By my freshman year of high school, my best friend since fourth grade, Zoë*, and I came to a mutual realization of our crushes for each other. We were relatively precocious, both intellectually and in our sexual interests. Part of the appeal of our relationship was that we knew each other so well already, and weren't inclined to bother with boys at the time, being students at an all-girl school. While we were forced to be inconspicuous in a way, it was thrilling to be sneaking around behind a closed door where the parental passer-by assumed that we were gushing over Vogue when it was more likely that we were fucking against the wall along which the Vogue subscription was stacked.
Our sexual relationship was a blur of about five months of adventures that even included an art museum bathroom, but the most memorable encounter is what I refer to most simply as The Pirate Story. A challenge we had faced with fucking at my house was the fact that my parents removed the lock from my bedroom door when I was quite young so that I wouldn't get accidentally locked in my room, and never replaced it as I got older. It was a hasty job that left my door in a state that prohibited it from remaining fully closed, and the best we could do was to making a little curtain across my room and casually prop things against the door to keep it from swinging open.
My mom was out of the house somewhere for the evening, leaving just my dad there. We decided to do a little tying up, and as we gathered whatever low-fi bondage gear we could find about the room (it usually ended up being long scarves or satin belts), we joked about the prospect of my dad walking in on us. I proposed that we explain to him that we were pretending to be pirates, and that I had been captured. We amused ourselves by continuing to add flourishes to the pirate tale as she tied the knots around my wrists and took her clothes off, and couldn't have been very far along when I remember recognizing movement from my peripheral vision in the region of my bedroom door.
I don't really remember what he said. I assume it was some sort of inquiry as to what the fuck was going on, upon seeing his daughter tied to the bedposts of her bed, a little nightdress still on (thank god), with her best friend hiding under the covers in a way that suggested that she was naked, her articles of clothing strewn across my floor. In the shock of the moment, I burst into a fit of giggles. I offered my explanation quizzically, in a way that blatantly indicated that I wasn't pretending to buy it, either.
"We're playing…pirates?"
He asked what Zoë was doing, hiding under the covers.
"She, uh…was changing clothes, and wanted some privacy, so she went under the covers."
Oh, such a giant, terrible heap of bullshit.
Through all of this, my father expressed little emotion, aside from shock. He invited us to come downstairs in a way that was casual yet not merely a suggestion. After he carefully closed the door behind him, I was hysterical with amusement, while Zoë took more of an "Oh my god, holy shit" approach, understandably. Unable to locate all of Zoë's clothes in a timely fashion, I made yet another genius move secondary only to the pirate back story in supporting the "Oh-she-was-just-changing-under-the-covers" scenario by having her change into another of my little nightdresses, allowing us to match. After coming downstairs, Zoë relaxed a bit and we tried to make the pirate game we were so clearly playing more believable by discussing it at great length within earshot as my father uncomfortably went about his business on the first floor. We stayed in the same spot, laughing at not only the absurdity of our situation, but the far more dumbfounding eagerness to convince my father of our explanation indirectly, until my mother came home. As soon as she walked in the door, we ran back upstairs and searched for Zoë's clothes, and I remained under the impression that my mother was oblivious to the goings-on in my bedroom that night until I received a surprising direct address on the matter three years later, which explained why she had banned subsequent sleepovers shortly thereafter.
When I've shared this story with the few people that I have, I often get the sympathy of, "Man, it sucks that it was your dad who caught you," but really, it wasn't. My dad is the more liberal, nondenominational half of an otherwise conservative Catholic marriage, and I cannot imagine what my mother would've done had she come home early and up to my room to say hello to Zoë. I have a feeling that I would've stuck to my pirate story, though.
*Name has been changed
1 comment:
hmmm, this story is ripe with vagueness.
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