“Anal? Did he do that to you?”
“… maybe.” She scratched her neck and drew her thighs close together. “He didn’t ask me if he could do it. Don’t tell anyone, okay? Everything below the waist hurt that morning. God, I can’t believe I just said that to you out loud.” She leaned close to me and looked down at our table. “That morning, with the motorcycle between my legs, I was confused like: ‘this hurts; what the fuck’s going on?’ I wasn’t sure whether I just wanted to get all the pleasures over with—to feel all the pleasures there were to feel and get it all behind me, or if I wanted to find some sort of boundary to slam up against or if I just wanted to find a way to get the control back—you know? like how I controlled that thumb thingy that makes it all flash past so fucking fast like a dream. Maybe I was just pissed off that morning. I don’t know… Don’t tell anyone. Everyone knows already, anyways. MySpace, email, cell: Everything in my life’s so see-through, anyways. It’s like: here I am. Here I am, World! Here’s every fucking little detail. That’s how people are, now, anyways. But don’t tell anyone!”
“I won’t tell anyone. What about your softer side, Emily? You know, your volunteer work with those handicapped kids?”
“I love the helpless.” She traced her finger over the table as if trying to spell something in cursive and, then, she gave up. “The helpless can’t ever judge me. They aren’t capable of hating me in any real way. They can only love me. I love them. They’re my children. It feels so good when their little, scared eyes need something from me.” She sat up straight, finger combed her long black hair and looked over her shoulders at her friends. They were waving her over. “Fuck,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re tricking me,” she said. “You’re taking advantage because I’m drunk.” She slumped. “I shouldn’t have told you those things about my accident. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid, fucking Power Hour. God, I’m so drunk.”
“No, Emily,” I said. “That wasn’t what I was doing, I—”
She got out of her seat. “I told you too much.” She smiled. “I can’t talk to you anymore; okay Victor? You know too much, now.” She started to walk away.
“Wait,” I said, raising my hand out to her.
She turned back.
“So you’re just leaving?” I asked.
She nodded and walked back to her friends.
I stayed there and sulked at my little table for a couple moments. I thought about waiting for an opening when she wasn’t talking to anyone but that was never going to happen. So I got up and headed toward her.
“Hey,” I touched her arm and she turned to me.
Michigan scored a fucking touchdown off a Hail Mary pass into the end-zone and the bar crowd went wild.
She jumped and clapped and high-fived her guy friends.
I weaved through a couple of girls to reach her and I heard them grumble, sarcastically, “Keep trying. I’m sure it’s going to work.”
“Hey,” I touched her arm, again, and she turned to me. “You shouldn’t of left. You didn’t get a chance to ask me any questions.”
Everyone around us started yelling at the football game. She said something.
“What?” I yelled.
She leaned toward my ear and her soft dark hair brushed my face. It was so black like the most fertile earth. She yelled, “I’m too drunk to do this right now. I’m so trashed.”
“Oh,” I said. I thought to say, ‘Some other time, then,’ but that was lame so I kept quiet for a second and just looked at her.
She motioned toward herself with her finger. The people around us got real quiet to try to listen and she whispered in my ear, “You know too much about me. You have to promise that you won’t tell anyone even though I know everyone already knows.”
I could smell her lilac perfume as it took possession of me. It would have been a much better world if only she and I were in it. We could both profit so much from the subtraction of all the cauliflower-eared, index-finger-ringed, frayed-baseball-capped interferers. “I’m not going to say anything.” I stepped closer to her and her face went blank. She looked a little confused. “I want to see you again.”
She furrowed her brow and didn’t say anything.
“I’ll give you a call, again, soon.”
One of her guys clapped his hand, over my shoulder, hard enough to make my head bob, and yelled between our ears, “Hey, who invited this guy, Em?” It was that cauliflower-eared dick.
“I’m Victor,” I told him, “Who invited your face?” God, that was stupid. God, that was stupid.
He looked at me with bewilderment. What was I doing? What the fuck was I doing? I was an animal. She had turned me into some animal and now me and this Neanderthal were going to punch each other over her. I knew I’d punch the guy too, even though it would be a huge mistake and I hadn’t punched a guy since the seventh grade…and Dubnicek. It was fight-or-flight and I had picked fight before thinking. It was quick, like a sharp switch that hurt me. Like my naked foot had stepped into a sharp-jawed bear trap of my own design.
I took his arm off of my shoulder.
“What’d you say, dude?” he asked, tilting his head. He smelled like beer and sweat as he got closer.
“I’m taking off,” I told Emily. The adrenaline stung my kidneys and my stomach dove but I didn’t think she could see. But, how did I know what a girl could see and couldn’t?
I turned from them. I started to walk away. This wasn’t going to work.
“What’d you say, dude!” the guy repeated, more forcefully.
A scrawny Asian dude appeared behind the guy’s left shoulder. The Asian dude was eyeing me. He had an upturned cloth visor and there was a little Cantonese left in how he clipped his words. “What—? he think he can just come up here with that,” he said, “He better walk around!”
I studied his face.
He raised his hand in the air and pointed down toward me from behind the cauliflower-eared dick, “I said ‘you better walk around with that, dude’!”
I smirked and turned to walk away.
“Victor!” I heard Emily exclaim and I hesitated in my walk to turn toward her. “’bye, Victor!” she said, giving me a fluttering wave and a smile.
Got her, I thought. Or had I?
* * * * * *
A couple days passed while I considered my next move. Time was running out before the end of the semester. I only had a couple good weeks before all the students settled down to prepare for final exams.
I sought out advice on our Instant Messanger group using ‘The Girl’ as my codeword for Emily:
‘So I should invite The Girl to our Christmas Party then?’ I typed.
‘That’s what I’m saying,’ wrote Wilfred. ‘It’s your last chance. Whatever impression you’ve made won’t last over Christmas break. I know. The impressions I made on her didnt last over the summer.’
‘How do u know that Wilfred?’ I typed. ‘How do you even know we’ll have a christmas party? We don’t even have a house mother.’
‘Victor, calm down,’ wrote Thomas Clark. ‘There’s going to be a Christmas party. All the guys in the house have been working themselves into a frenzy over your Girl. I sent out a few pictures to let them know what’s at stake.’
‘I overheard Brad Torsten in the hallway,’ wrote Solomon. ‘Ma Red’s not coming back. He was talking to Annie. She’s gonna have to order the food herself, now.’
‘The Christmas party is still on, Brothers!’ wrote Rex. ‘Ma Red’s door is being repaired today. I’ve written her a formal apology which she has not accepted. This only proves that we were right all along! Tergo Haec!’
‘I’d like to see that apology,’ I typed.
‘I’ll show it to you Victor,’ wrote Rex.
‘I bet you didn’t apologize for everything,’ I typed.
‘You’re right,’ Rex wrote. ‘I didn’t.’
(and 3 min. later)
‘It was more half explanation, half apology,’
wrote Rex.
‘I think you apologized too much, actually,’ wrote Reddeviler.
‘For the last time,’ wrote Rex, ‘WHO is this guy?’
‘I’m the Ghost in the Machine…’ wrote Reddeviler.
‘What?’ asked Rex.
‘He’s not The Ghost in The Machine,’ wrote Koethebuetal. ‘Get a grip, reddeviler. Drake started looking into this guy. We’re not sure how he got into our closed group. Drake found a few of his tags. From his online habits, he’s a sixty-year-old Canadian who speaks about seven languages.’
‘Learn to spell, frat boys,’ wrote Reddeviler.
‘Victor,’ wrote Wilfred, ‘you wanna be roommates next semester. We’re getting a bunch of new pledges next semester so everybodies gotta halve a roommate.’
‘I’ll think about it…’ I typed.
(and 10 min. later)
‘Anyways,’ I typed, ‘if the Christmas Party is still on, I’m going to ask The Girl, tonight.’
‘Good luck, Victor,’ wrote Wilfred.
‘Yah, Good luck, Victor :)’ wrote Reddeviler. ‘Emily Green-Portsmith is fucking hot! I got her full pic set if you wanna see it ! 1 1 1! 162 pictures! Real Nice. SSN 4__-__-____ & nice tits…’
‘I highly doubt you got her real SSN, reddeviler,’ I typed. ‘Get a life.’
That night, I paced in front of my room phone, thinking of how to get Emily to actually have a conversation with me. She had only been responding to text messages and I didn’t know if this meant that she only liked to deal in text messages or she wasn’t interested. Maybe that perverted, hepta-lingual Canadian had been trying to tell me something. 162 pictures? Was that too many pictures on the Internet for a girl to be datable. I had no idea. Again, as with a girl that I’d just met walking up and rubbing her boobs on me, there was no precedent to help guide me. So I decided that five hundred, provocative yet fully-clothed pictures on the Internet was the cut-off point where a college girl became undatable. I was horny. I wasn’t going to set the bar too high.
It occurred to me that if I called the main line at the Omega house, they’d page her and she’d have to answer. I thought about what we would talk about to break the ice. I wanted to flowchart out the possible conversation tangents but I stopped myself. I just tried to keep a few of the main ones fresh in my mind.
I dialed. The receiver rang in my ear: once, twice, three, four times, five times—there was still time to abort. I could abort. I could regroup. My heart was beating dangerously fast and there was little chance I would be able to speak with confidence. But, to force through, to force it, that was what was important.
“Hello,” a young woman answered, “Omega House, how may I assist you this evening?”
“Uh,” I said, “Yes. Yes, um, Emily. Can I talk with her? I mean: first name, Emily, last name Green-Portsmith.”
“You mean Em?”
“Yah, um, I—I think so. I think that’s what I mean, anyways.”
“Hold on, I’ll get her,” she said.
“Okay?” I asked.
“Hold on, okay?”
“Okay.” Shit, shit, shit. It was going to work but was it going to look desperate? I waited on the line, listening to the voices of chirpy, carefree sorority girls in the background. They talked about boys; they talked about some TV show; they talked about a missing backpack with a jar of ‘Grammy’s’ peanut butter.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Emily?”
“No,” she said. “Can I tell her who’s calling?”
“Sure,” I said. Shit. “You can—you can—” Shit. “It’s Victor. Victor Hastings.” I tried some hopeless bullshit:—“She isn’t expecting my call?”
She sighed. “Hold on.”
Two more minutes passed. I paced. I looked at my familiar walls, my books and my posters. I had to make a connection with her so far away with so little. I scratched all over and checked my pulse on my neck. I could feel it. This wasn’t healthy.
“Hello?”
“Yes, hello. Emily, it’s Victor. How are you?”
“This isn’t her. She’s busy. Can I take a message?”
“Well, I suppose that I. Well… if she’s…”
“Hold on.”
“Hold on?” I asked. “Okay, I can, I guess if that’s what you—”
“Hello?”
“Emily?” I asked.
“Yes-this-is-she,” she blurted as one syllable.
“This is who?” I asked.
“Her,” she said.
“Her… her. Emily?” I asked.
“Yah,” she said.
“Emily Green-Portsmith?”
“Yah,” she said, “Who is this?”
“This is Victor. Victor Hastings… from the party. From Handley’s.”
“Oh,” she said, “Hi Victor. What’s up?”
“Well—” I wanted to ask her to the Christmas Party right then but it was too soon. The boldness of asking so quickly didn’t translate so well over the phone. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been well.”
I wondered. Had she really been ‘well’ or had she actually been ‘good’. Girls often dressed up their introductory statements with flourishes like using the word ‘well’ properly only for me to hear them misuse the English language six or seven times once the conversation started rolling. These girls had actually been doing ‘good’ and not ‘well’ and if they’d told me upfront I wouldn’t have minded much either way.
“How are you, Victor?”
“Me, I’m, uh…” I paced my room and said, “I’m good, actually.” I continued, resignedly, “My parents are middleclass. I went to a public high school.”
“What? Why did you say that?” she asked.
“Uh, no reason, I guess. Where did you go to high school, Emily?”
“I went to Saint Victoria’s. It’s an all-girls school in Edina. My Dad wanted me to go to Harvard or something. I couldn’t deal with that.”
“Hmm,” I said. Maybe she had been ‘well’, after all. “I think I saw you on campus a couple times this week. Do you have a class in the Chemistry Building?”
“Yah,” she said. “Food Science.”
“What do you think of it?” I asked, hoping to spin the conversation in some interesting direction.
“It’s okay. Too much math. Math gives me a headache.” She laughed at herself.
“Yah—but I like math okay. You know what I really hate—?”
“What?”
“Economics,” I said.
“I’m with ya on that one,” she said.
“Great,” I said. “Let’s agree to never take an Economics class together.”
“Okay,” she said, “Agreed.”
It was coming. From my brief telemarketing days I knew this as the time to ‘ask for the order’ but I was always much smoother when I had worked as an outbound sales rep for Omaha Steaks. There wasn’t a single segue in sight. No conversational lily pads to hop across. Nothing. She was going to make this hard. And now that I’d thought of asking her, I couldn’t think of anything else.
“Emily,” I said.
“Yes.”
I made sure to say it in one breath without thought or hesitation: “There’s a Christmas party that we’re having the first weekend of December and I’d like you to come with me if you’re free.” I snuck a few heavy breaths with my mouth pulled from the handset.
“Oh,” she said, “Wow! That sounds fun.”
“Yes,” I said, “I think it will be.” I breathed away form the handset. I felt my destiny as it teetered.
“What was the date of your thing, again?” she asked. Her end rustled. “Hold on. I’m getting something out.”
“Well, I think… It’s the first weekend of December, anyways. Hold on, I’ll check.” I double clicked the little clock on my PC’s monitor. “It’s the first Saturday of December which is December 1st.”
“Ohhh,” she said, “I can’t do that Saturday. I agreed to go to a Christmas Par
ty with some guys from the Beta house.”
“The Beta house, huh,” I said.
“Yah,” she said. “I know them from high school and I can’t back out now.”
Some guys from the Beta house? How could she have a date with ‘some guys’? What was it an orgy? I thought to ask but then held back. I’d been turned down over the phone a few times before in high school while asking girls to dances. But, for some reason, I hadn’t anticipated her to say ‘no’. “Well,” I said, “that’s cool. That’s cool, Emily. It’s no big deal. I mean, I understand.”
“Aww,” she said, as a girl coos over a puppy. “Now I feel bad.”
“Don’t feel bad. There’s no reason for bad feelings.” A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed. I didn’t want to give up. “Some, some other time, I guess.”
“For sure,” she said, definitively.
“Well,” I said. “It was nice talking with you, I guess, Emily.”
“All my friends call me Em.” She continued, sweetly, “You can call me Em.”
“I can, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. It was nice talking with you, Em.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SPRING SEMESTER
While I was back in Reno with my parents over Christmas break I text messaged her and tried to be sly and aloof and terse. All the while, I fantasized of controlling her in the most intimate of ways: That’s right—cunnilingus.
And I used my parent’s computer to download her picture sets from the social networking sites that were popular on campus. They fell into two main categories: High School and College. I could tell which ones were High School because she would show both her hands for those. I wouldn’t allow myself to fantasize while looking at them or even to think about them later while I was alone in my parent’s guestroom. I downloaded and erased them from a hidden file on my parent’s hard drive until I had them emblazoned into my mind like cattle branded synapses.
Growing Up Wired Page 19