“I have never heard of this game in my life.”

“I swear, it’s a thing,” Bunny said. “Lots of girls played it. Anyway, you pretended to crack an egg on the person’s head, and then you would pretend to stab them in the back and push them off a building, and they were supposed to imagine themselves dying and tell you what color they saw.”

“This is insane.”

“I know. Little girls are insane.”

We sat there and Bunny didn’t say more.

* * *

—

“What’s going on with Eric?” I asked, later when we were out by the pool. I had taken a shower in her dad’s ultra-luxury steam shower, and we had made cinnamon rolls from the can, and I was feeling woozy but good from the sugar.

“Well, we’re definitely having sex.”

“Shut the front door!” I said. I had not been prepared for this. I had stupidly been in the hospital and out of touch, unable to protect her or at least try to sway her from driving just straight into the rocks.

“Well?” I said. “How is it?”

“I mean, good?”

“How did it happen? You have to give me the entire scene. Go.”

“Well. One day, I guess like ten days ago, after our practice, he asked what I was doing, and I said, avoiding going home for as long as possible, and he asked if I wanted to come see his new apartment, because he just moved to Hermosa Beach. So I was like, sure. So he drove us there, and he asked a bunch of questions about my dad, and was he super strict, and I was like, no, he doesn’t know half of what I do, I don’t even have a curfew, I’ve stayed out all night before and he’s never even noticed. And he’s like, cool, cool. So then we go to his apartment.”

“What was his apartment like?”

“Oh, it was like boy stuff, like bro-y, he had a cheap leather couch from IKEA, but then no rug or coffee table or other stuff to make it look less sad. He did have a cat, though, which somehow made me feel safe. It’s an orange tabby named Mayonnaise.”

“That’s cute,” I said. I was already feeling yucky about this story and she hadn’t even gotten to the juicy parts, but I was trying to be supportive and nonjudgmental. Stay focused on the cat.

“So he made us drinks, Cactus Coolers and tequila, which is yummy, turns out. And we were just being silly. I don’t know, I remember laughing a lot, but I guess I got pretty hammered, which is kind of embarrassing, and then I don’t have any memories at all.”

“Wait—what?”

“But in a way, I’m kind of glad because I got it over with and I didn’t have to be all awkward.”

“So wait, you had sex?”

“I guess so, I woke up in the morning totally naked with him on top of me, like inside me, and I leapt out of bed and I was scrambling around, out of my mind, like crying and screaming and trying to hide in the bathroom.” She was laughing as she told me this, making fun of herself. “Because I had no idea what was going on. But then he explained it to me, how I was the one who kissed him, how I gave him this whole speech about how I wanted him to be the one to take my virginity and then I burped in his face, which is embarrassing, but I was also like, that sounds about right.”

“So were you upset?” I began rubbing at my knees where the sunscreen was refusing to soak in.

“I mean, no. I mean, like, yes, obviously, because also I was hungover so I felt like I was dying and I spent the rest of the day throwing up and then that was the day you got attacked, and it honestly felt like the world was ending. But we’ve done it since then. So, like, I have memories. That was important to me. Because I feel like it’s not really your virginity if you can’t remember it.”

“Right,” I said. In a way, I wasn’t sure how to proceed, but honesty seemed like a good base layer. “So that was date rape.”

“But does it really count as date rape if I wanted it to happen?”

“Admitted gray area,” I said. “But it sounds like in the morning you did not want to have sex, and, like, he was having sex with your sleeping, passed-out body, which is gross and wrong.”

“Please don’t ruin this for me,” she said.

“I’m not trying to ruin it! If you’re into it, then I’m fully supportive, I just want to advocate for your boundaries.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Noted.”

“Well, do you enjoy it? I mean, is the sex good?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Do you cum?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“If you’re not sure, then you’re not cumming.”

“It’s just so much going on, I mean, I certainly feel a building to something and then a kind of frenzy?”

“But is it like when you masturbate? Are you like, nrrrr?” I rolled my eyes up in my head and faked a small seizure.

“No. Definitely not. But it’s still pretty painful so I’m not sure if that maybe has something to do with it.”

One of the simplicities of being male was always definitely knowing whether or not I had orgasmed, so I found her answers maddening. I had chosen much more bizarre and, on paper, bad sexual partners, but I had always had my own erection as a kind of guide, a Virgil, if you will, to lead me through the inferno. And I had been occasionally freaked out by where it led me, but there was no faking it.

Women, however, had drunk so very deeply of the cultural Kool-Aid that they couldn’t even figure out if they were cumming. Were they moaning right? Did their tits look good? How were they supposed to let go, get carried away? They were in deepest drag and they didn’t even seem to know it. I felt bad for Bunny but also ill-suited to help, and a little bit grossed out. It just seemed unnatural to me. Not a man and a woman having sex, although that wasn’t my favorite thing to picture, but someone not understanding or being able to detect their own sexual pleasure. It was like someone confessing they liked eating soap and dirt, that they couldn’t tell what was food and what was not food.

“But isn’t the pain,” I said, trying to figure it out, “like, at first it hurts, and then it gets hot and it stops hurting?”

“No,” she said, “definitely not, it hurts the whole way through.”

“Like, pardon me if this is too intimate, but are you really dry or something?”

“I have nothing to compare it to,” she said.

“Has he said anything?”