The Kid Secrets, by Something You Said

We played a remarkably different version of princes and princesses than you when we were kids:  

Honestly, I was always a kinky kid. I blame it on the one year that I went to public school: second grade. We had just moved and my parents decided that my neighborhood school was up to their academic standards, so we tried it out. The first day of school I was scared and I puked on my teacher, Mrs. Jones. The second day I made my only friend of the entire year; her name was Bee and she had a black bob cut that appealed to me and was hideously ugly. Also she was mean and didn’t read books so I admired her.

I proudly brought Bee back home to my parents and they were horrified. She called me “Dumbo” and my Mom yelled at her for using bad words around her daughter. Bee had a nasty tendency to disagree with everything my mother told us to do. She was my parents’ worst nightmare.

“You need to clean up your room!” my mom would yell.

“Your mom is so retarded,” Bee would say just audibly enough for mom to hear.

So we ended up spending most of our time at Bee’s dilapidated rental house down the street. Her dad never seemed to notice me, maybe because he was dating a fat woman who didn’t seem to own anything but a discolored pink slip.

I loved slumming it.

The Private Game began when one of us, I forget who, suggested that we add intrigue to our prince and princess game. We decided that the prince would capture the princess and then torture her for information on the rival kingdom. I was always the princess.

“You messed up,” she would whisper, “I caught you.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

Anything. Everything. She’d tie me up naked and I’d pretend to be thirsty so that she could refuse me water. I had my mom buy me a pair of combat boots, which I then gave to Bee to wear when she was being the “prince”. (The princess didn’t need an outfit). If I got a good grade, or talked with one of the nice girls in our class, I knew Bee would come up with a suitable punishment for me later. At my parents’ urging I won the “read-a-thon” and, after my celebratory ice cream with the principal of the school, Bee blindfolded me and whispered degrading sexual fantasies in my ear.

Throughout the school year and into the summer the game moved from her room, to the basement, and finally to the bathroom. That was the peak of our sexual arousal. I’d sit on the toilet with Brianna looming above me, both of us touching each other and ourselves.

“You can’t pee until I tell you to pee.”

“Oh god, I just want to get back to my castle!” I would cry in ecstasy.

We kept it intensely secret. She would threaten me with even more delicious sexual punishments if I ever told, but still I didn’t. My mom must have realized something was going on, though, because she found every opportunity she could to separate us.

“Bee is not very smart,” she would say, “I don’t like you spending time with her.”

I shrugged, avoided eye contact, and snuck off to my room to call Bee on my landline. We could hardly spend a day apart. The frequency with which we played The Private Game increased. I didn’t know what I’d do without her, without it.

And then the next school year started, my parents let out a sigh of relief, and I was back at my private international school. My dad would report that he saw Bee, now a goth, carrying an Adams Family lunchbox; later, when I went to college, she became nothing more than a party anecdote.

But the Private Game continued, less secret, with different princes and me always the princess.