Kissing Doorknobs (14 page)

“What?”

“I did it with Chuck!”

“What?”

“It!”

“You mean …”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“It was really sort of an accident.”

“An accident?” My head was spinning. I was trying to get over the rituals that I did to protect people I loved, and now my best friend just had sex by accident.

“We kinda got carried away. We were high.”

“You’re fourteen years old. Fourteen years old!”

“I know how old I am, Tara!”

“You’re way, way, way too young!”

“You thought I was too young to smoke too,” she said smugly, and lit a cigarette. I was so mad at her I wanted to beat her up. She blew a smoke ring at me. I did not put it on my finger. I slumped on the bed next to her and put my head in her lap. Then I thought of what she’d done and moved my head down to her knees.

“Did you use a condom?”

“No. But don’t worry,” she said.

“Maybe you should worry,” I said nervously. We sat in silence for a while and listened to her mom’s radio playing what sounded like a Madonna song.

“Want me to help you with your compulsive homework?”

“No,” I snapped. “I think you’ve got enough to worry about.”

“I’m not worried. Tell me what you do. I want to help you.”

I told her. All of it. She listened very carefully.

“I wanna try it,” she said, and closed her
eyes.
“Okay, I’m picturing my parents dead.” I watched her face to try to get a gauge of her pain. Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t speak. After about a minute she smiled and opened her eyes. “I can’t. I’m getting too much pleasure out of this.”

She did make me laugh. And I needed it.

Afterward, I made her come with me to the drugstore to buy condoms. “Don’t embarrass me,” she said as we walked into the store, “or I’m leaving.”

“Better embarrassed than dead,” I said seriously, and pointed to the various condom boxes.

“I don’t know
how
to buy this,” she whispered, and all the smug coolness had gone out of her voice.

“Can I help you girls?” asked the pharmacist.

“Urn … no, sir,” said Donna. “We’re just …”

“Yes. We’d like to buy a box of condoms,” I said.

His sixty-year-old face twitched in disapproval. Donna’s fourteen-year-old face twitched in embarrassment. I was unfazed. I didn’t care what it took, I was going to keep my friend from turning sex into suicide, or motherhood either. “Maybe you could recommend the best ones,” I said.

“How old are you girls?” he asked very sternly. It made me mad.

“Why?” I asked. “Why do you want to know how old we are?”

“Because I want a note from your parents or I’m not selling birth-control devices to … ah … underage …”

“It’s not for birth control,” I said. “Not necessarily, that is.” Donna was putting her hand in front of her face. I was unstoppable. “Okay, it is for birth control. But, more important, it’s for protection. It’s for lifesaving. So it’s really to prevent death more than to prevent life.”

“No,” he said. “Not without a parent.”

“But we don’t have sex with our
parents.
We need the condoms to protect us when we have sex with
boys.”

With that Donna ran out of the store as if she was on fire. I followed her, but I was still addressing the pharmacist
over my shoulder. “You shouldn’t have done this, sir. I hope you can live with your decision.” And then I went over the top and screamed, “I hope
she
can live with your decision.”

I was unsuccessful in my efforts to get Donna into another drugstore after that incident. Oddly enough, I felt empowered. I had never acted so boldly … so even if I was still kissing doorknobs, I had fought my first bully. The behavior therapy was doing something for me.

Sam called that night and I told him all about my work with Susan and nothing about Donna. It was too embarrassing. And too personal.

I
n school we were studying the Civil War. Our country was torn apart and brothers were killing brothers. All because some people thought they had the right to own other people.

It occurred to me that my family and my life had been torn apart because of the tyrants in my head who wanted to own me. I knew that it was a huge stretch to compare my OCD with the Civil War, but I had become a different person and my grades and friendships had suffered because invisible tyrants made me a slave to their whims. And so, as odd as this thought was, it gave me strength. Which I needed.

Because no matter how passionate I was, or how strong I decided I would be, my behavior therapy was very, very hard. I lost a lot of battles. It had been months and I was still involved in a terrible thirty-three-step dance involving my lips, fingers and a doorknob. I also still counted cracks, prayed, tapped and reconfigured my food. Not all the time. But enough of the time to doubt that I’d ever win the war for my freedom. And on the good days, when I felt as if I was making progress—I was scared then too.

I raised my hand in class for the first time in months.

“Tara,” my teacher said with concealed surprise in her voice.

“I was just wondering. Do you think the slaves ever got scared after they were freed?”

“What?”

A few kids laughed.

“I mean … do you think that they ever said, ’Hey, never mind. Let’s just go back to the way it was because … because I’m used to the way it was and I’m scared now?’ ”

“Well, that’s an interesting question, Tara. I suppose so. I mean, their lives were completely uprooted and they often had nowhere to go. So I’d venture to guess that many of them longed for the security of their old ways … no matter how horrible … in exchange for the frightening freedom they were being faced with.”

“But they did it,” said Keesha, as if she’d read my mind. “They coped.” The classroom exploded with laughter. I never could slip anything past Keesha. I loved that about her. I was embarrassed but vowed to myself to work harder.

When the bell rang and my class hit our lockers I grabbed her arm. “Keesha?”

Keesha froze dramatically.

“Wanna walk home together?”

Keesha was speechless. It was kind of funny. Because she always had a wisecrack answer for everything, her nonresponse made me know that she was willing to be my friend again. I was so happy that I hugged her. And when Anna saw me hugging Keesha she approached us.

“What’s going on?” she asked carefully.

“I—I think I can walk with you guys again. I think. I’m not sure. B-But I want to try,” I stammered. “Will you let me try?”

Keesha and Anna both smiled so big that I could practically see myself in their braces.

I stepped on every crack I could find. I felt nervous, dizzy, sick, but I did it while Anna and Keesha cheered for me.

“Damn!”
Keesha said, testing me.

“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost …” I prayed. They frowned. When I was finished I shrugged and jumped on a crack.
“So!”
I shrieked happily. “Maybe I’m doin’ cracks first!”

My friends jumped on cracks too. When we passed the hardware store I got an idea and ran inside. “Come on,” I yelled.

Standing in front of a wall of doorknobs, I looked at my distorted reflection, then at Keesha’s and Anna’s. They didn’t know about my doorknob ritual. It had been as carefully guarded as any of my secrets. Now I didn’t care if they knew. I felt giddy. As a test, I ran my hand across a few of the doorknobs. Even though I only had to do the ritual on my front-door doorknob, I would have never tried a stunt like this before. Especially in front of my friends, just in case it triggered a new ritual. But here I was. I felt nothing, and jumped for joy.

“Something tells me this is one ritual I don’t want to know about,” said Anna.

“I second that,” said Keesha, looking at her teeth in doorknob extreme close-up.

We ran back outside and skipped down the street arm in arm.

“Hey,” said Keesha. “What about the dolls? The ugly short fat naked dolls?”

“My trolls!” I laughed. “They’ve been put away for months. Get with the program!”

By the time we got to the block where Anna turned off, we were all holding hands and jumping for joy. We were friends. We had history together. We’d survived a test.

“Thank you, you guys. Thank you for being here for me.” I thought of Kristin and stopped jumping.

“How’s Kristin?”

“In New York,” said Anna. “She’s a Glamour Do. The cover, too, I think.”

We jumped for her. Then Keesha stopped jumping and turned to Anna.

“Is Kristin eating?” asked Keesha.

“I don’t think so. Her manager told her he likes it that she’s thin,” said Anna.

Keesha looked grave. “In that case, she really ought to eat her manager.”

I felt scared for Kristin. Actually, the fear barely had time to register before I was counting cracks again.

“Damn!” said Keesha.

For the rest of the way home, I did my best to pray for Keesha and count cracks at the same time. It was hard.

S
ometime around my sixth week of behavior therapy, Sam rang my doorbell instead of my phone. Before I could speak he said, “So … do you still … kiss doorknobs?”

“Ah, most people just say hello,” I gushed, playing along, “but I’ll remember that one.”

“I’m s-sorry!” he stammered. “Hello.” He backed up, tripped over nothing and banged the back of his head on nothing in perfect imitation of me at our first meeting.

I doubled over with laughter. “Come in. I’m … a little … embarrassed, okay?”

“Thank you. Nice doorknobs.” He smiled mischievously, walking by me. “You’ve got …” and then I joined him and we both said, “very good taste in hardware.”

He was taller than I remembered but every bit as cute. “You look good, Tara,” he said, once again standing a little too close for my comfort. I backed up. I could feel my face flushing, but Sam either didn’t notice or ignored my embarrassment. “Let’s see, I don’t
see any lip gloss on your doorknob, so … your therapy must be going well.”

“Ha!” was all I could manage. An expulsion of air. More like a cough than a laugh.

“I brought you something,” he said, pulling a box from his pocket and handing it to me.

“You did?” I asked stupidly. “Why?”

“You’ll see. If you open it, that is.”

Nervously I took the lid off the box, pulled back the purple tissue paper and burst out laughing. It was a crystal doorknob! And all around it were chocolate kisses wrapped in silver paper.

“Do you like it?” Sam asked with mock seriousness. “I know you’re very particular about your hardware, so I was a little nervous selecting one.”

“I … I love it. It’s the funniest present I ever got.”

“It’s a celebration. Of your challenge. Of your strength. And of your options.” Sam snatched a candy kiss from the box. “If you don’t mind.”

Stunned, I watched him unwrap the kiss and offer it to me.

“Take a bite,” he said. “But just a bite. Not all of it.”

“Why?”

“Contamination therapy. Refresher course.”

“Okay.” I took a tiny bite and Sam popped the rest of it into his mouth.

“Just to keep me on my toes.”

Before I could respond to his joy, he took the doorknob out of the box and offered it to me. “You don’t need to kiss this, do you?” he asked, and I shook my head, trying not to smile. Then he held it up to the light and turned it. It picked up color from everywhere.

It changed before my
eyes.
And it kept changing. I couldn’t miss the symbolism.

“This is so nice of you!” I was in shock.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” he said again, and he handed me the doorknob and flopped into a chair. “So … how’ve you been?” he asked with a big smile.

“I … I’m … good. I’m good,” I stammered.

“You’re good?” He smiled. “That’s good that you’re good. Because today is the one-year anniversary of the first time I could stand being hugged,” he said simply. “So I wanted to celebrate with someone who knows what it means.”

He stood up and held out his arms. I was so embarrassed I thought I’d die. Donna was having unsafe sex and I couldn’t even hug a boy celebrating his victory over contamination fears without going completely spastic.

I took the long step into his arms, gave him a little hug and then tripped over nothing backing out of it again. He smiled sweetly and then sat on my couch.

“So … how’s life with Susan Leonardi?”

“I hate it and I hate her.”

“Good. Let’s get some ice-cream sodas and toast to hating Susan Leonardi … the woman who reintroduced us to free will.”

On the way to the ice-cream parlor Sam told me funny stories about his group therapy. We laughed again about the girl who thought eating utensils had feelings.

“Still?” I asked.

“Well, she says she still thinks that they have feelings
but now she thinks they’re less sensitive than she originally thought.”

“Huh?”

“So sometimes she bites her spoons and forks just for fun. To play with them.” Sam punctuated his story by taking my hand and biting my finger. I felt squishy with pleasure.