I fourteen. You six years older. We knowing of each other because of brother; brother the leader of your band, you the replacement for the guy who needed to move on. The guy who was younger than you. You always staying longer than you should have. You legally allowed to drink, you buying the drinks for the band nights I wasn’t invited to (a roadie with no talent). The rest of the band hangs around high school waiting to graduate. You are a welder.
I always wanting to grow up faster. I always thinking I needed to change. What should I change? Anything. I just want to feel different than before. Let us change hair and outfits and maybe I can swap my skin and bones with a friend? You always around. Me always enamored. Let me change into a woman. Aren’t I already a woman? The world tells me I am ready to be a woman and I want to want to want to listen. I can be your woman, can’t I? Please?
You always ready for any stage of me. You driving your car with your tattoos and your piercings and you the singer of the band and you with loudness like you aren’t worried who hears you and you always wanting to be watched. You always watching. You with the piercing beautiful blue eyes. I melt into them, you can trap me. Trap me.
Me in your bedroom. You tell me: we don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with like i know we’ve texted but obviously i wouldn’t hold you to any of that, i mean have you even ever been spanked? cause if you haven’t then maybe we don’t want to go all the way today like maybe i could just show you how i like to worship feet? i don’t know, whatever you feel comfortable with, like maybe we should just kiss and see where it goes?
You drop me off at the high school after so I can see a basketball game with my friends. You remind me not to tell anyone. You can trust me I say. I beg to you in my mind: please trust me, I need something to remind me that someone out there wants me to continue and if you trust me then maybe I can trust myself so please please please trust me.
You did. We spend years hidden in cars or in your room in your parents’ house.
I naked in your room. You naked on the floor. You ask me: have you ever stomped someone’s balls before? it really isn’t that hard, don’t worry i like the pain and if you go too hard i will tell you so feel free to ram your fucking heel into my balls and don’t forget to tell me that i have a small small tiny fucking penis and that i don’t deserve to not be in pain just like really fucking go to town on my balls and my penis and even laugh at it just have a good time like all high schoolers always want to do just be mean to me.
I sixteen. You still six years older. You tell me that when I am seventeen we can take this public that when I’m seventeen the age difference won’t matter as if when I turn seventeen you will stop aging that you will no longer be six years older.
I waiting eagerly for one more year and we already made it this far so in one more year I will finally be a woman and I cannot wait to be your woman. I cannot wait to offer myself up to you publicly.
Until then. I watching porn trying to understand what it is that women do, how it is that I could please you. It is hard being the younger one because how do I keep your attention when I am so afraid that you will find someone who can do it better who has done it before who can do it do it do it. So I watch porn and you show me porn and I try to be the porn that you want me to be. I try to be what you want. I go to sex shops and I will ante up the dough for the sex toys you want and the bondage supply you say we need and I will watch all the porn of how to squeeze the life out of your balls until you cry like a bitch.
We on dates far away. You take me out to dinner but no you cannot get that also and I will say yes sir whatever you say because you must be right who am I but a little girl woman.
We on dates and you let the secret secrete out. I am not your first. There was a young girl before me. A friend of your sisters when you were younger. I full of jealous. I dye myself green, all my belongings green, all my body hair green, all I eat green. I wanted to be your first. Your only. Why would you choose someone before me?
You are not the only of my brother’s friends I have thought about fucking. You are just the one I thought about most. Wanted the most. Craved craved craved. But other friends of yours, ages of yours, tell me of their fetishes like duh, what sixteen-year-old wouldn’t want to know that you’re into period blood? You high five your friend as you make jokes of taking me to Paris, of making me into the Eiffel Tower. I laugh laugh laugh because I do not understand. I googling, I never understanding, I research research research to become any object you want me to be.
Me crying, always crying. You crying, usually pouting. You telling me if only I understood what it was like to really feel things, maybe then I would understand. You telling me to stop sending pictures of me cutting myself open, you do not think I am a doctor. I wanting you to see through me. To see through me to my illnesses. You always putting on blinders.
I seventeen. You somehow still six years older. You did not lie though and for that I give you credit. We lovers. We in love. We public as fuck. You not afraid to tell the world that you want to date a seventeen year old because technically it isn’t illegal because I’m seventeen (you’ve looked into it) plus isn’t seventeen basically eighteen.
You bring me to a work event and I am the youngest one. No one asks my age. If I had to guess I am the only one in high school. The only one who needs a parent’s signature for forms. The only one not paying rent. The only one applying to colleges for next year. The only one.
You take me home to meet the parents. And your siblings. Your sister is in my grade, your brother younger than my youngest sister. We eat tacos. They ask me about what I will study in college and offer me advice on how to take trains to and from so I can get more work done.
I going to college. You staying home. I moving hours and hours away. We have discussed before how hard it is to stomp on your balls from hours away so we decide to have an open relationship. We discuss: the hardship of long distance, should we be engaged, no we will be fine if we stay open because then we will not be bogged down with all of our horniness and isn’t that the hardest thing to contend with after all but really I do agree that we should be open because I waited long enough for this relationship to be real, I will not continue to wait to make out with all my friends or to get drunk and get laid. It is one of the we’s we truly agreed on.
You visiting. All my friends thinking: wow he is older, he can get us drinks but also don’t you find him to be a bit immature or don’t you think he is a bit old for us? You the only one blacked out on our college campus. You drinking drinking drinking. You full of confidence that you can check out all the hot hot hot of age girls and no one will bat an eye. You in your hunting grounds.
I home for break. You driving me around. Me nervous about how I look so I ask: Do you think I was hotter now or in high school? You answer: Oh, high school. I cry and cry and you don’t understand but I just cry cry cry.
I away at school with friends going to school for English and Political Science, I write papers and I read and I take the gen eds and also I write write write my silly little words. You give me a story for Valentine’s Day that you wrote just for me, I attempt to workshop it, you shut down and tell me I don’t get it. You leave and my life continues.
It is during this time that I remember too vividly that I was not your first. Another girl in my grade, another girl who knew your sister, another girl years before me that you picked up and talked to and I don’t know the specifics besides you got in a fight and she left your car mid traffic. That, and I know your sister didn’t talk to you for years after. Echoing the sentiment I heard yelled at us as we showered together in your mom’s apartment when we thought no one would be home, us hiding behind the curtain as she yelled and screamed, you ruin everything. She did not know who was in there with you but I wonder if somewhere inside she has considered this pattern, it’s never just one young girl.
I eighteen home for the summer. You somehow wearing this six-year difference for the first time. “Hold Me Down” by Motion City Soundtrack playing in my mind as I go over to talk to you. You ask: shouldn’t we fuck first? I answer: No because I don’t think I want to stay in this relationship because I have more fun when I am not with you. You say: this is why we should have fucked first. You were the one on the ground, you were the one below me, you were the ones with the balls being crushed, but you were the one holding me down, you were the one preventing me from blossoming, you were the one who didn’t want me to bloom.
I twenty-five. I unsure how to engage with you now. I unsure how to internalize this relationship. Something that always felt consensual is now tainted with grooming and statutory rape. I watching from afar. I a married woman. I no longer thinking of you with daisies and roses. I thinking and internalizing. I traumatized.
You tell everyone it is mutual but my brother knows it is not therefore everyone knows you got your heart broken by a girl six years younger. You tell me years later you think you will still end up with me, we are both dating other people. I tell you no it won’t happen. I wonder who stomps your balls now, I wonder if they found you on your sexy Facebook, I wonder if your parents somehow knew and that is why your name rhymes with pedophile.
VICTORIA HOOD holds an MA in English from the University of Maine. Her work has been published in Interpret Magazine, pioneertown, ergot., Cult Magazine, JAKE, G*MOB Magazine, and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit. She is also the winner of FC2’s 2021 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, for her collection of short stories My Haunted Home released by FC2. Victoria’s poetry chapbook Death and Darlings was published in 2022 by Bottlecap Press; her hybrid chapbook Entries of Boredom and Fear was published in 2023 by Bottlecap Press. Victoria strives to create work that can meld together the punk roots her parents raised her in with the disillusionment of losing her mother at a young age. Overall, she hopes to discomfort, humor and charm. You can find her on Twitter/X @toriiellen1 and on Instagram @toriiellen.
LYDIA VAZ is a high school artist whose work focuses on realism, portraiture, and surreal imagery. Based in San Jose, California, she has a love for traditional media and uses primarily oil, acrylic, and gouache paint. Her work explores themes of identity, portraiture, and personal growth, with a portfolio including a diverse range of projects. She aims to showcase her unique perspective of the world through her art and is always working towards something new. A dedicated student, Lydia Vaz was awarded her IGCSE in Fine Art in 2023 and has won several awards, including an Honorable Mention in the Congressional Art Competition (2024). Her work has also been published in several magazines, and she is excited to continue evolving as an artist.
