Free 2007 - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

you to do it to me.
    He started unbuttoning my pants. Are you sure?
    Definitely, I said grimly.
    He had a long, thin dick that hurt like hell, but the whole time I just said, Oh yes, Aldo, yes, because that was what I imagined you were supposed to say while you were losing your ‘virginity’ to some boy you thought you loved.

    It was like the stupidest thing I ever did. I was miserable. And so bored. But of course I wouldn’t admit it. I had run away, so I was happy! Happy! Aldo had neglected to mention all those times he told me to live with him that his father hated him like I hated my mother. Aldo Sr. had been in World War II, and he’d never forgiven the ‘Japs’ for all the friends he had lost. My dad’s so full of shit, Aldo said. He never left Fort Dix. I don’t think his father said four words to me the whole time I lived with them. He was one mean viejito and even had a padlock around the refrigerator. Stay the hell out of it, he told me. We couldn’t even get ice cubes out. Aldo and his dad lived in one of the cheapest little bungalows, and me and Aldo slept in a room where his father kept the cat litter for his two cats and at night we would move it out into the hallway but he always woke up before us and put it back in the room — I told you to leave my crap alone. Which was funny when you think about it. But it wasn’t funny then. I got a job selling French fries on the boardwalk, and between the hot oil and the cat piss I couldn’t smell anything else. On my days off I would drink with Aldo, or I would sit in the sand dressed in all black and try to write in my journal, which I was sure would form the foundation for a utopian society after we blew ourselves into radioactive kibble. Sometimes other boys would walk up to me and would throw lines at me like, Who fuckin’ died? What’s with your hair? They would sit down next to me in the sand. You a good-looking girl, you should be in a bikini. Why, so you can rape me? Jesus Christ, one of them said, jumping to his feet, what the hell is wrong with you?
    To this day I don’t know how I lasted. At the beginning of October I was laid off from the french fry palace; by then most of the boardwalk was closed up and I had nothing to do except hang out at the public library, which was even smaller than my high school one. Aldo had moved on to working with his dad in his garage, which only made them more pissed at each other, and by extension more pissed off at me. When they got home they would drink Schlitz and complain about the Phillies. I guess I should count myself lucky that they didn’t just decide to bury the hatchet by gangbanging me. I stayed out as much as I could and waited for the feelings to come back to me, to tell me what I should do next, but I was bone-dry, bereft, no visions whatsoever. I started to think that maybe it was like in the books; as soon as I lost my virginity I lost my power. I got really mad at Aldo after that. You’re a drunk, I told him. And an idiot. So what, he shot back. Your pussy smells. Then stay out of it! I will! But of course I was happy! Happy! I kept waiting to run into my family posting up flyers of me on the boardwalk, my mom, the tallest blackest chestiest thing in sight, Oscar looking like the brown blob, my tía Rubelka, maybe even my tío if they could get him off the heroin long enough, but the closest I came to any of that was some flyers someone had put up for a cat they lost. That’s white people for you. They lose a cat and it’s an all points bulletin, but we Dominicans, we lose a daughter and we might not even cancel our appointment at the salon.
    By November I was so finished. I would sit there with Aldo and his putrid father and the old shows would come on the TV, the ones me and my brother used to watch when we were kids, Three’s Company, What’s Happening, The Jeffersons , and my disappointment would grind against some organ that was very soft and tender. It was starting to get cold too,