Since then, I decided to stay a virgin, to hold onto something pure when everything around me seemed dirty and dishonest. "'No man is getting past these gates,'" I'd joke with my friends, but inside I was deadly serious. I wanted to take out my revenge on every man I met; every pig who, above all, just wanted to fuck me like I was some conquest. "'You think I'm easy?'" I'd whisper to boys who got too handsy. "'Think again.'" The hilarious thing is that I used to be the popular girl at school, the one everyone wanted to date. "'Bianca's going out with Tyler now,'" they'd whisper in the halls. I'd casually break up with a new guy after dating him and using him emotionally, watching them beg for another chance, and then I'd move on to the next guy like a hunter stalking new prey. "'It's just not working for me anymore,'" I'd say with practiced nonchalance. But none of them won my body or my heart—not even close. "'You can look but you can't touch,'" became my unspoken rule.
I kept myself pure in that one specific way, but I did enjoy touching myself, and being touched all over my body. "'Just not there,'" I'd say firmly, establishing boundaries. I let the boys lick my pussy until their jaws ached, and I sucked a lot of dicks like they were my favorite candy. "'You like that, baby?'" I'd purr, watching their eyes roll back. The blowjob was one of my specialties—I could make a guy see stars with just my mouth and hands. I wanted to show how much I could satisfy a guy without giving him my pussy, how I could drive them crazy while keeping my power, and I succeeded every damn time. "'Best head I ever got,'" they'd groan afterward, dazed and grateful. I left them with a shattered and broken heart as part of my defense mechanism, recreating what my mother often did to my father but without the full betrayal. "'It's better this way,' I told myself. 'Better to be the heartbreaker than the heartbroken.'"
I thought that my father didn't know that my mother cheated on him, that he was living in blissful ignorance, but I was mostly wrong. He knew all along, but he refused to process the information, to acknowledge the painful truth staring him in the face. "'Your mother works late again,'" he'd say, his eyes hollow. But by the time I figured out that he was deceiving himself, I was almost fifteen and wise beyond my years. "'He knows,'" I realized one night, watching him watch her leave for another "book club meeting." He'd kept the truth at bay in order to protect our family, to maintain the façade of normalcy, and I came to respect him for that sacrifice. "'You're stronger than I thought, Dad,'" I whispered to myself. Furthermore, he loved my mother unconditionally, which is rather romantic in a tragic, heartbreaking way. "'Love shouldn't hurt this much,'" I decided then.
I remember when I was fourteen, a freshman in high school trying to figure out who I was. I was dating a jock in my school, Scott with his letterman jacket and perfect smile. "'You're different from other girls, Bianca,'" he'd say, having no idea how right he was. He asked me for a date to a fancy restaurant that his father co-owned, all proud to show me off. "'Only the best for my girl,'" he'd said, kissing my cheek. When we walked in, I saw something that made me freeze in my tracks, like someone had poured ice water down my spine. I saw my father sitting on the lap of another man in a private booth, laughing intimately. I was so angry that I had to excuse myself, my world spinning. "'I need to use the restroom,'" I mumbled to Scott. I went to the washroom and, as I sat on a toilet, I closed my eyes and, in my mind, I fucked the man my father was with. "'You stole him from us,'" I thought viciously.
I tortured him sexually and mentally in my vivid imagination and, when I opened my eyes, I realized that I was masturbating—my hand working furiously between my legs. It was my first time touching myself that way, brought on by rage and confusion. "'What is happening to me?'" I gasped, both horrified and relieved by the release. I broke up with Scott after a couple of weeks, unable to look at him without thinking of that night. "'Is it something I did?'" he asked, bewildered. There were tears rolling down his cheeks, making tracks on his perfect quarterback face. We were in the middle of the hallway between classes and it was embarrassing for both of us. I said that he was a lousy lay, loud enough for people to hear, even though we'd never gone all the way. "'Sorry, Scott, but you just don't do it for me,'" I announced coldly. Then I walked away, leaving him standing there like a statue.
After that, all of the jocks in the school chased me like I was some prize to be won. "'Bianca's single again,'" they'd say, circling like sharks. They had heard rumors that I liked older men, and that I was secretly a porn star making videos on the weekend. "'Is it true you hooked up with Mr. Peterson?'" a bold sophomore asked me once. I didn't care, though, about the gossip or their desperate attention. I continued to do what I'd always done, playing my games and keeping my distance, and it had worked for me perfectly. "'You can all keep guessing,'" I'd say with a mysterious smile. I started to date a few guys in college, expanding my territory, but no one made me feel special or seen. "'You're amazing, Bianca,'" they'd say, but it was all surface-level adoration. Not one of them was genuinely attractive to my eyes or made me want to break my rules.
It must have been fate then, when, on the day that I turned twenty-one—on the day of my graduation ceremony—everything changed forever. "'Happy birthday to me,'" I said sarcastically as I witnessed something that would set me on a new path. My father was in another country because of a very important meeting with international clients, but he had promised to come over home early to celebrate my graduation with me and my mother. "'I wouldn't miss it for the world, princess,'" he'd said on our last call. I came early to search for my mother, who had totally ignored me over the past few years while I'd been in college, living her separate life. "'Mom? You home?'" I called out as I parked. Just as I arrived, though, I spotted a man coming out of our house. She was kissing him passionately at the door, and she was boldly squeezing his dick in the parking lot where anyone could see. "'Jesus Christ,'" I muttered, ducking down in my car. She kissed him for the last time and he stormed out of the parking lot with his car, tires squealing. My eyes watched him till I realized that he'd parked only a few meters away on the same street. I hid where he couldn't see me and, stealthily, I followed him like a detective in a crime show. "'Who are you?'" I whispered. It wasn't until I got closer that I realized with a shock that he was our neighbor, Dr. Adrian—the respected physician my mother had pointed out at neighborhood gatherings. "'The handsome doctor,'" she'd called him, and now I knew why.