Finding It

by Leah Marie Brown

  I was angry at Leo, too. Why’d he have to ask me to the prom? Why not Carrie Stemokowitz? After all, Carrie was the one with the super-huge crush on Leo. Not the silently-suffering, worship-you-from-afar kind of crush I had on Jason, but a creepy stalker-like pseudo-obsession that reminded me of that Glenn Close movie—the one where she has an affair with Michael Douglas and then becomes unhinged when he won’t leave his wife. I’m not saying Carrie would have killed someone over Leo Crandall, but if pushed, I think she could have been a bunny boiler.

  The way she always stared at Leo was kind of disturbing. She twirled a lock of her wavy hair around a finger and batted her long, curly eyelashes at him. Once, in Chem class, Leo’s Chap Stick dropped out of his pocket and rolled across the floor without him noticing. Carrie picked it up. Later, I saw her pop the lid off, sniff it, and then rub it over her lips. She had this weird look on her face, a bit like when Buffalo Bill tossed the bottle of Jergens down to his victim in Silence of the Lambs. I half expected her to moan, “It rubs the Chap Stick on its lips.”

  If Leo had asked Carrie to the prom, I think Jason would have asked me to be his date. So my first sexual encounter was the product of this bizarre love triangle fueled by molten teenage anger.

  I liked Leo, but I didn’t love him. And that’s all I could think about when we fumbled around in the back of the rented limo. Why aren’t I doing this with someone I really love? I’ll bet Jason Thomas wouldn’t be so awkward.

  I didn’t have sex again until my senior year in college. I was too busy trying to keep my GPA up and my waistline down. Freshman fifteen? Try freshman forty. The night I met Travis Trunnell, I was uncharacteristically hammered. My then-BFF, Grace Murphy, had lured me to a cheesy bar called the Tijuana Yacht Club.

  “The servers wear tight speedos and dance on surf boards,” she’d said.

  “Speedos and surf board dancing? Are they straight?”

  “Vivia, seriously! You can’t study all of the time or you’ll die an old maid, like Mary Shelley.”

  I was into Gothic literature at the time, and more than a little obsessed with Mary Shelley, so her comment was like a jugular shot.

  “Mary Shelley experienced one of the greatest love affairs of all time. She did not die an old maid,” I argued.

  “Are you sure?” Grace squinted. “Because I am pretty sure Professor Atkins said she died a virgin.”

  “Mary Shelley did not die a virgin! She was Percy Bysshe Shelley’s wife. When they were courting, they would meet at her mother’s grave and Percy would recite poetry.”

  “Eww!” Grace grimaced. “Is that what you want, Vivia? To marry an effeminate necrophiliac who recites poetry as foreplay?”

  Unable to argue with such logic, I slipped into my tightest jeans and followed Grace to the ramshackle bar with sand on the floor.

  I had just slammed my sixth Hawaiian Punch Shooter and stumbled onto the dance floor when I noticed a tall, muscular beach boy staring at me from across the bar. My stomach flipped and I had a sickening vision of me hurling all over his feet. I thought I looked so cool, gyrating to 2 Live Crew’s old school anthem, “Me So Horny,” but when Travis Trunnell stared at me, I suddenly felt lame.

  I was grinding away to the climactic moan backtrack when I caught my reflection in the club’s mirror, hips rotating, booty shaking. Years later, Grace described my smooth moves as a sad epileptic white girl’s imitation of a twerk. Harsh. Could anyone look sexy dancing to lyrics that include “Sucky, sucky. Me sucky, sucky”? I don’t think so.

  Travis waited for me until the song ended, a slow, easy smile stretched between his dimpled cheeks. I must have stopped breathing because he leaned down and whispered in my ear.

  “Breathe, baby, breathe. You don’t want to pass out here. You’ll wake up with your pretty face buried in a sandbox.”

  I don’t remember what I said. I just remember looking into his blue eyes and thinking I would die if I didn’t have sex with him. I didn’t know his name. Didn’t know his story. But I had to have him. Grace, the psychology major, called it primal lust.

  Travis ordered me another Hawaiian Punch Shooter, and beneath the glow of neon palms, we pretended to be interested in each other’s lives when all we really wanted to do was drop and have dirty, sweaty sex.

  Travis attended UC Berkeley on a full ride football scholarship. The more we talked, the more I liked Travis. His slow, sexy drawl and his hand on the small of my back made me feel fuzzy all over.

  I still wanted to have nasty sex with him, but I also wanted something more than a bar hookup/bootie call connection. I didn’t want him to think I was a slut. I summoned the last vestiges of my common sense and told him I would have to call it a night.

  That’s when I realized Grace had encouraged me to dance with Travis and then slipped out the back door. She even took my purse. Clever bitch.

  No Grace meant no ride home.

  Do you believe in serendipity?

  I do.

  I don’t believe everything is preordained. I doubt our higher power involves Herself in every detail of our lives. If you had the universe at your disposal and an infinite amount of time stretching before you, would you fill your days deciding whether Nancy Jones should have Caesar Salad for lunch? Probably not.

  I decided Fate had brought Travis to me. A higher power was telling me to abandon my no one-night stand rule and go home with the sexy Texan. After all, when the universe gives you a tall, handsome gift, you don’t give it back.

  We went back to his place, a third floor apartment with a frat house vibe. He offered me a warm Corona and put on a slow jazz CD. I hate jazz. All of those horns. It’s like someone handed out musical instruments at an asylum and ordered the patients to play whatever came to mind. He had a fake mink blanket on his bed. That’s about all I remember: jazz, warm beer, and a cheap blanket.

  I woke the next morning with a case of bedhead and a tennis ball-sized rug burn on my tailbone. What would Saint Vivia have said if she looked down from her celestial perch to witness my walk of shame? I had to walk the five miles from Travis’s house to the dorms, heels in hand, pride in shambles.

  Travis and I hooked up a few more times, but I was never able to get over the way we had met. My shame was that huge. Little did I know, my naughty night with Travis would come back to haunt me like a Kardashian sex tape.

  I vowed to abstain from sex, graduate college, and channel my energies into my Journalism career. I worked freelance until I landed a job at San Francisco Magazine writing fluff pieces for the Style Section—ironic, since the bulk of my wardrobe consisted of heavy metal band Ts and jeans. Fashion was not my forte. Once, I bought a fake Prada from a sketchy boutique near Chinatown. A burgundy satchel in buttery soft leather, with braided biker chain handles. Later, Fanny pointed out the shiny emblem read Prado instead of Prada.

  The editor who interviewed me said she dug my “edgy youth on the verge vibe” and hired me on the spot. Since then, I’ve been assigned pieces titled Out of the Recycle Bin and Into Your Closet and Fabulous & Faux: How to Rock a Fake Fur.

  It isn’t hard-hitting, investigative journalism, but I like to think my work at San Francisco Magazine serves an educational purpose. Besides, if I hadn’t gotten that job, I might not have met Nathan. Nathaniel Edwards, III.

  Nathan’s family owns Opulent Style Publications, the publisher that produces San Francisco Magazine and a slew of other upscale monthlies devoted to culture, art, and posh living. He is a junior partner in one of the largest law firms in the Bay Area, but also serves on Opulent Style’s Board of Directors. He is smart, driven, stable, respectable, and honest. He would make any woman the perfect husband. In fact, in seventy two hours and thirty four minutes he is supposed to become my perfect husband.

 

 

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