Snark and Stage Fright by Stephanie Wardrop Page B

couldn’t help but remember descriptions of male body parts from the terrible romance novels my mother gets from the library. Tori and Cassie and I used to read the sex parts just so we could laugh at the descriptions of penises. Which meant that as Michael was sliding on top of me and doing amazing things to my neck with his mouth, my traitorous brain was recalling phrases like “love lance” (Cassie’s favorite term), “throbbing manhood” (Tori’s), and my personal fave, the “pulsing pillar.” The memory of this last euphemism made me almost choke on a giggle-gasp, so I turned my head to the side and buried my face in a very plush pillow to muffle it.
    I swear my brain is out to get me sometimes.
    Michael was off the bed and looking down at me with great concern, saying, “Georgie, are you all right?” And then a terrible shadow crossed his face and he said, “Oh. You’re laughing.”
    “No!” I cried, sitting up and touching his back, which seemed to be about as stiff and lifeless as a plank now. He pulled away from my touch and yanked his plaid boxers back on and I could see that something else was suddenly pretty lifeless and no longer stiff as well. I felt my heart drop like a stone into my stomach. “I wasn’t … I’m sorry. I’m just … really nervous.”
    “Why? What is it you are afraid of?”
    “I don’t know!” I wailed. “I’m sure Catalina managed to get through this without laughing,” which was, of course, exactly the wrong thing to say, almost as merciless and self-annihilating as laughing at your boyfriend’s penis.
    “‘Get through this’?” he repeated through clenched teeth. He still wasn’t looking at me, but I could see in the fading twilight that his face was dark and tormented. And I had done that to him. I couldn’t have ruined our Big Night Together any more effectively if I had taken a flamethrower to the bed.
    I pulled my knees up to my chin and tried to explain, even as I knew I never could, “I was so worried about messing everything up that I messed everything up … I do that. I just keep doing that.”
    “Yes, you do. A lot.”
    I know I had just insulted his manhood—albeit accidentally—but those words struck me like the blade of an ax.
    “Seeing that didn’t exactly put me at ease,” I snapped, pointing vaguely at the photo on the bulletin board. “I’m sorry I don’t have the vast experience she has. Which she happily shared with you, probably the night that picture was taken.”
    He stood up and pulled his T-shirt over his head with such speed and ferocity I thought he’d snap his neck.
    “Oh, don’t start with that again,” he said, tone sharp as a whip. “You obviously can’t deal with having a more mature relationship than teasing the crap out of each other so I need to just accept that and move on.”
    “I don’t want to move on! Not without you! I—” I had to stop because there was a big hard glob of something lodged in my throat and no words could get past it. Every part of my body had turned to lead, heavy and ugly, burdensome and useless. I almost wished it would get so weighty it would crash through the bed, then the floor, and just keep dropping through the earth until I hit magma below the surface.
    He sat down on the bed with his back to me and said, “This shouldn’t be this hard. This just isn’t working out. Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”
    He shook his head, which then drooped over his shoulders for a moment like a wilted daisy. I had done that to him. I had hurt him because I was afraid that having sex would ruin everything. And so I went and ruined everything. Upon my demise, the coroner’s report will read “Death by Irony.”
    “Do you believe that?” I choked out past the glob.
    “I don’t know, George. But I do know I don’t want to do this anymore.”
    I struggled to get my underwear back on while still under the sheets, though I don’t know why I was being so modest or shy since he had seen