The Baby Walk

First published in Ivo Review, Issue 3

I was fourteen when I had my first kiss. He was thirty and liked blondes. At least, that’s what he told me. 

First base:

We had our first date at the back end of my small town, near the ravine, a place called The Baby Walk. I’m not sure who named it that. No mothers pushed their babies in strollers through the dense brush and long grass littered with butts and crushed beer cans that caught the light of the moon. The only objects resembling life were a shredded plastic bag draped sensually between the bushes and an abandoned tarp that used to be someone's home. 

I shivered in my belt-length skirt and metallic snakeskin top with one skinny strap, my feet sliding in too-big heels, teetering on the rocky sections. I rolled an unlit cigarette between my fingers hoping it gave me an air of maturity, occasionally bringing it to my pursed lips painted a Femme Fatale red. That was the name of the lipstick. I had applied two coats to be certain. 

We strolled hand in hand, not saying much because he was thirty and I was fourteen. He stopped and bent his head to connect his lips to mine. Breath quickening. A sharp inhale. Hints of stale coffee, mints and something else? I opened and closed my lips the way I’d practiced on my hand. Sometimes rolling my tongue around his but then missing and licking his teeth instead. 

My eyes focused on a freckle on his right cheek—or was it a speck of dirt?  I wondered where to put my hands. I settled on entwining them through his belt-loops. Under my fingers I could feel the smooth leather of his wallet as it stuck out of his back pocket. 

After our shared saliva had dried to a white crust at the corner of my lips, my attention drifted to my hand, bitten nails nestled in his. This was the best part. I hoped he thought so too.

Second base:

He had a car and none of my friends' boyfriends had one yet because he was thirty and I was fourteen. It was red with shiny silver handles. I often saw him take a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe smudges off the metallic chrome, then quickly pocket it again, as if he were doing something wrong. He would park at the back of the local Co-Op, deserted on a Sunday evening. Pushing his seat back as far as it would go, I would straddle his lap hoping my thighs didn't look too big when they were on either side of him. The steering wheel awkwardly pressing into my back.

Our tongues were more in sync now; I only missed his mouth once. A suggestion of more when his cold hand reached under my sweater: a tingling feeling, new to me. One of my hands drifted through his hair as I glanced over his shoulder to see a child’s car seat with an abandoned red crayon beside it and a discarded juice box on the floor. I thought about those sticky red fingers as he grazed the flimsy material of my bra, dipped a finger inside—furtive, certain—and panted in my ear. 

Was I certain?

Third base:

He rented a second place at the end of the town above the newsagents just for us, a thought which caused my heart to beat a little faster because he was thirty and I was fourteen. I often picked daisies on my way there to put in the vase we owned together. A formica aquamarine kitchen table on silver spindly legs was the first thing you saw when you pushed the flimsy door inward, a threadbare green couch its only companion. Old takeout containers, an ashtray and two glasses with brown liquid often lived there too, one with a faint lipstick stain. 

A second room held the bed and the only bathroom. As he took my hand to lay me down, I noticed black mould blooming in the corner of the ceiling, spreading in the shape of a bunny—or was it a constellation? Orion’s Belt, maybe?

When he rolled toward me and his breathing got quiet and steady, I slid out from under his arm to use the bathroom. A brown stain encircled the sink. I ran the water and scrubbed it until my hands were raw. Looking into the chipped mirror, my face a puzzle of disparate parts, the lipstick around the many mouths the mirror gave me, smudged. I wiped it off.

What happened next:

He knew what to do because he was thirty and I was fourteen. He rubbed my back and muttered platitudes in my ear. I curled in on myself, stunned, the pain threatening to tear a hole in the universe, watching the blood snake down my legs in little rivulets. Eventually it slowed, drying sticky and tacky on my inner thighs.

After that he made excuses. He was busy, probably with the sticky-red-fingered owner of the crayon in his other house. I’d walked past once—a vase full of daisies on the windowsill. Something always came up. And he no longer answered my calls. 

Until all that was left was the echo of my hand in his and the lipstick I kept hidden in the back of my sock drawer. By then I was fifteen and decided it was time to kiss someone else.

I still wear red lipstick on date nights. Femme Fatale, two coats, to be certain.