The Scorpion's Sweet Venom (5 page)

Tell her you went to study anatomy with a friend from school.'

'Let's leave it for another day.' I played a little hard to get. Until he finally managed to twist my arm.

'C'mon, you're not leaving me like this, are you? I know you want it too.'

We stopped next to the wall of a school one street away from my place. I didn't let him kiss me, but I ended up wanking him
off there in the middle of the deserted street, even though I wasn't really in the mood.

The next day during the class he kept on insisting and sending notes and I gave in. The time had comefor me. After the class,
a new adventure. Along the way, he stopped to buy condoms. I started to panic, as I had all the other times I'd almost had
sex. I didn't want my first time to be like that. Nor did I want him to know I was a virgin. We stopped in a dead-end road.

'It's not going to happen.'

'What?'

'I told Mum I'd go out with her.'

'No way. We're here now and we're not going to just forget about it.'

I tried to leave again, but he didn't let me.

'You're not escaping without at least giving me a blow job.'

There was nothing else I could do. I'd only get out of there if I sucked him off. I couldn't say I didn't know how. How embarrassing!
I'd never put a dick in my mouth and didn't have the slightest idea what to do. I imagined myself sucking an ice-lolly. I
squatted on the ground while he leaned against the wall with his trousers down, holding my hair, controlling the rhythm. I
didn't like the way he kept pushing my head. I held his dick at the base, near his balls. If I'd let him, he would have rammed
the whole thing in. I was afraid of choking, but very excited. By the situation, his taste, his smell, the act itself, the
fear of getting caught. Before long he started moaning, panting, shoving his dick forcefully between my lips. Then, a stronger
shove, and I tasted something strange in my throat. He'd come in my mouth. But I didn't have the courage to swallow.

I don't know if it's true, but he told me it was the best blow job he'd ever had. So I made my debut with critical praise
. . . All I know is that he really moaned as if he liked it. Once again I didn't have the courage to say that it was my first
time. We promised to keep it to ourselves.

I was really silly and broke the promise myself. I told a 'friend', who worshipped the guy. And by the look of things, he
didn't keep his mouth shut either. The gossip spread throughout our entire year in a matter of days. No one came to ask me
if it was true, to hear my side of the story. I just heard the laughter and felt people staring at me. Some with malice. Others
with disgust.

As if with the wave of a magic wand, everyone disappeared. Not even my 'friends' stood by me. I ended up completely alone.
People were ashamed to be seen with me. One girl came to ask me how much I charged. I said nothing. Big mistake. I felt hard
done by. Even the girls who were no longer virgins helped make and spread my reputation as a slut around the school. But I
kept it together. I went to school as if nothing had happened and even though I felt alone and hurt. I shed few tears over
it, although I was really suffering. I was only fifteen!

Then one day I'd had a gutful of the hypocrisy and said, 'I did it, I liked it and I'd do it again.' That shut a few people
up. I knew I hadn't committed a crime. Then I realised something else. What exactly had the boy told people? Guys have this
stupid, childish habit of blowing everything out of proportion, bragging. I never found out if that was what happened, since
no one spoke to me. Not even him. But I think he must have made out that he'd had sex with me.

The story ended up in the head's office, of course. I denied everything and would have continued to my last breath. That day,
I crumbled. I arrived home crying and told my mother everything. Well, not everything. I told her I'd left the school grounds
to kiss a boy and that people were saying I'd had sex with him, that I'd performed oral sex on him.

It was the end of my eighth year of school and Mum thought it was better to change schools. I don't know if she believed me
or was just pretending, like me. Bandeirantes was about to become history. That is, if another boy hadn't also left Ban­deirantes
and gone to study at Maria Imaculada -and ended up in the same class as me. The story was duly spread and once again Raquel
was margin­alised. Know what? Fuck them!

There were two Brunas working at the house. A client asked for Bruna and the manager took him the other one.

'Not this one,' he said. 'I want the little surfer girl.'

I liked the guy. We had chemistry and got along well.

'Why did you call me a surfer girl?'

'You look like one.'

'Good, I like it!'

When I left this house and started working in my flat, I had to come up with a working name that suited me. I remembered the
episode and didn't think twice. I'd be Bruna, the Surfer Girl.

I've already mentioned that one of the things that most irritated me about the brothels was the issue of the linen. Well here's
another behind-the-scenes story. In the house on Rua Michigan, the girls had to wash the towels themselves (the bed linen
went to the launderette). There were four washing machines and a bunch of clotheslines to dry them on. Except that when winter
came and business picked up, the sun didn't come out and the dratted towels just wouldn't get dry. There was a heater in the
room where we sat and waited for clients. We'd come downstairs after each client with the towel, and the manager would hang
it in front of the heater, let it dry a little, check for stains and wrap it up again. Looks brand new, right? Several men
would dry themselves with the same towel. Gross . . .

Who knows why I went into such a bad depression. Well, actually, I do know. I thought I was fat and ugly, I was adopted, and
I had problems with my dad . . . As if that weren't enough, when I turned sixteen, after the fuck-up at Bandeirantes and the
fact that the story had also spread to Maria Imaculada, I found myself with no friends. It got to a point where I couldn't
see any way out. I decided to kill myself. It'd have to be something quick, where I wouldn't feel any pain or run the risk
of staying alive, but quadriplegic, for example. A gun would be the best way. Dad had one at home. Legal, of course. Not that
he'd ever used it; it was from the days when we'd lived in the country. I knew where he kept it.

One day, alone at home, I really hit rock bottom. I got the gun from its hiding place and, although I was shaking, stuck the
barrel in my mouth. It's strange holding a gun. It's cold and its weight doesn't seem to match its size. It was as if I washolding
something from another planet, a place that might well be my final destiny after firing the first and last shot of my life.
I closed my eyes and got ready to pull the trigger with my thumb. There was this ridiculous pressure inside me, my head, my
chest. I counted to three and . . . CLICK! The fucking thing wasn't loaded. Even so, I decided I still wanted to go through
with it. I turned the place upside down and found the bag Dad kept the bullets in. I don't know what happened to me, but I
was unable to load a single bullet in the revolver. I decided to give up. For the time being.

A week went past and I was still really bad. I took Prozac to stay awake and something else to get to sleep. I don't think
either of them had the desired effect, because I spent seven nights in a row going over my life, seeing just how much I had
to work out. I decided to try again. I waited for everyone to go to bed, placed a chair by the living-room window, which was
the only one that didn't have bars on it, and figured that falling from the ninth floor would be fatal, which was my intention.
I climbed up, stuck a leg out the window and, with half my body inside and the other half hanging out, I thought about all
the bad things in my life. That would give me the strength to jump. But I couldn't think of anything bad enough to make me
do it. Only good things came to mind: my dreams, the desire to make peacewith my parents. My courage, which was already dwindling,
threw itself out of the window before I could. I never tried again. I wanted to live. So, I'd have to do something for myself.

Since Mum kept a tight rein on me, and I didn't want my first time to be up against a wall in a dark alley or on a dance floor,
it was hard fulfilling all of the requirements. Of course, I also had to be truly in love. I dreamt of finding a boyfriend
and going to live with him, regardless of my age.

I found my third boyfriend on the Internet. At home, Dad and I both had our own computers, which ensured me a certain amount
of privacy, even if only in the virtual world. I'd always been crazy about the Internet and spent hours surfing, writing and,
of course, flirting on-line. Until the day I fell in love with a boy through the computer screen. It's true. We arranged to
meet. Face to face, I thoughthe was horrible. If we hadn't been in love . . . We started going out for real.

At home, we suffered a lot of prejudice because he was a delivery boy. Daddy's little girl, middle class, going out with a
guy like that? Dad refused to accept it. 'I don't want you going out with a poor guy, a delivery boy. Imagine if you married
a guy like that - he wouldn't be able to support you. You'd have to work.' In his mind, all families were like his. Mum had
never worked after getting married, although she had a degree in Language and Literature and had worked as a teacher for a
while in Sorocaba before she married my father. The poor thing - how boring watching TV all day long, looking after the flat
and her daughters, chatting on the phone.

Love is blind, deaf and mindless. But mute, never. I fought with my parents every day. I think that's why I did everything
in my power to put an end to my virginity. Imagine the juggling act. My parents were away and my sisters didn't live with
us any more. Whenever Mum was away, she asked the maid to stay the night - in the living room, to be specific. The maid always
went to bed early, which made things easier.

I planned everything. My boyfriend arrived at the building and called me from his mobile. Without raising any suspicions,
I said I was going to agirlfriend's place. I went downstairs to meet him and we took the service lift back up so we wouldn't
have to buzz the intercom. When we got to my floor, he hid on the stairs. It was really exciting. Like something out of a
film.

My heart was beating wildly; I was scared that something might go wrong. Then I ordered a takeaway. When the food arrived,
I asked the maid to go downstairs to get it. It was enough time for him to sneak in through the kitchen door and hide in the
cupboard in my bedroom, while I behaved as if everything was normal in the living room. I got the food, left some for the
maid to eat alone and locked myself in my room. He came out (no pun intended) and had dinner with me. We waited until we heard
the maid snoring. With a full stomach, she quickly fell asleep. Then we left my room and, taking care not to wake her, headed
for my parents' bedroom. It had to be on a double bed, of course . . .

It didn't really work the first two nights (of the five) that we repeated this scheme. It was only on the third night that
I worked up the courage to have sex. It was crazy, awful, because it had been planned. It was really mechanical. I felt my
hymen tear and that was that. All said and done, I'd only lost my virginity. No, that wasn't sex. It hurt a lot, and I couldn't
scream or make a noise. It was a while before I got to have real sex. Was it worth it? Yes. I'd imaginedthat becoming someone's
'woman', completely, would be yet another reason for me to decide to leave home to live with him. But I realised that I didn't
need to marry someone for that to happen. And I had to do something about it fast.