My junior prom corsage was big and wet as an open mouth. A decadent purple. My high school boyfriend liked to give me decadent things. When he asked me out for the first time, for example, he gave me four squares of cake with frosting shiny as lip gloss. 

There’s a long-standing association between the flower and the vagina. I don’t understand the resemblance, though in fairness I don’t spend much time staring at vaginas. I prefer to dive in tongue-first and get to work. Still, I do wonder if my boyfriend was thinking about pussy when he looked at the flower he gave me. Based on my interactions with him I’m pretty sure he was thinking about pussy ninety percent of the time. 

I never had sex with him. He asked me, shortly after we started dating, if I wanted to “you know.” I told him that if he was not going to say the word “sex” then we were certainly not going to have sex. He didn’t think I was funny. 

We spent our dates in my basement, curled up on a pale green beanbag with his hands skimming my surface like water striders. He would always ask, “Do you like this? Is it good?” which at first I thought was nice, but he got so upset with me when the answer was “no” that lying was just easier. So, I let him touch me, because I didn’t want to be a bitch. But I was still just enough of a bitch to keep my pants on. Mostly I made encouraging noises while trying to subtly crane my neck so I could see the TV over his left shoulder. In retrospect, this was maybe the meanest thing I ever did as a teenager.

Since I couldn’t offer him sex, I offered him secrets—even my biggest secret of all, that I too was thinking about pussy ninety percent of the time. Though, while I can’t speak for him, I was also interested in the person attached. Back then, I was sort of Catholic, in that my parents told me to attend Catholic school and I preferred to avoid conflict when possible. I knew some of my teachers wouldn’t like me anymore if I came out as bisexual, so I resolved to stay in the closet for the time being. 

My boyfriend liked this secret very much. Especially when I gave him permission to fantasize about me with other women. Pussy times two. Three, if he was feeling devilish. All I needed to do was occasionally contribute more secrets to flesh out his dirty talk. Which girls in my class I liked. What I wanted to do with them. There was an odd irony to it, finally giving voice to my most fervent teenage longings only to watch them transform into material for someone else’s wet dreams before my eyes. But they say a good compromise leaves nobody happy.

On prom night, my friend hosted an afterparty in her basement, featuring games, plastic bowls of chips, and absolutely no alcohol. My boyfriend and I came early, and the four of us waited on the tattered brown couch for everyone else to arrive. He pulled me close to his body and gripped me tight, ran his hands up my thigh. My friend and her date sat in silence, unimpressed by our shameless PDA. Sorry, I thought. If it helps, I don’t like this any more than you do.

“You should kiss her,” my boyfriend said to me, indicating my friend with his head. He did not whisper, or even mumble. I looked at my friend and thought, would she know? Would the knowledge pass from my body to hers? I looked at her date, who was practically a stranger. I wondered who his friends were, and what kind of stories he might tell them. I looked at my boyfriend, and there was nothing in his eyes but hunger. A rotted hunger, brown and wilted and wet, and it stank. Like a corsage left lying in the trash after a prom night when no one had any fun and no one got any pussy.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson