Juliet

Tommy's girl began to go places with us occasionally. In essence, I went with them. I was only there because I had a car. We would go to movies or just driving around, and when we'd park, he'd get into the back seat with her and start making out. They never went all the way in my car, but I was witness to everything else. It usually didn't last long as it was awkward with me sitting a few inches away, but it was enough to fire my imagination. If I had a girl, I thought, it would never be like this. But I didn't have a girl and didn't have any prospects of having a girl, so this was it. I was growing shyer every day.

One night, Tommy told me that Laura would get naked for him in her room so that he could watch her through the window. He told me to come see, but she couldn't know I was there. And for the second time in my life, I watched a girl climb onto a table in her nightgown and expose herself to a boy. This time, though, was different. I knew the girl and she did not know I was there. Why did Tommy want me to see this, I wondered? He was showing off, sure, but it had to be more than that. I would never look at Laura the same way afterwards. Though she and Tommy rummaged around in the back seat of my car while I was there, that was still, in the main, intimate. This was something else.

"Turn around," he said, and there was her pale behind shining through the darkness. Tommy looked at me. I could only shrug.

Sex was all around me now. One day, it just appeared. But it was always squalid in some way, never sweet and romantic as I imagined it, not the way it was portrayed in movies.

One night, we went to see Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" and I was smitten. That is what love was like, I thought. That is what it means. I sat through the movie twice, then saw it again and again until I had learned all the lines. I would not be in love until it was like that, I told myself. This was the way of love.