DC Trip

by Sara Benincasa

  She lathered up her legs while her conditioner was sitting on her hair, and she only managed to nick herself twice—pretty much a record in Alicia Deats history. As she stood up straight to rinse her legs off, she looked at her vulva, or “yoni,” as they’d called it in her college Representation of Women in Art class. It was definitely in full bush mode, perhaps the fullest it had been since college. Somewhat jungle-y, even. Her first year as a teacher had been super busy and it wasn’t like anyone in Flemington was actually interested in dating her, so she hadn’t really given mind to what her yoni looked like. It just … was. And while she’d spent time in a college consciousness-raising group exploring it with a flashlight and a mirror, learning about the beautiful intricacies of the female anatomy, she hadn’t even spent much time masturbating lately. She was just too tired at the end of the day, and she’d never been a masturbate-in-the-morning type of person.

  It was clear to Alicia that her bush needed some pruning. Or weed whacking. She did the best she could with the razor at hand, reminding herself that feminism was about choice, and if she was making a choice to conform to conventional modern beauty standards, that was perfectly fine, because again, it was her body and her choice. She didn’t shave it all off or anything. She told herself she was just trimming it back to show the property lines. Her property lines, of her property. Obviously.

  After she was reasonably satisfied with the state of her pubic area, she rinsed out the conditioner in her hair and got out of the shower. She stood in front of the full-length bathroom mirror and scrutinized her appearance.

  Overall, she was pleased with what she saw. Her boobs could’ve been bigger, and she could’ve had more of a booty, and she could be more toned, but—

  “Stop it!” Alicia said to her reflection. “No body shaming allowed. I love you and you are beautiful exactly as you are.” She nodded firmly and turned her attention away from superficial physical matters and on to the important question of whether she had packed any perfume. She hadn’t, but her Tom’s of Maine organic deodorant smelled like tea tree oil, which was pleasant enough.

  Alicia hadn’t brought many clothing options for a three-day, two-night trip—just the basics. Sighing, she put on a long skirt woven of hemp (it looked a little like a burlap sack but was very comfortable) and the tightest of the four T-shirts she’d brought, which just happened to be emblazoned with an image of the Dalai Lama. She fixed her hair as best she could, and took a moment to scrutinize the pricey makeup Danielle had bought for her the previous Christmas. She’d brought it for a reason, just in case the opportunity arose, and it seemed the opportunity was arising.

  The trouble was, Alicia didn’t know exactly what to do with it.

  Did one put the neutral eyeshadow on and then the dramatic color over it, or vice versa? How exactly did liquid eyeliner work? And as for mascara—ugh, it made Alicia shiver just to think of it. She’d read once that there were tiny creatures, little parasites or something, at the base of the eyelashes, and they munched on mascara for fuel. She had no idea if this was actually true, but just thinking about it skeeved her out.

  She settled on applying some fiery red lipstick. That would have to do. She gave herself a practice smile in the mirror, and saw that she’d already smeared the lipstick across a front tooth.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, and for a moment, she sounded just like her sister.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and wasn’t utterly displeased. She looked nice. She looked pretty enough. Wait—did her boobs look uneven in this bra? Alicia had been self-conscious about one breast being slightly higher than the other ever since her jerky high school boyfriend—

  Well, there was no need to think about that.

  Okay, vagina? Check. Hair? Check. Lipstick? Check. Boobs? Check. They stretched out the Dalai Lama’s face a little, but Alicia figured His Holiness wouldn’t mind.

  Oh, she should definitely brush her teeth. And floss! And then brush them again, just in case. Shit, she’d have to take the lipstick off. She wiped it off quickly, and then saw that it had stained the area around her mouth. She looked like some creepy little kid who had been sucking on a cherry Popsicle for far too long. Not that any child should have a cherry Popsicle for any length of time, considering the high fructose corn syrup, but anyway. That’s what she looked like.

  Alicia washed her face with soap, which messed up her hair a little, necessitating some rearranging and some work with the crappy hotel room blow dryer.

  And then she remembered that she didn’t have any cute panties and that her bra was just boring and matched her skin tone. By the time she had brushed her teeth and carefully reapplied her lipstick, it was getting really late. And Brian was clearly asleep anyway, because this was supposed to be her shift.

  It didn’t occur to Alicia that she was doing a fairly terrible job and was shirking her duties. She was too busy wondering how to avoid getting lipstick on her teeth again. She was too busy pondering what he would say when she told him what she had to say. She was too busy feeling hot and bothered and nervous and excited.

  But then, love will do that to a person.

  “Georgetown,” Rachel said reverently. “We made it.”

  They were standing at the edge of the campus, which was very pretty and had at least one building that looked like Hogwarts.

  “Well, we can’t get into the school,” Sivan said. “So where are we going, exactly?”

  “We are going to a bar,” Rachel said. “And there we shall meet boys.” She giggled a little. Sivan and Gertie looked at each other.

  “Do we even know what the bar is called?” Gertie asked.

  “Oh, there are lots of bars in this neighborhood,” Rachel said, and the girls began to walk down the street.

  “So which one are we going to?” Gertie persisted. “Because we can’t spend all night looking for a bar here if we’re going to make it to the Henry Hotel to find Danny and—”

  “And do my thing,” Sivan cut in.

  “Which is what, exactly?” Gertie asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Sivan said. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  Gertie silently hoped Sivan just wouldn’t end up finding her “thing.” She loved Sivan and wanted her to be happy, but tonight was supposed to be about finding Danny Bryan. They were getting sidetracked as it was by Rachel’s determination to get into some douche bar.

  “Excuse me,” Rachel said sweetly to a passing guy with a Georgetown cap. “We’re looking for the best bar in this neighborhood. Can you suggest one?”

  “Sure,” he said with a hint of a Southern accent. “Well, it depends what you’re looking for.”

  “Boys,” Rachel said. “We are looking for boys. Hot boys, to be specific.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Okay, well, you can go two blocks up this way and make a left and go to O’Hurley’s. I don’t know if the dudes are hot or whatever, but there are a lot of them. It’s a frat bar.”

  Rachel squealed and threw her arms around the guy, who looked startled.

  “Thank you sooo much,” she said, and hurried off. The other girls had to rush to keep up with her.

  “Do you really think they’ll let us in?” Sivan asked dubiously. “We don’t even have—”

  “Fake IDs?” Rachel asked. “Yes, we do.”

  “No we don’t,” Gertie said.

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “We do.” And from her purse she produced three New Jersey driver’s licenses—or what looked like New Jersey driver’s licenses.

  “What the fuck?” Sivan said, her tone shocked but admiring. “You got us fake IDs! When were you gonna tell us you got us fake IDs?”

  “I’ve been waiting the whole trip to tell you,” Rachel said, looking very pleased with herself. “They’re pretty great, right?”

  Gertie gingerly accepted her fake ID and looked at it. It certainly looked real, and there was her face and there was a fake name, Francesca Block, and a birthdate that said she was—

&
nbsp; “This says I’m thirty-one!” Gertie said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Rachel said. “I said to make it say you were twenty-one, Francesca.”

  “Who even made these?” Gertie demanded. “Where do you even get something like this?”

  “The preacher’s kid,” Rachel said simply. Sivan and Gertie looked momentarily confused.

  “You know, the one who fingered me in the graveyard,” Rachel said. “The one who made me come like six—”

  Gertie put a hand up.

  “Rachel,” she said. “We know the details. But how the hell did a preacher’s kid end up getting you a fake ID?”

  “Oh, it’s his side business,” Rachel said. “That and selling weed products. Edibles, stuff like that. As a matter of fact, I also brought—”

  “Hey,” Sivan said. “Mine says I’m five foot six. I’m only five feet tall.”

  “Whatever,” Rachel said, annoyed with her friends’ apparent lack of gratitude. “I worked hard to get these IDs. I had to convince my parents I wanted to go all the way to this kid’s father’s church over in Frenchtown. Do you know how hick Frenchtown is? It’s, like, terrifying. And he still made me pay him ten dollars per ID. Granted, that’s like ten percent of what he normally charges, but still. You’d think all the times I gave him handjobs in the back of camp choir practice would’ve counted for something.”

  “Apparently, they did,” Sivan said dryly. “You got a two-hundred-seventy dollar discount, Rach.”

  “I know, but he should’ve just given them to me.” Rachel pouted. They rounded a corner and saw the neon sign of O’Hurley’s gleaming before them. Apparently its icon was a drunk leprechaun bent over a toilet.

  “Get it?” Rachel said. “He’s o’hurling.” She giggled.

  “How charming,” Sivan said. “All right, let’s get this over with.”

  “This is going to be fun!” Rachel said. She adjusted her boobs, flipped her hair, and walked straight up to the giant, mean-looking bouncer.

  “Hi,” she purred, looking right into his eyes. “Would you like to see my ID?”

  He looked at her, unamused. Then he looked at Sivan and Gertie. He scowled a little and looked back at Rachel.

  “Nah,” he said, with a dismissive wave. “Go on in.”

  “You’re not even going to check our IDs?” Sivan asked. She was a little annoyed with this fellow. Underage drinking was obviously not a moral dilemma, but it was certainly a public health issue, and this man really ought to—

  “She’s kidding,” Rachel said quickly. “We’re very old. Ugh, the 90s were awesome, probably! Okay, thanks, bye!” She grabbed Sivan and Gertie and pulled them roughly behind her into the bar.

  None of the girls had ever been in a bar before, and certainly not in an establishment anything like this. They were in a classic college dive bar—wood paneling with initials carved all over it; nightly pitcher specials; fraternity insignia everywhere; and, as an added touch of class, bras hanging from the ceiling. It was full of older boys—men, really—wearing Georgetown caps and fraternity T-shirts. The music was loud rock and roll of the sort Sivan was inclined to call “douche jams.” Dudes were doing shots, shooting pool, laughing too loud and hitting on the pretty waitresses. There were some other girls in the place—women, really—and they were wearing tight little T-shirts and short shorts and they were flirting with the guys and, in a few corners, making out with them. As soon as the girls walked in, one shitty, loud, grating song ended, and there was a pause before the next song started up. And in that pause, which lasted about two seconds but seemed to last forever, seemingly every single soul in that place turned toward the door and stared at the little misfits who had just rolled in.

  “Are they gonna kill us?” Gertie whispered to Rachel.

  “Maybe,” Rachel said excitedly.

  “This place smells like a hate crime,” Sivan said, and that’s when the music started up again. Everybody went back to doing whatever they’d been doing before the girls walked in.

  “What do we do now?” Gertie said.

  Rachel paused for a moment and then broke into a smile.

  “We do them,” she said, and pointed to a table where three guys sat, apparently trying to give one another wedgies.

  “No, thank you,” Sivan said, but Rachel was already marching forward like a woman on a sacred mission from God.

  “Hi,” Rachel said brightly when she reached the table.

  The guys looked up mid-wedgie and seemed pleasantly surprised.

  “Hey,” said one, who was a dead ringer for Brock Chuddford.

  “Buy us drinks!” Rachel said.

  “Rachel!” Gertie said. “That’s rude. Um, guys, we’re—we’re sorry, she’s just—”

  “Hey, Tammy!” one of the guys yelled to a waitress. “Bring us a round of shots.”

  “You want Cuervo?” Tammy yelled back.

  “Fuck no,” said Not-Brock. “We want the Patron!”

  “What is Patron, exactly?” Gertie asked.

  Rachel looked annoyed.

  “It’s alcohol, Gertie,” Rachel said. “God.”

  “It’s tequila,” said the third guy, who was smaller and less muscular than the other two. “You girls wanna sit down?”

  Rachel slid into the booth beside Not-Brock and his friend, the one who’d called for the shots. Gertie and Sivan awkwardly sat beside Guy #3, who seemed a lot less drunk than Not-Brock and Shots Dude.

  “Hi,” Guy #3 said, sticking his hand out for Gertie to shake. “I’m Geoff.”

  “Hi,” Gertie said uncertainly, and shook his proferred hand. He introduced himself to Sivan next. Rachel was immediately in deep conversation with Not-Brock, so it seemed to be left to Geoff, Shots Dude, Sivan, and Gertie to entertain themselves.

  “Where you girls from?” Shots Dude asked.

  “We, um, go to school here,” Gertie said.

  “Oh, us too,” Geoff said. “What’s your major?”

  “Political science with a self-designed minor in Intercultural communications,” Sivan said immediately. Gertie stared at her, and Sivan shrugged. “What? It’s what I’ve wanted to study since I was eight.”

  “Sounds pretty heady,” Shots Dude said.

  “It is,” Sivan agreed. “It’s extremely … heady.”

  “I say that because I’m president of Campus Republicans, and even I don’t know much about political science,” Shots Dude said with a self-deprecating laugh.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Sivan said before she could check herself. “I mean, you’re a Republican.”

  “Oh ho ho!” Geoff said, laughing. “I see we have a Democrat at the table.”

  “Independent, actually,” Sivan said. “I don’t feel the Democratic party, as a whole, is sufficiently left-wing enough in its modern incarnation.”

  “Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Shots Dude. “The Democratic party of today is practically the Communist party.”

  “I don’t think you actually know what a communist is,” Sivan said. “But I’d be happy to explain it to you.”

  And then they were off to the races, throwing jargon back and forth faster than Gertie could comprehend.

  She looked at Geoff. Geoff looked at her. And they both started laughing.

  “What do you study?” Geoff asked.

  “Um—photography,” Gertie said. “I want to be a photographer.”

  “I didn’t even know that was a major,” Geoff said. “Pretty cool. I’m pre-med.”

  “Wow,” Gertie said. “That’s really cool.”

  “It actually sucks,” Geoff said. “I’m doing it because my parents made me. I’d rather be a social work major.”

  “Oh, no way,” Gertie said. “My mom’s a social worker. It’s like super stressful. And you don’t get paid enough. You’ll be happier as a doctor.”

  “You sound exactly like my parents,” Geoff said. “But honestly? I know I’d love being a social worker.”

  “My parents
want me to be an art therapist,” Gertie said grimly.

  “That’s so cool!” Geoff said. “I thought about that too.”

  “I just want to do art, though,” Gertie said.

  “You got any photos you can show me?” Geoff asked.

  “I mean, just my Instagram,” Gertie said shyly. “But you wouldn’t want to see that.”

  “Sure I would,” said Geoff, pulling out his phone, and that’s when Gertie noticed three things: 1.) the shots had arrived, 2.) Geoff was very cute, and 3.) Rachel was sitting on Not-Brock’s lap and giggling in his ear.

  “SHOTS!” roared Not-Brock. Everybody took a glass, even though Gertie wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it.

  “I’ve never done this before,” Gertie said to Geoff.

  “Oh, well, you’re in for a treat,” he said dryly, and then laughed. “It’s kind of gross. But it’s worth a try. Just do what I do.” So Gertie and Sivan copied him as he licked his wrist, sprinkled salt on it, and grabbed the shot.

  “You lick the salt, you shoot the tequila, and then you suck on the lime real fast,” he said.

  “Why?” Gertie asked.

  “You’ll see,” Geoff said.

  “BOTTOMS UP!” Not-Brock yelled. And before Gertie could get too nervous, they all threw down tequila.

  It felt like hot fire in Gertie’s belly. It tasted fucking gross. The lime only helped a little bit. For a moment, Gertie thought she might throw up.

  “You okay?” Geoff asked with concern. “Hey, Tammy, can you bring us some water?”

  “Thanks,” Gertie sputtered.

  Rachel, on the other hand, seemed to love it. And Sivan didn’t seem affected one way or the other. She immediately went back to debating abortion law with Shots Dude.

  Tammy brought the water, and Gertie downed it thankfully.

  “You better?” Geoff asked. “You gonna be okay?”

  “Yes,” Gertie said, relieved. “Thanks.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Geoff said. “Are you really a Georgetown student?”