They came on a Friday
Planning to stay until Sunday
And didn't leave
Until the following Thursday
When their fathers
In one car
To save gas
Drove up to the city
And kidnapped them home
They were staying at a hotel
Paid for by one of the fathers
In a suite
Not a room
Accommodations befitting queens
Which is what they were
Not teenage girls
Newly graduated
On a weekend trip
Katerina fell in love on the first day
With a waiter at the restaurant
Where they had lunch
And she lost her virginity to him
More than willingly
On his futon
In his little apartment
With plants on the windowsill
Just like in a beat poem
As he lay naked next to her
He lightly brushed the hair from her eyes
And only then, asked how old she was
She lied and told him
That she was in her mid-twenties
And because Katerina could pout her lips
Like a trophy wife
He believed her
After all
What teenage girl
Knew how to pout her lips
Just like that?
Minerva hung around the hotel ballroom
Attending various conferences and functions
Including two late-in-the-season proms
Five Entrepreneur Networking Events
Three weddings
A retirement party
And a jewelry convention
She couldn't believe
How different a ballroom could be
Depending on who was in it
And she thought to herself
How sad it was
That nobody actually danced
In ballrooms anymore
So that Saturday
She put on her best dress
Hopped into a cab
And instructed the driver
To take her anywhere
Where there would be dancing
Her cabdriver
A dancer himself
With the necessary part-time job
Of driving a cab
Took her to a dance place
Like one from 50's Cuba
Where he danced her around the room
And made her body glisten
With a combination
Of both their sweat
She lost her virginity to him
In the back of his cab
Right outside the dance place
His skin smelled like cigarette smoke
It smelled like dirt
It smelled like leather
It smelled like Heaven
Lynn stayed in the room
The entire trip
She had room service brought to her
On an hourly basis
And charged everything to her father's credit card
Since he was the one who got the room
As atonement for having forgotten her graduation
She did not feel
That a mere Presidential suite
Was atonement enough
For not hearing your daughter's
Diligently prepared
Valedictorian speech
So she bought room service
And lots of it
She ate in the hopes of becoming obese
In order to horrify her mother
Miss Smithfield '77
She also bought movies on cable
She had a masseur come up
And get out all her graduation knots
But the crowning achievement
Of all the spending
Came on Saturday night
When she lost her virginity
To a real-life gigolo
His name was Francesco
When he arrived at her room
He looked around
As if trying to figure out
Where the ugly old woman was hiding
Who wanted a good time
With an Italian boy
Who was really just super-tanned
And from the Midwest
Lynn ordered him to remove his pants
He asked her how old she was
Her reply?
'I'm four thousand dollars. And it's my birthday.'
He disrobed quickly
After that
The rest of the night
They laid in bed
Wrapped in cotton robes
Eating ice sundaes
While Lynn asked him things
And he answered dishonestly
Much to her jubilation
Once or twice
He even let his fake European accent slip
And finally he kissed her
Which was against all the rules
He had learned from 'Pretty Woman'
He left at 4am
Just as Katerina was coming back
And when he ran into her
He apologized
Mainly for bumping into her
But also because he thought Katerina
Was in her mid-twenties
And Lynn was most definitely NOT in her mid-twenties
And Francesco looked thirty
But was really twenty-one
And so he assumed Katerine was Minerva's aunt or something
And Katerina assumed he was the male prostitute
Lynn had said she was going to get
To take her virginity
So his apology had many
Many
Layers
To it
When Minerva got him half an hour later
The three girls got into their pajamas
Except for Lynn, who stayed in her robe
They toasted each other
With wine Lynn had ordered
(How lovely that they don't card for room service)
They looked out onto the city
And laid together
Like sisters
When they got home
Kidnapped back by their fathers
After days of shopping
And seeing the sights
And hotel room parties
One of their mothers
Read their diaries
And called the other mothers
And names were called
Whore
Tramp
Slut
But all they would say
Was that they were careful
And that they had a lovely time
And they were women now
So they could do as they liked
But strangely enough
Their losses were not
What would stick in their minds
What would stick
Would be that image
Of fog surrounding a city
Of bad things
Becoming exciting
Prostitutes
Taxi cab drivers
Lying
Fog
Loss
They thought of how they shed their skin
And let their eyes wander into that fog
Knowing they could get lost
And holding onto each other
That much tighter
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