Factory by Kenneth Pobo

At fourteen, my friend Eddie and I decided we were ready to lose our virginities.  To each other.  Finding the right place was hard in our crowded neighborhood.  Mom was already suspicious of me.  When she told me to wipe the kitchen counter, I did, but I rubbed too softly.  “You did that like a pansy!”  It wasn’t my fault.  I had no training in how pansies clean counters.  I hoped that Eddie and I would grow old together, or at least make it to fifteen.

An abandoned factory stood just out of town.  Our folks told us to never go there.  Rumors abounded about Satanic rituals and criminals who hid out in it.  That added to the factory’s romance, so Eddie and I decided it would be a good place to try.  We got in through broken windows on the lower level.  Someone had busted down a door, maybe a famous criminal or someone who prayed to Satan to make the door give in.

I had brought a small blanket in a shopping bag.  It wasn’t fancy, just cotton with a sailboat on a lake.  We avoided the broken window, went through the broken door, and found a shadowy room with what looked like two water tanks.  Some people have their first time in a luxury suite.  Ours smelled like melted plastic.  The slivery floor threatened our feet.

I told Eddie I loved him and he said he loved me—we shouldn’t have said it, at least then.  We grew shy with each other and by summer’s end we had stopped going to the factory. 

I felt ready for a new place, a new start.  A door can be busted down.  A cloud can bring rain—or cooling shade.