Thirteen

by William Orr

When I was thirteen Lily had a painting over the fireplace inside her parent's huge victorian house. The picture was a woman with a locket around her neck. She told me a story about the woman--an ancestor of hers. Lily said the woman was just sitting around in the parlor minding her own buisiness when all of a sudden a bolt of lightning came down through the chimney and struck her right in her locket. Right here, out of this very fireplace under that painting of a lady it came. After that the woman could not take off the locket ever because it was melded to her flesh for the rest of her life.

Before Lily met me she would masturbate with an electric toothbrush. She had moved on, though. At this time she did it by grinding her crotch into one corner of her matress. She still kept the toothbrush under her pillow as a keepsake. I tried once my luck with her and the toothbrush, but I was thirteen and could not understand such things--things like clitorises--so I was never any good at it. I just could not seem to get it in just the right spot.

I remember Lily telling me the morning after she made a black metal white boy masturbate in her attic. She made him eat his come and watched as he sucked it down, all before Lily was even sixteen years old. When she told me she had done it I was jealous because I knew in that moment she had known what love is.