Sex and Candy

by Hairee Lee

A friend of mine hasn’t had sex in over three years.

That’s just long enough for the hymen to stitch back, says another friend, tearing open the package of assorted American candy we just snatched from the Monoprix.

I reach in: Three Musketeers.

Not interested in fucking any more, says my re-virginized friend.

The other friend looks at her Snickers.

And if—if?—she does, she wants it to be with someone thatknowsher.Knowsme, she says, pulling out a Skittles. All the sweet pieces of her, he should know.

Next: Kit Kat.Give me a break! Give me break!sings my other friend.

This sounds unrealistic, if not simply impractical, but I don’t say so. What she means, but withholds for fear of coming off saccharine, is she wants her second first time to be special. Sweeter. The mystification of female virginity implied by this line of thinking ticks me right off. I put a fistful of Whoppers in my mouth. They dissolve quickly.

When I lost my virginity, I knocked over the sugar bowl and it shattered on the granite tiles. Neither of us noticed, not even when a shard stuck into the gardener’s thigh. Hotspur. I thought of Hotspur stabbed in the thigh. Post mortem. Only after thepetit mortdid he register his bleeding leg.Merde, he cursed, pulled on his coveralls, and limped out of the kitchen. I lay on the tiles catching my breath with sugar and crystal pressing on my buttocks, coating the backs of my arms and palms, caught in my hair. My snatch broken and cum-sweet tasting, the sugar crystals and crystal shards glittering around me.

Milky Way is my favorite, says the other friend. It smells, she says, the cheapest.

 

Hairee Lee

Born in Korea and raised in Toronto, Hairee Lee is currently finishing up her creative writing MFA at Emerson College in Boston. Before pursuing graduate studies, she taught high school chemistry in London for several years.

 

Lee has a forthcoming story in Fractured West, and has been published by 680News and Didrik?s Dinner Series. She won the Norma Epstein Creative Writing Award for Best Short Story and for Best One Act Play. She reads fiction for Redivider.