Josh Rossi had a fake front tooth. I didn’t know why. When I finally found out, I peed on him in the shower out of pity.
Our eyes first met when we were eighteen, sitting on opposite sides of the room from each other at a small party in someone’s parents’ basement. He had a buzz cut, diamond stud earrings, and baggy wide-leg jeans, with an oversized hoodie. I was into emo boys with swoop bangs, tight t-shirts, and skinny jeans, but there was something about Josh. He had expressive deep blue eyes, and freckles. He seemed modest and overly shy. For the duration of the party he looked amused, but barely spoke. Whenever he did, it was because he had something particularly funny or absurd to say.
I asked about him, and his friends told me he was a virgin, terrified of girls. They urged me to talk to him so that they could watch him fumble awkwardly through conversation, so on my way out I made a big show of it. I pretended to trip, fell directly into his lap, and said in my best phone-sex-operator voice, “Hi, I’m Jena. Would you like my phone number?” His friends’ jaws dropped open in excited anticipation. He looked stunned, followed by a sheepish smile, without making any eye contact whatsoever. “Um, yes,” he said.
***
Instead of calling, Josh added me to AOL Instant Messenger. His away messages were always an assortment of dramatic emo lyrics, featuring an array of different
Chatting online, he was an entirely different person from who I observed at the party. He was a wildly talkative, charming goofball. A couple of weeks later when he still hadn’t asked me out, I asked him.
In person, he was exactly who I observed at the party. Overly shy, but dare I say coy? His slight smirk was flirty and ever-present. We’d just graduated high school and were both equally directionless. This led to a series of long, aimless coastal drives together from Rye Beach, New Hampshire to his hometown in Mass, listening to whiny music and Dane Cook stand-up on CD. Dane was his idol, second only to Vince Vaughn. It was 2003, after all. Within a few weeks I finally managed to disarm him enough to come out of his shell, and it was easy to see that he was trying to embody that same brand of loud, abrasive charisma.
I tried to get him to kiss me on several occasions. I knew he had a crush on me, because he quickly changed his fashion to fit my type, and started to grow his hair out—but I also knew he was a nervous wreck of a person. So when we would talk in his driveway at the end of a cruise, I’d gradually try and get closer and closer to his face, but as soon as the tension started to boil over he would quite literally jump out of the car running. He confessed he’d never kissed a girl before and was afraid he’d be bad at it. I teasingly yelled out the window after him, “PUSSY!” He turned around and laughed, “Next time!”
Soon he started sneaking me into his dad’s house for sleepovers. They always ended with us writing secret messages on each other’s backs with our fingertips and the other had to guess what it said. I don’t remember what I wrote on this particular occasion that made him abruptly turn to face me, I only remember that he finally kissed me—and for a ridiculous amount of time. Three or four hours at least. Until our lips were too swollen and sore to keep going. As much as I love kissing and consider it an art form, I can’t fathom there was ever a time that making out for that long was appealing.
Neither of us had been hurt by love before, so we didn’t exercise any caution whatsoever. Instead of moving to a new city right away after graduation, as I’d planned, he convinced me to stay in New England for the summer where we would split our time between his mom’s house and his dad’s house.
As weird as that sounds, it was weirder.
***
The first time I met his mother, she was sitting in a beach chair in her driveway wearing a gold metallic string bikini, her tan and leathery freckled skin oiled and baking in the Massachusetts sun. Her waist-length yellow ponytail pulled back in a scrunchie. Her bangs--a gravity-defying fluff. She had a Boston accent that was thick and jarring, and her body language abrasive. But...she was sweet as hell.
“MY JEN!” She shrieked as her skinny little body leapt out of the chair to give me the hardest hug a stranger has ever given me. “My little Joshy has told me so much about you!” she yelled joyously into my face while clutching my arms.
“Awwww, has he?” I flashed Josh a smirk and he rolled his eyes, exasperated.
Then suddenly her grip tightened as her tone turned serious. “Do you love my boy?”
“Ohhh, uhhhh…” Josh took over, “Mom, we haven’t talked about that yet. We’re not there ye---”
“You BETTER love him! Cos he loves YOU! He told me!”
“MA! I never told you that, please stop.” He looked at me, mortified, “I never said that.”
I laughed as she dragged me by my arm into the house. It was a small, single story two bedroom, without A/C, that reeked of cigarette smoke. The decor was distinctly poor white trash. My heritage.
When we got to the living room, I was stunned to see amongst the ashtrays, fake plants, and Harley Davidson memorabilia, there stood an elegant birdcage containing a strikingly beautiful Scarlet Macaw parrot.
“His name is Mike” she told me, “and he’s trained to talk shit.”
The bird cocked his head sideways while casually defecating and repeatedly telling me to “fuck off.”
Suddenly it fit right in.
She led us to “Josh’s room.” But it wasn’t really his, because he had been living with his dad for years. It was simply a bare room with a dresser and a bed. She pointed at it sternly. “Don’t be havin’ sex in this bed. You’re too young for sex, and it ain’t gonna happen under my roof! Last thing I need is you to knock someone up, Joshy.”
“Ew! Mom! Stop it!” He shouted. I was stunned and speechless, but somehow I managed a stiff nod and an “Of course not.”
“Good. Don’t let me catch you fooling around.” She lamented. But to my horror, she eventually would. Twice.
***
Josh’s mom travelled several times that summer, on the back of a Harley. When she would leave on these extended biker trips, unbeknownst to her, her home would turn into a sweltering teen sex den. Her son hung sheets on all the windows for privacy, and as a failed attempt to cool down the apartment. I still have this hazy visual montage of hot, golden hour sunlight piercing through sheets, illuminating our fingering and oral marathons, and sitting in front of a box fan to try to cool off in between sessions.
We moved it to the couch for a while because the living room was a couple degrees cooler, but the parrot was watching us with sinister eyes, bobbing his head up and down like a pervert. When he started calling us shitheads and laughing in a menacing uncanny, human-like sound, we decided it was time for another room change.
We resorted to having sex in his mother’s bed. Not for kink, but for desperation, as it was the only room in the house with blackout curtains and a window A/C unit.
In the middle of it, his mother called the house phone, and said on the answering machine that she was returning from her trip early and would be home shortly. We flew out of her bed and rushed around trying to get the house back in order and hide all evidence of sexual exploration. When we heard her car pull into the driveway we leapt onto the couch and turned on the TV to try and act natural. When she walked in, Josh put it on mute while she regaled us with a rowdy Harley gang road trip story. When she paused to chug a glass of water, Mike, the elegant Scarlet macaw, tilted his head back, spread his gorgeous wings, and started moaning like a whore. “Oh god, oh god. Right there.” He moaned in his A+ impression of my voice. “Just like that.” Josh and I looked at the bird in horror. Josh’s mom choked on her water and gasped in pure rage, “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Josh nervously laughed like a mad man and shouted “EW! MOM, STOP! It’s from a movie we watched! Mike copies whatever he hears!”
“SHUT UP, Joshy!” She turned to me, narrowed her eyes and got right in my face, “JEN, you BETTER not lie to me. Is it from a movie, or did you have sex in my house?”
“It’s from a movie! We have never had—We never have done that.” I stuttered, scared for my physical safety, because days earlier she had insisted on giving me a lesson on how to fight dirty, which included punching someone in the eye with a screw between the fingers, and hitting someone on the temple with a bag of change in a nylon stocking.
“I’m waiting for—until I’m married I think.”
She closely inspected my face trying to gauge whether or not I could be trusted. After a long and tense inspection she relaxed her shoulders and said with a chipper tone “Okay. I’m going to make sandwiches so I hope you’re both hungry!”
***
Our time spent at Josh’s father’s house was quieter, but not in a good way.
The fun times during the day would abruptly end in the evening, the moment his father would get home from whatever he did after work. As he stepped through the front door with drugged up bloodshot eyes, Josh and I would say Hi which was always met with a cold expressionless nod, before brushing past us to get a beer from the fridge.
I never saw him smile. Never even saw him smize.
If you tried to converse, at best you’d receive a side glance from his darkest brown eyes, and a single sentence in a gruff tone.
Every night we retired to Josh’s bedroom early to escape the tense and deafening quiet of the shared space.
“How do you live with him?” I whispered. “Is he always like this or is it just me? Does he ever even talk to you?” Josh stared into the floor and shrugged. After a moment his expressive eyebrows inverted, turning his face into a caricature of sadness. Still just staring into the floor.
“Josh?”
He crawled into bed facing me, and curled into the fetal position against my body. I held him until he fell asleep.
***
Luckily his dad left early for work every morning, and the bad energy left with him.
One particular afternoon we were watching Old School on DVD, my head on Josh’s lap while he played with my hair, which I was desperately trying to grow out. It had reached an awkward bob length that hit just below the ears.
He was twisting and twirling it through his fingers, sometimes twisting a little too tight. It felt good enough that I drifted in and out of sleep, occasionally batting his hand away and mumbling, “Ow. Stop.”
An hour or so later I woke up to see Josh looking down at me covering his mouth to muffle laughter. “What? What are you laughing at?” I snapped crankily. He smirked with wild eyes, and led me to the bathroom putting me in front of the mirror. I gasped. He’d twisted every bit of my hair into tight little knots all over my head. I laughed out of shock, then panic set in when I realized I couldn’t get them out and they started to hurt. He apologized profusely, and called his cousin the hairdresser for advice.
He put a jar of mayo on the counter. “She said to use this.”
So there we were sitting in the tub with the shower pouring down on us while he massaged mayo into the knots. All of them came out– except for one. It had to be cut off with scissors, leaving me with a large chunk of spiky short hair on the side of my head. I lifted my leg and joked that I was going to piss on him for revenge.
His eyes lit up.
“Wait, can you? Would you?”
“Ew, what? Shut up.”
“No, seriously, that would be so hot.”
“NO.”
“I’m not asking to pee on you, I’m asking you to pee on me! The shower will rinse it off!”
He continued to ask over the next few weeks. What started off as funny became annoying.
***
When we went back to Josh’s mom’s house I was relieved. Sure she was unpredictable, and sort of scared me at times, but it was counterbalanced by tenderness, unlike his dad.
She loved having another female around, especially one who was dating her son. She would cradle my hands in hers and tell me how happy she was that I came into their lives. She had such pride in Josh, or “Joshy” as she would only refer to him as. She would give him bear hugs and kiss his cheek and say–with her trashy New England accent– “Don’t you just love him? I love my boy.” He always resisted her hugs.
I couldn’t understand why he would choose to live with his dad over her. Our summer of love was soon coming to an end, and I urged him to move in with her temporarily until he gets his own place. He pushed back. “I can’t live with her, okay? Enough.”
***
At the end of summer I moved to Buffalo, and Josh begged not to break up. He promised we could make the distance work, and eventually move to the same city. His overbearing poetic sweetness was hard to reject, so I agreed to try.
To this day, I still have the lyrics-laced love letters he sent me during our time apart.
“I know blue eyes get boring but
I'll wear dark glasses all the time
And hey if you want me to
I'll take a knife to my own bright eyes.”
He screen-printed guns on the back of the more intense letters. The ones where he begged for forgiveness for cheating on me with my best friend— something he went on to do not long after I moved away. I was equal parts shocked, broken, and enraged.
After she confessed, I broke up with him via text. He called me almost 150 times in a row. When I finally answered and let him talk, he frantically blamed the cheating on me—claiming I never made him feel good enough, and that this low self esteem I caused him led him to seek reassurance from others.
I faux-yawned and hung up.
After another week of his calls, I answered angrily, “WHAT?”
He screamed in agony because he was pressing a razor blade into his wrists as we spoke, and said he was going to kill himself if I didn’t give him another chance.
So I did.
I took an overnight Greyhound bus to Boston, and he picked me up at the station, a gauzy bandage wrapped around his wrist to protect his wound. He collapsed into my arms sobbing and thanking me for giving him another chance.
He was all I knew of love to that point, and it must have been love, right? For him to want to die without me?
***
All day I was happy to be back. It felt more like home than Buffalo did.
When his mom left for the bars that night, Josh and I had our first moments alone. He tried to cozy up to me on the couch, but I recoiled. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are.”
“You’re the only one who does. I would do anything to undo what I did.”
When he saw that his words weren’t moving me at all, he started to cry again.
The harder he cried the more loved I felt.
I wiped away his tears with my sleeve and kissed him, but it didn’t feel the same.
I wondered if makeup sex might heal us. It works in the movies.
So I got up, took my shirt off, and looked back at him. “Meet me in the bedroom.” I said with a forced wink.
He cheered right up and followed behind.
His hands all over my body, I tried to lose myself in the moment, but there was a thick mental block. I overexaggerated my moans to drown out the voice in my head. I have to forgive him, I thought. Then, mid-penetration, BAM.
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FUCKING HOUSE!” His mother shrieked while violently pounding on the locked door.
She was home after only one drink. Unheard of.
“Oh my– Oh my god.” I grabbed for a blanket and weakly cried out “We’re sorry! We’re so sorry!” Josh was paralyzed, a look of terror in his eyes as he stared at the door.
I whisper argued with him over who should have to exit first. “She’s your mother!”
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW.”
We threw on our clothes and darted out of the room toward the front door. She kicked him hard in the back of the leg as we passed. “YOU’RE DISGUSTING.”
We didn’t touch each other again that night.
***
The next morning while we were inspecting his new bruise and finally laughing about the whole thing, his mom called and casually acted like it never happened.
“I’m making breakfast, come over,” she said warmly.
When we got there she was microwaving canned green beans in a Hells Angels bowl and deep frying chicken wings. Breakfast was a very loose term in this household. She kissed us both on the cheek and then started right in with talking shit about Josh’s dad. The usual racket.
“That man is filth. He’s FILTH, Jen.” Still not my name, but she insisted. “Do you know what he did to me? He cheated on me. That fucking bastard.”
Must run in the family, I thought, while I shot Josh a death stare side eye. She clocked it, and gasped. “Joshy, did you cheat on her?”
He looked genuinely uncomfortable. “Mom, stop.”
“Are you a cheater just like your piece of shit father?” Then she turned to me, “Tell me, Jen, did he cheat on you?”
It was tempting, but I let him off the hook.
“Nope. He would never do that.”
“Are you sure?” She baited me. Then she raised her fist and faked Josh out like she was going to hit him in the face. He flinched, blocking his nose and bracing for pain. She cackled maniacally and punched him in the shoulder much too hard. He winced. “GOOD. He better not. Or I’ll kick another glass into his fucking teeth and knock another fucking tooth out his mouth. Did he ever tell you how he lost that tooth? Did he ever tell you how he learned to respect his mother?”
He looked small and embarrassed.
She went back to cooking and continued talking just to hear herself talk.
After tensely eating, I pulled Josh into the bedroom and whispered, “Is that really how you lost your tooth?”
He nodded.
“Weren’t you like twelve?”
“Eleven. It’s why I had to go live with my dad.” he whispered. “CPS.”
Suddenly it was very easy to forgive.
***
The drive that followed was long and quiet. We pulled off into a nook overlooking the ocean. With watery red eyes, he told me how he’d never felt safe anywhere. That he was always lonely, always masking, and had no idea who he was.
We sat quietly watching the waves.
“I know who you are.” I finally said.
He looked at me as if I might say something hurtful.
“You’re the next Vince Vaughn, duh.”
He smiled, but only a little, before looking away.
This was the last day of my short trip. How could I fix him before tomorrow?
“Wait…”
He looked at me.
“I know who you are…
“Who am I?” He played along.
“You’re the lucky guy who’s gonna get peed on in the shower this afternoon.”
He laughed. But only a little.
“Oh you don’t believe me? Start driving.”
His eyes brightened. “Wait, really?”
***
We got the water hot and steamy and tried to figure out how it was going to work logistically. Turned on, he said “How bout I bring my leg forward like this, and you just kind of squat over it?”
To be a good sport, I pretended to be turned on too as I got into position.
I tried but nothing came out.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve never peed on someone before, I think my mind is preventing me from doing it.”
“Just try to relax. Mind over bladder.” He smirked.
So I did. I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly and deeply, and about 20 seconds later—
“Oh my god it’s happening.” He said, as if he was witnessing a total solar eclipse.
My pee stream started and stopped several times as it fought against my brain signals telling me this is not a toilet. And then when it was officially empty, I opened my eyes and his expression was…not what I expected.
“Huh,” he said in a genuinely quizzical tone.
“Huh?”
“I guess I’m not into it after all.” He shrugged.
I opened my eyes wide. “You’re not?!”
“Nope, I guess not. But thank you so much for trying it! That was so nice of you!”
I burst out laughing at his completely sincere politeness given the situation, and then so did he. Once we started, we couldn’t stop. We laughed until we cried and wheezed and could hardly breathe. All while hugging in the shower.
That night after he fell asleep calmly smiling, I stared at his sweet face in the bright moonlight coming through the window. And then out of morbid curiosity I lifted his wrist bandage.
There was nothing there.
Not even the faintest scratch.
***
Josh and I broke up again soon after I got back to Buffalo, after he cheated again, lied relentlessly, and eventually threatened to kill us both. All things he did to the girl after me as well. (Or so I heard.) His self-destructive behavior escalated, leading to substance abuse and culminating in a terrible car accident. (Or so I heard.)
And then I stopped hearing anything altogether.
Until over a decade later, when he sent me a friend request on Facebook. Against my better judgement, I accepted, out of sheer curiosity.
There were no recent photos of him. Only ones from when we knew each other, reposted over and over, as if he were still there…in 2003. His daily posts were openly tortured. Mostly reposts from Christian Facebook groups about Jesus Christ and his willingness to forgive you for your sins if you accept him as your Lord and Savior.
This went on for several years. Then one day, he posted something different.
“You’re so money, baby, and you don’t even know it.”
A movie quote from Vince Vaughn in Swingers.
I don’t think about Josh Rossi often, but when I do, I hope he’s okay.
Because once upon a time, I peed on him and it was pure.
