Kip Knott, "In-Between"

Persephone's Daughters nominated this piece for the 2021 Pushcart Prize.

“I lost my virginity when I was 15 to a hot 28-year old librarian. She taught me everything I know!” 
 
For years, that was how I began the story of losing my virginity. 

But now, as the 57-year-old father of a teenage son and in the much needed illumination that the #MeToo Movement has shone on the world, I have had to come to terms with the reality of my experience rather than reducing it to the locker room talk so admired by our honorable president. 

Back in 1978, I worked until close three nights a week with a woman named Sarah at a small library. While Sarah checked books in and out at the circulation desk, I was confined to the dank stacks re-shelving returns. From the moment I met her, I had a huge crush on Sarah, a woman who barely reached the height of my shoulders. At nearly 6’3” tall and 195 pounds, I looked older than I actually was, which is why I thought Sarah treated me as someone older than 15. Sarah liked to flirt, winking at me from behind her desk, brushing my hand when she would give me a book to shelve, and so on. Eventually, Sarah’s flirtations led to her taking me by the hand to the elevator one night after closing. As the doors slid shut behind us and we started to move, Sarah pressed the “STOP” button. “This will be our in-between world, our secret place where no one can find us. Do you understand?” I nodded, and she pulled the “STOP” button to let us move again.

From that point on, Sarah would lead me to the elevator each night after closing, tap the button to go up or down, walk me in, tap either “2” or “B,” and then stop between floors, trapping us in the In-Between World. At first, Sarah showed me one of her breasts and, smiling, Mona Lisa-like, took my hand and instructed me to squeeze it gently, to feel how something firm can also feel soft. After a moment, she lifted my hand to her lips, kissed each finger once, and withdrew her breast back into her blouse. “More tomorrow?” she asked, and I nodded as she pulled the button that delivered us back into the real world.

Over the next few weeks, Sarah and I spent more and more time in the In-Between World, where she would show me more and more of herself, guiding my hands down the geography of her body like a tour guide: “The skin around my belly button is so sensitive!”; “Feel the way my hip curves? Nice, isn’t it?”; “Don’t you love how smooth the inside of my thigh is?” If my fingers strayed too far one way or the other, Sarah would gently chastise, “No, no, no. It’s not time to go there—yet.” I would apologize, but when I would try to pull my hand away, Sarah would reassure me, “It’s fine. Trust me. Just let me show you.” 

In retrospect, I realize that I knew very little about Sarah, other than the way her body felt beneath my hands. She knew me, though, because I dutifully answered any question she asked of me. She knew that I didn’t have any close friends at school; she knew that I was beginning to challenge my Catholic faith; she knew that I dreamed of becoming a mountain man, and even gave me a book about how to survive in the wilderness. While Sarah was a great listener, she never really talked much about herself. Whenever I would ask a question about her, she would brush it aside by saying something like, “Oh, I’m just a typical librarian. There’s nothing exciting about me.” 

On the one-month anniversary of our first excursions to the In-Between World, Sarah asked if I wanted to go home with her after work. My fingers twitched with excitement, and my voice cracked as I said, “Yes.” I thought, Here’s my chance to learn more about Sarah, to find out what she’s like outside of the library, outside of the In-between World. But I also thought, Now I’ll get to see everything. “Good,” Sarah said as she led me to her car for what would be the first of many surreptitious trips to her apartment.

Though certainly larger than the elevator, Sarah’s apartment was still small—just a studio with a galley kitchen, breakfast nook, TV area (complete with love seat), and sleeping area where a bed jutted from behind a purple folding screen decorated with peacock feathers. The whole apartment smelled overwhelmingly of lavender. Sarah took my hand and led me to her bed. I couldn’t help but think that the area behind that purple screen was nearly the same size as the In-Between World. Over the bed hung a big wooden “S,” just like the wooden “M” hanging in Mary’s apartment on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. As Sarah directed me to lie down on a bedspread with a peacock-feather design, I thought, What will she show me tonight? But as she began to undress me while staying clothed herself, I became confused. As if reading my mind, Sarah smiled that same Mona Lisa smile and said, sweetly but matter-of-factly, “You’ve made it to the top floor. There’s no more in-between. I’ve taught you about my body; now I’m going to teach you about yours.”

In the 42 years since that night, the majority of my relationships have inhabited a space somewhere in between love and co-dependence, and all of them failed. It wasn’t until I met Dana, my wife of now more than 20 years, that I began—albeit grudgingly—to reassess and reexamine the circumstances surrounding the loss of my virginity. When I made my standard declaration, “I lost my virginity when I was 15 to a hot 28-year old librarian. She taught me everything I know!” Dana looked horrified and said without hesitation, “You were raped.” At the time, I couldn’t accept Dana’s view, and we argued about it on and off for years; I felt trapped in between the self-preservation an altered memory can provide and an unwanted truth. After each argument, though, it was as if a bit more of the truth emerged from the ether of my memory. It wasn’t until our son turned 15 himself that I fully realized just how young a 15-year-old boy can be; just how young I was all those years ago. Now when I begin the story of how I lost my virginity, I begin it this way: “I was groomed in an elevator at the age of 15 by a 28-year old librarian and sexual predator named Sarah.”