Sixteen, Sixty-One

by Sixteen, Sixty-One- A Memoir (epub)

‘I should because I’m an English major, but I’d rather be doing sports.’

  ‘I’m the total opposite. I’m not sure I even know where the sports centre is.’

  ‘That’s like cursing in my presence! Hey, are you finished? Want to come to my dorm?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I followed Alex out into the snow, my gloved palm sadly empty. She used her identity card to swipe us into her building and took me up to her single room on the third floor. Gesturing for me to sit on the bed, she crossed the room to put on a CD, then walked back to me with a smile.

  ‘Are you going to kiss me then?’

  And thus Alex and I made out for the month of January. It can’t have been quite as impersonal as that, because I do remember learning about her strict Connecticut parents who still rang her up to say they’d met a nice rich lawyer they’d like her to meet after she’d got over this lesbian ‘stage’. She told me about her ex-girlfriend, a rugby player who had broken her heart, and her fears that she wouldn’t pass the LSATs and wouldn’t get into a decent law school. I babbled about British things because they made her laugh, talked about how absurd the liberalness here seemed in comparison to Durham and made jokes about my failed attempts at being a lesbian since I was sixteen.

  But what I remember most is rolling on my or her bed with my lips pressed against hers. I remember sliding my hand up her top and getting it caught in the complicated built-in bra. I remember worrying that my nipples didn’t seem as sensitive as hers and thinking she must think I was a freak. I remember the firmness of her stomach, the lack of any fat on her tiny frame and how disconcerting it was to cuddle someone who was all muscle and bone, even if they did cut a truly masturbatory image when they undressed in your doorway. I remember feeling large for the first time in my life and not believing her when she said she liked my curves.

  I remember wanting to blow my nose because I’d been lying on my back all evening and I couldn’t breathe through my mouth while she was kissing me. I remember trying to move my lips down her belly to where my fingers had explored and being told she only did that in a relationship. I remember her buying me a bottle of moisturiser and laughing at my lack of basic female abilities. I remember kisses dissolving into laughter as we tickled each other.

  Finally, I remember Alex arriving at my door as arranged and walking in with only a perfunctory kiss, followed by the clichéd: ‘We need to talk.’

  I remember saying, ‘Okay.’

  Then I remember Alex perching prudishly on the edge of my bed and speaking softly, ‘I really like you and we’re having fun, but I’m not sure we have a connection. I mean, I enjoy it when we hang out, but I don’t miss it when we don’t. And my ex called me last night and wants to give it another go. I’m sorry, I do really like you and I don’t want to hurt you.’

  And I remember agreeing with everything she said. I didn’t miss her either. I felt awkward when we made out. I thought she was fun, but would usually rather be talking to someone from the theatre. Did I just want a girlfriend so much that I’d convinced myself this was a relationship? Was I that desperate?

  So I remember replying, ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing. But, hey, you’re really cool and I wish you well with your girlfriend.’

  And I remember my pride stinging only a little bit, my tears only slightly moistening my pillow.

  With snow still on the ground, January ended, Jess returned from Texas, reading lists were handed out and the play entered ‘tech-week’. I signed up for five classes, waved to people in the dining queue and snuck myself into one of the only two bars in the area on the first Friday; this semester would be perfect, I knew it.

  Then I met Lizzie Stein.

  I fell for Lizzie because she listened to Aimee Mann, drove an SUV, had handcuffs hanging on her wall and introduced me to But I’m a Cheerleader. After opening night, I sat in her passenger seat howling to Tori Amos as she reached sixty along 45th Street with the windows open and her hand upon my thigh.

  Lizzie was too short and too soft to be butch, but she refused to wear make-up and swore she didn’t own a dress. She didn’t care. Her daddy was rich and she owned one-of-a-kind Louis Vuitton black sneakers that she coupled with men’s slacks and scuffed up backstage at the Ruff.

  She was majoring in Theatre Arts, but didn’t much like acting. Her minor was in English, but she didn’t much like books. We shared a class called Queer American Poetry, in which she never raised her hand, but later agreed with me that the flamboyant 6'5" professor who explained the difference between kitsch and camp with reference to his own outfit was ‘dreamy’. She would go on to law school, she supposed.

  Studying was a chore to Lizzie and, born in Florida, she hated being stuck in the North-East. But some things made her enthusiastic: watching Veronica Mars in bed; fast-forwarding Tipping the Velvet to the sex scenes; laughing at my shocked face as she introduced me to www.suicidegirls.com; taking photos with her new camera; IMing me at two in the morning to see if I wanted to hang out in her room; ditching the dining halls to drive ten miles for sushi; telling me I could touch her breasts, but only with the lights off; describing in detail the expensive leather whip beneath her bed; and reading Harry Potter for the fifth time in the back of a lecture about Max Stafford Clark’s contribution to directing.

  I learnt too late that Lizzie Stein was in love with Lauren Bradbury. After only a week of entertaining the idea that this boyish red-head with a round freckled face might call herself my girlfriend, I accepted my role as second best and willingly began to skip through the snow at midnight to hang out with Lizzie on the days Lauren snubbed her. I wrote terrible poetry about the ‘cruel cat who wrapped herself in leather and wound me on her claws’, and gleefully titled my final paper for our class, ‘The Hermeneutics of Flirtation in (Gertrude) Stein’s Tender Buttons’.

  When Lauren liked Lizzie, I comforted myself with Reena. Reena knitted while watching Lost and had a dental dam taped to her door. I slept in her bed three nights in a row, but never managed to kiss her, not even a peck on the cheek. Frustrated, confused and egged on by Jess, I ruined the whole thing by sending a text that expressed something about enjoying spending nights with her but wishing we could do a little more than sleep.

  She didn’t reply and I stopped staying over.

  I recommenced making out with Lizzie on the occasions Lauren rejected her and became agonisingly aware that everyone on the campus except me was having hot, loving, lesbian sex. I developed consecutive crushes on Amy, Rihanna, Jasmine and Jenny. Though I acted painfully self-conscious around them all, I asked none of them out. Amy was too popular, Rihanna was straight, Jasmine already liked someone else and Jenny knew I liked her because Mia had told her so, so if she was interested why didn’t she ask me out herself?

  There was always a reason to do nothing.

  Every time that I cringed while unlocking my mailbox or swallowed hard when someone mentioned Leonard Cohen, I became more and more convinced this would never work. I didn’t belong here. Matthew was right: I’d never be normal. Having a girlfriend to walk to class with and sit beside in the library while I did my homework didn’t fit with having lost your virginity to a sixty-year-old and not even being able to tell your best friend your darkest secret. My life was tainted and sordid, and however many times I descended the stairs at 8pm for Rosella’s complimentary milk and cookies, I would never belong here.

  In April, I wore my newly purchased vintage velvet jacket to a dorm party and danced with Andi, who’d bussed in from the co-ed. She got my attention by flashing a pancake breast. Horrified yet impressed, I developed an immediate infatuation with this mohawked Twiglet. Shutting ourselves in the closet, I showed her my nipple bar and we giggled into our cups. Drunk and giddy, I agreed to walk to my dorm with Christine Butler to pick up more alcohol. I failed to make it back to the party and instead slept with Christine, who wore sweatpants to class, played Apples to Apples and didn’t seem to trim her fingernails.

  Too lethargic
and hungover to shower the next morning, I stalked Andi via Rosella Social. Disgusted with myself, yet tickled by the potential flirtation, I left a wall post asking if she’d like to ‘get coffee sometime’. I then checked back neurotically, deciding I was a completely unattractive slutty whore who deserved nothing more than the Christine Butlers in life.

  Until Andi replied: ‘Sure.’

  We had two not terribly awkward coffee-shop dates, but neither ended in a kiss or anything more than a friendly, ‘see you soon’. Two weeks later, I convinced some friends to attend the Drag Ball at Andi’s college as the T Birds from Grease. With my hair slicked back and a sock in my drainpipe trousers, I danced shyly with Andi. At midnight, she and a bunch of other students removed their shirts and other items of clothing. Grinding self-consciously with this semi-naked undulating boygirl, I wondered how to initiate a kiss.

  After an excruciatingly long time of dancing like that and feeling decidedly overdressed, I told Andi I needed air. Outside, I noticed my last bus was about to leave. I hurried with Andi to the stop, where she sighed that I was sweet but this was not what she was looking for.

  Back in my dorm, I IMed with Lizzie Stein until 4am and read more of Matthew’s emails. I couldn’t date girls who wore pink tank-tops and joined the rowing team, I couldn’t hold conversations with friendly actors who needed help with their English accents and now I couldn’t even kiss a woman who shaved part of her head and brushed her bare breasts against me while dancing. I wanted to be normal, but how could I be normal with an ankh tattooed on my hip and sixteen new emails in my inbox?

  I directed a short play Jess had written in the spring. It was a cocky absurdist student piece in which we could all pat ourselves on the back for our cleverness. I cast only girls I had crushes on, ensuring their company every evening for rehearsals and enjoying their excitement as opening night arrived. I bit my nail as the audience filed in and Rihanna dithered nervously next to me, asking if the set she’d designed was right and should she move this or that object? I noticed Greg’s seat was empty. It was a Friday and he must have gone to New York, but I still felt annoyed. I hadn’t been invited to dinner for three weeks.

  The play went well. Afterwards we snuck into the costume cupboard and dug out bizarre outfits to spend the rest of the night in. Wine and Mike’s Hard Lemonade led to Amy and I running across the amphitheatre topless and Jasmine cartwheeling on the college president’s lawn. We found a dorm party and stumbled inside. I followed Rihanna back out so she could smoke and we sat shivering on the porch.

  ‘I’ve never kissed a girl, you know?’ she slurred after sucking on the white paper between her fingers.

  ‘Okay.’ I mentally kicked myself for being awkward even while drunk.

  ‘I mean, I like boys I think. I’ve been here three years and never felt like kissing a girl, even just as a joke, but …’ She trailed off, then looked at me through thick eyelashes.

  ‘But what?’ I almost sang, congratulating myself on my coolness.

  ‘But maybe I want to now.’ She kept looking at me.

  ‘Oh,’ and back to hating myself.

  ‘We could …’ She wouldn’t stop looking at me.

  ‘Okay.’ I managed to lean in, still a little nervous of rejection despite the invitation, and tasted her cigarette breath and strawberry ChapStick.

  ‘Whoa, are we interrupting something?’ Amy roared with glee as she and Kristin emerged from the building.

  I sat back, my cheeks flushed.

  ‘They’re out of alcohol inside,’ moaned Kristin. ‘Where can we get some at this time of night?’

  ‘I have a bottle of wine in my room,’ Rihanna said, smiling at me. ‘We could all go there.’

  ‘Okay, what are we waiting for?’ Amy grabbed Kristin’s hand and they began skipping towards North Winthrop Hall.

  ‘Shall we?’ Rihanna offered me her arm and I took it.

  On the way to her room we picked up a couple of other stray revellers and the promised bottle of wine multiplied into three. We sat in a circle on Rihanna’s floor swigging from the bottles before passing them along.

  ‘I have an idea,’ whispered Amy before guzzling the last dregs of the second bottle. ‘Why don’t we play spin-the-bottle?’

  She placed the green glass in the middle of the circle and twisted it until it landed on Kristin and Rachel. They each leant over the bottle and touched lips briefly, then sat back flushed.

  ‘You prudes,’ moaned Amy, setting up to spin again.

  Rihanna and Amy.

  Rachel and me.

  Kristin and Fran.

  Rihanna and Fran.

  Then Kristin and Amy and the game paused while they closed their eyes and ran fingers through hair with mouths working passionately and the rest of us making jealous whooping sounds.

  ‘That’s how it’s done,’ smiled Amy, coming up for air.

  Rihanna and me.

  ‘Okay,’ breathed Rihanna nervously. I touched the back of her head and pulled her into a soft but firm kiss, blotting out the giggles of those around and concentrating on her warm tongue.

  ‘It never lands on me,’ moaned Rachel once we’d finished. ‘Why do we have to use a bottle, can’t we just kiss?’

  The question hung for a moment as each of our drenched brains processed it.

  ‘Okay,’ Amy broke the silence. She grabbed Rachel from across the circle and pulled her into a half-lying, half-sitting kiss.

  Kristin turned to me and hiccupped before doing the same. On my left, I felt Rihanna shuffle towards Fran.

  Beneath the fluorescent dorm light, three couples made out on the floor, draped over each other, feet tangling with other couples and giggles and moans blending from one pair to the next. After a few moments, someone, perhaps me, sat up and shouted, ‘All change’, and without question, each girl found a new partner.

  This may have lasted ten minutes or two hours. Natural couples formed and I remember feeling hurt by Kristin and Amy’s clear attraction to one another, but flattered by Rihanna’s curious-straight-girl attentions.

  Stumbling back to our dorm, Kristin and I babbled about how that was exactly like the stuff we’d been talking about in our Performance Studies class. What was the word? Communitas? Mass euphoria? Was that a liminal space? Had we created a sense of abandon? Kristin mused whether she could get away with writing about it for her paper due next week, and we said goodnight on the stairs.

  As far as I know, Kristin chickened out of writing about that night for her Performance Studies 301 final, but the story afforded me a meal at Greg’s and he congratulated me on finally having a ‘real women’s college experience’. We laughed together over chicken and rice and he asked why I hadn’t seen Rihanna since. I explained she’d been a bit cold, but that it didn’t matter, that it was all a one-night thing and he had to promise he wouldn’t tell the others that he knew.

  He promised and walked me back to my dorm, smoking a menthol before offering me the rest of the packet. I went to bed thinking Rihanna’s coolness did matter really.

  At Graduation Ball I watched the women I’d spent the year fantasising about arrive in neat pairs. In an attempt to snub Lizzie, I danced on a table with Lauren Bradbury until one of the bar staff told us to get down. I kissed six or seven women, most of them straight, and spilt wine on my dress, then slept in Jess’s bed while she went home to Angelo.

  Three days later, my bags were packed and my room was as bare as when I’d arrived. I’d stuffed essential items into a travel backpack I’d ordered online and neatly folded the rest of my thrift-store acquisitions into three large suitcases, ready to be deposited in Jess and Angelo’s basement until I returned at the end of the summer. I was going to travel, see as much of the States as I possibly could, then meet my mum in Manhattan, drive up to Rosella and fly back using her baggage limit as well as my own.

  I’d been babbling about my travel plans for weeks and feeling grown up about exploring places alone, flying from state to state and me
eting friends in their different time zones. But now I was leaving this leafy campus with its dining halls and twenty-four-hour porters, its emergency numbers and security men on Segways, I began to grow nervous. Who was I but a little girl, foolishly thinking she could take on the big bad world?

  Before I hugged Jess on her doorstep and told her I loved her; before I climbed in a taxi and asked for the station; before I boarded Amtrak and began my summer of adventure, I needed to clear the air with Matthew. Once again, I composed what I thought was an olive branch:

  From: Natalie Lucas

  To: Matthew Wright

  Sent: 11 May 2004, 23:08:07

  Subject: Hi

  Hello

  Thanks for your last couple of letters. Good news about your film.

  I’m leaving campus in a couple of weeks, so no point sending much else. Thanks for respecting my space. I’m putting myself together bit by bit, but still struggling to deal with some things. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t dreading coming back a little bit. America has been my liminal space to work out some things. But I still have a few weeks I guess. I’m going travelling – visiting friends all over for a while, then taking this hippy bus that was recommended from one side of the US to another.

  I’m sorry for all the pain I caused at the beginning of the year and am glad to hear things are going well for you. I’m not ready to analyse the past or read your poems in great detail, but it’s not because everything was an act or untrue. You and I both know that it was all true at the time. But I think it was also ill-advised and immature.

  I hope that when I get back we can be friends and talk of books and theatre without any undertones. I’m really not strong enough to deal with fights and questions and attempts to work out what went wrong. I realise this request is incredibly immature, but I hope you will grant it because it’s the only way I can look forward to returning home.

  I really hope you are doing well and I apologise for my inability to handle our situation.

  I look forward to seeing an old friend in July.