Lauren Boulos is a writer and communications specialist living in Syracuse, New York. Her poetry, short fiction, and personal essays have appeared in Profane, Quail Bell, Crosswinds Journal, Memoir's Ink, The Squawk Back, and others. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University.  

Sainted

Agnes was thirteen the first time. Her brother’s friend was three years older. Spending the night, drunk on Parrot’s Bay and her brother passed out upstairs. She was in the basement watching You’ve Got Mail.

He came down and stood in front of her, swaying. His pants were off. He was wearing plaid boxers that looked new.

“You like?” He twirled around, presenting himself.

The basement was partially finished. There was the couch she was lying on, Ikea clearance, and a vinyl loveseat that had belonged to her bachelor father. A coffee table, a bulbous TV, a Nordic-Track.

He extended his hand and led her to the unfinished side. No time to scooch out of her leggings. He pulled them down himself and stuck a finger inside her.

Or tried to. Something blocked him. He tried to wriggle past it but could not. His boner began to collapse in his boxers. He looked at her, turned, and left.

She pictured her brother sprawled across his bed. His friend entering silently and zipping himself into his sleeping bag, not wanting to feel so much as air against his skin.

It took her a few days to investigate. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for when she took the compact mirror and lay down on the bathroom floor. Maybe a flap of skin like scar tissue. That would make it hard to manipulate, but she saw no flap.

The hair didn’t surprise her. The look of it, however, did. It crisscrossed where he’d tried to put his finger, interlocking like a thicket. She thought of Sleeping Beauty and the brambles surrounding the castle after the witch cast her spell. Miles deep.

Her hair was not miles deep, but she couldn’t pierce it with her nail. She wasn’t frightened, though she suspected this wasn’t anatomically normal. She felt special, actually.

By the time she turned fourteen, Agnes’ mother started to wonder why she hadn’t gotten her period.

“You’re not keeping it from me?”

Agnes’ parents were separated, not divorced. Her dad came around on minor holidays to see if she and her brother wanted lunch at Outback.

“No,” she said, sipping her milky coffee.

“Then I’m making you a doctor’s appointment. It’s time.”

She hadn’t needed to make the appointment, because Agnes got her period that night. Her hair acted not like a dam but a sieve, letting it through.

“It happened,” she said.

“Interesting timing.”

Anticipating that response, she pulled the ruined panties from her back pocket. “Ugh.” Her mother waved her hands in front of her face. “Got it.”

She asked if she needed a pad or tampon. Agnes shook her head. She’d already swiped a stack of pads from school.

Agnes left for a big state college. Every semester the Lit Society threw a Wilde-themed party called Gents & Harlots. Poe parties too where the absinthe flowed like Natty Light. Suicide Soirées where papier-mâché busts of Plath, Wolff, and Foster-Wallace watched over the gyrating bodies packed into Bund Hall.

Agnes had one party outfit: a purple H&M corset and black miniskirt. Freshman year, she lived in a suite with three other girls. Their periods synced and they shared lip gloss, instant coffee, and condoms, the latter from a communal dish by the door. Everyone but Agnes used it. It wasn’t just that she was skeptical of sex, she had little desire to try. Filtered through her roommates, it sounded like something endured for the story.

Though some girls liked it. The Womyn’s Center went on and on about self-determined desire. They performed The Vagina Monologues on Valentine’s Day and Agnes, curious, got drunk and went. Much of it was grim, but there was one vignette about the word cunt. The actress faked an orgasm and the audience rose to their feet, triumphant.

That night at Gents & Harlots, Agnes accepted a cup of punch from Lit Society member Ben Castile. He was attractive, a guy girls talked about, and Agnes didn’t know why he’d taken an interest in her. They only had German together. Freshmen were required to take a language and Agnes, who’d taken Latin in high school, wanted something fractionally more useful.

Mensch, she thought as Ben smiled.

He was solicitous, bringing her more punch whenever her cup ran dry. The room started to spin and her chest broke out in a thin, cool sweat. She kept dancing with Ben, moving closer.

Eventually her roommates, less lucky, started to leave.

“You got this,” Sarah, her favorite, told her with a hug.

Not much later, Ben asked if she wanted to get out of there. It was time, wasn’t it?

They crossed the campus arm in arm, swaying across the cobblestone walkways. Ben stopped and pulled her to him. He kissed her hard, with tongue, and Agnes did her best to reciprocate. He moved his hips against hers.

“You’re freezing.” He rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “Let’s go faster.”

Ben’s dorm was on the other side of campus. There was a jitney that drove students to and from their points, but that was a last resort. On party nights it reeked of puke.

They stepped inside his dorm and the sudden shock of heat made Agnes woozier. She stood still for a moment, blinking.

“You good?”

Ben grabbed her hand and pulled her up the two flights of stairs to his room. They started kissing again, him fumbling with his belt, and it took a minute for her to realize they weren’t alone. His two roommates were there, sitting on someone’s bed.

Agnes pulled away. “Oh,” she said, about to apologize.

“Hey.” Ben pulled her back. “It’s cool. You like fun, right?”

He waved to one of the guys, who jumped up and produced a bottle.

She took a sip. She wasn’t sure if she answered Ben’s question. (Upon later reflection, no, maybe she didn’t like fun).

She didn’t say no or yes. She couldn’t remember saying anything after “Oh.” Ben’s roommates joined him, yanking up her skirt. She was wearing—and she couldn’t believe she’d chosen these, and couldn’t believe she cared at all right then—full-coverage cotton panties. Not a thong, not lace. She thought about that as the guys pulled them down.

What she’d remember later were the sounds they made when it didn’t go as planned. First, uncomprehending. Then a noise closer to bewilderment. Then fear?

Her roommates were asleep when she got back. She brought her pajamas into their shared bathroom and locked the door. She ripped off her corset, easy to do now that the zipper was busted. Then she stepped into the shower.

Her hair was longer, thicker. It covered more of her now. Braided tight across where they’d wanted entry.

A week before her twenty-first birthday, Agnes moved to Berlin. The idea of living in a city where no one knew her was attractive. Berlin was attractive. She’d been studying German for years, on her own once she dropped out of school. She knew how to order food, ask about hotel rates. She’d been surprised to learn this qualified as fluent.

She read that everyone in Berlin spoke English. Had she chosen a cooler neighborhood, that might have been the case. But she’d picked the cheapest, most proletariat. Charlottenburg had beautiful streets, having once been the wealthiest Russian hub in Berlin, but the street she lived on was quiet concrete. She was the youngest resident by at least a decade and the only American. No one spoke English. The German they did speak was heavily accented with Russian.

That was how Agnes learned a hybrid language, based on Russian and punctuated by Berlin slang, some lazy, wayward English. Eventually she became truly fluent. She made friends, Germans and expats from Europe and American towns like hers. No one particularly wanted to talk about their hometowns.

Agnes had always heard Germans were sexually open. This openness took shape in unexpected ways. Not just fucking in clubs, but in how normal bodies were. Coworkers went to Turkish baths together. You could watch porn on cable after 10 pm.

Maybe that was why she’d chosen Berlin. She left America hating sex, but what she hated was what she knew. Sometimes she’d remember how she felt the first time she looked at herself. The years between had muddied the sense she was special. On her twenty-second birthday, she toasted her friends at a lounge in Mitte that none of them could afford.

Prost!

She’d ordered a baby pink cocktail with a layer of meringue.

“To more of this.” She raised her glass. A bit of drink sloshed over the rim, spilling onto her stockings. Cheers all around.

It’s mostly men that come to her, but sometimes women. Before she had money she used to take them in her apartment. She liked the intimacy of them getting a glimpse into her life, but at the same time that felt limiting. She’d wipe down her counters every night, vacuum every morning, put away things no one needed to see. But still they could smell the her that infused her home. They might notice fingerprints on a water glass. Intimate, but it also made her real.

She rented space in an old power plant converted into a nightclub. A cliché she overlooked. So did the other dozen people renting space there. She saw them regularly, women and men arriving in jeans and sneakers with travel bags. No one interacted outside a polite nod. Agnes wondered occasionally what other people kept in their bags. She assumed the contents were much like hers, but who knew. Everyone had their something.

Hers appeared straightforward. She’d step into a garter belt, fasten her stockings, and slip on stilettos. She’d pin back her dark blonde hair, powder her face, put on lipstick. If someone was new, she’d wear a satin balconette. Otherwise she’d go without.

She didn’t take many new clients. She had never expected to get to the point where she had a wait list, especially for someone who didn’t advertise. Word traveled fast. There’s a woman in Berlin who can’t be penetrated. Pay enough, she’ll let you worship her.

She had one rule: they couldn’t touch her. She had no interest in touching them. If they wanted to be whipped, strangled, pissed on, they’d have to go elsewhere.

Enough people were happy to look. She dressed predictably, an overture to them. She could have worn flip-flops and a sports bra. But it made sense to choose sparse, expensive underwear, to lacquer up. It felt good too. Her stockings had the texture of Chantilly. Her lipstick cost forty euro but seeped into her lips like wine.

Her client today is a woman. She’s been to her once before, wearing the same thing she is now. A white cotton dress that skims her ankles, covers her neck, and buttons at the wrists. She kneels on the floor, head down. Her black hair is parted down the middle and her scalp is vividly white.

“Why have you come back.” Agnes usually doesn’t ask questions. There’s too much of that in real life.

The woman doesn’t respond. Agnes isn’t in the habit of forcing anyone to talk. She doesn’t force much of anything, yet every client has fallen to their knees in her presence.

“Why.”

She wants to hear this woman. Agnes is above her, bare tits and thigh-highs. She’s never punished anyone but considers how it would feel to slap her, hard.

The woman unfastens the buttons on her left wrist, then the right. She rolls up each sleeve to her elbows. Her forearms are full of scars.

Not a botched suicide. There are hundreds of nicks, slivers, patterns healed pink. Agnes has seen stranger shit. Still there’s something about this woman.

“Did it make you feel good?”

She looks up. Dark brown eyes and very thick brows. Agnes sees something flicker across her face, subtle as an eyelid spasm. She knows that it made her feel amazing.