Free Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel Page B

talk about Bruce all the time, and he thinks it’s amazing that I’m not like all his sister’s other friends who are into Shaun Cassidy and Andy Gibb. I get such a crush on him—his name is Abel—and after a while I’m going to my friend’s house to see him more than to visit her. I feel this strange affinity, like maybe he might like me too, and one night when we’re watching TV in the den with the whole family—it’s Tuesday night, so I bet it was
Happy Days
or
Laverne and Shirley
—and I am sitting under an afghan quilt to keep warm, I feel his hand reach underneath the blanket, up my legs, into my panties. I don’t try to stop him, I do nothing at all but sit there and take in the sensation because it feels good, it is the only thing that has felt nice to me at all in so many months, maybe even years. I have never had a feeling quite like this before, haven’t even come close to the strange electricity that seems to be spinning in my stomach and then just below, and below and below and below. And I can’t imagine what I’ve done to deserve anything so nice.
    And I feel blessed. I feel that if God has given me this capacity for pleasure, then there must be hope. So I start sneaking into Abel’s bedroom in the middle of the night whenever I sleep over at their house, start wishing he could do to me what he does to me all the time because I never knew my body had such a capacity for joy. I learn to touch him too. With my fingers, my hands, my mouth. I am surprised to discover that I have the facility, in all my sadness, not only to receive but to give a bit of this life force.
    This physical contact brings me such happiness that I want to tell everybody I know about it, I want to walk up to women in the streets and tell them about this thing I’ve discovered, as if only I am privy to it. I want to give blowjobs to guys I see here and there, wondering if they will respond the way Abel does, or is it just something unique to him. I want to let Dr. Isaac know this little secret of mine, but I can’t say a word to a soul. Everyone will think it’s sick, will think I am being molested because he’s seventeen and I’m only twelve. No one will ever believe that this is the only good thing in my life.
    So when Mr. Grubman bothers me with all his questions—his strange, salacious questions—I think to myself that maybe I should tell him my secret. But then I don’t, don’t dare. I am somehow afraid of how weird he is, afraid that he will turn me in and then they will send me away, lock me up in a prison for unchaste girls. I am scared that they will throw me into an institution not because I am depressed and need help, but because I am a girl, a good girl in my own way, and still I am capable of such crazy lust.
    Â 
    That summer, I am just thirteen, everything sucks and I am stuck at camp wondering about the Olympics. One day right after clean-up period, right after our beds have been inspected for hospital corners and our cubbies have been checked to make sure all the Archie comics are piled neatly, I sit on the porch of my bunk listening to Bruce Springsteen’s first album. Paris, a girl I also go to school with, comes outside to sit with me. Paris is, I guess, what I would call a friend. I’ve known her since kindergarten, and like everyone else who’s been in my life for a while, she’s just kind of waiting for me to snap out of this funk so that we can have play dates and polish our nails in baby pink like we used to do when we were seven. She lives across the street from me so we still walk home from school together sometimes, which can’t be any fun for her because all I want to talk about is the oncoming apocalypse in my brain.
    Paris tries to be understanding. I don’t make this process very easy for people. After weeks of haranguing the girls in my bunk about the genius of Bruce Springsteen, when