The Maidenheads: A Novel

A week after we broke up, Peter called to ask when he could drop off my record player, which I'd left at his house when I moved out. The record player was a vintage Sansui I'd owned for ten years, since my senior year of high school. I loved it, but it hadn't fit into the cab I'd squeezed everything else into. Besides, I was sure Peter would eventually bring it over. He'd want it gone-he was very angry at me-and it wasn't something you could mail, so he'd be forced to drive with it. "How about Friday after work?" I asked, and it took Peter a long disgruntled moment to admit that yes, that was a fine time for him as well.

Friday afternoon, I left work early. It was April, and walking home from the bus stop, I smelled spring and pictured myself cleaning up, sticking a flower in a vase, demonstrating to Peter some basic functionality. But once inside my new apartment, a hastily rented one-bedroom in an anonymous area of Baltimore's midtown, I remembered there was nothing to clean. I'd been living for the past two years in Peter's house in Charles Village, surrounded by all his inoffensively luxurious objects. I owned barely any furniture, and nothing decorative except a painting by my mom that had moved with me from closet to closet since college, and that went directly into the closet here. I'd bought a mattress but no frame, so it was on the floor. Everything else was still in cardboard boxes stacked in my bedroom, because I had nothing to unpack them into: no coat hangers or bureau for my clothes, no shelves for my books and records. For Peter, I pushed the boxes flush with the walls and swept the wood floors with the janitor's broom from the basement. I'd carried the stereo speakers on my lap in the cab, and I set those up now in adjacent corners of the bedroom. I showered, brushed my teeth, put on clean underwear.

To be clear, I didn't go into the evening intending to seduce Peter. I only thought that if we did have sex, it might help fix the feeling I'd had constantly since the breakup, that I was looking down at my body from a great distance and I was a grotesque Franken-freak cobbled from scraps. It was an old and bone-familiar sensation, but over the two and a half years with Peter, I'd effectively kept it at bay.

Peter called from downstairs just after six-he was always punctual, even when he didn't want to be. In a few minutes, I heard him shuffling down the hall in his stiff work shoes. Then he loomed in my entryway, dripping rain onto the bare wooden floor. Peter is very tall and always has an expression of mouth-half-open expectance, like someone's just yelled, Go long! His skin is the smoothest I've ever seen, like a child's, white and freckled. His dark red hair curls sideways across his forehead like Superman's.

The Sansui was balanced on his forearms, wrapped in a mostly dry quilt I recognized from our old bedroom. "Where should I put it?" he asked, eyes turned from mine.

"Bedroom," I said. Peter glanced from right to left, through the doors of two identically bare rooms. "To the left-yeah, in there, sorry about the . . ."

Peter carried the Sansui into the bedroom, unwrapped it, and placed it in the spot I'd cleared, lining its edges up with the wall. Then he backed rapidly out of the room and paused in the entryway again, clutching the quilt to his chest.

"Could I get you a drink?" I said. "Just a thank-you for bringing over the Sansui."

"I have to go soon," he said. "I have a thing later." I knew this couldn't be true; Peter very rarely had "things." He was leaning against the wall, long legs crossed.

"Oh, me too, me too," I assured him, "but just a quick-" and I leapt into the kitchen. "I ordered bookcases, they're coming soon," I called, clanking bottles. I'd absconded with our liquor cabinet, now in a cardboard box on my counter. "And plants. Thought I would get, like, a lot of plants."

"It'll look nice," he said. "You'll get good light. North-facing, right?"

I carried out two mugs of the fancy bourbon Peter's mother had bought us for Christmas the year before and gestured him into the living room, empty apart from three boxes. I'd asked the landlord to spackle the fist-shaped hole in the drywall, but he hadn't yet. Peter found another wall to lean against, placing the quilt, folded, at his feet.

"Cheers," I said. I leaned next to him, not so close that he'd step back.

"Cheers," Peter said. He sipped, made a face, sipped again.

We both looked out the window, down to the rain-sheened strip of road four stories below and the flashing red lottery tick sign in the store window opposite. I said, "You know, I care about you a lot."

"You've said that."

"I'd like to be friends."

"It's not up to you, is it?" he said. "Traditionally, it's the dumpee who makes that decision."

"Dumpee," I said. "That's funny."

Peter swished his mug like he was testing the legs on a glass of wine. "I care about you too, Jamie. That doesn't mean I want to be your friend."

"Of course. Sorry," I said. "I'm used to lesbian breakups, you know? You go camping right after, split custody of the cats."

"Noted," he said. He stood up off the wall in preparation to go.

But I wasn't ready to be left alone with the bare walls, the bottles of alcohol, my jumbled-up body: I knew where nights like this went, it wasn't pretty. "You have a right to be mad at me," I said quickly.

"I'm not mad at you."

"Right-I mean, you've never even yelled at me. Peter, hey, what if you yelled at me?"

"Stop acting like a child," he said. His mug was empty, his voice warmer.

"I'm serious. Yell at me. Like, primal scream therapy."

"What would I yell? You don't love me. I can't be angry about that."

"Know what, you stay right there," I said. I grabbed his mug and went into the kitchen for more bourbon. Returning, I held it up to Peter hopefully. He wrinkled his thick eyebrows-mistrusting, cornered-and took it.

"Yell at me," I said, with new confidence. I could already feel my body twining itself back together, smoothed into shape by the pink along his cheekbones, the way he didn't inch back when I leaned closer. "Tell me I'm a bitch. What do you say to your friends about me?"

"I say, Jamie's on her own journey and needs to sort a few things out."

"Oh yeah, right."

"OK. I say, she's pretty immature and has a messed-up family situation, and I definitely dodged a bullet on the marriage question."

"You're mad at me," I said. "Just-let it out."

"I couldn't call you a bitch," he said, hesitant before the word. "I just can't do that."

"Fine. Call me whatever you want to call me."

He laughed and rumpled his hair. For a second, he was my old Peter, not this stiff stranger. "Fine," he said. "OK. You're a selfish cunt."

I laughed with pleased relief. "Fair."

"Well, to be honest, you really are a bitch as well."

"Do you want to hit me?" I said, keeping my voice steady.

"What the fuck, Jamie!"

"You know, if I tell you to hit me, it's not like 'hitting a woman' or whatever. You're not breaking the gentleman's code."

His eyes lifted from his drink to my lips. "I could hit you," he said. "If you wanted me to."

"I want you to."

"OK," he said. He had finished his second bourbon, and now he leaned down to place the mug on the ground between us. Then he squared his body to mine, craning forward as if to erase the height difference, and tapped me on the shoulder with three fingers.

"You can do it harder."

I could hear the catch in his breath. "I thought you weren't into this sort of thing because of Mari," he said.

"This has nothing to do with that," I said, batting away private images. "This is you and me."

"You and me," he said. "What does that even mean right now?"

But he was breathing heavily, and I could see his erection lifting the khaki cloth of his pants. I shifted to press it with my hip, and his body shuddered into mine. He followed me into the bedroom, where he sat on the mattress, bent knees shooting straight up, and untied his shoelaces.

I crouched by the Sansui and plugged it into the speakers-I'd missed that unshowy gray box with its red control lights, kind eyes in the dark. I dug out XO from a carton (I knew Peter had played Elliott Smith on lonely aimless drives in high school) and placed the record on the dustless black circle, set down the needle so it crackled into life. Then I took off all my clothes except for the green lace bra and underwear set I'd put on after work. Peter had bought it for me, and just wearing it made me feel less mismatched, like my body was a worker with a purpose and a uniform. I watched Peter recognize the bra, recognize the first few notes of "Sweet Adeline," recognize it was all for him. I closed my eyes against the weariness in his.

He fucked me carefully, keeping our bodies otherwise distant. Only once he leaned close and I smelled his deodorant and had to smush my face into the pillow. I knew I couldn't cry or none of this would work; I would spill into chaos again. So I took deep breaths, I matched his rhythm. Peter pushed me into a few different positions, and I tuned into his sadness, felt him thinking, This is the last time I'll ever fuck her from behind. Elliott Smith had been a terrible choice.

"I could hit you again," Peter whispered from behind my shoulder. "If that's what you want, I could do it."

"Do it," I said.

Peter slapped me tentatively at first, on my ass, legs, back, then a stinging slap on my left tit, clearing my sinuses like spicy food. I thought of Mari; of course I did: Mari ripping her nails along my thigh, Mari biting me until I bled. Mari biting her own knuckles to distract from the actual pain. Mari's face crumpling; Mari gray and horrified at me.

"Ow," I said with a gasping laugh.

"Oh, shit," Peter said. "Should I stop?"

"No, you're good, keep going." Another light slap, then several that burned. "Ow, actually ow, Peter," I said, accidentally loud into a silence between songs. My knees buckled, we both slipped so I was flat on my stomach, and he blanketed me. I wrapped my arms over my head like a hood, wanting to black out all thoughts of Peter, Mari, everything.

"Shit," he said, "I'm sorry, hold on, shit," and came inside me. Then he flopped out next to me and tried to peel my arms off my head. "Are you OK?"

I could hear the grudging tone-he didn't want to worry about my feelings-and I forced a smile and let my hands drop. "I'm good."

"You're really OK?" he said. "You don't want me to . . . ?" I shook my head. "If you say so," he said, and nuzzled into my neck. He was all loosened up now, his body boneless along mine. The warm pressure against my skin was enough so that I could breathe, so that, later on, I could sleep.

After that, for the rest of April, Peter came over once or twice a week. Most times, we’d have a drink and fuck. He never stayed over; we never discussed anything beyond practicalities. I didn’t risk putting on music after the XO debacle. We didn’t use a condom. If I’d gone to the store for condoms, or if he’d brought them from home, it would’ve made the situation too real. I didn’t take the bottles out of the cardboard box in the kitchen either, even after we drank through the nice Christmas bourbon and moved on to a dusty handle of rye. I didn’t unpack my boxes, didn’t buy plants or bookcases. Peter’s quilt stayed folded on the floor in the living room.

I knew that fucking Peter was a bad idea, the act of a selfish cunt. He'd cried like a child when I broke up with him, head down on the table, hands twisted in his hair. He'd begged me to stay, told me he'd do whatever I wanted, couple's therapy, whatever. He was a kind person who deserved to be with another kind person, not someone who dumped him abruptly after two and a half years, then fucked him out of loneliness.

The first week in May, I woke up with a sickening ache along my spine and at the base of my stomach. I put on black underpants and stopped for tampons on the way to work. But my period didn't come. I wore black underpants the next day and the next day too. The ache didn't subside; my period didn't come.

As the week passed, I noticed a new exhaustion. I worked as an editor at the Baltimore Bugle, an alt-weekly newspaper with a downtown office building that had been built in a pre-elevator world. I'd gotten used to the four flights of stairs, but now I had to stop at each landing. Probably depression, I figured, or lack of exercise, or maybe I wasn't getting enough iron now that I wasn't cooking meat with Peter. On Thursday morning, I ran into my boss, Jeremy, in the lobby and we began the climb together. Halfway up, I had to pause. My legs were wobbly, hips sore. I bent and pretended to tie my bootlace.

"These boots take forever," I told Jeremy, nodding so he'd go ahead without me.

Jeremy, like most of my coworkers at the Bugle, was a white man in his thirties who wore New Balance sneakers and band T-shirts to work every day. It was 2012, and yet Jeremy had a stuck-in-the-'00s look with his thick black eyeglasses and permanent half inch of stubble, forever the Johns Hopkins lit mag editor making Wilco-heavy mixtapes for his crushes. He had hired me because his knowledge of obscure Maryland and DC cultural trivia included the Maidenheads, my old band with Mari, as well as Jennifer's Not There, the 2002 indie film we'd performed in right before our final implosion. "Jamie mother-fucking Cain," he'd said with some astonishment at my first interview. I'd known that a) I'd get the offer, and b) I'd probably regret taking it.