Page 76 of The Other Side of Paradise
Oh, god. Wasn’t that the question, though? “I don’t… I don’t know,” I mumbled, picking at my fingernails. I mean… if Allison asked me to do it again, I’d do it again. Was the answer that simple? “I mean, she’s cute!” I said. “She’s really pretty and everything. If I were really, like, seriously into girls, then probably, yeah. But—I don’t know, okay? It’s just… it’s weird.”
“What’s weird about it?”
God, I was hoping she wouldn’t ask that. “It was… fun to watch and all, but I’d feel weird touching a whole…” How was I suddenly awkward? I couldn’t say words. I gestured towards my lap instead, and Brooklyn stared at me for a second before she said bluntly,
“You have holdups around vaginas.”
Well, I guess if we were getting right into it. “I mean, I don’t look at mine and thinksexy,” I said, and she laughed.
“Would it feel better if I said that’s normal?”
I frowned. “What, with lesbians?” I said, and I cringed a little inwardly, realizing I was doing it again. “And bisexual women?”
“Actually, yeah,” she said, and I softened, a nervous sensation beating in my heart.
“Seriously? Isn’t that, like… just being straight, then?”
“Not really,” she said. “Attraction is about the person, not the shape of their genitals… although there’s nothing wrong with liking genitals one way or the other. But it’s more like… we all have a lot of internalized feelings around a woman’s pleasure, don’t we? Society doesn’t exactly praise the vagina. There’s kind of a narrative of that it’sickyexcept as something for a straight guy to put his dick into.”
Allison talked a lot about how I was so chill and relaxed and could talk about anything comfortably, but Brooklyn was next-level. I looked away. “I mean,Idon’t think that.”
“Not on a conscious level, but it gets to you,” she said, shrugging casually. “Gets to all of us. It was honestly kind of weird and awkward for me my first time with a woman, too. But—a couple of things.” She put her hand up, counting them off on her fingers. “One is that there’s no one right way to have sex, and you shouldn’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable. And two is that vaginas, just like… body fat, or a woman’s body hair, are something that you realize pretty quickly isn’t actually as gross as society makes it out to be.”
Huh… I wondered what that looked like. Maybe if I tried touching Allison, I’d get over my hangups and then be chill with it. And then what, go around likehey, I’m bisexual?Like Brooklyn? And… I had a hard time picturing Brooklyn like that anyway. “Wait, so it was even awkward for you?” I said, and she shrugged.
“Yeah, the first couple times. A lot of us have been there. It was hot to watch, right? Even if you did have holdups about touching?”
I mean, god,hotwas so underselling it. I’d come so hard my soul had left my body. And I’d had the urge to, I don’t know, sprout a dick and fuck Allison into the couch. That had certainly never happened before. “I mean, yeah,” I mumbled after a minute.
“Pretty sure if you’re totally not into it, you don’t get turned on watching something like that,” she said, and I pouted, just a little. I mean, it sounded obvious, but jeez. Let a girl live. We couldn’t all be my sister.
God, did that mean she had the same holdups too? I furrowed my brow before I decided to go for it. “Was Ryan likethat too?” I said, and she raised her eyebrows maybe higher than I’d ever seen from her.
“You’re asking me how much your sister liked pussy her first time.”
I mean, I guess I was. Was that weird? Hell, this whole thing was weird. “Yeah,” I said, and she shook her head, a far-off look in her eyes.
“Different people do have different family relationships… she was definitely the outlier,” she said, and I sat up taller.
“Wait, seriously?”
“Yeah, zero hesitation, all in…”
I laughed. Her?Ryan?Being that interesting? “I literally cannot believe her,” I said, and Brooklyn’s eyes sparkled.
“She’s going to kill me for telling you this, but her face when she finds out will be worth it.”
Ugh. What a loser. I loved it. “I wish I was brave like that,” I laughed lightly, and Brooklyn gave me a weird look.
“Do you?” she said. “You wish you could bring yourself to get Allison off all she likes?”
“Uh.” I stiffened, a nervous feeling in my stomach. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Didn’t you?”
Didn’t I? I mean, how else was I going to interpret it? Not like there were other girls I was hoping to get off. I mean, if Allison had a dick, I’d be all over it, literally. I guess I did want to get her off. Trying to picture it with her… I mean, it was kind of weird, but it was kind of hot, too. I wondered what she’d sound like.
God, I was into it. Sure, maybe I had some holdups, but if Brooklyn could have holdups, then I could, too. I wanted to at leasttry,right? Like a new food, you had to try it before you could judge it.
