The Guidance Counselor - Chapter VI (Patreon)

Her name was Heather. She was friends with a senior lacrosse player at my school, the dude who drove the black Mustang, named Kyle. He turned around to face me, his chiseled manly chin nearly stabbing me. He gave me a skeptical look, like he was trying to see what made me cool or something. He then barked, “Who’s this loser?” and Heather replied with “Shut up, he’s cool. I don’t know his name though. What’s your name?”

“Jason,” I said.

Kyle’s eyebrows narrowed. “Are you like a theater kid or something?”

“What?”

“The Phantom of the Opera getup.”

“Nah. I just…I dunno.”

“Shut up and drive,” she said, slapping his seat playfully.

I thought at first that Heather was Kyle’s girlfriend. I couldn’t believe I would have already fallen for someone just after a few minutes of interacting with them. It was a bit too much hope that I had hyped up. Kyle’s girlfriend was actually sitting next to him in the passenger seat, a blond girl who looked more like 22 or 23 named Natalie. Some people just hit puberty early. She reminded me of that one girl from that teen drama The O.C., the main girl. She didn’t say much aside from small-talk to Kyle about which turn to take.

In the backseat, I was squished between Heather and her friend Janet. They both looked similar in that they could have been on the cover of Teen Vogue – they looked like they should have been celebrities. Slender figures, long hair, bright faces, good skin. The only difference was that Janet was dressed as a skimpy angel with wings and a halo.

“Is this your new boyfriend?” Janet asked, smiling.

“No!” Heather then looked at me. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I said, too nervous to look her in the eyes.

Janet gave her a smirk as if to say she didn’t believe it. My heart pounded again thinking about how this could be the start of something new. I hadn’t felt like this since I was in middle school thinking about my first crush. A new love felt like a fresh new start. I tried so hard not to make myself readable, so I stared straight ahead at the road. But even that might have been giving it away. I had to act natural.

“So…” I said, giving a long pause, “you guys do this often?”

“Pretty much,” Heather said. “We hang out by the bay area and come back when the dance is over.”

Janet was fumbling with something underneath her seat. She was taking out a small cooler filled with Coronas.

Kyle heard the glass clinking and said, “Hey, don’t take those out yet. You trying to get me arrested?”

“But if we wait too long once we park, won’t they get suspicious?”

“Nah, just don’t worry about it. Put them back.”

Janet grumbled, closed the cooler, and shoved it back under her seat.

“So,” Heather said, in a teasing voice, “ARE you a theater kid?”

“Nah. I’m more of an artist.”

Heather lit up. “Oh yeah? What do you draw?”

“A little bit of everything. Mostly anime. Manga stuff.”

“What’s manga?” Janet asked. I wasn’t sure if she was serious until I noticed her blank expression. She had asked that question genuinely.

“Tsch, you don’t know shit, Janet,” Heather said.

“What?! I was JUST asking. I really don’t know.”

Kyle drove across a slim two-lane bridge that crossed over to the town of Red Bank. The bay area was nice, snaking past rich and fancy houses by the water and eventually leading to the Atlantic Ocean. I tuned out to Heather and Janet talking, instead thinking about how I was really doing this. I was really hanging out with strangers and “conventionally attractive” girls my age.

Kyle made a sharp left turn after the bridge. Janet grunted as we swerved. She said, “Jesus, I thought you said we weren’t trying to be suspicious.”

I had been to Red Bank several times but only with my parents. It’s a small but highly metropolitan town overlooking a river. Over the years, the town became more high-end with fancy restaurants that even my parents couldn’t afford. They still had several indie shops but one day they would be overrun by the growing gentrification. In those days though, the town was still at its peak of fun, but I never actually got to experience that “fun” until that night. That’s the thing with me – I never knew what it was like to simply “hang out” unsupervised.

The excitement continued to swell inside of me as Kyle approached a parking lot by the bay. When he parked the car and the engine died, I spiraled into anxiety because I also knew they were going to drink once we got out, and presumably also smoke. Presumably.

It turned out this was a lowkey but private area without any gate or security cameras. Kyle technically wasn’t supposed to park there, since it was a lot belonging to the residents of the nearby apartment complex, but he said that nobody cared as long as you didn’t stick around too long and didn’t make any noise.

It was much chillier out there by the water. The sea was calm, and in the distance I heard lively festivities of 21-and-over Halloween parties at bars and taverns. Janet was wrapping the Corona bottles in brown paper bags and gave one to each of her friends. When she handed me one, she must have recognized my hesitation because she pulled it back and said, “You’re not straight-edge or something, are you?”

“Huh?” I had no idea what that meant.

She chuckled. “Never mind. Here.”

I had had few sips before at family gatherings. Nothing too crazy. Corona tasted like fizzling cardboard to me. I checked myself with how comfortable I was about all this – it was neutral at best. I neither hated it nor loved it. I just went along hoping for a good outcome with Heather.

Minutes later, after everyone had a drink in their hands, a white Mustang drove around the corner and parked abruptly next to Kyle’s car with a loud screech. Janet beamed at the boy who stepped out – a dark-haired kid wearing a Jack Sparrow costume. (Pirates were really in back then. You had to be there for it.) She rushed to him for a hug.

Heather crossed her arms. She grumbled, “Her boyfriend.”

“Not a fan?” I asked.

“He’s alright. Just alright.”

It became clear to me in seconds that Heather was the third wheel of her group. That made me all the more nervous. That must have been why she was so eager to invite me, a random stranger. I drank my beer a little too fast. I wanted to leave some in the bottle because I didn’t want to have another one. If someone asked me for a second, I’d just raise my half-empty glass and say, “Ah, still working on this one.”

I wandered towards the boardwalk and the rest soon followed. Next to the boardwalk there was a greenery, almost like a little park but this was meant to be private for the residents there. It had a swing set with a slide, monkey bars, and a few benches.

I tuned out to their conversation, since obviously I didn’t know them personally so they talked about so-and-so and such-and-such. Heather wasn’t too engaged either, and she stood next to me leaning against the boardwalk rail.

“Are you a senior?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you able to drive yet?”

“Not past midnight.”

“Lame.”

“Yeah.” I added, “Soon I will though. Next March.”

“So your birthday is in March eh? Pisces. I’m one too.”

“Oh nice.”

“February.”

“Yeah, I don’t really believe in the Zodiac to be honest,” I said, “but…it’s amusing sometimes.”

“I know what you mean. It’s like little bits and pieces of advice that may or may not be worth it to you. Sometimes it’s on point other times no.”

Heather took a swig of her beer. Despite being so obviously conventionally pretty, there was something boyish about her nature. The way she guzzled down the alcohol, and so easily too, stirred something in me. I didn’t like intoxication but I liked whatever this was…

She ended up downing the entire bottle. She smacked her lips and went “Ah!” then tossed the bottle into the sea. I had the impulse to feel appalled by it. I was always environmentally minded for as long as I could remember.

Heather noticed that I looked concerned down at the bottle bobbing in the sea.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

Then she let out a raucous belch. I caught a whiff of the Corona stench as an invisible gas cloud spread across her face, then dissipated. She was so casual about it; it amazed me. She caught me staring. She mistook my stare for one of disgust, so she laughed and said, “What is it? Are you grossed out?”

“No. On the contrary, that was…awesome!”

Do it again. Do it again. Do it again.

I tensed up. I didn’t want to fuck this up by being weird.

“Is it though?” she said, grimacing. “Or are you just saying that? Shit like that stops me from getting a boyfriend.” She eyed the horizon for a moment, and then side-eyed me with a hint of nervousness. “At least, one that sticks around.”

I tensed even more. I didn’t know what to say. I knew she was hinting at the prospect of starting something. Flirting. She was flirting. I just didn’t know what to say. My game was terribly off.

“I…don’t think that’s gross,” I said, shrugging. “I think it’s pretty cool. I think you should do it again.”

“I think you should do it again?” Way to sound like a weirdo.

I cursed at myself in my head over and over. Why the fuck did I say it like that?

But, amazingly, Heather laughed. She said, “You know what? I should.”

She pulled me by my arm to take me to where the others were standing around in the park. She grabbed another Corona bottle from the cooler, popped it open with Kyle’s bottle opener, and downed it.

“Whooo!” Kyle said. “Go Heather!”

Janet rolled her eyes. Natalie looked indifferent.

I gawked.

Heather had downed the entire thing in seconds. I couldn’t even chug water like that. I choked on my own spit at times, that’s how pathetic I was. Once she finished, she tossed aside the bottle on the ground, wiped her mouth with her arm, and let out a scratchy belch that dragged on for almost five seconds.

Janet cringed in disgust. Kyle and Janet’s boyfriend laughed but also were grossed out at the same time, in that manner when one is amused but also disgusted.

Those five seconds were an eternity to me. I had never in my life seen and heard a girl belch like that before, only in videos online, the same five or six videos at the time that I would cycle through endlessly when I masturbated. I realized that this moment was not recorded. This moment was just stuck in my memory, replayed over and over until one day in the future I would start forgetting exactly how it sounded or exactly what her expression looked when she let it out. And it was in everyone else’s memory too from then on, also subject to distortion over time. Only six brains were the source of that moment ever existing. If I grew old and developed dementia or something, well fuck. It would be lost forever. I needed to hear a burp like that again, and again, and one day have them recorded.

In other words, I needed to be with Heather.

“Wow,” I said.

“Pretty gross, right?” Heather said. “But fuck it.”

“I think it’s pretty cool,” I said. At first, I had all the confidence in the world when I said that. But then everyone else looked at me a certain way and my cheeks flushed. I averted my gaze. Even Heather looked at me weird. It was all a split second of awkwardness but again, to me, it felt like at least five minutes.

“You think you can beat me or something?” Heather said.

“Oh, pft, no.” Acknowledging that I burp too immediately turned me off. I could never really explain it other than I wanted to see the person of my sexual interest be the sole source of my turn-ons.

I needed something new to divert the conversation quickly.

Heather grabbed yet another beer but wanted to drink this one slowly. The two of us drifted from the others as they talked among themselves.

“Are you sure you’re not a straight edge?” she asked, nodding towards my one beer.

“I uh….” Trying to think of what to say. “I’m not a fan of Corona. I like rum more.”

“Oh, hard liquor guy? Wow. I can’t even stand the taste of wine. My parents gave me a sip on Thanksgiving once.”

“My mom let me taste rum and coke once,” I said. “I liked it.”

We loitered by the railing again overlooking the harbor. I could feel excitement and dread swelling it inside my chest as I wanted to get the point across that she could burp any time in front of me.

“Do you…can you burp your ABCs?”

She gave me a look. “Huh?’

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Quick. Save the conversation.

I laughed nervously, cracking my voice and sounding like a chicken. “Oh! It’s just that’s a thing I know people do when they are able to burp like that.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I never tried. It’s not something I can do by air if that’s what you’re wondering. I just burp.”

“Well. It’s cool. I think you shouldn’t have to be afraid to do whatever you want to do.”

She smiled at me – a full-on genuine smile. They say you can always tell a genuine smile by the way the eyes crinkle. The eyes don’t move with a fake smile.

I looked at my beer and started to drink more. I thought maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. I was in good hands. This wasn’t like how teachers and parents warned us with kids going on a violent drunken rage and shooting themselves up with drugs. They really just hung out at a spot they technically weren’t supposed to, had a few beers, and bullshitted. Loitered. That’s what they did. Nobody was getting hurt.

Still, I kept my distance. I guarded myself.

Heather started to get drunk after two more beers. We sat at a park bench and she continued to belch more and more. They resonated across the park and Kyle told her to “shut the fuck up”. It became apparent that we were becoming louder as a group as the night progressed, and I seemed to be the only sober one to realize. I couldn’t tell if anyone was watching us but I became paranoid that people were noticing us.

I let my guard down that night. I opened up to somebody for the first time. I told her about my overbearing parents and how my mom is weird about sex and thinks I will go down a spiral into homelessness if I so much as have sex before marriage, and yet wants me to get a girlfriend. Heather laughed a lot as she got drunker. Being a girl, Heather had a lot more stuff she dealt with her parents. Don’t wear this. Don’t wear that. Don’t do this. But do that instead. But not so much of it. The usual shit. Heather stopped caring and faced her parents head-on. I found it really inspiring, actually.

“You’re cute, you know that?” she then said out of the blue, with drunken doe eyes.

I had been smiling dumbly at her, admiring her story.

Her breath reeked of Corona. It turned me off then but I put that aside as she let slip another low burp. She was too drunk to acknowledge it then. She leaned forward and kissed me and that was my first kiss. A drunk smack on the lips. It was a bit rushed and harsh. She was pressing hard more so than moving her lips, so I had to move them for her with mine.

I kept thinking about her friends a few feet away from us. I stopped kissing to look behind at them because my natural instinct was to feel awkward just making out like this in front of them. The two couples were actually making out in their respective private spots. Kyle with Natalie at the other park bench and Janet with her boyfriend by a boardwalk lamp.

Heather turned my head to face her and kissed me again.

She pulled back for a moment to say, “You’re fucking cute.”

The alcohol was really hitting her as the minutes passed. She kept repeating similar things and couldn’t really focus on me. I started to feel weird about this. She moved her hands across my thighs. The way she moved told me she had done this before. I didn’t mind that. Again, I was more weirded out by the fact that I was sober and she wasn’t. She started to notice that I wasn’t hard. She stopped kissing me and gave me a look.

“H-hey, can you do something for me?” I asked.

She lightened up with batting eyes, expecting to please me. “Yeah? What is it?”

You can do it. You can do it. Just say it. Go for it. You’re already here. All or nothing.

“Can you like…burp for me?”

The latter half of that question came out more as a murmur. She stared at me for a second and I couldn’t read her reaction, so I repeated it, more confident this time. Sobriety started to come back to her, vaguely, as she sat back with a raised brow and said, “Wait what?”

“I know you can’t do it on command but can you…drink a little? It’ll help…um…well…it’s a thing. I like.” I darted my eyes. “When girls do that.”

It was still hard to read Heather’s reaction. She just kept staring at me, and then said rather loudly, “Wait so you’re like INTO that?”

“Yeah.”

“Like…sexually?”

“Yeah.”

She stared off to the side trying to process it. Then she looked at me again and everything started going downhill from there. “Oh. Ew. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“That’s a bit much. I dunno. That’s like…weird. Is that like a foot fetish? Do you have a foot fetish?”

Damn those foot fetishists. That was the number one thing that popped up in the minds of normies. Everything with the word “fetish” went straight to the feet.

“No, no! It’s not like that! Well. It’s…I don’t…like to use that word but it’s…just a weird thing I like.”

“I thought you were just being funny. Like it’s funny to do but like…” she said the word as if it pained her, “sexually? That’s…” She couldn’t find the right word. And she didn’t need to, because her hesitation told me everything.

I sat up straight and turned away to stare at the water. “Uh. Okay. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

I didn’t dare glance at her. We suffered maybe a minute’s worth of awkward silence, until things got even worse.

A flash of blue and red lights bounced off the water. I turned around and squinted in the growing glow of a cop car. The cop car parked itself abruptly at the top of the private park looking down at us. For some reason, I stood up, even though that was a dumb move. I instinctively wanted to show that I wasn’t doing anything weird, but that just made me stand out.

“Ah shit!” Kyle spat, jumping to his feet.

“I thought you said this place was safe!” Janet cried.

“Go, go, go!”

The cop car was closer to the parking lot, so my reaction was to head the opposite direction away from there and hide somewhere else. I knew I couldn’t afford to get caught. I couldn’t get written up anywhere. Getting a record before my high school graduation? Forget about it. My parents would never let me hear the end of it. I bolted towards the center of town but Heather and everyone else bolted towards their cars. I tried shouting, “Wait!” but Heather didn’t look back. She practically leaped into Kyle’s car, and before I made it halfway back to them, Kyle and Janet’s boyfriend drove off. The cop had just stepped out of his vehicle when he noticed the two Mustangs racing off, so he cursed aloud and got back in his car. He sped off after them.

Nobody came back for me. I stood alone in the cold park hearing the siren and the tires screeching fade away. I processed what had just happened for who knows how long. I looked around wondering if maybe someone else had been left behind.

Nope. Just me.

“Shit,” I murmured.