THE FIRST TIME
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT - LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX
"Let's talk about sex, baby
Let's talk about you and me
Let's talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
SALT-N-PEPA (From the album "Blacks' Magic (1990))
Pacey had been looking forward to this day for months. The day where his boat would go on it's true maiden voyage. He could have taken it on it before of course, but ever since he'd gotten it as his birthday present all of those months earlier, he'd made the decision that if he didn't have the perfect passenger, also known as his girlfriend, to share it with, he could put it off until the timing and not the least, the weather, was perfectly right. Now, with everything on the home front being more or less in order, the time had come, and, in all honesty, this felt like a big step towards adulthood for him, seeing as himself and Joey would be entirely on their own for several days with none of the adults in their life around, to tell them what they could and couldn't do. To add to the joy of it all, they'd both been given an entire week off from work, now that Bessie was back close to being back to her old self and could at least be in charge of the dinner shift, where the pressure was at its usual peak, and they had something else to celebrate, with summer school being over and done with (for this time) too.
"Did you make sure to bring protection, in case things get a little too hot and heavy between you and Joey?" Gretchen slyly asked him, while they were deciding how much clothing that he needed to pack for the next week or so.
"Yeah, we have life jackets on the boat" he jokingly answered her, although he knew exactly what she'd been talking about.
"I meant condoms! I've always loved Joey, and, in many ways, she was a little sister to me while we were growing up, but I'm not ready to become an aunt yet, any more than the two of you are ready to become parents. Take it from me, it's a million times better to be safe than sorry afterwards!" Gretchen lectured him, not that it was the first time where she'd done so on the subject of having safe sex that summer, something that was probably highly attributable to her own situation.
"We've already decided that we're going to wait, until we're ready for it. I'm in no hurry and neither is Joey" he tried to reason with his older sister, who just shook her head at his comment.
"Do you know who said that almost exact same thing, on the exact same day that she lost her virginity?" she asked him.
"You?" he answered her, since it was the only answer that immediately popped into his mind.
"Bingo! Pacey, when you're your age, it can be hard to control those hormones, that are raging through your system and with how long you've been leading up to it already ..."
"I'm not in the mood for a heart to heart about my hormones with my sister! Not in this lifetime or any of the other ones, that might come after it!"
"Let me ask you this, then: What do you think it'll do to Joey's reputation at school, if she has to walk around there being known as the pregnant girl, who couldn't keep her legs clinched together and was dumb enough to get herself knocked up? That's all that she'll become in the eyes of her peers and what about her glowing future, that you've told me about a thousand times already? College is hard enough without having to be a mom on the side and that's if, she can even afford to go. Babies are also expensive as hell; in case you weren't aware. They need diapers, new clothes every half a year, because they grow so fast ..."
"The message has been received, loud and clear! If I buy a pack of rubber Johnnies for the trip, will that put your mind at ease?" he asked Gretchen, who looked pleased that she was getting through to him, at least.
"Make sure that they're the right size too. You can brag about the size of your junk in the locker room, all you want, but this is one time where you have to be ruthlessly honest, when it comes to evaluating your own ... package" Gretchen finished lecturing him, after having had to spend a few seconds to think of the right, and not too graphic way, to describe her little brother's nether regions.
Unbeknownst to Pacey, Joey was having a not too different kind of conversation with Jen, who was walking with her down to the docks, where she would be meeting up with him.
"Don't you think that it would be too suggestive, if I suddenly pulled a pack of condoms out of pocket? she tentatively asked Jen, who luckily for her, wasn't nearly as shy as she was, when it came to discussing these things. "I mean, I'm not even sure that I want to have sex with him yet".
"Let me paint a picture for you, Joey. It's a beautiful starlit evening, you're alone out at sea with no one around to see, what could happen, and Pacey sexily whispers into your ear: "I love you, Joey and if we made love tonight, you would make me the happiest guy in the entire world". Can you really see yourself still saying no to him in that situation?" Jen asked her, bringing up something that Joey herself had thought about many times.
"It would be tough to, I'll admit that much!" she replied, and it drew a knowing smile from Jen.
"Do you think that I'd been carefully planning it for months, when I did it the first time? Pretty much no one does, it just happens when it happens!"
"Weren't you stoned out of your mind and drunk as a skunk that first time, or was that a lie?"
"I was, but not to where I didn't know what I was doing, or I couldn't control my actions. I made sure that he'd put on a raincoat too, before I allowed him to stick anything of his inside of me, don't think that I didn't! Having safe sex isn't just the guy's responsibility anymore, Joey. We live in the 90's now and that antiquated idea that it's only the boy, who buys the protection is as extinct as the dodo, in case you haven't noticed!" Jen explicitly said, just as they came up to one of Capeside's two pharmacies (the other one being the one with the mean looking lady working behind the counter, that Joey had tried to avoid going to ever since she was a child, if she at all could). "Plus, you can think of this as a ride passage, if you want to. You can like it or not, but Joey, the girl is rapidly turning into Joey, the woman and once you've tried it the first time, it won't be nearly as embarrassing the second time. Even if I'm not sure of a lot of things, that's one thing that I know all about!"
Seeing as Joey couldn't come up with any sound arguments against it, they therefore went into the pharmacy and headed straight for the aisle, where the prophylactics were being kept.
"Okay, so how big is Pacey's ... John Hancock?" Jen slyly asked Joey, who instantly blushed into looking like something resembling a ripe cherry at her candid question.
"I'm not telling you that and especially not in the middle of a public place!" she exasperatedly answered, although it only brought a wide grin out of Jen.
"I don't need to know specifically how long it is, just if it's small, medium, large or jumbo sized, that's all!"
"That's all, you say? This is quickly becoming far too personal for my taste, let's just get out of here!" she tried saying, but sadly for herself, Jen wouldn't let it go.
"Joey, in less than a month, you'll be sixteen! Stop acting like a shy little kid and tell me, how big your boyfriend's penis is!" Jen reprimanded Joey far too loudly, for her own liking.
"I don't know ... above average, probably? I've only seen one other one of them, when I snuck a peak at Dawson's while he was peeing out in the woods, back when we were little kids and I sincerely doubt that the two are in any way comparable!"
"Okay, so we can rule out jumbo-sized and small, from our little equation here. This is kind of hard, now that you mentioned it! She said, pun intended!" Jen quipped to her, although this wasn't a situation that put Joey in much of a joking mood.
"Very funny, Jen!" Joey bit back at her friend. "If I had to guess, I'd say large, but it's just a barely qualified guess!"
"You have to be sure, Joey. If the condom is too large, then it can slip off during sex and if it's too small and gets stretched out too much, it breaks far easier. I can't imagine either that it's pleasant or easy for a guy to keep it up, when all of the blood is practically being forced back out of his "Little Companion" by a latex product, that's too tight for it" Jen reasoned, drawing a small headshake from Joey in return.
"I'm so glad that I don't have one of those things, dangling between my legs! Honestly, I don't have a clue how boys do it and that's coming from a girl, who almost was one of them!"
"What really puzzles me is how they can stop themselves from playing with it all the time! If I had one of those things ..." Jen was just in the middle of saying, when Joey heard just about the last voice that she wanted to hear at that moment, coming from just a few feet away, from where they were standing.
"Shopping for an orgy, I see?" Bessie said and if anything over the past few years had made Joey's blood run cold, it was hearing her older sister's voice in this particular moment.
While Pacey would usually have taken his trusted bike from his house down to the docks, the realist in him knew that it was very likely to get stolen, if it was left unattended for a week during the tourist season. This was why he'd gotten his brother to give him a ride, seeing as Doug was heading in that direction anyway and had stopped by during his morning work break to pick up his nearly freshly cleaned laundry from their mom's house.
"What's your plan, when you get there?" Doug casually asked him, while they were patiently waiting for a red light to switch to green.
"My original plan was to find a bed and breakfast or perhaps, a small motel that we could stay at ..." Pacy began explaining, before Doug's mocking laughter interrupted him.
"In Martha's Vineyard towards the end of July? Did you win the lottery and just forgot to tell me about it?" Doug asked him in that way, where he was relishing playing the better-knowing older brother just a little too much for comfort.
"I hadn't thought that far ahead, okay? I checked what the dock fees are though, and they're actually not too steep, so we'll still be able to sleep on the boat. And, before you ask, I have both a pepper spray and a baseball bat hidden on board, in case we get any unwanted visitors" he assured Doug, who smiled to himself.
"Does this mean that some of things, I've taught you about staying safe, are actually beginning to seep in?" Doug asked him, just before the light signal turned and they continued on their way.
"Don't let it go to your head! Speaking of staying safe, can we stop by a pharmacy on our way? It isn't like I have to, I just need some things to fill up my first-aid kit on the boat with, to make sure that we aren't out in the middle of the ocean and missing some part of it, that I should have stocked up on" he reasoned with his brother, not letting him know of course, what the number one thing on his shopping list was.
"Look at you, acting all responsible for once in your life!" Doug blurted out, sounding almost proud of him in the process. "This has to be thanks to Joey being a positive influence on you!"
"Probably! If it isn't too far out of your way ..."
"No, it's fine, just don't expect me to come in there with you. It's nothing personal, but if people see me taking my little brother shopping, when it should be working, it just wouldn't look right to them" Doug explained and not long after, they'd arrived at a pharmacy, the one with the mean looking lady working behind the counter, who Joey was still scared of talking to, even if it was quite an irrational fear.
So as not to blow his cover with Doug, he firstly did what he'd told him that he would do and, in all honesty, needed to be done, which was to stock up on things for his first-aid kit like bandages, band-aids, disinfectant wipes and things of that sort. This only left one thing on his shopping list and as he stood there looking at the various choices of products to roll down over your wiener, it suddenly occurred to him how little he'd been prepared for this moment. Not that it was the first time, he'd bought condoms (that was a few years before, where his old pal Will had dared him to do it), but it had never been with the potential implication that he could be using one of them in the near future and that made for quite the gamechanger, this time around. Was he really ready to take the ultimate step towards adulthood with Joey? In reality, that was what it would be and as for there being any chance of them going back to being just friends afterwards, those chances would probably be shot to hell in a handbasket. After staring at the selection for over a minute, he came to the conclusion that it would be too much and too soon, which was why he didn't follow his sister's otherwise very sound advice, and left the store with only those things, he'd told his brother that he would buy.
"I wasn't actually planning on having sex with Pacey!" Joey tried reasoning her case to her very stubborn looking sister, who also didn't look all that pleased with her. That they were in the middle of the street wasn't making this conversation any easier to have, and she was praising her lucky stars that it was still relatively early in the morning, meaning that most of the tourists hadn't come out from their temporary dwellings yet.
"Joey, do you think I was born yesterday? A teenage girl shopping for condoms can only mean one thing and don't try to sell me on any other explanation, because it won't work!" Bessie sternly reprimanded her, making Jen (who was only a few feet away from them and looking rather uncomfortable from knowing, that this was in great part her fault) take a few more steps away from the sisterly horror show that was unfolding for everyone to see.
"You won't believe me then, if I say that it was only because the toy store was out of water balloons?" Joey tried her luck with, although Bessie's vehement shaking of the head told her that it probably wasn't the best time to come up with yet another one of her usual smart-ass answers.
"This is serious! Have you had sex with him already? I want the truth this time!" Bessie loudly asked, caring very little that an elderly lady, who was heading into the pharmacy and had probably just come down to there to pick up her meds, was getting far more info about her little sister's personal life than the majority of teenage girls would have wanted a stranger to know about.
"No, but it doesn't mean that we won't someday! I'm not going to stay a virgin forever, just because you want me to, so ..."
"You're still just a big kid, Joey! Sex comes with responsibilities, and you have to be emotionally mature enough, before you even think about doing it. Look, wanting to act a little older than you are, when you're fifteen, is perfectly normal and I'll be the first to admit that I did it too, but this is something, you could end up regretting for the rest of your life. It's my sworn job as your older sister to stop you from making those sorts of mistakes, if I at all can" Bessie explained, before Jen saw the need to throw her two cents in.
"Can I act as the translator here?" Jen asked the two sisters, neither of whom minded it. "Joey, what Bessie meant to say is that because she loves you so much, she also wants to protect you from anything bad, that could happen to you. No matter how you look at it, that can't be a bad thing, can it?"
"No, I guess not" she truthfully replied.
"Bessie, all Joey wants is for you to trust that she knows what's best for herself and as I just told her a few minutes ago, she's quickly turning into a young woman. In a few years, she'll be off to college and by that time, you'll have no choice except to trust her to make the right choices. If anything, you can see this as a bit of helpful practice, when it comes to putting that kind of faith in her" Jen reasoned and from the looks of her older sister, it looked to Joey like Jen's words were doing their stuff.
"Your friend is a lot smarter, than she looks, Joey. No offense, Jen" Bessie calmly told the two of them, while a huge wave of relief travelled from the top of Joey's head and way down to the tips of her toes.
"None taken. I hear that being said about me pretty often" Jen smilingly answered, clearly just glad that she was able to be of help in this situation.
"Bessie, don't you know me well enough to know that I wouldn't have sex, until I'm sure that I'm ready for it?" Joey asked her sister, who'd begun to cool down enough, that they could speak at a lowered and more fitting volume for this sort of subject.
"How far have you gone with Pacey? On second thought, don't tell me! It'll just give me nightmares!" Bessie conceded and while it wasn't something that she often did, Joey felt like this was an occasion that warranted a small hug-out. A hug, that Bessie gladly accepted.
"Not so far that it's anything, you need to worry your pretty head over anytime soon" Joey semi-lied to her sister, just to put her fears at ease. "I just figured that it was better to be on the safe side, in case that I completely lost myself in the moment and forgot all about reason. It doesn't mean that I think it will happen today or tomorrow, just that I'm being realistic enough to know that it could happen sometime over the next couple of years, after I've become old enough and mature enough, that I am ready for everything that having sex comes with".
"Do me a favor though, when it does. Don't tell me a word about it for at least a few years afterwards, until you're entirely sure that I'm also ready to hear about it!" Bessie semi-joked and in truth, it made Joey feel warm inside to not be lying as much to her sister about her own erotic escapades, as she previously had been.
After saying her goodbyes to Jen and Bessie, she quickly made her way down to the docks, where Pacey and his boat were already waiting for her.
"May I have permission to come aboard?" she sweetly asked him, before he gently helped her aboard the boat that would be their home for the next week or so and they shared a long kiss, that part of her never wanted to end.
"Are you going to tell me why you're a bit late, or do I have to start guessing?" Pace playfully asked her, after their long lip lock had finally concluded.
"I was with Jen, when we ran into Bessie down at the pharmacy. She caught us shopping for condoms" she confided to Pacey, who couldn't stop himself from letting out a small chuckle.
"I can easily imagine how that conversation went down! Was she upset with you?"
"She was at first, until Jen helped me with talking her down. Look, Pacey, I love you more than you can begin to imagine, but as for us doing the nasty ..." she began, before her boyfriend practically finished her sentence for her.
"It's better, if we wait. As much I'm aware that this makes me sound like the anti-typical teenage boy, I have to agree with you. We can still do other stuff though, that doesn't involve us going all the way, can't we?" he romantically asked her, and it once again made her feel like a slightly dirty-minded version of Cinderella.
"Can we try sleeping in our birthday suits together?" she suggested and from what she could see, it was a popular suggestion with the boy, who she referred to as the love of her young life so far.
For the next week, all there would be in her small world was the two of them, in love and enjoying every second together, like it was their last chance to. For a teenage girl, who was as up her ears with infatuation for her boyfriend as Joey was, this was the absolute best scenario, she could possibly have dreamt up for herself.
END OF CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
