by Mj Fields
“I don’t want anyone else fucking you when I am.”
I pause, no longer pushing my panties down, and look at him.
“I’m serious,” he says like it is gospel.
“Well,” I sigh trying to figure out what just happened, “If I agree, that goes both ways.”
“Obviously,” he says pulling his shirt over his head.
****
My back hits the bed and he pulls my legs apart. His mouth hits between my legs and my knees pull together instinctively. He pulls them apart and I look down at him.
His tongue slides up and down me as I watch him watching and tasting me. Wentworth Miller’s double, fuck what’s his name?
“Oh god,” I flop back as my back arches and I am immediately slipping down, down, down, the rabbit hole.
“Not god, Kat, Owen.”
Right Owen, I think I like him.
MAIN LOBSTERS NO MORE
Owen and I exchanged phone numbers on Thursday, or was it Friday morning, it doesn’t matter, the point is we did that.
I was hesitant when he asked for my number. He looked at me as he lay next to me naked and sweaty. I am sure it bothered him. Which concerned me.
“I don’t need that. I mean-”
“I do.” He looks at me sternly.
“I’m not needy. I’m not demanding. I’m not going to be fawning over you, or falling at your feet-”
“You married?”
“No!” I gasp and then laugh, “Don’t you think that’s something you should have asked last night?”
He smiles, really smiles and rubs his hand over his face, “Yeah.”
I take his phone and punch in my number, “There.”
“Well thank you,” he smirks.
“Send me a text and then I’ll have yours.”
He takes my hand and kisses it, “Progress.”
How odd is it that he is the one questioning me. He was the one dancing with another girl tonight.
“I’m gonna take off. The girls will be waiting for me.”
“You all have an apartment together?” He asks following me out of the bedroom.
“Uh, yeah. We live together.”
He chuckles handing me my shirt, “I knew you weren’t one of the students from around these parts. To be honest I was worried when I saw the one taller girl, but you and the one with the glasses, I knew better.”
“Students?” I ask.
“Harvard University?”
I nod, “I know of it.”
I know of it? Well that isn’t a lie, but damn close. I have to get out of here. I have to try to make sense out of nonsense, and I don’t like to do that. Making sense is lying to yourself, because nonsense is rule, law, truth.
He grabs my hand and pulls me back towards him.
Then he kisses me and whispers, “Stay.”
My body tingles as he grips my hips and for just one moment, I feel…
“I have to go,” I say the words but don’t truly mean them.
“Then tomorrow?”
Oh God, I think to myself, “Text me.”
I tear myself away and walk to the door. I open it and walk out.
****
It’s Saturday and my phone squawks at me. I know it’s one of two people, Mom, or Owen.
The woman I promised myself never to become, and the man who threatens to make me want to be just like her.
I have avoided both for two days. Not total avoidance. I did send a text claiming to be the busiest person in the world. When in fact I was sitting in Harvard yard under an oak tree, drawing.
****
I squint my eyes and blindly reach for my phone. When I see it’s seven in the morning.
“Good morning Mom,” I grumble.
“Oh dear, did I wake you, Katherine?”
“Yes mom,” I sigh.
“Okay well, I just wanted to say,” she pauses clearly trying to figure out what she actually wanted to say.
“You could go with the truth Mom, you wanted to hear my voice? You are already sick of doing the dishes?”
“Both,” her voice cracks.
I want to tell her she’s a drama queen, tell her that I should be the one calling, or tell her that she seriously needed to get a grip.
But I say nothing. Why waste my breath, my words, my effort?
“You still there?” I ask knowing she is because I hear her whimpers.
“Yes, this is so hard. Someday you’ll understand.” She sighs heavily. “Someday.”
“I love you Mom. I have to go.”
“You can’t talk?” she gasps. Then she whispers, “You’re breaking my heart.”
I swallow down the sarcasm that is ready to drip from my tongue, “I know.”
****
Sitting on the T train, I can’t keep my knee from bouncing or my nails out of my mouth.
I finally agreed to go ‘out’ with Owen. He had invited me over on Friday and I declined. Honestly, I needed a break, a distance. I was starting to want to be with him. I know what follows want, need.
Need is something you wanted but can never have enough of.
Need was something I danced with before. I didn’t enjoy that dance.
I need air, I need water, I need food, I need to be strong. That’s it. Anything more is nonsensical.
When I got off the T, I hailed a cab.
Once inside the cab, I started feeling even more anxious.
I look down at my army green capris, and my black Bad Alice tee shirt. I roll my eyes when I look at my bright red toenails, that yes, I painted for this ‘date’.
This will be the first time I’ll see him sober. I need a drink, I need four.
I lean forward ready to tell the driver, to turn around and take me to The Lizard, when he pulls up to the curb. I start to open the door when it opens for me, and Owen’s face appears with a smile. “Move over. We’re going out.”
“It’s not necessary,” I say as I move over.
He has on a deep red, polo shirt and khaki pants that are fitted. He’s wearing loafers; and I swear his socks match his outfit. I try not to laugh. I mean what happened to the jeans and tee-shirt wearing guy I had been with two nights in a row, he all of the sudden turned preppy? Not that it was a bad look; hell I don’t think anything would look bad on him. He just seemed...different.
Once inside he leans forward and tells the driver. “Charles Street.”
He reaches over and takes my hand, then looks into my eyes, down my chest, my legs, and his eyes stay on my feet.
“I like the toes, babe.”
I want to tell him I like his socks, but that would be a lie. “Thanks.”
“Tee-shirt’s cute.”
Cute? I wonder if that means he doesn’t like it. I put the mental breaks on, no, I tell myself, doesn’t matter.
His hand cups my chin and he turns me towards him, and then he kisses me.
****
Our first stop is the Duck Boat, a yellow water taxi, if you will.
We ride around on it, his eyes glued to mine, “Tell me about you?”
“Not much to tell.” I answer.
“I find that hard to believe.” He smiles, “I think underneath your tough exterior is someone soft.” He leans in and whispers, “I like your insides.”
“My insides seem to like you as well.”
He laughs as if it’s the funniest thing he had ever heard.
We walk around a bit and he tries to get me to go into bar after bar. Without an ID I steer him in the opposite direction each time.
“I have dinner reservation. How does lobster sound?”
“I bet they sound sad,” I joke and he laughs.
“Are you feeling awfully unsocial or do you just really want to get back to my place?”
“I say pizza and your place sounds good.”
A STOLEN HEART
Monday morning and I am sitting in the lecture hall alone. Neither Cecilia nor Josie signed up for this seminar. I was fine with it, goo
d actually. I am here to collect the degree my mother wants me to get, and take as many art classes I can on the side, so that someday, I could make a living being an artist.
Drawing, painting, creating.
I am anxious and excited at the same time. I look around as more freshman file into the history and literature class seminar, We the reader: Reading communities in early America.
I watch as everyone finds seats and sits down. It doesn’t go unnoticed that most of them still pair up, like middle school kids. I thought I had left that back in Albany.
I can’t help but watch them. Students at Harvard University, future leaders, scholars, some considered genius, still have to cling to each other.
It’s like a middle school party, the blind leading the blind; the room becomes quieter when someone taps the mic at the lecture hall’s podium.
“Hello I am Judith Trammel, I am your professor for HL90BC, and the head of the History department. Welcome students.”
She is tall and thin, her dark hair with a few streaks of gray is piled in one of those tight hair buns. She is a good-looking chic. She doesn’t look old enough for gray hair though.
“I trust you all have the required text and are ready to get started today. This is not high school. There is no law saying you have to be here. It is a privilege to be accepted here. If you decide not to do the required work, it hurts you, not me. I will not give you a grade without it being earned.”
She looks around the room. “I’d like to introduce you to my assistant professor, he will be here more than I am. Owen Michaels received his bachelors, and masters from Michigan State and carried a 4.0 GPA his entire undergraduate and graduate school career. Owen also earned his PHD here. He deserves your respect, just as much as I do.”
I swallow hard when my fear is confirmed. Owen Michaels is Owen. The Owen who took my virginity, the Owen who had tasted, fucked, and kissed me. The Owen Michaels whose dick had been in my mouth, and whose cum I had swallowed not two full days ago.
“Thank you professor Trammel. Hello everyone, I am Professor Michaels, and I am truly honored to be in this position —”
I hear nothing else after the word position. My stomach flips when he begins to talk, my pulse pounding so hard I can’t hear a thing he’s saying over the river of blood that seems to be rushing in my ears. My heart does a complete flip dead center in my chest. I feel like I am suffocating. This cannot be happening.
I hear my peers saying here and naming where they are from, what makes it worse is that they are standing up to do their introductions.
It doesn’t take long until I hear my name. “Katherine Brun,” he says and looks up.
Fuck me.
I stand, “I’m Katherine Brun, and I’m from Albany New York.”
He is still as a statue when his eyes meet mine, but he nods, “Welcome.”
I sit down and feel ill.
When he is done with attendance Professor Trammell stands in front of the podium again. “This seminar focuses on who was reading, what they were reading, how they were reading, and how that affected this country historically.”
****
At the end of the hour she says goodbye and he calls two students down to stay after, needing them to fill out some form. Then he looks up, “Katherine, you too.”
I wait in the front row as the other two students fill out whatever form he gave them.
When they weren’t asking him questions I could feel his eyes burning into me.
As soon as they leave the lecture hall he walks down the stage stairs, with a form in his hand, towards me.
I look down, as I feel my face burning bright. I see his leather shoes less than a foot from me.
“We need to talk,” he whispers.
I sigh and he pushes the paper in front of my eyes. I reach out and take it. He clears his throat beckoning me to look at him. I take in a deep breath and look up.
“Jesus Christ, Kat,” he spats.
I look around worried someone will hear, “Shh.”
“Shh?” he hisses. “Shh!”
“Owen-”
“Professor Michaels,” he snaps.
“That information would have been nice about five days ago,” I roll my eyes uncomfortably.
“So would the fact that you are a student,” he snaps.
I stand up and side step him, “I’m not doing this here.”
“You don’t call the fucking shots, Katherine.”
“Right, well you need to put your emotions in check. Hell, throw them away, I have.”
I take a step and he whispers, “Don’t you fuck this up for me, I have worked too hard to get where I am.”
“Don’t worry about it, Professor, I have no intention of fucking anything that has to do with you ever again.”
My feet can’t carry me out of that lecture hall fast enough.
That night I lay in bed thinking about how irritated I am that he was so angry. It wasn’t something I planned. I would have avoided it at all costs. I don’t like drama. But hell if I didn’t find it.
The wonderful thing is that as much as I enjoy sex, with him, I am not so ridiculous to think that I wouldn’t enjoy it with someone else too. Do I want to have a list a mile long of men I have slept with? No. Do I want to fall in love, have babies, and depend on someone else to make me happy? No.
I am not naïve. I am not illogical. I am not immune to ‘loving’ myself.
Why?
Because love is the most nonsensical emotion there is.
****
Two days have gone by and I am on my way to hide under the tree to draw. Josie and Cecilia are busy with their classes. We eat breakfast together and that’s about it since classes started Wednesday.
I am happy with it. Things are great. What I am dreading is next Wednesday when I have to go to the HL seminar again and see him.
My heart squeezes beneath my chest for a moment, but I brush it off. I don’t welcome or want that in my life.
What I welcome is keeping busy. What I want is to study, read, draw, and disappear.
People are draining, and you can’t get water out of a stone. What I desire, is to become that stone.
****
Saturday morning my phone squawks. I reach to the nightstand and try to grab it, instead I knock it on the ground. When I pick it up the call has unfortunately been accepted and I can’t tell who it is.
I force myself to say hello.
“Katherine?”
Immediately my rested body is full of tension.
“Kat, come on, say hello.” His voice is pained, the kind of pain that seeps inside the person bearing witness to it. In my case it is only over the phone, therefore less invasive.
“Babe,” he sighs. “I need to see you.”
I clear my throat, clearing the sleep as best I can. “Not a good idea.”
“Do your roommates know?”
“Of course not.” I whisper.
“I checked, they aren’t in any of my seminars.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to tell them aren’t you?”
“Why? It’s not like it matters.”
“Don’t say that,” he sighs. “Don’t say we don’t matter.”
We, he says we like it were a fact and not just an idea. “Owen, I’m not sure what you expect from me but-”
“Who hurt you? Who hurt you enough that you can’t let someone in?”
“No one.” I answer. “I’m going back to sleep, your secret’s safe with me.”
I hang up and for a minute I wonder why he would ask that. I wasn’t hurt. I am realistic about life, relationships, love, whatever the hell that is.
You see, none make sense logically and as much as I love to read, and escape into nonsensical dilemmas, living in a fairytale is not my… cup of tea.
****
Saturday he called me, four times. I sent all of them to voicemail, and my voicemail never gets checked. It’s like a deserted island. I mean why listen to a
call? If you want to talk to the person, you call them back. If you don’t want to, you simply don’t.
The girls ask me to go out for a couple of drinks. They want to unwind, not get drunk.
I don’t want to go. I especially don’t want to go to The Lizard and chance running into him, no way.
“I heard there is a poetry slam, just off campus, we could go there,” Josie suggests.
She looks at me for longer than I am comfortable with and then gives me a sad smile.
“Why not The Lizard?” Cecilia whines.
“I want to go to the slam,” Josie says exerting herself for the very first time in the week and three days I have known her.
“Okay, fine.” Cecilia pouts.
****
We walk into the little café, and see a line going down the hall to the back.
“Is that it?” Cecilia asks, looking a little less pensive than she had the entire time it took to get here.
“I think so.” Josie smiles at her then me. “Exciting, huh?”
It is actually a good time. Once down the hall we came to a room with a small stage that was elevated a bit.
All three sides were surrounded by tables and chairs. The room was much bigger than I would have suspected.
Waitresses periodically make rounds and the three of us, drink wine, while we watch men, and woman stand on stage throwing words of love up in the air, kicking words, angry words around the room, and some heavy with sadness.
I can’t help but laugh when they snap instead of clap. It is pretty pretentious for the crowd we are surrounded by who wear socks with sandals and are supposed to not give a rats’ ass what people think about them.
I spend the majority of the time people watching, trying to figure these snappers out. Normally I wouldn’t care, but now, after three glasses of wine, these snappers got me thinking. Just who were they?
Modern day hippies? Bohemian alternative thinkers? Socialists? Hipsters?
Do they even know who they are or what they want to be?
Who gives a shit? Not me. I drink the rest of my glass of wine and hold the empty up to the waitress.
The clown on the stage ends his spew and everyone snaps. My filter...or lack thereof, has been poked by far too many glasses of wine to expect me not to react the way I want. So I clap. I clap, and I whistle, even though nothing he said made sense and boy do I get looks. So I hold my middle fingers high in the air.