Cure for Love

Reegan lay perfectly still in bed next to Darren, the first boy who had ever seen her without panties. He had his shirt off and smoked a clove cigarette. She couldn’t look at him. Darren was too beautiful: that Nordic nose so pointy she could see up into it, his hairless eggshell-white chest.

“You want a drag?” he asked.

“Sure.”

The air around them was sweet with clove smoke. Remember this night, she told herself. You only lose your virginity once.

Darren swung around on the bed and put his feet on the floor. He grabbed one of his 18 eyelet Dr. Martens and pulled it over his black jeans, lank blond hair falling over his eyes as he laced up the boot. After summiting the first set of holes, Darren began working his way up the shoe’s partner.

“You better get home,” he said to the floor. Reegan was already pulling her Bauhaus t-shirt over her head.

Reegan loved Darren’s boots: they were the first things she’d noticed about him. She’d been skulking around smoker’s corner with the other goths at lunchtime. That day it had been Reegan, her best friend Siobhan, and the twins Raul and Jack as usual when this new guy walked up and asked for a light. She had never seen him at school before (weird, because she made it her business to know all the freaks).

Immediately she liked how tall and skinny he was — he reminded her of Daniel Ash from Love and Rockets. Reegan barely cleared five feet and was self-conscious about her middle, her thighs too. That’s why she wore baggy shirts, concert tees mostly: The Cure, Lollapalooza, Ministry. Some were from shows she’d seen, others from a head shop on Haight Street or ordered through the back of Propaganda magazine. She always bought a size large enough to wear over her tights like a dress.

“You have good tits,” Siobhan told her once, applying eyeliner in Reegan’s bedroom. “Don’t hide.” Reegan looked at Siobhan, eyeing her toned body left over from years of gymnastics and her Noxzema-fresh complexion. Easy for her to say.

Siobhan had only turned goth this year — she’d been a total muffy before that — but Reegan didn’t hold that against her. Shit, if someone wanted to descend the social ladder to hang with her crew of misfits, she wasn’t going to stop them. Reegan knew she was the one with the cred. Only a sophomore, she had started at Alameda High School as a full on death rocker from the first day of freshman year. Her authenticity was unchallenged. This power dynamic was important to maintain between her and Siobhan. Maybe she wasn’t as pretty, but Reegan had taught Siobhan everything she knew about Christian Death.

That day in Smoker’s Corner, at the far edge of the quad, Reegan had been too shy to talk to the new boy.

“Where did you come from, mystery man?” Siobhan asked their lanky visitor. Poseur or not, Reegan was glad for her girlfriend’s willingness.

He raised his eyebrows as if to question who she was addressing. This, despite Siobhan’s bullhorn of a voice, no doubt honed by years of gymnastic meets.

“Transferred. We just moved here from Nevada City. I’m Darren.” Actually, he looked like Andrew Eldritch from Sisters of Mercy, Reegan decided, but cuter. She still couldn’t say anything, but gazed at Darren with her most entrancing stare. Reegan knew her eyeliner looked good — of that she was certain. She crossed her arms, then looked away, not wanting to appear too interested.

“I’m Siobhan.” Of course, she won’t introduce me, thought Reegan. Siobhan’s extroversion was un-goth, and it made her look like a kid in a Halloween outfit. The dead silence felt like a dare.

“I’m Reegan,” she said. “I like your docs.” Then she turned and walked to fourth period, hoping he didn’t look at her butt, hoping he looked at her butt.

Darren started hanging with the goths pretty much every day. He ate lunch with them and ended up in Smoker’s Corner during passing periods. Siobhan tended to dominate most conversations, but Reegan occasionally snuck in a few words.

She stared at Darren’s eyelashes, the faded cigarette burns on his right hand (a dare, he’d said), his thin lips. Mostly she talked to Darren about bands, but she did manage to extract a few facts about his life. He was old enough to be a senior but was repeating junior year and his family had moved on account of his dad’s job at Lockheed. Darren got along with his parents all right; they didn’t have many rules.

Unlike the rest of her click, Darren could blend in with the mainstream students. While the twins favored Dead Kennedys and Misfits shirts, Darren’s white Hanes and black jeans were classic rebel fare. Reegan wasn’t the only one with eyes for the transfer student either. Preppy girls decided he was the bad boy it was OK to like. Darren became a heartthrob, even with the crazy boots.

“New guy’s a cutie,” Reegan overheard in gym class.

There were rumors of him deflowering a few of the popular girls but Darren never breathed a word about these activities. When he was with the creepy crew — that’s what Reegan and her friends called themselves — he was one of them.

But Darren had another life, on the upperclassman plane, that excluded Reegan, even Siobhan. Secretly, Reegan was intrigued by the tales of Darren’s afterschool dalliances that arrived through the gossip channels.

Reegan never uttered Darren’s name; that would give away too much.

She and Siobhan were walking back from school, dawdling since only studying and MTV’s Alternative Nation awaited them at home. Reegan kicked a rock with the pointy toe of her patent leather boot. “He can’t really have done it with Maya, Esme, and that exchange girl,” she said. “In one weekend? That’s just slutty.”

Siobhan scrunched her face. “You have to be pretty desperate to do it with a guy at a party, especially one with a total rep.”

Reegan didn’t buy it. There had always been tension between the two girls but they’d maintained a tacit respect for each other. Siobhan’s frank assessments of everyone and everything were exactly what Reegan needed sometimes. Conversely, Reegan knew her moody, critical nature, while exhausting, was couched in a loving protectiveness that made Siobhan feel safe. But ever since Darren’s arrival at Alameda High, that once-unquestioned balance had shifted. They were rivals. And Reegan knew she had to act quickly.

Most nights, the girls talked on the phone well past midnight. Reegan’s parents had recently gotten call waiting, but she mostly ignored the beeps when they interrupted their laconic late-night conversations.

That Sunday night they were chatting about the futility of Reegan asking for permission to see The Cure play at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mt. View the following month. The concert was on a Tuesday, making it an unequivocal no for her parents, whose idea of acceptable weeknight activities included little past homework, TV, and sleeping.

“I don’t even care if I see the whole show,” whined Reegan. “I can’t be trapped in Alameda when Bobby is so close.” Bobby is what the girls had taken to calling Robert Smith, the band’s singer: he of the panda bear makeup and rat’s nest hair.

Siobhan sighed. “Your parents are so tightass,” she said. “It’s one night. And it’s The Cure.”

Reegan hated when Siobhan complained about her parents, especially when her friend was right. They were uptight. Unlike Siobhan’s single mother who managed the JC Pennys at Burlingame mall, drank a tumbler of gin nearly every evening, and listened to Laura Branigan, Reegan had a pair of normal, upstanding parental units. At home, they wouldn’t let her wear her bat-makeup, as they called it, so Reegan had to apply it on the way to school and wipe it off with makeup remover and pads before turning onto her block. That Sunday, like most weekends, the whole family had gone to the movies and had dinner at CoCo’s. Secretly, Reegan liked these outings and her parents’ basic decency. She judged Siobahn’s mother for being too lenient, for letting her daughter wear the cut up Siouxie Sioux shirt that showed her black lace bra.

The call waiting beeped. They’d ignored it the last time, which was at least twenty minutes ago, (how long had they been talking?), and a sudden fear gripped Reegan. What if it was a work thing for her parents? “I better answer it,” she said, then switched over. “Hello?”

“Is, uh, Reegan home?”

At first, she didn’t recognize the caller as Darren. The juxtaposition of his baritone voice and the awkward greeting clearly intended for a parent, made him sound both older and more adolescent. Then her stomach started to turn. “Yeah. It’s me.” Reegan waited a beat. “Who is this?”

“It’s Darren from school. What are you doing?”

Her mind stopped. She felt woozy and a little happy. Darren was the call waiting. She also realized that he may have been — was probably — the one calling earlier. She had to get rid of Siobhan. He might call her next. “Hold on.” She pressed down on the clear plastic ringer on the phone’s handset, utterly certain it would hang up on Darren. Reegan could hear music in Siobahn’s room. It was the Mission UK, “Tower of Strength.” I need to get the tape with that song back from her, she thought.

“Took long enough. Who was it?” Siobhan wasn’t patient on the best of days, even when she had absolutely nothing going on.

“Oh, it’s for my Mom. Someone from work. I have to go.” And like that Reegan told her first outright lie.

“Let me come get you. I want to see you.”

He’d never spoken to her like this before. This was actually the longest conversation Reegan had ever had with Darren. On the phone, he acted different than at school, almost whispering, but more talkative, more insistent.

It was the middle of the night but Darren walked the whole way to her house. Reegan crouched on the floor of her bedroom, watching from the upstairs window. As soon as she saw his leather jacket shining under the yellow light of the streetlamp, she tiptoed down the beige carpeted stairs until she reached the entryway. Before opening the door, she looked in the mirror at her hastily applied eyeliner and then at her black nail polish. She stretched her shirt out so it was further from her belly and caught a glimpse of Darren through the window. She had never seen him outside of school. He was even more perfect at night.

She walked over to where Darren stood with his hands in his pockets. She wasn’t sure what to say.

He broke the silence. “Let’s hang out at my house.” He turned and started walking. She watched the leather jacket get further away. He wasn’t in any hurry for her to keep up. She caught up with him quickly and kept his pace as they walked the three blocks to Darren’s house. On the way, she provided the conversational cues.

“What did you do this weekend?”

“Not that much. Went to a party. ”

“Cool. I just hung around the house, except to go to Tower Records in the city.” She expected him to ask something about that, to be impressed.

Darren looked briefly at her. “Are you cold? You look cold. Here.” He did not wait for an answer, instead stretching his long arms out and disentangling himself from his leather jacket, which he proceeded to place over Reegan’s shoulders. She knew then that she loved him.

Unlike Reegan’s family, Darren’s parents lived in a yellow ranch style home. It was a rental, he told her, while they figured out where to live.

“Totally,” she said.

They went around back. Darren put his key in the door and turned the knob deliberately.

He motioned to be quiet and took her hand. Reegan’s breath quickened as her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness. The house smelled like bacon grease. It was packed with a surprising amount of furniture considering how recently Darren’s family had moved to the Bay Area.

They crossed the living room to a door with a ripped Return of the Living Dead poster. He opened then shut it softly behind them.

It was pitch dark but Reegan could see Darren’s translucent skin.

“Do you like me?” he asked. “I feel like you do. Sometimes.”

Reegan closed her eyes. Yes, she thought. Yes, I like you, I love you, I love you more than Siobhan and those preppy party skanks. “Uh huh. I do.”

Darren put his hand on her shoulder and followed it down her arm, then traced underneath her left breast, something no boy had done before.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Darren didn’t wait. He kissed her cheek, then her lips, and pushed Reegan onto his bed. Metallica Garage Days Revisited poster, she thought. He continued to kiss her, across her neck and the top of her chest. Reegan realized she wasn’t kissing back and started to make efforts to do so; this hurt her neck.

She looked up and saw Darren taking off his t-shirt, a silhouette until the moonlight hit him and she saw how pale and skinny he was. Then he was taking her shirt off and next her pants, kissing her chest, her belly, rubbing her breasts through her bra. She felt the blood rushing through her, tasted alkaline, got hair caught in her mouth, felt him pushing, pushing against her. She thought of how jealous Siobhan would be, how in the last hour she had gone further than her friend had been with a boy. At first, this pleased Reegan. Then she pictured her father’s disappointment and furrowed her brow.

Something clattered outside the door. “Shit,” a voice muttered. Darren sucked in his breath, struggling to suppress a laugh. He put his long index finger over his thin lips and mimed a hush sound. They waited. Reegan heard the ringing in her ears and the quiet of the house and the crickets in the yard. Then his fingers were inside her, too long and moving too fast.

“Can I?” he asked.

Reegan nodded and then it happened he was a part of her so close and pushing harder and she didn’t move at all until he stopped shuddering and she felt his sweat on her forehead and her own sweat on her chest.

It had hurt but it was over. Darren pulled off her and put a pasty arm behind his head. She rearranged herself and looked down at their four legs, lit up slightly by a lava lamp, side by side: hers naked and twice as thick as his black-jean covered sprigs. Around one foot was her underwear; she didn’t even remember him taking them off. She reached behind her back, (which was sweatier than she ever recalled it having been before) and felt between her legs. When she looked at her hand, it was wet but even in the dark Reegan knew it wasn’t blood. Wasn’t that supposed to happen?

“I used a condom,” came the voice beside her.

“I know.” She had not known. “I was checking to see…” she trailed off.

Darren turned to face her, putting a hand on his smooth cheek for support. “Your first?”

Reegan stared straight at the ceiling.

“Wow,” he said, lighting a smoke. The sharp, piney smell filled the room. Darren was not worried about his parents making a surprise visit to the bedroom. Reegan pulled her panties up over her thighs and scooted into them, then flattened her skirt, still staring at the ceiling. She’d had sex with a boy. It hadn’t felt good like in the movies but it hadn’t been that painful. She had a strong urge to run home and call Siobhan, but of course, she could not.

“You want a drag?” he asked her.

The next morning, third-period biology was particularly painful and Reegan distracted herself by practicing drawing the Einstürzende Neubauten logo on the inside of the Mead notebook she used for lab figures. A few times, unexpectedly, she felt a slight warm tingle when crossing her legs and remembered the night before. It seemed impossible, like a scene from a movie. Despite the time it took to put on his knee-high boots, Darren hadn’t actually walked her home, just stood smoking as she walked off. At the back door, he’d said: “That was cool. I’ve been wanting that to happen. I hope you did too.” He then kissed her half on the cheek, half on the mouth. He’d smelled sweet, like a clove cigarette.

Reegan pulled out a black ballpoint pen to go over the Neubauten design again. Why hadn’t she replied last night? Of course she’d wanted it to happen. Just like she wanted to see him today and talk more. Maybe they would make a plan to go to Tower Records together or even into the city. Go to Haight. There were like five great goth stores there.

Finally, the bell rang and Reegan pulled on her backpack. She knew the quickest path to smoker’s corner. One of the few advantages of being short was how easy it was to slink through the crowds in the halls. Her heart was beating so fast and her stomach was making all kinds of weird noises. God, had it done that last night? She told herself she would have noticed and rushed a little bit more, slowing down when she saw the black outlines of her friends.

The twins were talking to some kid she didn’t know wearing a Tron shirt. Whatever. That was of no consequence to her. What startled Reegan was seeing Siobhan, looking every bit the perfect goth poster girl (she was such a lame), leaning toward Darren as he lit her cigarette. Her throat choked up and tears started to form. She took a deep breath and approached the group.“Hey freaks,” she offered.

Siobhan blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Reegs. What’s up?”

Nothing was up; she came here every day. What did she know? Did that fucker tell her? She looked over at Darren who was staring at his perfectly polished boots.

“Hey,” he said.

“Darren and I were talking about going to The Cure with a few other people.” Siobhan knew the impossibility of Reegan coming along. Somehow she knew what happened last night. Maybe not exactly, but she knew. The two of them kept talking but Reegan felt like she was underwater, their laughing voices never quite translating into words.

Darren didn’t look at her. He laughed, puffed, stared at his shoes, flipped his hair, but addressed only Siobhan.

“I’m going to the bathroom you guys.” She didn’t even know why she’d told them. Siobhan said OK, but Reegan immediately felt like a total idiot.

She closed the stall door, put down the toilet seat, and sat cross-legged on it. Then she pulled out her Mead notebook and her black ballpoint pen, drew the same logo as before and a pair of Siouxsie eyes, and cried until the tears made the blue lines smudge.

Reegan didn’t talk to Siobhan for two days before she finally broke down and called her.

“Hey.”

“Uh huh?” said Siobhan.

So she had noticed the disappearing act. “Some stuff happened last weekend,” she began, “and I need to talk to you about it.”

“I know you and Darren did it if that’s what you want to tell me.”

Siobhan’s voice sounded icier than Reegan had ever heard — older too. It made Reegan feel small. “Who told you that?” Her voice quivered in that way she hated when she became emotional.

“Darren tells me everything. He doesn’t understand why you wigged out so hard at lunch.”

Reegan’s stomach dropped. Now she was crying. “I wanted to be the one to tell you about it,” she said, he voice choking. “Not him. I feel so gross.”

“It’s just sex,” Siobhan said. “You’re being a total baby.”

Her dismissive tone of voice made Reegan’s worst nightmare suddenly seem an unavoidable reality. “Have you? Did you…” Her voice sounded far away.

“What do you think, Reegan?” The phone clicked.

Reegan stayed away from campus the next day, skipping school to wander the nearby Walgreens. Thanks to the auto reverse function on her new Sony Sports Walkman, Head on the Door remained on repeat the whole afternoon; she didn’t even have to flip the tape. She drifted through the aisles, lost in the melancholy tide of the music. After an hour or so she didn’t even feel like she was in Alameda anymore. It could have been Manchester, Oxford, London: any rain-soaked city, really.

She picked up Tiger Beat, a magazine she’d loved in Junior high. She and her friends looked at copies together on the floor of her bedroom. Reegan realized she never talked to those girls anymore. They’d all abandoned her when she started painting her fingernails black and wearing what one called “Halloween crap.”

Reegan remembered those days, pouring over photos of the Dukes of Hazzard in hunky poses and Rick Springfield on General Hospital. Now she shook her head at pictures of the next breed of Hollywood heartthrobs: Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise. They all squinted at the camera, pretending to look sensitive. Like Darren. They were all fucks. Robert Smith sang to her.

She walked over to the row where they kept the tampons. On the other side of the aisle were a dozen or so small square packages with promises like “ribbed for her pleasure” and “extra sensitivity.” Reegan had taken health class twice, once in 8th grade and again this year, so she knew the importance of protection. No one wanted to be 16 and pregnant, like in an afterschool special — or worse: catch that AIDS virus she kept hearing about on TV.

Darren said he had used a condom. She even saw the wrapper on the floor of his bedroom. But she felt so stupid and dirty. It wasn’t at all how she pictured her first time. The other night she’d been under his spell, but the way he blew her off at school the next day was mortifying. He had been inside her. She hated him so much.

She thought Darren was different. Quiet. Sensitive. But now she knew better: He was a guy like the rest of them, So what if he had great shoes? His taste in music wasn’t even cool: mostly jock shit like Metallica and Guns and Roses. Reegan bet the only reason he hung out with the freaks was that he thought goth girls would be easy.

A male clerk tapped her on the shoulder. Reegan pulled her headphones down around her neck. The metal band caught in her hair.

“I said, ‘do you need help finding anything?’ You couldn’t hear me with those things on,” the clerk explained.

“Oh no, no,” Reegan said. She walked quickly to the cashier and bought three different kinds of gum. She felt lonely and liked it.

As she exited Walgreens and stepped into the parking lot, Reegan thought about her friend, the wannabe who didn’t even know where the Smiths were from, or the difference between industrial and death rock, but who actually made her feel pretty cool sometimes.

Then she pictured Siobhan laughing about her with Darren and her throat began to constrict. Siobhan made it clear that she’d been sleeping around and had been for a while, bragging about exploits that made Reegan blush. Before Darren, Reegan had only kissed a few guys, mostly junior high games of spin the bottle. Reegan knew about the bands and Siobhan knew about boys. Neither one really cared all that much about what the other did with the opposite sex. Until Darren.

When she got home after her day of blissful truancy, she decided she had to call him, tell him what a fucker he was. Reegan sat on the floor with her back against the bed and stared at the white plastic phone. It had a little chip on the receiver which had been there since she was little. She thought about the fact that she didn’t really call boys. She’d certainly never called the boy who took her virginity. The fact Darren would always be that boy made her sad.

“Hey, it’s Reegan.”

“I know.”

“When I came over, I didn’t expect…I mean, I like you. I was surprised you even called.”

“It’s OK. Maybe we shouldn’t have done all that. Are you cool, though?”

“Yes.” She was under the spell again. Why wouldn’t he ask her to come over? She’d do it with him again. She didn’t care about Siobhan anymore. She would show Darren how much she liked him and they would become something serious, maybe not at first, but pretty quickly —

“Well, I’ve got to go. I have a buttload of studying to do. I’ll see you at school, though. Come to Smoker’s Corner. Siobhan keeps asking where you are.”

Reegan closed her eyes and pulled her legs up to her chest. “Siobhan said that?”

The next morning Reegan put in some extra effort before school. She sprayed the crap out of her hair, creating a perfect rat’s nest and tried to do that Egyptian thing with her eyes. She hadn’t seen Siobhan all week and wanted to look great. For her, but for Darren too. Reegan half-walked, half-jogged from fourth period to Smoker’s Corner where she saw Siobhan and the twins puffing away, actively ignoring everyone in her path. No Darren. She held her binder in front of her like a shield, but things were different. She didn’t care if Siobhan even had slept with Darren, because so had she. Siobhan couldn’t treat her like a little kid anymore. As competitors for his attention, they were now equals.

Siobhan raised her eyebrows. “So you’re alive.” The words weren’t posed as a question nor were they enthusiastic.

“Hey, Siobhan.” Reegan looked down. Her initial cavalier attitude was fading. What did she even want from this? “I’ve been meaning to call you. I’m sorry. It’s been a tough week.”

“Bullshit. You don’t like that Darren and I are friends — ”

Reegan cut her off. “It’s not that.”

“Yes, it is that. You fucked a guy. That doesn’t mean you own him, Reegan. I mean, you never even told me you liked him.” Siobhan looked away and took a drag.

Reegan was crying now. Siobhan had never spoken to her like this. She wanted to run but she hugged her binder tighter, hoping it would somehow keep her planted there. “I never said that,” Reegan said. “I just wanted to talk to you about it.”

Siobhan looked at her with cool, inexpressive eyes. “You are much too immature for him, Reegs. Darren has seen a lot of stuff you haven’t. I don’t get all possessive with him. That’s why we can hang out. You need to grow up.” With that, Siobhan ground her clove out and sat on a decrepit bench.

For a moment, Reegan stood dumbfounded, processing her friends utter and complete alienness. Was this what things were like on the other side of virginity, all mixed-up friendships, and boys who kissed you everywhere then acted like you were just sharing chem notes? The tears dried on her face in the November California sun.

“C’mon,” Siobhan said and scooted over. “Eat your lunch with me. We’re both adults.”

Reegan didn’t even bother wiping her tears as she walked over, swinging her vintage Munsters lunchbox. She put her head on Siobhan’s shoulder. At the crunch of Reegan’s hairspray, both girls laughed and laughed.