"Storytime" by Akyiaa Wilson

From TRUTH BE TOLD's June 10th, 2025 show ("First Love/First Lust") Akyiaa Wilson's "Storytime" tells of what happens when a potentially clueless girl finds herself alone with the cutest boy in class... who also happens to be the school's drug dealer. 

Akyiaa Wilson is an actor, writer, comprehensive personal aesthetics professional and cardigan fetishist born and raised in Brooklyn. Cute baby pics at akyiaa-wilson.com.

TRUTH BE TOLD was created by Susan Kim and David Zellnik and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svejcar. Logo designed by Joseph Zellnik.

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to Truth Be Told Season 1: Love and Monsters. Each of these 14 episodes will feature one story performed at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City as part of the live event Truth Be Told. This story night was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick and features members of EST and friends who tell heartbreaking, embarrassing, hilarious, true stories based on a theme. This seven-week season draws from our first two sold-out nights. One called First Love, First Lust, and the other Scary Monsters. Please note, our first night was not captured live, so this story was recorded and scored in a studio. And now, without further ado, a tale about a potentially clueless girl in Brooklyn who suddenly finds herself alone with her crush, written and performed by Akia Wilson.

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First Lust. Young Feminine Lust. It's so funny. We live in a society that bends over backwards to sexualize young girls while simultaneously ignoring, obscuring, and oppressing their own sexuality. It's a tricky one because trust me, we know lust at that age. Of course we know lust. If you've ever seen an adolescent girl very nearly make out with a poster she just pulled from a Tiger Beat magazine or the cover of a Rolling Stone, you know we know lust. We felt our loins burn for some pretty boy with a sparkle in his eye and a non-threatening haircut. Those teenage girls fainting at Beatles concerts, bet your ass they weren't passing out from dehydration. So for girls at this age, the problem becomes that the feeling is there, but the details are murky. You see, society doesn't like to share with us exactly what's going to go on after the hand holding and the kissing. And with good reason. So we stay in the dark. I was in the dark at one time. I don't think I was naive at 15, but I remember being a sophomore in high school, talking to my best friend, a tiny half Costa Rican Jewish girl whose unamicably divorced parents left her alone every weekend in their four-story park slope brownstone, the division of which hadn't quite been settled for the comfort of their new partner's beds, which I didn't realize was strange. And I didn't realize how lonely Lisa was, and how that abandonment directly affected her behavior until much later. All I knew was that she was boy crazy, had low self-esteem, and at her mother's behest was constantly on a diet. But she, after much machination, had finally landed her first boyfriend. And she's talking to me about how she had gone to his house and they were going on the couch. Go. The term we used was go, like, oh my god, Will told Ryan he wants to go with you. Or Sarah and Gabe went with each other at the party last night. I like go. I miss it. It's got a bit of a motor to it that hookup lacks. You know, a mystery, an excitement. Hookup has always sounded to me like something you do in a dirty gas station bathroom. So I asked Lisa, when you are going with a boy, how do you know when to like stop? Do you just get tired? And she looked at me and kind of scrunched her eyes incredulously, as she would do, and she goes, when it's enough. Right. I said, I had no idea what she meant. But I felt too annoyingly inexperienced to ask, so I just let it drop. Cause it's one of those things, right? Before the internet, you didn't know until you knew. We had that stupid baseball analogy, and I was pretty sure what a home run was, but it's when you're rounding the bases where everything gets a little hazy. I had kissed a boy when I was a freshman, but I hadn't gotten any further. I was firmly on first, staring nearsightedly into the outfield, wondering. One carelessly unsupervised weekend at Lisa's, we were hanging on the couch under the original stained glass, spending the money her mother had left for food on candy and diet coke, and wondering what we should do that night. Now we weren't the type to sneak into the city and try to get in the limelight like some of our other friends, but Lisa was always down for a spot of trouble. That's why I liked her. The phone rang, and I was told our other classmate, inconveniently for you all, also named Lisa, was on her way. Other Lisa and I were not good friends. She was a boys' girl and had these obnoxious double D's and was a little slutty to be honest. She wasn't particularly smart or funny or interesting, in my opinion, but she had gone with all the boys in our circle on multiple occasions, which annoyed me. But I could handle her company for the night, especially if it meant popularity by association. I like that just by virtue of her reputation, she was trouble. And I always like to stand just close enough to trouble to get a little bit on me. But just a little. Other Lisa arrived while I was in the bathroom, and by the time I got out, Lisa and Lisa had decided they wanted to drop acid. This stroke of teenaged brilliance did not appeal to me. I was not into drugs. Okay, I was too scared to take drugs. I am the first-generation child of an immigrant mother whose paranoia and insistence on laying out the catastrophic consequences of any even slightly deviant action I might even consider taking were the hallmarks of her parenting style. How are you even going to get acid? I asked, trying to deter them, afraid we'd have to take some ill-fitted trip to Washington Square Park, where at best we'd be sold some very expensive aspirin, or at worst, something laced with PCP and horse tranquilizers, and I'd be stuck with the police and paramedics and a whole lot of splaining to do. We're gonna call Matt Hooper. I was immediately seized with the kind of nervous terror that can only be experienced by teenage girls. Matt Hooper was a year younger than us, unbelievably tall, all arms and legs, caramel skin and brown puppy dog eyes that were always a little bloodshot. Matt was a skater kid who spent more time at the cube on Aster Place than in class in our high school. He didn't talk a lot, but looked intently at things as if they were too beautiful or too deep to understand. He was my very own Jordan Catalano with a green afro. I loved him secretly. Or I loved the idea of him secretly. I knew that he probably couldn't hold a decent conversation, and that there was no way I could ever be his girlfriend, but it didn't stop me from staring at him, smoking in the courtyard adjacent our school, where the cool kids went on their free periods, and where I also hung out, but always felt like someone with a visa that could be revoked at any time for lameness. It didn't stop me from wondering what he smelled like or what his skin felt like. I wanted to stand next to his trouble real bad. Well, it felt like a minute and a half later, Matt was ringing the bell, drugs in tow, and I was freaking out because I was not prepared. I didn't have my wet n wild lipstick or my flattening iron or anything that would make me feel emotionally armored to share space with a boy I liked without the company of at least 10 to 15 other teens. My mind was racing. Part of me hoped he would just drop off the acid and leave, because this night could easily turn into the kind of movie where the entire house gets destroyed and we end up having to get jobs to pay for the damages instead of going to college. And I did not want to know how many hours at minimum wage it would take to pay for repairs to original hardwood floors and crown molding. Instead, Lisa asked him if he wanted to hang out. These two girls were about to drop acid and leave me to hang out with a boy who made me breathless, with the kind of boy I should not be around. I felt sick. I needed air. We went out to the garden, and while Lisa and Lisa took their doses and awaited their trip, I tried to make conversation with Matt. So, high school, am I right? It was painful. I had no game. Luckily he was amused by my awkwardness, or at least didn't seem to mind. He says, Do you mind if I smoke? I shook my head. He pulls out rolling papers and marijuana and rolls up a joint in the time it took me to arrange my face and posture into those of someone who is very comfortable around drugs. He lights up, takes a big hit, and offers it to me. And suddenly I know this is the moment. This is the moment I either take hold of this newness, of this small risk, or I make a complete fool of myself by saying, no, I don't do drugs. So I took it. I took a small hit, coughed, coughed again, desperately suppressed cough number three, and handed it back. We sat in silence for a bit, while I began to get used to the strange new sensations happening in my body. And then something else strange happened. He began to talk a lot about family, school, kids we knew. We started making jokes about anti-drug commercials that we remembered from when we were younger. We both loved irony. And we started to laugh and laugh for about five minutes straight until I stopped being able to feel my hands. I could see them and I could move them, but they felt funny. I clenched them over and over again. I held them to my face. Matt must have noticed my vague panic because he reached over and took my right hand in both of his. I was breathless, hot, fluttery, boneless, and though I still could not quite feel my hands, it was okay because I was feeling other things. By this point, the Lisa's were off on another planet, hanging out in Lisa's bed, giggling, pointing up at the ceiling, completely in their own world. It was just Matt and I. We snuck by them and went upstairs to watch a movie in Lisa's mother's bed. And well, eventually, after some more awkwardness, he kissed me and he undressed me. And I didn't know what to do, so he took my hand again and showed me how to touch him. And I was very embarrassed, but also grateful because what the fuck? How are you supposed to figure that shit out on your own? I was kissing down his chest when my head started to feel heavy, so I lay down on my side on the mattress and gave him what I'm sure was the worst blowjob of his life. But certainly, hopefully, the most sincere. He stopped me after a few minutes because I guess it was enough. In the morning, when he left, Matt kissed me in front of the Lisas, who were both surprised and impressed. And I walked around for the rest of the day like I was the coolest bitch that ever lived. I had just barely rounded third, but I sure felt like I had hit a home run.

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Akia Wilson is an actor, writer, comprehensive personal aesthetics professional, and cardigan fetishist, born and raised in Brooklyn. Cute baby pics at akia-wilson.com. Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svagar. If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening. More stories of love and lust will be released every Monday and scary monsters every Thursday. And do hit like and subscribe, it really helps. Till next time, remember Truth wants to be known. Yours too.