SLUT

I knew Janice from 6^th through 8^th grade. She was a grade ahead of me and two years older. I was informed of her reputation soon after moving into town. She was tall, thin and pretty, but didn't say much. There was something a little different about her, something in her personality. These days I would attribute it to depression or abuse of one kind or another. We didn’t know anything about those things back then; we just knew she was a slut. 

Janice  lived next door to my friend Joe. One day, she came out to talk to Joe, another friend named Chris, and me. Joe demonstrated how easy she was by taking her to the side of the house and putting his hand down her pants. She let him, without resistance. My friend Chris followed. Again, she didn’t stop him. Joe and Chris called me chicken until I did it, too. Janice never said a word. 

After we had all felt her up, we walked away, leaving her standing alone. Joe and Chris called her a slut as we left. The whole thing baffled me and filled me with guilt. I didn’t understand why she would let us do that, and I didn’t understand why my friends would taunt her afterwards. But I knew that Janice didn’t deserve to be treated like that. I saw the pain in her eyes, I knew that we had crushed her soul, and I felt for her.

I wanted to see her more, because I liked her and because I was a horny teenager, like everyone else who'd taken advantage of her. But this was Oklahoma in the seventies. The Baptist church controlled the moral climate and I wasn’t mature enough to resist the prevailing social wind so I couldn’t be seen with her.

Sometimes, I would call her and she’d invite me over if her dad wasn’t home. We’d talk and eventually make out, and I’d gain a little in my sexual education. The next day, without me even saying or doing anything, she knew not to act like we were an item. She’d been a slut for a while by then. She knew the drill. 

Occasionally, I overcame my social fear, or grew some balls if you like, and we’d go somewhere in broad daylight together. Still, I hoped I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. When we were finally spotted, I was teased mercilessly, accused of being in love with a whore. My friends recited the list of who had supposedly done what to her. Instead of standing up for her like I should have, I got back in line and ignored her again.

I didn’t see Janice again for a year – a chance meeting at a drive-in. She’d changed by then. She had short, greasy hair and dirty jeans. She was very stoned on Quaaludes and looked like hell. The last image I have of Janice is her blowing my best friend in the front seat of a rambler station wagon while I held the driver’s side door open, puking up my Bacardi and Coke. Passers-by stared first at me, then at the open sex taking place beside me. Three of our female friends sat horrified in the back seat, their eyes as big as frisbees.

I don’t recall ever seeing Janice after that, but I have thought of her often. I wonder if she loved me. I wonder if I broke her heart, whether she held out hopes that I would be different. I wonder if I contributed to her deterioration. Was I someone significant to her or just one more in a long line of guys who used her.

Still I think of Janice. She was beautiful. In spite of, and because they called her slut.