A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Yvette

When I was nineteen, I briefly went out with a black girl from Pasco named Yvette. The first time I saw her, she was wearing a very sexy turquoise dress at a Pasco High School dance. When I introduced her to my brother Matt, I could tell he liked her too and I felt guilty about that.

I went to eat dinner at Yvette’s house and the food was totally different from what my family ever had. It was soul food. Her mom even called it that.

She was a virgin and we often talked about having sex and where we should do it.

My cousin Tana gave me a key to her apartment and I often stayed at her place when she was gone. Her fish needed to be fed.

Yvette and I eventually tried to have sex in Tana’s bed. It almost seemed too planned out and it was hard to get excited. Yvette said she wanted to do it, but we couldn’t make it work for some reason. I was nervous and started to have performance anxiety. Her vagina was slick but felt like a wall. Her hymen would not budge.

I didn’t see her for about a month after that. I knew it wasn’t working out without her having to tell me. But I saw her one last time at a party in East Pasco. It was at some DJ’s house—the kind with weeds and dirt in the front yard instead of grass. Some raw homemade-sounding hip-hop was blaring out of the living room stereo when I came in. Everyone looked at me suspiciously since I was the only white person there. Yvette led me to a dark bedroom and we went in. I couldn’t see a thing but I could hear her breathing hard. She reached into my pants and started jerking me off. My pants fell and I could sense her moving down my body as I stood there, surprised and unsure of what to do. I touched her head softly and felt her short blunt hair until I came.