The Bucket List

by Georgia Clark

  “Is it? I thought flirting with your friend’s date was meaner.”

  “I’m not flirting,” Steph says. “I’m being friendly.”

  “Being friendly with an exposed nipple is flirting,” I tell her. “I read it in Cosmo.”

  “Well, maybe we have more chemistry than you,” Steph says, taking a fussy sip of her newly procured cocktail.

  I almost spit mine out. “That doesn’t give you permission to make a play for her. She’s my date. She’s mine. Okay?”

  Steph stares at me. “You’re touchy. Did something happen? Something with Elan?”

  “Elan?” I shout, startled. “God, no. I haven’t talked to him in weeks.”

  “Breakups are hard. I get it,” Steph says, in a way that’s flat-out condescending. “It’s normal to rebound with someone unavailable—”

  “It’s not about Elan. I will never see him again.” Even as I say it, I feel a humiliating gush of sadness. “I like Luna. She’s not a rebound, and she’s not unavailable. If you’re worried she’ll choose me over you . . . you should be. She will.”

  Steph blinks at me; once, twice. “Ouch.”

  That was cruel; that crossed a line. I prickle with shame, and pretend that I’m not. “I’m going to get a better view. Come with?”

  She shakes her head. She’s turning red.

  Fuck.

  I get to the front of the stage and stake out a position dead center.

  Steph and I have never liked the same person, for obvious reasons. Luna probably won’t choose me: in the collective ten minutes they’ve spent together, she and Steph probably do have more of a connection. But watching them flirt, right in front of me: that’s hard. Am I really that unlovable?

  And how, exactly, will a goddamn mastectomy make me more lovable?

  The organizers are clearing partygoers from the stage.

  The show is about to begin.

  Lights dim.

  Music fades.

  The crowd quiets, turning its collective attention to the empty stage.

  Movement from above.

  Two swathes of red silk tumble from the ceiling. Wrapped into them, spinning around in a perfect circle, is Luna. Half-naked, now only in hot pants. Her skin is lightly painted in gold glitter. Her long dark hair whips around her like a serpent. The crowd oohs. Using only the red silk twisted around her body, she forms fluid, lithe shapes, spinning and twisting. So light. So effortless. Everyone in the room is mesmerized. She looks beautiful; vital. Most beautiful of all, her breasts. She hasn’t hidden the scars. They are what make her look strong.

  She lands soundlessly on the stage and meets my gaze. She smiles and extends a hand, gesturing for me to join her. I shrink back, shaking my head.

  The crowd pushes me from behind—go on, go up.

  To a small swell of applause, I join her. A black harness appears beside the red silk. I’m being strapped into it by two assistants, and Luna. “You’re not afraid of heights are you?”

  I can do this. I can do what she did, because she did it. “No.”

  Straps and buckles tighten around me securely. The faces of the crowd are turned up at me, a sea of lights and fake flowers and burlesque masks. “I got you,” she says. There’s a whoosh. My feet leave the ground.

  I’m flying. Luna twirls my arm, twisting me around. The party swirls below me and I’m laughing and squealing, weightless and free. The red silk spirals around me, Luna, a smear of gold next to me. We whizz back and forth, through color and light. I am birdlike with bones made of air.

  And then I’m descending, lowered back toward the earth. I could’ve been up there for five seconds or five minutes, I have no idea. The assistants are unbuckling me, and Luna is beside me, smiling, her eyes bright. She holds my hand up and the crowd cheers, again. I am filled with love: for her, her courage and beauty. I pull her close, and put my hand on her cheek. We kiss. I know the crowd is cheering even louder, but I’m barely conscious of it. All I feel is her: warm breath, soft lips, new and powerful. I pull her closer still, my hands twisting into her hair, tasting sweat and gin. Her body feels lean and muscular under my fingers. I feel her smiling, her mouth on mine. We break away and I’m liquid fizz, silly and high.

  I meet the gaze of the crowd for the first time, laughing.

  And I freeze.

  Everything around me tightens.

  Through the blinding lights, I can just make out Steph, still on the cushions, watching me with an odd sort of blankness. But she’s not who I see first. That would be the person standing a few feet away from her.

  Elan.

  40.

  * * *

  Even though Elan is wearing a simple black mask, I can tell it’s him: his posture, his hair, the way he’s looking at me. Intense and wolfish. My blood curdles. Steph turns her head to follow my gaze. When she realizes who the man in the mask is, her head snaps back to me. I see her form the words: What the fuck?

  I scramble off the stage. The show’s over, a DJ’s playing, and the crush of people around me are now dancing. I push through naughty nurses and dudes in Mexican wrestling masks, desperate to find him, get him out of here. I’m furious and panicked, but a part of me is thrilled, even flattered.

  His dark head, six feet away. I prepare to pounce. Steph materializes in front of me. Behind her eyes, a war. “Outside. Right now.”

  With a grip that’ll leave a bruise, she drags me out of the party. She lets me go around the corner from the line that has gotten even longer since we arrived.

  “That’s him, isn’t it?” she spits. “The guy you allegedly broke up with.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I have broken up with him. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

  “This is the kind of place forty-five-year-old fashion designers like to hang out, is it?” Steph scoffs. “Just a coincidence?”

  “He’s forty-two,” I say. “Jesus, are we really fighting about a guy? I thought we were feminists.”

  “We’re not fighting about a guy! We’re fighting about the fact you just lied to me. Again.”

  “I didn’t lie,” I say. “Look . . . I guess I told him where I was. But I also told him to leave me alone.”

  “You told him where you were? How is that anything other than an invitation?”

  “What does it even matter to you? My life isn’t your business! It’s nothing to do with you!”

  “Wrong,” Steph says. “It does matter to me. It matters to me to see straight girls leading on gay girls. I know what that’s like, Lace. It fucking hurts and it’s also manipulative and selfish—”

  “Jesus, Steph, stop calling me straight! I’m not straight, okay? I might not be a full-on lez, but there’s a spectrum and I’m on it.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re obviously way more interested in my roommate and the fuck buddy you invited than that girl in there, who, trust me, you’d be all over like a rash if you were, in any way, shape, or form, into girls.”

  “God.” I feel like pulling my hair out. “I didn’t invite Elan. I don’t even understand why we’re arguing. None of this is happening to you. This is my life.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to stand by anymore and watch you turn into a selfish bitch.”

  I gasp. “Excuse me? What did you call me?”

  Steph looks at me without blinking. “I called you a selfish bitch.”

  I’m floored. “I was diagnosed with BRCA1 this year. I’m getting a fucking mastectomy. I could get cancer, Steph, fucking cancer.”

  “I know. I know all about your life, Lace. Even though you like to shut me out and occasionally lie to me, we only ever talk about you. How’s my thesis going? What about my family? Did you know my dad’s in hospital right now? No, you wouldn’t. Because in the past six months you’ve never once asked me about me.”

  The ground is unstable beneath me. I open and close my mouth, unable to locate a thread of anything.

  Steph’s eyes flash at me. Every word is intent
and deliberate. “You got a bad diagnosis, Lace, really bad. But you’re not actually sick right now: you’re still a human being. You’re still accountable. You still have to play by the same rules as everyone else. You don’t get a pass to be a bitch for the rest of your life. So stop juggling dates and be a fucking grown-up. And try to think about other people’s feelings for a change.”

  With that hanging in the air, she heads back into the party.

  I am blind with rage. My fist slams the brick wall. I don’t even feel it. How dare she. How dare she accuse me of all those things, all those lies. My best friend, what a joke, what a sick joke. No one cares about me. No one understands me. I am alone, and I always will be because I have to be. I know what’s best for me.

  Be a grown-up?

  Okay. I’ll be a grown-up. I will go after what I want, and if that makes me a selfish bitch, then I am a fucking selfish bitch.

  Like a hurricane, I obliterate my way back into the party.

  I find him by the bar. “Hey,” he says. “There you—”

  I grab his wrist.

  “Whoa.” Elan almost trips. “Where are we going?”

  We are going to the dungeon.

  41.

  * * *

  The light in the dungeon is a dim, dark red. I descend the stone steps—yes, stone, like a real dungeon—with sudden trepidation. My blood is still coursing through me like a wildfire, but I’m nervous now. There’s no music down here. It’s not a party like upstairs. It’s serious. The space is cool and labyrinthine, with a low ceiling. Probably an old cellar. Thwack, thwack. In one corner, a man in leather pants is whipping a very large woman’s back and ass. Her skin is covered in welts. I blanch.

  “She’s loving it,” Elan says in my ear. “Look.”

  And yes, she has a strange half smile on her face, even as the whip comes down hard again and again and again, hurting her. A completely naked guy is masturbating, watching them. This, too, is permitted. There’s something slightly camp about the whole scene; I almost feel like laughing. I want to make a joke. But it’s not a joke. I’m on the brink of losing my nerve.

  Elan takes my hand. “C’mon.” I let him lead me forward.

  We pass a foursome fucking, three guys and one girl. A woman with a shaved head leads a man on his hands and knees by a dog leash. Another woman is pinned to a wall, legs splayed. I keep telling myself it’s all consensual; we are all adults. I am unnerved, out of my depth. But the strange dark sex of this place is also arousing. It’s just not arousing anything in me I am familiar with.

  That’s what I want. That’s what I’m here for.

  We get to an empty room. Stone walls, dull light. A metal hook in the low ceiling, a long piece of leather hanging from it.

  My vision wasn’t a fantasy. It was a premonition.

  I tell Elan about it. The image that came to me the first time we met. My hands above my head. Blindfolded. Gagged. People watching us, in the shadows.

  His jaw is loose. “Are you sure?”

  I nod. “I am.”

  He steps away from me. Shadows pool around his eyes, turning them black. “Wait here.” He returns with a piece of satin and a ball gag attached to a leather strap. For my eyes and mouth. “It’s clean,” he tells me, rubbing it with the satin. “Okay?”

  “Yes.” My voice is a whisper. I clear my throat, and try to say it louder. “Yes.”

  He steps close and places his lips on mine. I’m so wound up, I can barely kiss him back. He moves away. “Take your clothes off.” His voice is dispassionate. A quiet order.

  I obey.

  I slip off my heels, and roll down my stockings. Finally, I’m just in my bra and underwear.

  “All of it,” Elan says.

  A few people have gathered to watch. An audience. I don’t think Luna will come down here, but I can’t be entirely sure.

  “Don’t look at them,” Elan says. “Look at me.”

  I train my gaze back at him. Beneath the black mask, he is a stranger and strangely familiar, a combination of my lived experience and the image I know from glowing screens. Real and unreal. My bra and underwear fall away. I close my eyes and raise my hands above my head.

  Surrender.

  My pulse is slamming, a runaway train. I am blackness and sensation, a hot freeze of anticipation, of wild electricity, of sweat.

  My hands, looped in leather. My eyes, shut with satin. My mouth, filled with plastic. Everything tight. A prisoner secured.

  Warm fingers on my side. I jump.

  “It’s me.” His voice, soothing, behind me. “Are you ready?”

  I nod. But I am unsure. This doesn’t feel how it did in my mind.

  I’m not turned on. At all. My body has left me. It has disappeared.

  He grasps my waist. I hear him breathing, feel him steadying himself. Even though I’m blindfolded, I shut my eyes. He inhales and slams into me. Air comes out of me in a choked grunt, the plastic gag ball pressing hard against my tongue. He feels huge, splitting me open like a ripe piece of fruit. And then again, and again, and he is fucking me hard and fast in a way he never has before. The way I asked for. The way I imagined. And it is nothing like how I imagined. My body is a thing, a piece of meat, hung up on a hook like a pig in an abattoir. I am a batting cage, a beat-up old sofa. I am entertainment. I float away from the party, up, over Bushwick, over Manhattan, which is just a diorama, just a cartoon skyline. I am at sea, a piece of wood tossed around in a storm, splintering and breaking apart as monster waves smash and crash and pummel me. Through the choppy gray-green water, I see a dark shape. Thrashing the water, more powerful than the storm.

  Something is out there. Something is waiting.

  He comes inside me, a strangled groan on the nape of my neck. “Fuck,” he pants. “Fuck, that was hot. Holy fuck.”

  I just hang there, waiting.

  He kisses the back of my head.

  I twist away. “Untie me.” It comes out a mumble.

  He slips the ball gag out of my mouth, still breathing heavily. “What, babe?”

  “Get me down.”

  I face the stone wall and pull my clothes back on with numb fingers. My costume is tight and ridiculous and I just want to be at home, in sweats, forgetting this.

  I’ve never felt more raw. More exposed.

  I turn back around, expecting to find Elan behind me, hands clasped, suspecting my unease. But he’s on his phone. The sight of him more interested in whatever the fuck is on that screen and not me, says everything. I leave without waiting for him. He catches up to me at the bottom of the stairs, telling me to wait up. A stream of people separate us, everyone jubilant, excited. With every passing second, I feel worse about what just happened.

  He follows me out of the party, back onto the street. It’s so humid, I’m sweating, parched. I need to find Steph. I need to get out of here. “Lacey,” he’s saying, “Lacey, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Clearly, something’s wrong.”

  “It’s just . . .” I can’t look at him. “I didn’t like that.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, I really didn’t like it.” I want him to hold me. To comfort me. I can’t keep the need out of my face as I look right at him.

  “Oh,” he repeats. He blinks. He glances past me.

  “Oh?” I mock. “That all?”

  He shakes his head and shrugs. Not annoyed, exactly. Just uncommitted. Uninterested. “What do you want me to say?”

  This was a huge mistake. Letting him back in, letting him fuck me. He doesn’t care about me: he told me as such, and I ignored him. “Why am I surprised?” I take a step closer and let my voice drop low. “Your ability to hurt women has always been criminal.”

  He says nothing.

  Does he get I’m talking about Sofia? The woman he basically murdered, all those years ago? I have no idea. His face is completely blank.

  He turns toward the street and hails a passing cab. He doesn’t even look back at
me once as the taxi begins to take him away.

  42.

  * * *

  The safety of flannel, of pink skin warm from a shower. The mattress sags underneath me, marshmallow-soft, taking my weight. I know it can hold me. My body tentatively tries relaxing. There is order, here, faint but very real. I am grateful for piles of textbooks, dog-eared and ruffled with Post-its. I am grateful for damp towels left on bedroom floors: we can hang them up in the morning. Not everything needs to be perfect.

  “Here.” Steph hands me a mug. “I know you don’t like green tea but it’s all we have.”

  “Thank you.” A breathy female voice warbles from her laptop. I’m not usually a fan of the “I am beautiful but sad” singer-songwriter genre. But at 3:00 a.m. on a sad Sunday, it feels appropriate.

  Steph gets into bed beside me. She’s angry. “I still can’t believe him,” she says. “Total fucking sociopath, leaving you like that.”

  But Steph’s eyes are lowered. She’s still pissed with me, too.

  I don’t blame her.

  The tea is scalding, burning the soft flesh of my mouth. “Tastes like dirt.”

  “What?”

  “The tea. Tastes like grass. Or the earth.”

  “It’s all we have.”

  “No, I’m . . . I’m not complaining.”

  She’s mad at me but she’s also protective, maternal. She doesn’t know where to look. We sit in silence for a moment. A new song starts on the laptop. The lyrics rhyme new dawn with forlorn. “What happened to your dad?”

  She sighs and maybe she’s relieved I asked a question she could answer. “Cycling accident. But he’ll be fine.”

  “I’m so sorry. That sucks.”

  “It’s hard. Being so far away. I guess he’s lucky this is his first really bad accident. He’s on that bike every day. Maybe it was only a matter of time.”

  And maybe it was naive to think I could go on a sexual odyssey without something like this happening to me. “I’ll send him some Sudoku books. He likes those, right?”

  “Yeah,” she says, sounding surprised I remembered.