My other boy cousins were so into sex by then that they were tiresome. Most of them were around sixteen and having enough wet dreams that their libidos were a new topic between their mothers. I knew this because, being female, I was supposed to associate with my aunts and mother in the kitchen, where I could not help but hear. Kitchen time was one of the many expectations I rebelled against, but even so I spent some with the women, more than the boys did anyway. Once I was warned not to answer a chorus of cousinly summons; my mother intercepted me on the way into the house and told me to stay with her, because she’d overheard several of my cousins conspiring to get me in the bathroom and strip me. Boys are curious, she explained, and they will be boys.

My mother told my aunts and they corralled my cousins somehow. But Mark wasn’t part of the conspiracy. Mark and I were special. In fact, he came around right after that event, smiled with his even white teeth, hugged me in his strong arms, and took me back to his place, where we talked and he played piano till the others fetched us for dinner.

Then it got complicated. Mark started really mooning around, partly about me, and his brother Philip teased him nonstop. Mark tried to talk to me about it the next time we visited, and I must not have regarded him seriously enough. I guess I made light of the family jokes about us. He said we might as well do it, for all the fuss. I assumed he was joking. I said well sure we could have intercourse, just as long as I didn’t have to do anything with my mouth. I don’t think he understood that I was going along with a joke. He played some more on the piano, but half an hour later, when I left to go to the bathroom, he followed me.

I went to the toilet beneath the stairs, the one with no window, and at first I didn’t know what hit me when the lights went out and my back met the wall. Then Mark was against me, strong thighs and hard chest, and his mouth dipped down to press mine.

His teeth clacked against my teeth and mashed my upper lip. I opened my jaw to pull away and his tongue filled my mouth. I grunted. I gagged. I pushed him away.

We were never as close after that.

In fact, I became a little phobic about kissing. First-kissing, anyway. Maybe I’m too connected to my own mouth, but it seemed to me that French kissing was just about the most intimate act possible. And a first kiss, a kiss that almost certainly would either begin with the male pressing too forcefully or develop, orchestrally, into an insinuation, such an act was simply too loaded for my comfort. I was all for it in anticipation but when the moment came I tended to avoid. Sometimes I even ducked.

Looking back on it, I may have married Jim because he was the only one to persevere after such a duck.

My parents and brothers and I moved again, this time from extreme Southern California to the San Francisco Bay Area. My brothers were then eleven, and they always had each other; they slipped into the new environment like tadpoles into a pond. But I was sixteen. I had to leave all my pals and start over in a four-year, stratified high school. Even as an eccentric I was not going to have much of a social life. I gravitated to the few other new kids in the fast-track classes. Jim was one of them. We became friends. We talked a lot, walked a bit, worked even on the homecoming float. I’ll admit I found him attractive. His hair was too thin and his ears were a little prominent, but he had good teeth and a strong body. He was on the diving team, because he was too big for gymnastics and they hadn’t yet gone to fiberglass poles for vaulting. He swam daily. His body was tan with glints of blonde hair. But he only wanted to talk to me about politics, astronomy, and girls who didn’t look at all like me.