Like a Love Story

by Abdi Nazemian

  Having him in my arms, and in my darkroom, feels more intimate than anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s like he’s inside my beating heart, and our hearts are becoming one.

  And then I say it. I don’t even think about it. I blurt it out because I have to.

  “I love you.”

  There. It feels like a relief. The words linger in the air.

  His eyes dart away from my gaze, but I can see him blushing. I love seeing him blush. He sighs and then he kisses me. When he pulls away, he whispers, “I love you too. I’ve wanted to say it so many times.”

  “Me too, so many times,” I whisper. I can’t believe this is happening, that he actually feels the same way I do.

  I love him. He loves me. We said it, and the magic spell didn’t wear off. I still want to kiss him, hold him, protect him. I need to feel his skin against mine. I try to pull his shirt off, but he resists. I make a decision. I can’t control what he takes off, but I can choose what I take off. I remove my T-shirt. Then I pull my jeans off over my sneakers.

  “Art,” he whispers.

  I ignore him. There’s one thing left to take off. My boxer briefs. I remove them. I stand in front of him, exposed.

  “Art,” he says again, a little louder.

  “Shh . . . ,” I say. “Just look at me.”

  “I thought the chemicals could . . .”

  “I kept my shoes on,” I say. “There are no rules posted about anything else.”

  I approach him again, press my nakedness against his clothes. We kiss, but he’s holding back.

  “Please,” I say, with desperation. “I need you.”

  “I need you too. . . .” He trails off.

  “Just touch me,” I say, as gently as I can in the heat of this moment. “Let’s start there. You won’t get anything from touching. I promise.” I push my knuckles into the knots in his back, trying to release his tension.

  “I’m afraid that if I touch you . . . that it will make me want more. That if I touch you, I will want to taste you. And if I taste you, then . . . if I open the door, then I won’t know how to close it again. . . . Because I want you more than anything.”

  “We don’t have to close the door,” I say. “Never. Don’t you see how lucky we are? We were born at exactly the right time to protect ourselves.”

  “But what if that’s not true?” he asks. “What if there is another virus waiting in the wings? What if condoms turn out not to work? What if this is only the beginning of something even worse?”

  “Please,” I say. “Please just kiss me.”

  He does, but it’s tentative. I want it to feel free, unhinged, passionate. I want to be an animal, to roar.

  “Art,” he says tentatively, “I’m serious. What if AIDS is our warning that something even worse is around the bend?”

  “What if AIDS is our warning that life is short?” I ask. “What if it’s telling us that we should love when we have the chance?”

  “I do love you,” he says. “So much. Now that we’ve said it, I want to keep repeating it. I love you.”

  “Then don’t let fear run your life,” I say. “Look at me. I’m standing naked in front of you. I’m yours. I’m all yours.”

  Something shifts in him. He softens. He runs his hands down my chest, his touch so warm. “What if we just hold each other?” he asks. He looks so beautiful illuminated by the red glow of the lights.

  I melt into him, my head on his shoulder. The smell of him merging with the chemicals makes me dizzy. And then I cry. I can’t help it. The tears just flow. I want to tell him that this isn’t what love is supposed to feel like. I want to tell him that love is supposed to soar, to be weightless. Our love is so heavy, full of fear.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, with a sudden laugh. “These are tears of joy. Seriously. I’m just so happy that I want more happiness.”

  “We’ll have more happiness,” he says. “So much more happiness.”

  He cradles my face in his hands and kisses my tears. Then he wraps my head in his arms and holds me tight.

  Judy

  How did I get here? I’m not the girl who goes to high school parties with her girlfriends. I’m not the girl who even has girlfriends. But I’m standing next to my new friend Annabel de la Roche in her gorgeous two-story apartment, currently vacated by her parents, who had to go to Geneva for some kind of gala. Annabel’s dad makes watches, like really expensive ones that cost more than my apartment. They have a safe deposit box full of them, and not even Annabel knows the code to it. When it was just Art and me, it was so easy to judge everyone else at school because we didn’t need anybody else. I judged Annabel for always dressing in beiges and grays and always wearing dewy makeup, and obviously, I judged her for dating that asshole Darryl Lorde freshman year. It’s easy to judge people when you don’t talk to them, and I never said much to Annabel. But then, just before Christmas, she saw me sitting alone in the cafeteria, since I had no friends left, reading a guidebook to Paris. She told me Paris is her favorite place in the whole world, and that she has family there. She sat next to me and told me all about these restaurants I had to eat at. Like, a steakhouse so popular that you have to wait in line for an hour to eat there, but that’s totally worth it ’cause of some magical green sauce they drape onto the steak. And a hole-in-the-wall patisserie where I would find the very best almond croissants and pain au chocolat. And a Moroccan restaurant where you sit on the floor in patterned banquettes and where you must order the pigeon pie. And meanwhile, I was sitting there listening to her and thinking that I didn’t even know Annabel ate food. I thought she was one of those skinny girls who subsisted on raisins and V8. And she’s going on and on about steak and pigeon, and I’m thinking that Art doesn’t even eat meat, and that maybe I have more in common with Annabel de la Roche than I do with Bartholomew Emerson Grant VI. She asked me to bring her some stuff back from Paris. Little macaron cookies from her favorite place, and some copies of French fashion magazines she loves.

  That’s how it started with Annabel. I brought her the stuff back, and she thanked me by getting me an Anna Sui choker as a gift. And I was like, how does this girl who wears the most boring clothes I’ve ever seen even know who the fiercest new underground designer is? And how did she pick such a badass choker for me? I think that’s when Annabel told me that she always loved my style, and that she wished she had the confidence to dress like me. I was so confused. I mean, I wished I had her body, and her perfect features, and her ease with the world, her ability to glide instead of stomp. But she was jealous of me? So we became friends. We shop together. We talk boys together. We’ve somehow gotten on the same cycle. We flip through the pages of French, American, Italian, and Japanese fashion magazines together. Sometimes we hang out with Annabel’s other girlfriends—Cindy, Verena, Briana (I know, they sound like supermodels, and they look like ’em too)—but I’ve realized that Annabel’s friendship with these girls is pretty surface. That the person she feels the closest to is me.

  Annabel’s having a party, and about twenty seniors are here. The whole penthouse apartment is full of hormonal teenagers, most of them drunk on the fruit punch that Annabel made, then spiked with her parents’ vodka. “It’s top-shelf,” she told me. “So it won’t give you a hangover.” She convinced me to take a sip before the party started, “to loosen up.” The party is fun. That sip of fruit punch did loosen me up. Annabel made a super-fun playlist, and there’s a small dance floor in the kitchen. When Wilson Phillips’s “Hold On” comes on, Annabel and I belt it out together and dance. Our voices sound awful, but it’s so much fun. Then Cindy, Verena, and Briana join us and we’re like a girl group. Everyone watches us and claps when we’re done. Seriously, I don’t know how I got here. I always thought I hated girls, and now I’m group-hugging a bunch of them like they’re my long-lost sisters. The next song that comes on is Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and a group of the guys, including Saadi, decide they’re going to challenge our performance. T
hey line up in a row and sing the lyrics to the song, screaming out all the references to Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe and Roy Cohn and Brigitte Bardot. I have a pang of missing Art. If Art were here, he’d whisper in my ear, “Do you think any of these meatheads even knows who Doris Day is? They probably think that’s just D-Day’s full name or something.” Art’s voice disappears from my head when Annabel whispers in my ear, “These guys are worse than the New Kids on the Block.”

  “They certainly do not have the right stuff,” I say, and she laughs. That’s another thing I like about her. She’s generous with her laughter.

  “Do you feel the punch?” she asks.

  “I mean, a little bit, I think,” I say.

  “Come on,” she says. “One more cup.”

  “One more sip,” I counter.

  “My sister told me that the best thing you can do before college starts is build up a tolerance to booze. Otherwise, you’ll get there and be way behind everyone else.” She scoops some punch into a clear plastic cup and hands it to me. Then she refills her own.

  “I guess I was never planning on majoring in alcohol in college,” I say.

  “Well, you can minor in it,” she says with a mischievous smile.

  I smile as I sip the punch. I don’t know what being drunk feels like, but I’m just a little more vibrant, a little more alive, like I have a light on inside me illuminating me from within. I feel creative, inspired. I wonder whether vodka punch can replace ice cream as my inspiration food of choice, and which one has more calories. “I wish you’d let me make you over,” I tell Annabel. “You would look so fierce in, like, a body-hugging black dress with hot-pink slashes across it.”

  She laughs. “I would need, like, five more cups of punch before I’d wear anything like that.”

  “It’s not about that,” I say. “You know I heard that Madonna doesn’t even drink or do drugs or anything. And look at what she wears!”

  “Judy,” she says, “I hate to break it to you, but I am so not Madonna.”

  Almost on cue, “Vogue” comes through the speakers, and everyone just has to dance. I bet Art and Reza love this song. I think back to that drag ball Uncle Stephen took me and Art to ages ago. It all feels so far away. I practically scream all the lyrics out as I dance, and each time Madonna mentions the name of an old movie star, I have a flash of a Sunday movie night with Stephen and Art. I think of all the movies we’ve watched. Uncle Stephen and I still have movie nights, and Jimmy joins us sometimes. But it’s not the same without Art.

  When the song ends, Cindy grabs the now-empty bottle of vodka and yells, “HEY, SUCKERS, LET’S PLAY SPIN THE BOTTLE!”

  God, no. Please no. This will not end well.

  Everyone else seems to love the idea and, in a flash, a bunch of dudes move furniture off the living room rug. A circle forms. Everyone agrees that as the hostess, Annabel should spin the bottle first and then we’ll go clockwise. Of course I sit next to Annabel, counterclockwise, so I’ll be the last to spin that stupid bottle. The game begins. Annabel spins first and it lands on Verena. And to my surprise, they giggle, go to the center of the circle, and kiss each other. What I discover as the game goes on is that girls can kiss boys, and boys can kiss girls, and girls can kiss girls. But boys can’t kiss boys. If a boy spins and it lands on another boy, they laugh, go, “Ewwwwww, gross” for a while, and then spin again. I’m so happy Art isn’t here right now. He’d definitely go into some diatribe about the homophobia of high school party games.

  Luckily, the tip of the bottle seems to avoid me for the first few spins. I pray I will keep being spared. I also pray that the game will end before my turn arrives, that some amazing song will get everyone back on the dance floor. But then Darryl spins, with a lot of force, and the bottle turns and turns for an eternity, and Darryl goes, “Come on, no whammies,” and then the bottle slows down and lands on . . . me.

  “Judy!!!!!!!” Verena squeals.

  I must grimace, because Darryl says, “Hey, I don’t have cooties.”

  It’s hard not to think that when he says he doesn’t have cooties, he’s really saying he doesn’t have AIDS.

  I turn to Annabel and whisper, “I don’t think I should. I mean, he’s your ex . . .”

  “It’s just a game,” she says, cutting me off. “And you’d be surprised. He’s a decent kisser.”

  My name is still being chanted. Reluctantly, I head to the center of the circle until I’m facing Darryl Lorde. We’re both on our knees, our faces close to each other. I can smell his breath. It smells like alcohol, Cool Ranch Doritos, and hate. Thoughts stream through my head, but one resonates more loudly than the others: that this will be my first kiss with a heterosexual guy. How absurd is that, and how awful would it be to have to always know my first kiss with a straight person was with this high school Roy Cohn?

  As Darryl moves his lips close to mine, I turn away. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” I say.

  “Seriously?” he says. “Do you only kiss fags?”

  A few people laugh uncomfortably. I hear a few ohs, and oh, shits.

  I stare Darryl straight in the eyes, like I have lasers in my pupils. “I’m just a little worried that bigotry is contagious,” I say.

  What have you done, Judy? It was just a game. This is what normal kids do.

  I make a beeline to the fruit punch and I scoop a huge cup for myself. I chug it. It burns the back of my throat a little bit, but I don’t care.

  “Hey,” Annabel, who followed me, says. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know that was awkward.”

  “Why are you sorry? I wish I could tell him off like that. Nobody keeps him in check.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “He wasn’t as bad when we dated,” she says. “I mean, he was still kind of awful, but not like a full-blown asshole yet. He got so much worse after his parents’ divorce. Not that there’s any excuse for the shit he says and does.”

  The spin the bottle game has ended, but a few people loaf on the living room rug together. Some are on the couches, making out. A few people dance. There seem to be two Annabels in front of me. “I think, um, I need to lie down,” I say.

  “Come on,” she says. She grabs a huge bottle of Evian from the pantry and leads me upstairs. “I think bottled water is the stupidest thing in the world, but my mom insists on buying it by the case.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say. Her words echo like we’re in a cave.

  “Do you know Evian spells naive backward?” she asks. “What more evidence do you need?”

  “Do you know that words that spell other words backward are called heteropalindromes?” I ask as she leads me up the stairs.

  “Seriously?” she asks.

  “Seriously,” I say. “I have no idea why. Like, what’s a homopalindrome, then?”

  We reach her bedroom. It has huge windows with views of the Manhattan skyline. “You can lie down here,” she says.

  “I told my parents I’d be home by ten,” I say.

  “You still have half an hour,” she says. “Trust me, drink that whole bottle of naive water and lie down. You don’t want your parents to see you like this.”

  I stare out at the skyline. “Do you think gay people are just naturally cooler than straight people?” I ask.

  “What? You’re so weird,” she says.

  “I’m serious,” I say. “Think about it.”

  She gives me a kiss on the forehead and says, “Water. Rest. I’ll check in on you soon.”

  I lie down on her bed when she leaves, with its crisp white sheets. Her room looks like a hotel room. I close my eyes. I have no idea how long I’m out for when I hear the door open and then a deep voice say, “Sorry, I was just looking for another bathroom.” I look to the side and see it’s Saadi. He’s stumbling and slurring a little bit. “I think Bobby and Rachel are hooking up in the downstairs bathroom, which is really rude to people who need to, you know, piss.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess.”r />
  “My mom refuses to go to a party in an apartment with less than three bathrooms,” Saadi says.

  “That’s smart,” I say. I don’t know if I mean it. I’m just making conversation. And hearing about his mom reminds me that his stepmom is Reza’s mom. Weird.

  “You mind if I piss here?” he asks.

  “If by here you mean in Annabel’s toilet, then sure,” I say.

  He goes into her bathroom but doesn’t close the door. I can hear him pee. When he’s done, he comes back into the bedroom and sits on the edge of the bed. “Hey,” he says. “You doing okay?”

  “You didn’t wash your hands,” I say.

  “So?” he asks. “It’s not like I pissed on my hands.”

  “It really is an epidemic,” I say.

  “What is?” he asks.

  I think back to Art telling me that straight guys never wash their hands after they pee. But I just say, “Nothing.”

  Then he puts his unwashed hand on my arm, and says. “So, you like Persian dudes?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “You liked the little prince,” he says. “And he’s like a scrawnier, less attractive version of me.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Are you . . .”

  Is he hitting on you, Judy? Is this how straight guys hit on girls?

  “I always thought you were hot,” he says. “I don’t get why girls are so skinny these days. Dudes want something to hold on to.”

  “Um, thanks?”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I guess I’m a little confused,” I say. “Since you like to make cracks about my weight.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” he says. “I can be a dick.”

  “A major one,” I say.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks.

  I don’t even know what I’m thinking. Too many things. That despite my better judgment, I’m a little turned on. That hooking up with Saadi would be the ultimate revenge on Reza, and that maybe that’s the best reason to go through with it. That any other girl at this party would definitely take this opportunity. “Nothing,” I say.