Inappropriation

by Lexi Freiman

  “How would you do it?” Tessa beams at Ziggy, so keen and believing, it pangs. Shark attack, but my friend gouged out its eyes.

  “We’ve got one dose of ayahuasca,” Ziggy says deliriously. “Which works like the trauma technique I learned from my mum.”

  Tessa is suddenly reverent. “The constellations?”

  Ziggy nods.

  “Wow.”

  Tim looks panicked at the unplanned disclosure. He taps manically against a fox tooth hanging from his belt. Ziggy gives him a bright, reassuring smile.

  “So you drug him,” Tessa clarifies, “and then let the drugs do the traumatizing?”

  Ziggy nods.

  “You guys are really going to do this?” Tessa glances between the two of them.

  “Yes,” says Ziggy. “Unless you have any better ideas?”

  Naturally, Tessa does. And the first one is to go somewhere more private. The four of them hurry down the hall and out into the fire stairs. Hunched in urgent congress, they revise Tim and Ziggy’s plan. For Lance to have an authentic experience, Tessa thinks they will need to dispose of his friends as well.

  “How much ayahuasca do you have?” she asks Ziggy.

  “One dose, but we’ve also got sleeping pills.”

  “Then we could do an actual date rape,” says Tessa, fingering her ruff with strange, unconscious prurience. “Once his friends pass out, we can pull their pants down and cover them with dirt and Vaseline!”

  Eamon smiles adoringly at his girlfriend. “And maybe bruise them a bit with their own iPhones.”

  “And choke them a bit with their cravats.” The couple’s banter feels almost like foreplay.

  Tim looks disturbed. “But we can’t give them date-rape trauma inside the venue.”

  “True,” says Tessa. “We’d have to get them all the way to the park.”

  Ziggy’s intimacy with the nightclub surprises everyone. “If we can get the three boys down into the basement parking lot, no one will find them there until the next day.”

  “She’s right,” says Tessa. “The parking lot will be empty—no one drives themselves to the formal.”

  Eamon speaks with rhapsodic delight. “And then they’ll wake up the next morning in a cold concrete bunker!”

  “Like a real date rape,” marvels Tessa.

  Ziggy’s concern for Lance again accosts her. “But someone will need to stay upstairs with Lance while he vomits.” By saying it, Ziggy apparently volunteers herself. The others give her cloying looks of gratitude. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll look after him.”

  Outside, it sounds like the formal is winding down, so the four of them agree to reconvene in thirty minutes at the after party. As she steps out through the fire door, Ziggy feels Tessa’s fingers encircle her wrist.

  “This is pure Haraway,” says Tessa. “Traumatizing men into empathizing with women is exactly what she meant by feminist socialism.”

  “I’m going to film it,” Ziggy warns her. “But none of us will be recognizable.”

  “Kitlers over all our faces?” Tessa is grinning.

  “I hope this one makes a better video.”

  “It’s going to go viral,” Tessa says sweetly. “People hate private school boys.”

  Chapter 14

  When they get to the nightclub, there is an enormous doorman propped on a stool at the entrance. He has the sad gaze of a large dog in a small apartment. Tonight he can’t check IDs, can’t even hand out wristbands. That job has gone to Cate, who sits beside him at a long table ticking names off a list and massaging her chemically tightened jaw. A small pile of the exclusive gold wristbands lie to her left. She doesn’t appear to be giving any of them out. Ziggy feels lucky to get even a yellow one.

  Inside, already a large group of girls are dancing in various states of formal undress. Some have swapped their floor-length gowns for tube tops. Others remain cumbersomely frocked but now in sparkly Converse or fun-loving fluoro ballet slippers. Ziggy is excited to be here, newly refriended and with thrilling purpose. At the bar, she sees that the cocktails are themed: Pink Pussycats for the girls and Blue Bloods for the boys. Ziggy imagines this is one of Cate’s heteronormative flourishes. But she is grateful. The deep blue will nicely disguise the ayahuasca’s purple.

  Tessa and Eamon find Ziggy at the bar. The four of them squish together, palms open under the countertop. Tim hands out the pills. He assigns each of them a boy, identifying him by his pocket square. The idea is to shadow the victim, waiting for the moment a Blue Blood goes unattended. Lance’s friends are all drinking the designated boys’ beverage, making it impossible for them to accidentally drug their girlfriends. Although, spotting the Cates, Ziggy sees that the girls aren’t even drinking cocktails. They have established a small circle on the dance floor, from where Kate pumps a single, communal water bottle. Their orbiting jaws and buggy eyes make it obvious that they have taken MDMA. Ziggy watches them dance, sprayed waves bouncing in the strobey air. They are having so much tightly curated fun. Even Lex looks utterly blissful—her eyes roll back as she shimmies her shoulders, mouth agape—high, it seems, on the perks of straight, cis-normative friendship.

  Now Tessa slinks away toward Little Matty, while Eamon skips off after Declan. Tim is taking Toby, and Ziggy, of course, has treated herself to Lance. Tim squeezes her hand.

  “It’s going to be hilarious,” he promises.

  Ziggy is moved by her friend’s sentiment. Considering that most of her sexual fantasies are about powerful Aryan men, it is humbling to think she has helped Tim access his queer sense of humor.

  Ziggy remains beside the bar. After a few minutes, Lance appears at the opposite end by the register, clicking for the bartender’s attention. Ziggy moves quickly toward him, sliding in casually beside his cream blazer. While Lance stares impatiently ahead, Ziggy studies the familiar contours of his profile. She admires his dimple—the perfectly placed indent that makes him seem designed, touched by God’s fountain pen. Being this close to Lance sends the blood thumping through her ears. Ziggy isn’t sure she can do this. When the bartender passes him his drink, Lance turns and looks straight at her. His eyes hold hers with gleaming interest, and for a moment it seems he might think she’s cute. A dense heat roils through her body. Ziggy would absolutely let him finger her in the bathroom like a normal girl. Then she notices that Lance’s gaze is askew; he isn’t actually looking at Ziggy’s face; he’s staring at the camera. Checking his hair in the lens’s reflection. For a moment, Ziggy disappears. She watches the scene with cool astral detachment as Lance’s narcissism continues unabated back on Earth. And then she sees her chance. Ziggy tilts her head up and Lance’s eyes follow it. While he watches himself, she slides her hand low along the bar, finds his tumbler, and tips the bottle into the blue froth. Then she turns away, taking Lance’s image with her. She doesn’t feel even remotely bad.

  Ziggy meets her friends back at a booth in the club’s front corner. Everyone has been successful, even Tessa, who had to join Little Matty on the dance floor and get gently groped. The four of them sip soda water as they watch their victims drinking in the adjacent booth. Minutes later, there is a demented squealing from the dance floor, and then a sudden ambush of girls to the elevator. The exodus to the VIP room has begun. As anticipated, Lance and his cronies are boycotting the celebrity autograph-signing session, preferring to stay petulantly in their seats. Ziggy and her friends listen in as the four boys mock the action hero’s last three sequels and the strange, hemmed puff of his surgically altered face. “He’s starting to look like bad origami,” quips Lance, and Ziggy almost laughs. His friends find this disproportionately funny; Little Matty yowls and slaps his giant hand on the table, disturbing the drinks and swishing Blue Blood everywhere. At this, Toby and Declan throw their heads back, howling in an unwieldy splay of limbs all across the upholstery.

  “The Temazepam is kicking in,” whispers Tim.

  Tessa and Eamon look distraught. Ziggy feels it too: the boys’ degenera
tion is violent and distressing to watch. She sees Declan’s arm slur along the tabletop, and has a trembling need to dissolve into the ether.

  “What did the girls give you losers?” Lance teases his friends. “Horse tranquilizers?”

  The boys just laugh, hugging and slapping each other in a slow-motion ballet of aggressive mateship. Lance edges away, reviled by their sloppiness.

  “Who wants another bottle of aqua?” he says to the masculinity disintegrating all around him. The boys murmur their appreciation and Lance sets off across the room. Ziggy watches him strut, still alarmingly sober. Then just before the bar he stops, blinks up randomly at the ceiling, and continues. Now a second wave of panic eclipses the first, turning Ziggy into an insensate machine of pure action.

  “You guys need to go,” she says nodding in Lance’s direction. Her friends turn to watch as he reaches the bar and becomes deeply fascinated by a jar of lemon slivers. “Get the boys downstairs before Lance starts vomiting.”

  Tim and Eamon leap up. But Tessa sits frowning at the three sweaty heads lolling back against their seats. The pretext for getting these boys to follow them into the elevator now seems ludicrously flawed. “I don’t think they’ll care that their girlfriends are downstairs waiting to have sex with them.”

  “Maybe we just say they’re waiting to take them home to sleep?” Tim’s suggestion is met with more uncertainty. Then Declan’s head hits the table.

  “Go!” orders Ziggy, and her friends rally.

  While they close in around the boys, Ziggy sets off toward Lance. Approaching him, she can see that Lance is very slightly swaying. His face is pale. His focus is intense and nearsighted, as if he is doing a difficult mental calculation in the air just beyond his nose. He jerks forward, clutching his belly, and then quickly cups a hand to his mouth. It is the sudden mad bulge of his eyes that makes Ziggy regret everything. She imagines a whole Boschian underworld storming up his esophagus, a tiny army installed by her, and she shudders with a powerful, regurgitative reflex. Or maybe she is just about to sympathy vomit. Lance glances down into his palms then starts bolting toward the bathroom.

  Ziggy waits outside for several minutes. Other boys hurry out, noses pinched, nauseated and groaning. Ziggy reasons that she must now act not just as Lance’s bathroom guard, but as his spiritual guardian. She stands to the side, steeling herself for the role. Despite her remorse, Ziggy still feels the moment’s theatrical edge, the plucky rush that might chaperone a girl through her first date. When the bathroom is empty, Ziggy steps in and locks the door. The stench is evil. The sharp vinegar of vomit cuts through the deeper, sodden cling of piss. There is only one closed stall door. Ziggy inhales deeply through her mouth.

  “Are you okay in there?”

  There is a long, pointy silence followed by a tremulous intake of breath. “I’m scared.”

  Ziggy’s heart swoons with compassion. She leans against the door and speaks to it gently. “What are you scared of?”

  “My mind,” says Lance. “Something’s wrong with it.”

  “You know,” Ziggy says kindly, “all minds are delusional and cause suffering.”

  Lance groans in psychic pain.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she coos. “I’m just saying you don’t have to listen to it.”

  “But I have an HSC exam on Tuesday,” Lance whines. “Oh God, what’s happening to me?”

  “It’s just chemicals,” says Ziggy. “Aren’t you guys all on drugs?”

  “They are,” Lance whimpers. “But I didn’t have any.”

  “Well, maybe you did. Accidentally.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Try not to focus on the thoughts.” In her own voice Ziggy starts to hear the soft strains of her mother’s. “They just create more negativity.”

  “Then what should I focus on?”

  “Sensations,” she says, blushing. “Try to stay focused on your body.”

  “Okay,” Lance says studiously. “I’m focusing on my heart and it’s beating really fast.”

  “That’s okay. That just means you’re alive. That’s good. Stay focused on your heart.”

  Lance gets quiet. Then Ziggy hears a sniffle.

  “What’s happening now?”

  “I feel sad,” says Lance. “So incredibly . . . sad.” He sobs.

  Ziggy’s heart tilts steeply toward him. “Why do you feel so sad?”

  “I don’t know. I just do.” Lance sighs wearily into the toilet bowl. “I think it’s because I’m about to graduate.” His voice quavers with feeling. “And I’m scared to leave school.”

  “Of course you are,” Ziggy says tenderly. “Your whole identity is there. Now you have to make a new one.”

  Lance sniffles again. Ziggy has never been so nice to anyone. She didn’t know this sweetness lived inside her, that she possessed an EMT’s talent for nurture under duress. The world seems neat and small and toylike. Ziggy wants to hold Lance’s hand. “Can you open the door?”

  There is a pause and then the toilet flushes. Slowly, the door peels open. Lance looks at Ziggy with glassy pink eyes. “Am I in the female restroom?”

  “No,” she says. “They’re gender neutral.”

  Lance seems relieved. They stare at each other. “Oh God,” he says. “I feel so strange.”

  There is a loud knock at the door. Ziggy has a second to decide whether or not to abandon Lance to the chaos of the after party and join her friends. She takes his hand. “I think you should come downstairs with me,” she says. “You’ll be safer there.”

  Lance is obedient. He hooks his arm around hers and allows Ziggy to lead him out through the door and swiftly to the elevator. The club is now mostly drunken boys swaying in small dejected clusters, but Ziggy still bolts, her head hot and imploding as she flees with her charge. In the elevator she can feel Lance leaning into her shoulder, giving her his weight like a sleepy child. Inches from her own, Ziggy can sense the mad, crackling activity of his brain. She can’t imagine how they will keep Lance safe for the next several hours, but Ziggy knows that they need to.

  She finds the others just behind a large pillar near the ticket machines. Lance’s friends have been laid out in a line on the concrete floor. The other three squat busily around them. The boys’ peaceful somnolence is jarred by gaping jaws and hands twisted back at unnatural angles. When Lance sees his friends, he screams. “They’re dead!”

  Tessa spins around. “They’re sleeping,” she refutes. “The pills they took were smacky.” Tim and Eamon stare up anxiously over Tessa’s shoulder. The three of them shooting Ziggy looks of horror and betrayal.

  “What are you all doing down here?” Lance asks Ziggy’s friends, seeming to include the ticket machines.

  Tessa lies with impressive fluency. “We came to smoke a joint,” she says, “and heard the boys passing out.”

  “And who are you people?” Lance says rudely, scanning from Tim’s shamanic belt to Eamon’s orange flares and finally settling in grim disgust on Tessa’s garish Elizabethan frock. “Where did you come from?”

  “Our mothers’ vaginas,” Tessa spits back.

  “Or one of our mothers’ vaginas,” appends Tim.

  Lance turns helplessly to Ziggy. She is touched and then quickly torn between this startling new allegiance and the other ones. “Lance isn’t feeling well,” she tells her friends. “I thought he could join us?”

  “Join us while we do what?” With her eyebrows, Tessa appears to be communicating the entire history of female oppression.

  Ziggy thinks quick. “A sharing circle?”

  “Wait,” says Tessa. “This is a date rapist. I’m not sharing anything with him.”

  “A date rapist?” Lance scoffs. “Date rape is for betas. A real man enjoys the hunt.”

  “The hunt?” roars Tessa. “Do you have female heads mounted on your walls?”

  Lance flinches in disgust; Ziggy wishes he was still being vulnerable.

  “Guys,” she says, “I think we sho
uld just sit in a circle.”

  “No,” says Tessa, rising and dragging Eamon up violently with her. “Not with him.”

  Ziggy panics. “Lance,” she says, “I think we’d better go back upstairs.”

  The vicious veneer shatters like bones in his face; Lance looks suddenly soft and pudgy and tearful. He blinks desperately. “I need to close my eyes.”

  “You can close them,” Ziggy indulges him.

  Lance squeezes shut his eyes then drops to his haunches.

  Ziggy goes down after him. “What is it?” she says frantically.

  “Patterns . . .” he moans. “I can’t make them stop.”

  “That’s okay,” she says, glancing up nervously at her friends. Everyone stares back, bewildered.

  “What do the patterns look like?” she asks Lance, stroking his head.

  “Like waves,” he says in a small voice. “Like the ocean.”

  “That’s nice,” says Ziggy. “Why don’t you just watch the waves rising and falling?”

  Lance nods, wiping his nose. His head rises and falls minutely with his gentle inner tide.

  “Good,” says Ziggy, caressing his arm—ignoring the giddy heat at her fingertips. “Just keep watching the waves and enjoying the sensations. Feel the sun beating down warmly on the crown of your head. . . .”

  From Tessa and Eamon, Ziggy hears suppressed snorting. She has never given a guided visualization before but has heard enough of Ruth’s to get the basic idea. Part of her is embarrassed by this and another part turns toward Lance with powerful, uterine heat. He seems to be calming down. Ziggy smiles up at Tim, anxiously fingering the cockles on his belt. Then the elevator dings.

  “Ziii-gy!” Kate’s voice rushes shrilly into the cavernous space. “Laaa-ance!”

  Ziggy can hear kitten heels approaching. Someone upstairs must have seen her. She looks up at her friends, the three of them paralyzed in sharp relief against the concrete wall. There is nowhere to hide. Ziggy spins around just as the Cates and Lex come peering around the pillar. The girls emerge in shocked, arm-linked animosity, their hairdos haloed by the industrial fluorescence.