My mother waiting at the strand.
I couldn't travel anywhere without her. She would wait just within shouting distance, making sure that I could not get into any trouble. She worried about the kind of trouble that could be inflicted onto me, but I was restless, wanting to make trouble of my own.
She knew this was a date and that I was here with a boy. I had my one piece swimming costume on under my jeans and t-shirt. He was wearing boardshorts. We would swim. I argued that I needed some small moment of privacy, just time alone to talk and to perhaps hold hands. I'm not sure if I promised her that nothing would happen but I might have. I was determined to abandon my hymen on that beach in the light of day. I had the condoms in my pocket and I had purchased them without any assistance and nothing, not even my own promises or the presence of my mother was going to stop me executing my task.
I had a towel that was patterned. I knew there might be some blood. I had read about this, small drops of red on a wedding sheet, hung out for all the villages to cheer over. Rose-petals of colour on the virgin white knickers of some fallen girl.
I took his hand and plummeted. I ran down the beach and around the curve of ocean to where my mother wouldn't see me disappearing into the scrubby strand with the basketball player trailing from my hand like a huge kite. He caught the wind and dragged at me, but I tugged against him. There was very little time. In a matter of minutes my mother would be strolling along the sand, peering out into the ocean, looking for the little bobbing bouys of our heads.
His penis was very large. That was my first and only thought. I watched it bob up from his board shorts like a little white flag, marking a place in the centre of his wiry pubic hair. I thought about golf. I knew he played golf. He played boy-sports like rugby and golf and snooker. None of my other friends played sports at all. I could barely fathom the thought of breaking my hymen with someone who played sport.
I checked my watch and undressed hurriedly. The condoms were another thing. They seemed too small. I wrestled one out of it's packet and it was a skinny limp skin. Shrivelled, miserable.
"Do they come in sizes?" he asked me.
"I don't know. How do I know."
"Well didn't you ask?"
I thought of the old man behind the counter at the chemist and I shook my head more in frustration than in answer. I handed him the droop of latex, watched him scrabble with his ridiculous protrusion. Time was ticking on. My mother would be sitting on a wooden bench pretending to read her book, but mostly just watching the ocean and waiting for me to drift into view. He tried and failed to do anything productive with the condom and dropped it into the prickly grass at his feet.
Only five more condoms now. Five left. The thought that I might return home a virgin still was unfathomable.
"Here."
I pulled another little rubber worm from the packet and the hot sand scratched against my knees.
"I'll do it." I said.
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