . .We
can’t
. My roomie’s home and she’s a real tight-ass. She’d have the Resident down on me like a ton of bricks!”
That was grossly unfair, and I found myself getting angry. I hadn’t ever reported Jaquie for anything, not when she smoked, not when she brought boys home—not even when I’d found a baggie of pot on the floor.
Eventually, Wayne left, sulkily, and I heard Jacquie close the door and let out a long, slow breath.
Jacquie slipped into the room, and quietly began to undress in the dark. As she pulled off her sweater she was silhouetted in the moonlight, fine bra-less breasts with big, hard nipples. As the sweater came off she let out a yip, and something shiny flew across and landed on my bed. Without quite knowing why, I caught it.
“I’m awake.” I said “Turn on the light.”
She was cursing and holding a hand to her ear.
“Been awake long?” She asked casually.
“Since you and
Wayne
got here, yeah.” I said.
“Oh.” I wondered if she remembered what she’d said.
The light clicked on, and in the yellow dim, I saw Jacquie sitting on her bed a few feet away, looking concerned, her tits bare.
“What did you mean,” I asked “when you told him I’d report you to the Resident?”
“Oh!” she said embarrassedly “I just said that to keep him out. He just wanted to make out, and I wasn’t in the mood.”
“That’s a first,” I said grumpily “anyway, why’d you call me an old stick?”
Jacquie’s eyes widened, “Oh Flocksie,” she always called me Flocksie, and I hated it. “Don’t get tangled up. It’s okay to be. . .the way you are, I mean it’s. . .”
Now I was angry.
“What the
hell
do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Well, come on honey. It’s pretty well-known around here that my roomie doesn’t, y’know, get out much.”
“Get
around
much, you mean.” I accused.
Now it was her turn to flush.
“Jesus you’re an uptight bitch. Y’know,” she said, fishing in the drawer of the nightstand “you oughta smoke a joint occasionally—it’d relax those tense anal muscles of yours.”
I was at a loss for words. No-one had said anything like that to me since before I’d graduated high school. I blushed and felt a dull throb of anger. Tennisball contemptuously fished a joint from a baggie, lit it, and inhaled deeply. After a moment she gave me the joint to hold, and turned to open the window between our beds. I took the pot wordlessly, with tears pricking behind my eyelids. She knew damn well I’d never tried it, and had no plans to. As she turned around I angrily stuck the joint in my mouth and sucked it hugely and inexpertly.
Once the coughing fit had died away and my eyes stopped streaming, I got nervous. What if I went nuts? I’d heard pot could make you do that. Jacquie was grinning sloppily, her yellow hair drooping into her eyes. She came and sat on the bed and took another hit. She was still topless, and by the bedside light I could see how her big pink nipples crinkled in the cool air from the window. I reached up and brushed the hair away from her eyes; I felt something electric. Maybe it was the pot, or something else.
“Here,” I handed her the shiny object—her lost earring “you dropped this.” My fingertips were tingling when she touched my hand to take it. Her hand rested on mine for just a beat too long, it seemed.
“Thanks,” she said, looking at me with something like wonder in her eyes.