by Dana Czapnik
* * *
We walk up the cement stoop, and Percy lets us into his house. No one is home, as usual, so it’s all dark. He turns on the light in the foyer, and we walk through the dark living room and dining room into the kitchen in the back. The kitchen is my mother’s dream kitchen, like, straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. Sub-Zero fridge, Viking stove, custom copper range, and marble countertops. The kitchen opens up to a back garden, which in the spring and summertime is beautiful, if a little run down. All these perfect, top-of-the-line accoutrements for real, serious chefs, yet no one in the Abney house cooks. No one. I’m sure all the Le Creuset and copper pots are in mint condition. The whole scene is just for show. Though a show for whom, I don’t know. As far as I can tell, Percy and Brent and their friends are the only people who ever step foot in the house besides their mother.
Off the kitchen is a powder room. When I was a kid, it was my favorite room in his house because it has padded cloth toile wallpaper. I had never seen anything like it in my life. When I told my mom about the bathroom and asked if I could get that kind of wallpaper for my room, she said, “Padded walls are for WASPs and the insane.”
When Percy and I first became friends, there was nothing more foreign to me than his white stone palace on Riverside Drive with turn-of-the-century detailing. Though another childhood friend, Deepti, who lived a few blocks uptown before her family moved to Ardsley, had an apartment filled with smells and rituals and accents I had never heard before, it was still familiar in an abstract way. Her home was understandable to me. It was the home of immigrants in America. There was clutter everywhere, like in my grandparents’ homes and even in my home too. Despite being born here, my parents still couldn’t entirely rid themselves of some of the ethos of their parents. There is no maid from some poverty-stricken place in Mexico or Puerto Rico. Nothing is ever thrown away because when you live in constant fear that they will come to take it away, ridiculous, pointless stuff becomes valuable. So even though Deepti had gilded-framed pictures of Ganesh and a house that smelled of spices I didn’t recognize, I understood it. Despite my parents’ American secularism, they still cling to some parts of their culture—the mezuzot on all the bedroom doors, the silver candle sticks on the dining room table, the pasta made by hand.
It was Percy’s house that was exotic. Every surface shone. There was no sign of struggle. No evidence of a former life in an ancestral village. No oppression or starvation. No tempest-tossed refugees. No yearning to breathe free. It was all brand new. And for that reason, I found the experience of being in his home amazing, unbelievable, as though it couldn’t be real. It was the fantasy version of life. Until I learned a little more about his family. And though my family—my aunts and uncles and grandparents and great uncles and aunts and first cousins and second cousins and third cousins twice removed, both the Jewish and Italian ones—are loud and hairy and have massive guts and chew with their mouths open and hug and kiss their children with too much force, and their homes always smell of stew or garlic and the surfaces of their kitchens are always coated in years and years’ worth of grease and some of them believe in God with way too much fervor, they are full of life and stories and history and love. Percy says he spends his life living in a Williams-Sonoma catalogue—everything perfectly stylized to give the impression that there is warmth and laughter, but in all actuality, it’s completely devoid of people.
I walk into the bathroom and avoid looking at myself in the mirror and just go straight to scrubbing my face with Crabtree & Evelyn hand soap. I dunk my whole head into the shell-shaped sink and wash my hair with the hand soap, scrubbing as hard as I can at the front, where Kim put in the temporary dye.
I wring out my hair and dry it with a monogrammed hand towel before I finally take another look at myself. There are still remnants of blood staining the front of my warm-ups, but my face is totally clean. A bruise has begun to form on my nose, but unless you knew I had just gotten hit, you probably wouldn’t notice it. All in all, it turns out to be not as bad as I thought. The maroon explosion is almost completely out of my hair, which is good, and I leave the bathroom with the hand towel wrapped like a turban around my head.
Percy’s rolling a joint on the kitchen counter, which is basically the only activity that ever happens in this kitchen.
“Don’t smoke,” I say. “Please.”
“Why?”
“I just want to feel for a minute. Please, just keep me company?”
Percy nods and puts the joint he was fiddling with in a little sandwich bag and drops it into a drawer in the kitchen island. “Hey, I know you’re upset, but I thought you had a great game. Honestly, I was proud of you.”
The atmosphere around the moment feels heavy. There’s no noise around us, just the ambient humming of the Sub-Zero fridge. There are no distractions. No cigarettes. No joints. No people. No drugs. No music. No television. No basketball. It’s raw. Or rather, I feel raw. Like my body has suddenly been turned inside out and I’m just a throbbing blob of muscle and connective tissue bleeding onto the immaculate kitchen island.
“I just hated being in that school. What were we doing there?”
“Don’t you know? There was a scout there. Your coach didn’t tell you?”
I look at him like, Are you fucking with me? He puts his right hand up. “I swear.”
“But it was a scrimmage.”
“They probably organized it so the scout could see you play a better team.” He goes to the fridge and takes out a bottle of Mountain Dew. I notice as he’s closing the door that the only items in it are a bunch of sodas and snack-sized bags of Lay’s potato chips and Cheetos in opaque white corner-deli bags. Obviously Percy is the only one who’s been going food shopping lately. “Loose, you gotta be one of the best players in the city, public or private. You know that, right? It’s about time someone figured out you belong playing in college.”
“Why wouldn’t Coach tell me?”
“Maybe he didn’t want to screw your head up.” He laughs as he twists open the Mountain Dew. “That backfired.”
“Was it that bad?”
“Doesn’t matter—your game was on point. That big girl you were playing?” Percy leans toward me on the counter, trying to engage me in a conversation.
“Yeah, Weatherspoon—what about her?”
“She’s going to UConn in the fall. She was, like, one of the top recruits this year.” He swallows a gulp of his Mountain Dew. “You held your own against her. You should be proud of yourself.” Percy punches me in the arm. But not his usual aggressive punch. Playful. My heart rate elevates, and a gooey sensation starts to take form in the pit of my stomach. Something like high-fructose corn syrup . . . and bile.
I could linger in the moment. You know, flirt back? But I flinch. “I can’t talk about this anymore. It’s exhausting. Can we, like, go watch the Rangers or something?” I push my body away from the island, from where his energy is strongest.
“Yeah, fine. But don’t you feel good that you can hang with someone who’s going to one of the top teams in the country?”
“Percy, don’t you get it? I know I’m a good basketball player.”
* * *
We watch the beginning of the second period of the Rangers game in darkness on the futon in his bedroom. Normally we’d be stoned and laughing at something ridiculous. Or sitting on the edge of our seats, cursing out the Rangers or their opponents on the screen. But this time the room is quiet. Tense. We’re both awkwardly leaning against the back of the futon. I’m sitting with my legs crossed and my hands clasped together, shoved in between my thighs. Percy’s spread-eagled. Isn’t that the way? Girls always make themselves smaller, more compact, while boys always take up as much space as possible. Why is that? Do we think we don’t deserve the same amount of space in the world? Are we afraid they won’t like us if we do?
I don’t look over at him. I don’t sneak any peeks at his face or his body the way I normally would. He’s paying too close at
tention to my movements. To his movements. Is this what life is like not stoned? All nerve endings? I think about those pictures of body-heat sensors in last year’s chem textbook. I must be flaring red right now.
And then, suddenly, with no warning, we’re kissing. I think I’m the one who starts it but I’m not sure. My body seems to have dissociated from my cerebral cortex, and suddenly I’m all id and impulse. I straddle Percy on his futon, press my lips against his. He tastes salty, with a hint of artificial lime flavoring. I can’t tell if Percy’s kissing me because he likes me or if it’s because he’s a slut and I’m in front of him. His kiss feels like sandpaper—a detail Violet didn’t include in her painting of the vermilion border because she only paints women. On men there’s stubble lining the lips. It’s not unpleasant. I want it to feel like warm stars dying on my face. But it feels like a kiss. The voices of the guys in the booth on MSG tether me to the room. Sam Rosen’s saying something both sycophantic and true about Mark Messier. Skates smack ice. I moan softly and put both my hands on his face because I once saw someone very sexy do that in a movie and I think that’s what you’re supposed to do when you kiss someone. Percy pulls my hips down tight against his and I can feel his erection through his jeans and my basketball warm-ups. Something flutters in me. There’s a wetness in my underwear, and I wonder if he can feel that too. The light emanating from the TV turns the world a staccato blue, which makes it sound more romantic than it is. He wraps his arm around my waist and flips me onto my back on the couch. Between my legs, he pushes his pelvis into mine and dry humps me, but his hard-on is rubbing against the base of my inner thigh. I wonder if this is on purpose or if he just doesn’t know female anatomy as well as he claims he does. Demi Moore wrapped her legs around Patrick Swayze’s waist in Ghost, so I do that too. Percy’s button fly is really starting to irritate my skin under my warm-ups, but I don’t say anything because here I am, finally getting what I’ve always wanted. Someone’s gotten a penalty. The blaring sound of the crowd expands and contracts in his bedroom as it seeps out of the speakers in his tiny plastic television set. His hand paws at my left breast. He tries to get under my sports bra, but it’s too tight. He kind of sighs in frustration and sits me up and pulls my shirt off over my head and then yanks my sports bra off in the same way. Sam Rosen’s joking now about one of the producers in the booth, saying, “You can always count on old Sully to have a mustache.” No one has ever seen my breasts before. And here I am. Topless in front of Percy, who is still fully dressed because I’m completely terrified to remove any of his clothing. I’m waiting for him to gently lay me down on the couch and look at me and tell me how beautiful I am. Because isn’t that what guys are supposed to say before sex? Even if it isn’t true and he’s just saying it to try to get me to give it up, I still want to hear it. But he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t even look at my face. Hockey players crash into the boards, and it sounds like bodies being dropped from rooftops. He sits on his knees and takes his shirt off. I guess he’s figured out I was never going to do it. I’ve seen him shirtless before. It’s not like I don’t know what he looks like. But I’ve always wanted to run my hands down his chest and stomach. And so I do. My fingertips. God, my fingertips. The Rangers have a two-man advantage and the puck is traveling around the ice with precision. I hear it plinking from stick to stick. Percy takes my pants off and accidentally on purpose my underwear goes with it. So I’m naked except for my socks, which I take off because I’m sure they look ridiculous. I’m scared he doesn’t think I have a nice body. That my breasts are too small in proportion to the rest of me. That my waist isn’t small enough. That I’m too straight and boyish. What an unfair thing a body is. How can a body be something so incredible in one situation and so awful in another? My body is a work of art on a basketball court. I know what I look like there. I know how it moves in space. How time and light and air kneel to make room for me. It feels so good then. It feels so right, of a piece with the rest of me. But in a bedroom. On a couch. How different it is. How out of place. How jagged and frayed. Nothing smooth or poetic about it. Some skin and birthmarks and elbows and lumps in assemblage. A body isn’t just a vessel. It is everything. The power play pays off. The Rangers score. The room turns red from the rotating light over the goal. Percy feels at my breasts with one hand, and with the other undoes his belt and slips out of his pants without even having to undo a button. Now the only thing between us is the flimsy cotton of his boxers. If he’s looked at my body, my face, I haven’t noticed. He lays on top of me and burrows his face in my neck and rubs against me. Harder and harder and harder. He doesn’t kiss me, though I keep turning my face toward his a little more whenever I have the opportunity so that maybe he gets the hint. But he doesn’t. I think about what Kit says to Vivian in Pretty Woman about how you never kiss a john. “Do you have a condom?” I say quietly. He gets up off the couch and trots over to his bedside table. I don’t know what to do, naked, by myself on the futon. I take my warm-up jacket from off the floor and cover myself with it. I face the TV for a moment and watch the face-off. It’s a relief to divert my attention to something other than what’s happening in real life, in this room, where the TV is. I look back at Percy standing by his bed. His spine juts out of his back as he bends over to fish out a condom from his bedside table. When he comes back to me, I’m going to feel that with the palm of my hand and memorize it forever. “The Rangers scored,” I say. He looks me in the eyes as he makes his way back to the couch, pulling the condom out of its packet, but he doesn’t say anything back. Who are you? What are you thinking? The greatest mystery that will never, ever be solved no matter how sophisticated science gets is the mystery of other people. We’ll cure cancer before I ever figure Percy out. He sits down on the couch and pulls his boxers off and puts on the condom. My knees are up, so I can’t see what’s going on, and I’m glad for it. I’m not sure I want to look. The Garden’s organ is in a crescendo. Bum-bum-bum. Bum-bum-bum. He pulls the jacket off my body and leans over. Rubs his hand in between my legs, which startles me. He looks up at me and hesitates for a second, but doesn’t say anything. It’s too intense, so I close my eyes. He takes that to mean I’m ready, and I feel him slowly move inside me. My eyes open with the shock of it. Violet once read me this passage in a book of feminist essays that says that all sex, even good sex, is violence just because of the way our bodies are made. I should have known it would feel this way. I grit my teeth together. I feel my neck muscles tensing with every move he makes. He stops and looks at me for a second and says, “You okay?” I go, “Yeah, yeah, it’s okay.” “You sure?” he asks, and I nod. He continues. In and out. In and out. Each time feels worse than the last. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t last long,” he whispers into my ear. I know he knows I’m a virgin. And he knows I know he’s been referred to by his friends as the “Virgin Surgeon” as a joke. I wonder how many times he’s had to do this exact routine with other girls. I wonder if they all liked him as much as I do. I try to concentrate on the game so that I can dissociate from the pain. The play-by-play guy is saying, “Yessir, Messier got his bell rung on that one. He’s shaking it off. Tough as nails, that guy is. Tough as nails,” and I think about all the boring adjectives people use to describe athletes and how broadcasters’ only job is to recycle hack expressions to fill about three hours of airtime. “You almost done?” I ask, near tears. He moves faster and harder, and then he exhales and lies motionless on top of me, breathing hot air into my shoulder. And it’s over. Alexis told me you have to make sure the guy pulls out before he goes soft so that the condom doesn’t leak inside you, so I gently push him off me. One tear streams down the side of my cheek, and I quickly wipe it off before he has the chance to notice.
* * *
On the futon, there is nowhere to go except to be pressed into each other, and there is a bit of a slant, so gravity pulls my body toward his, nestled into the nook of the mattress, and in that moment it seems to me that there is nothing in the world as essential as the
weight of a man against your body. My face presses directly into the meat of his shoulder, and I notice for the first time the faint stretch marks he has on his skin. And I marvel at what that means, that his skin couldn’t handle how quickly he grew and his muscles developed. I graze my lips against the little white lines on his shoulder just because I want to feel whether their texture is different from the rest of his skin, because the lips, like the fingertips, have the highest concentration of nerve endings in the body.
