“This is why you just have to do things, Imogene.” Darby pointed her fork at me, her mouth full of challah French toast. She was drunk, I could tell, and her raven hair stuck to her face in sweaty strands, but she was still beautiful.
“Do things?”
“Do the things you want to do.”
I dragged a giant bite of pancake through the puddle of syrup on my plate and shoved it between my lips, sweet golden goo dribbling down my chin.
“Do all the things you want to do, or you’ll just regret it. That’s what I think.”
I nodded. Then we lowered our mouths to our plates and ate like we hadn’t eaten in years, ravenously, rapaciously, until our plates were empty and our mouths sticky and our stomachs heavy and swollen but satisfied.
Living with Darby, I noticed things about her that no one else would, though it took me some time to see them. It wasn’t until halfway through freshman year that I noticed the pudgy roll of fat that spilled over the waistband of her jeans. It didn’t occur to me for a while, either, that she had a habit of chewing with her mouth open. The difference between Darby and me however: She wasn’t sorry about her roll of fat or her open mouth chewing. She didn’t even seem to notice these things about herself, much less feel the need to apologize for them. Every time she slipped on a tight T-shirt or dress, her roll of fat protruding under the fabric, I’d feel a mix of admiration for her confidence and anger that she didn’t feel the need to hide herself, that her roll of fat didn’t make her hate herself, even a little bit.
* * *
Chapin knocked on my door Thursday night. She stood on the other side wearing a cheetah-print romper, leather ankle boots, and dark red lipstick, her hair piled in a messy sprout on the top of her head like a cartoon character. “Let’s go out,” she said.
I can’t remember if I agreed—more likely Chapin already knew the answer would be yes—and within a moment she was pushing hangers aside in my closet. I stood and watched her dumbly, wearing slippers and Buffalo State sweatpants.
She held out a purple corset dress my sister Joni bought me for my twenty-second birthday, having mistaken me for someone else. “Wear this.”
“Okay.” I took the hanger from her and headed towards the door.
“You can change in front of me.”
“Okay,” I repeated. I pulled off my T-shirt, under which I wore a simple cotton bra, and stepped out of my sweatpants. She watched me with an intensity I felt sure I wasn’t imagining. I tried to appear as cool as possible as I slipped the dress from the hanger and pulled it over my polka-dot underwear.
Chapin shook her head. “You can’t wear a bra with that dress.”
I unclasped my bra and slipped it over my head. It felt strange, my bare breasts bobbing unbound in the top of the dress.
Now she nodded. “You look good.”
I walked over to the mirror, inspected my reflection, then smiled. I did look good.
Chapin called a cab, and we rode together to the Scarsdale Metro-North station. She had brought along a water bottle of vodka and Sprite, and we split it between us on the way. I knew better than to ask where we were going. Chapin paid for the cab, as well as for my train ticket, and I didn’t protest.
Once we were on the train, the water bottle now empty and no longer able to provide a diversion, I struggled to think of something to say. Chapin leaned back against her seat, her lids heavy. Why didn’t she feel this compulsion to fill the silence that I felt?
“This will be my first time into the city since we’ve been here.”
Chapin smiled blandly, didn’t respond.
“I think the last time I was in the city was to see The Lion King with my parents and my sister. And that was probably four, five years ago.” I paused, thinking. “Yeah, Joni still had braces then so that must have been five years ago.” My tongue already felt a little heavy from the drink in the cab. “I really like the city. It just feels like anything can happen there, you know?” I didn’t like the city. I was in constant conflict between the person I was and the person I thought might work better given the situation.
Chapin still hadn’t responded. I looked over at her to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep. She hadn’t; she smiled at me mischievously. “Let’s play a game.”
“Okay,” I said.
She stood and slid over me on the seat so that she sat on the outside. Then, she pulled one of the straps of her romper down her shoulder so that nearly the entire cup of her red bra was exposed. Her chest was emaciated, her collarbone jutting out and the cup of her bra unmistakably empty. It was difficult not to stare. She didn’t care about her lack of breasts; strangely, I felt suddenly self-conscious, weird and large and old, for having any breasts at all.
“Keep count,” she said.
“What—”
The train made its first stop, and passengers stood to exit. Chapin pressed her lips together and stared straight ahead; she looked so deliberately innocent I wouldn’t have been surprised if she began to whistle. After three passing men paused to openly stare at Chapin’s exposed bra, I understood what I was supposed to be counting. Once the train pulled away, she adjusted her strap and asked me, “How many?”
“Nine,” I said.
She stood and slid back into the inside of the seat. “Your turn.”
“But—” The older woman across the aisle was glaring at us, so I lowered my voice. “But I’m not wearing a bra.”
“Stand up.”
She was more persuasive than Duggar Robinson on the bus, if that was possible. I stood, and she hiked the hem of my purple dress up around my waist, exposing my polka-dot panties. “Chapin!” I instinctively reached to pull the dress back down.
She forced me back into my seat. “Almost at the next stop.”
I sat, helpless, feeling naked with my underwear in direct contact with the seat. We pulled into the stop. I stared directly into the seat before me, feigning Chapin’s same obliviousness. After we’d pulled away and I’d tugged down my dress, I couldn’t help but ask. “How many?”
“Thirteen,” she said. “Nice.”
The woman across the aisle shook her head in disgust and looked out her window. I wished I could explain to her that this wasn’t me.
Chapin slid back over me. “My turn again.”
She was so like my old roommate Darby, yet so unlike her at the same time. Darby I wanted to be, but Chapin I simply wanted not to fear. She grinned wildly, and the game continued all the way to Grand Central.
* * *
At the station, I was amazed, as I always was, by the sheer amount of people there were. Where had they all come from? Where were they all going? I was definitely a little drunk.
“C’mon.” Chapin took my hand and yanked me along. We got in a cab (it was understood that she would pay again), and she directed the driver to an address, stated with the confidence of her home address. She leaned against her seat with that same sleepy-eyed look she had on the train, and I did the same, trying to sink as comfortably as she could into silence.
The club was dark and hot, like the inside of a mouth. Chapin bought us two drinks at the bar, something that tasted sour and potent. As she sipped, Chapin peered around, assuming a practiced expression of blasé but open to amusement.
It didn’t take long for two men to approach us. They appeared to be in their early-30s, and they wore the kind of thick-framed glasses that I’d only recently realized were supposed to be cool. They weren’t unattractive so much as unremarkable; I wasn’t sure I could describe them even as they stood before me. Perhaps I was drunker than I thought.
“I’m Mark. This is Mike,” one of the guys said by way of introduction. He had an accent—ambiguous, European.
“Maeve.” Chapin held out her hand. I was confused until I realized this was her new name.
“Mona,” I said, following her cue.
“Moan-ah,” Mike repeated, wiggling his eyebrows. Chapin giggled, and I did, too. They were goofy, European, harmless. I
swallowed the discomfort fighting its way out and forced myself to relax.
Mark paired off with Chapin, and I was left with Mike. I wasn’t sure how and when this was decided. Mike grabbed my hips and rocked them back and forth. I’d been to clubs before, had danced with men before, but I’d never been to a club this clubby, had never danced with a man this manly.
I thought to ask him what he did for work, or where he was from, but I saw that Chapin was silent, sipping her drink and rocking to the beat Mark had set. Be comfortable with the silence, I told myself. I closed my eyes, felt the pulsating bass. I was Mona; I wore dresses without bras and didn’t feel obligated to entertain others.
The night went on. Mark and Mike bought us another round of drinks, and then another. Mark and Mike faced Chapin and I towards each other, and we danced together, laughing, as though there weren’t a stranger behind each of us gripping our hips and grinding his crotch into our ass. I felt the inevitable stiffening and prodding from behind, and I felt guilty and excited and embarrassed for having inspired his arousal. I wanted to hide it so no one else could see. I wanted to hold it in my hand. Soon enough we were swiveled around, facing our respective partners. Mark and Chapin began to make out, so when Mike leaned in to kiss me, I let him. His tongue was thick and insistent. By the end of the night, Mike and I were holding hands.
“We should go home soon, Mona,” Chapin said, holding up an imaginary wristwatch.
Mike put his mouth to my ear. “Come home with me.”
I imagined waking up the next day at Mike’s place. He’d roll over in bed and look at me, his face creased from sleep, and say, “Some night, huh?” And we’d laugh together, at the ridiculousness of it all. I’d tell him my name was really Imogene, and he’d say, “Imogene. That’s much better than Moan-ah.”
“We’re going home,” Chapin insisted.
She led me to the door, and I waved goodbye to Mike—or was that Mark? They were both waving goodbye, both already interchangeable in my memory.
In the cab on the way to Grand Central, Chapin closed her eyes, and I thought this time she might actually be asleep. After a few minutes, she spoke.
“Those guys were gross.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
Her eyes were still closed, but she looked sad. I might have just been imagining it. Chapin was silent for the rest of the trip home, and once we’d returned to the Hovel, she said only, “Goodnight, Imogene,” before climbing the stairs and closing her bedroom door.
* * *
I couldn’t concentrate in Honors World History that day. The boys were fidgety because it was Friday and it was warm outside, and it didn’t help that I was massively hungover from the night before. I gave a ten-minute lesson on the earliest agricultural methods and machines, listing various tools and placing them on a timeline, and then I gazed out the window for the duration of Dale’s lecture. I planned the rest of my afternoon: I would take a long nap. Later, I would order a pizza, watch some TV. I would think about nothing.
After class, I went to the mailroom. In my mailbox, I had a letter from my Noni, which enclosed a check for ten dollars; a menu for a local Chinese restaurant; and a piece of notebook paper folded into quarters. I stuffed the envelope and the menu into my bag. The note contained only a phone number and a brief message: Hey, text me sometime. Absurdly, for a moment, I imagined it was Jared Hoffman from high school, before I remembered he was becoming a medical doctor at Johns Hopkins and had undoubtedly forgotten who I was. Then, for another horrible moment, I imagined it was from Clarence. I held the paper in my hand like a secret as I walked back to the Hovel. I didn’t allow myself to imagine whom else the note could possibly be from.
Chapin was in the kitchen eating carrot sticks when I came home. “Hello, Imogene,” she said.
“Hey.” I set my bag down and leaned on the counter next to her, feeling emboldened by the night before. “Are you as hungover as I am?”
“I don’t get hungover,” she said. She chomped down on a carrot.
“Oh.”
She turned and started up the stairs, crunching the carrot between her teeth. I wondered if all of last night had been a dream, if I had even left my room, if anything that I thought had happened had happened at all.
* * *
I lay restless in bed for nearly an hour before I reached for the piece of paper, folded next to me on my nightstand. The handwriting was cramped and slanted, undoubtedly a boy’s. I picked up my phone, punched in the number. Who is this? I texted.
When a response didn’t come within a few minutes, I picked up my book. After twenty minutes, I put down the book and looked up the number’s 781 area code online. I learned that area code 781 covered most of the Boston suburbs along Route 128 and about two-thirds of the South Shore of Massachusetts.
The other apprentices were all back from class by then. I caught snippets of their conversation.
“—so nice out—”
“—have a picnic or something—”
“—get drinks at that place with the outdoor patio tonight—”
I turned back to my book. An almost violent irritation coursed through me. I thought, perhaps, it was just a product of my hangover. I wondered if I should feign sleep, or simply pretend not to be home.
The laughter and chatting continued a little longer, inaudible, before I heard the opening and closing of the front door and then silence. I dropped the book, peeked down the stairs. They were all gone. They’d left, and they hadn’t invited me along.
I returned to my room, fighting an embarrassing urge to cry. Could it still be considered a loss if it was something I hadn’t even wanted? I was thinking about calling my mom when my phone vibrated. It was the unknown number, as I knew it would be.
I’m hurt. I thought we had a moment the other night.
I felt dizzy. My phone vibrated again.
Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about me already.
I don’t think I know who this is.
A few minutes passed, and then a reply. I think you do. Before I could even think, another vibration. I waved to you the other night in the dining hall. Another. Why didn’t you wave back?
I didn’t have to ask, but I did anyway. Adam?
Yeah?
I was glad to be sitting; it suddenly felt difficult to breathe. No texting, calling, or messaging with any of the students, and emails were only appropriate if they were related to an academic matter.
Hello.
Hi.
This was wrong, so obviously, recognizably wrong. I began to reply. I’m sorry, I can’t—I stopped, deleted everything I’d typed. It was better, I decided, to not say anything.
I turned my phone facedown on my nightstand. It buzzed, and then again, and then one more time a few minutes later. I waited until I was sure he was done before I looked.
First, You think you shouldn’t be talking to me.
Then, You’re probably right.
Finally, I just want to know more about you.
SIX
When I saw my first penis, I was eighteen years old and dressed as an olive branch, a costume I thought would be clever but really just earned me several confused looks. After dancing at the freshman Halloween bash for the better part of two hours with Jonah Davis, who sat in front of me in my Communicating Nonverbal Messages lecture (we had never acknowledged each other before and still wouldn’t after), he asked me to come back to his room, and I said yes. Darby hooked up with boys all the time. My first real kiss had only been three weeks before, at a party in Darby’s brother’s apartment with the junior named Paul who told me I was beautiful, who bit my lip and pawed at my breasts in front of everyone. But as we kissed, my hands shook and I felt that thump between my legs that told me I was ready for more than just kissing. I thought he might become my first boyfriend, too, and I felt sick when I saw him cupping the ass of a longhaired Indian girl an hour later. Kisses mean nothing, I realized. Kisses are as disposable as old gum and banana peels.
&
nbsp; Jonah Davis was dressed as a pirate, and once we started making out on his bed I felt the fly of his silky black pants expand and harden beneath me, poking my belly impatiently.
“You can touch it,” he said. His drawn-on mustache was smeared above his lip and also, as I would discover later when I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink, on my chin.
He drew my hand close to him and guided it down the front of his pants. My fingers curled around something warm and fleshy and rubbery, and when he eased his pants down to his knobby knees, I saw it: the Magic Marker sketch from my Camp Barbara Anne bedpost incarnate, a clam without a shell, so vulnerable and pink I wanted to laugh and cry at once.
I was exposed soon enough as well; my shirt and bra on the floor, my skirt pulled up, my ladybug-print panties pulled down. I’d always been the type to change my clothes in the bathroom stall before gym class, never imagining I could lie nearly naked with a stranger. How easy it was, I thought, to show those vulnerable, pink parts of ourselves to someone when we know that person will never ask or expect anything else of us. When he thrust his finger inside of me, I winced and wondered, is this it? And after I peed later and saw blood, I didn’t feel irrevocably changed, as I imagined I might, but instead vaguely disappointed, as I hadn’t even realized what was happening as it happened. I’d missed it.
“Fingering doesn’t count,” Darby told me, but still I wanted to ask her, Then what does count?
It was okay that I hadn’t lost it in high school. It would have been nice to have been entered for the first time, tenderly and sweetly, by the object of some sixteen-year-old romance, clutching each other in my childhood twin bed, the feeling of fitting our bodies together so thrilling we would wonder how we could do anything else ever again. But of course, with no High School Sweetheart there had been no High School Sweetheart Sex.
And it was okay to enter college a virgin, too. As Darby assured me, some guys were into that, virgins. The idea of conquest, of pillaging lands. If the subject came up, I was Waiting For The Right Person. By junior year, I was Waiting For Something I Wouldn’t Regret. But by senior year, when Zeke Maloney from down the hall asked if I wanted to just fuck already (we’d been doing everything but for three weekends by that point), I decided I was Ready To Just Fuck Already, and I said yes. Zeke Maloney liked to chew tobacco and spit the juice into strangers’ Solo cups at parties. As Zeke Maloney pumped inside of me, his breath hot and labored in my ear, I thought, once again, Is this it?
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