A Supposedly Staggering Infinite Work of Heartbreaking Illumination I'll Never Read

I knew right away she was not like other girls

For You, The Stars
Chapter Three: Big Sister’s Clothes
Installment 2

We had great seats for that show. It was general admission and there were about 20 of us going, so we saved abour four or five seats each in about four or five rows. We all moved around between seats during the opening acts and between the sets, but Cecilia and I ended up sitting together for the bulk of the show.

We had both taken acid and though it wasn’t her first time she still knd of relied on me to guide her through the experience, especially considering that the whole acid-at-a-Dead show routine was new to her.

I specifically remember a moment when I suddenly felt less avuncular and more attracted to her. At one point she was sitting in one of the much closer rows we had saved and I caught her looking at me and when our eyes met she gave me a significant nod, like she was feeling it too.

I was still somewhat inexperienced with women. I had been turned down so often that I was surprised at how, in the recent past, so many flirtations seemed to be bearing fruit. I was beginning to learn to recognize a certain feeling - I’ll call it surety. There was just a point in this evening when I knew we were going to get together.

Some of it was logistical, the second set started at midnight to ring in the new year. The show wouldn’t finally wind down until after 2 pm, but BART stopped running around midnight. She had no ride back to Marin and when I asked what she was planning to do she said, “Can’t I stay at your place?”

Even that could have been innocent. We’d had lots of people crashing at our house, and not just the influx of college-aged Deadheads who knew we’d put them up for the new year’s run. I’d even had girls sleep on my futon innocently enough. She could have just slept over, but I knew it was going to be more than that.

I was barely thinking about Simone at all, except to note that she was very far away. I was definitely not thinking of my recent ethical pledges to myself to fly straight and stop messing around.

Cecilia was cute. Her older sister Bella was beautiful but Cecilia was more overtly sexy. There were tiny flaws in her looks - eyes too far apart, nose a bit too wide, shoulder a little too square, but who was I to complain? I was decent-looking little guy in mediocre shape with a smart mouth and glasses.

If we’d been the same age or coming from the same context, Cecilia would never have looked at me twice. It was only because I was the cool friend of her older sister that she saw me as a catch.

Cecilia liked to dress sexy. She wasn’t a Deadhead. She was a party girl. She liked Pink Floyd and the Dead all right, but she loved smoking pot and drinking beer most of all. She had tried acid and mushrooms but she liked ecstacy the best. She loved to go out dancing and she liked it when guys ogled her.

She dressed to be looked at: miniskirts and bare-midriff tops. She was moderately busty (a C cup, I later learned) and she wore bras that accentuated her bust. She almost never wore flats. Her skirts were stretchy and skin tight and her tops often matched them.

She wasn’t at all the type of girl I’d ever been with before. My college girlfriend from Vassar (I never managed to hook up with anyone on my own campus) had been an intellectual, a writer. Simone was getting her Ph.D. in English Lit. Cecilia was smart but she wasn’t booksmart. She didn’t like school and she didn’t really want to be perceived as smart. She wanted to be perceived as sexy, and she was good at that.

Her hair was shoulder length, honey blonde, and naturally so. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup but just enough to look naturally glowing. She wore teenybopper lip gloss and was often re-glossing her lips. She laughed at my jokes and I was falling for her hard.

Of course we end up spending the night on my futon. We kissed alot and messed around a little. I was surprised when she did not want to take off her bra. It was my first hint that she wasn’t as inhibited as her behavior implied. She let me undress her completely otherwise.

We did a lot of touching that night and lot of kissing, and a little licking. I wasn’t very aggressive, but I was suprised that I wasn’t able to get her off with my hand or my mouth. She had no problem getting me there.

We didn’t have “actual sex” that night. Cecilia wasn’t on the pill and I didn’t have any condoms. (Simone was on the pill by then, so I hadn’t need any for a while.)

She knew about Simone, at least in passing, but she waited for me to bring it up. I told Cecilia her that I was going to break up with her, that I had already cheated on her once and that I obviously wanted out. I said, “Don’t feel obligated to keep seeing me just because of that. It’s just something I have to do.”

Cecilia told me she would like to go out with me. “I’ll be your little sexy girl,” she said, which sounded a little weird to me but not necessarily in a bad way.

Around dawn the psychedelics were wearing off enough for us to fall asleep but we’d been kind of drifting and dreaming for a few hours by then, me with my arms around Cecilia. She was a few inches shorter than me, a few years younger than me. I wanted to possess her and to protect her.

We woke up a little afternoon and played the dangerous game of coitus interruptus. I told her that it wasn’t safe, that even if I came outside her something could leak out. Shesaid she wasn’t worried but I was.

Also, I was already dreading breaking up with Simone. I knew it was what I wanted to do, but I didn’t look forward to telling her and dealing with her anger or disappointment or whatever her reaction was going to be.

When we finally came out of my room, a few other Gomers were hanging around the living room next door. Nobody said anything about Cecilia spending the night. She went into our neglected kitchen and found a beer in the fridge. When she came back someone passed her the bong that was perpetually on our coffeetable. She looked at the gritty scum clinging to the inside of the red plastic tube and asked, “Would anyone mind if I washed this out?” Chad, Dave, Seth, Hopper and I looked at each other and laughed.

Chad said, “Be our guest.”

This became a running joke for us after awhile. I explained to her that we didn’t like the bong being dirty - we were just too lazy to clean it. The same thing went for the bathroom and the rug, for that matter.

Later in the day I took Muni downtown with Cecilia and saw her off on the bus to San Rafael. I was torn between the light buoyant feeling of starting a new fling and my fear of breaking the news to Simone. I had four days assuming I told her right after she got back from New York.