Do Tampons Take Your Virginity?: A Catholic Girl's Memoir by Marie Simas

laughed. My fishhook had entered his heart. It would stay there forever. It was only six months of his life, but I know he still thinks about me. They all do.
    I know, because I still think about James. The pain of your first heartbreak never leaves you. You just cover it with dirt. But it’s always there, like poison in the soil. Nothing grows in that spot ever again.
    Three years later, Brad found me working at a shitty sports bar. I had been paying my way through school working two shit jobs—the worst of which was a demoralizing cocktail job at a sports bar. I was forced to wear a cheerleading uniform.
    I was friends with only one other server, a young schoolteacher named Amy. She worked nights to supplement her meager teacher’s salary. Amy was the only other waitress with a degree, so she was “good enough” to be my friend. Amy and I were the only servers who wore uniforms in our actual size. All the other girls cut their shirts to reveal more skin. We laughed and called them sluts.
    I was one semester away from graduation.
    Brad came into the bar and watched me for a few minutes from a dark corner. I waved at him and he perked up and walked over to me.
    “Hi, Brad. How are you?” I said politely.
    “Great, great... it’s good to see you.” He looked down at the floor, his toe playing with a piece of trash.
    “I’m tired—this is my last semester, then I’m off to graduate school.” I smiled again.
    I was snotty and told everyone I was going to graduate school. I was fiercely proud of my accomplishments and I clearly thought that I was an academic.
    “Can we go out for coffee sometime?” His voice cracked at the end of the sentence.
    “No.” I smiled.
    “Please, Marie... just coffee... nothing else,” he begged. His eyes began to water.
    I leaned down slowly from the beer tub and stared at him, straight in the eye, still smiling.
    “No.”
    He stood there for a few minutes, then hung his head. He had begged, me... BEGGED... Brad’s shoulders slumped; he walked away like an old man.
    That cocktail job never got any better, but it paid the bills. I eventually graduated with honors. I earned my BA in four years, working two jobs the whole time. To this day, it is my greatest triumph.
    I never made it to graduate school.
My Cousin’s Jealous Boyfriend
    1992, AGE 19
    My father’s cousin Victor lived on a dairy farm in Central California with his wife and kids. The farm was big—at least 100 acres, which was considered a large plot of land in California, even back then.
    Victor raised goats and dairy cows. He owned hundreds of them. Their house was always spotless, but everything smelled like cow shit. I mean everything. I could feel it hanging in the air, like soup. Eventually, we all got used to it, but the first few hours were terrible.
    We visited Victor at least four to five times a year for family events—baptisms, weddings, and funerals—all the requisite family gatherings. Victor had four kids. A handsome teenage boy with premature baldness, fraternal twin teenage daughters, and a toddler girl (the over-forty mistake).
    The twins were Luisa and Lourdes. They were tall, thin... gorgeous. I was jealous of them both. I was about ten years old, and they were teenagers, so they couldn’t be bothered with me. They all ignored me.
    All the siblings were popular. The twins were both cheerleaders and the son was a football player. Even the baby was cute.
    When I was seven, I was jumping on Luisa’s bed, playing. I jumped too hard and broke one of the boards holding up the mattress, so I fell off the bed and bumped my forehead. The twins picked me up and I was crying. My father came in and saw the broken bed.
    He yelled at me, “Did you break this?”
    I cowered like a frightened rabbit and my cousins looked on impassively. They knew what it was like to grow up in a Portuguese family. My father didn’t need to worry about Child Protective Services here. All the kids got beatings. They knew the