by Lola West
Raina shot me a look of confusion. “Perhaps they grow freshmen different on that farm where you hail from but around here, itty bitty fresh faces are like unicorns, all sparkly and pure and full of potential magic.” She talked with her hands, her fingers flaring in front of her. Then she grew more serious. “Literally half of these brainiacs have never heard the word feminism, and I’d reckon that even those that have heard of feminism are afraid of it or think that women have already attained equality, or even more genius, they think that social justice is”—air quotes and a valley girl voice—“like a bummer.”
As she finished her speech, two such unicorns approached the table. My only real understanding of a freshman was Chrystal, who as far as I was concerned exemplified knowing one’s mind, perhaps too well. However, these two girls weren’t poised and monstrously determined like Chrystal. Instead, they kind of reminded me of myself earlier in the day, crying at my own reflection. One was tall and thin, the other petite and curvy. They looked like children who were playing at being adults—wearing makeup and jeans, flipping their hair, smiling a lot. Despite physical differences, somehow they came off as drones or clones, nondescript, like they were desperately trying to look like everyone else, trying too hard to fit in. They seemed both endlessly interested and ridiculously bored, like their interest could be perceived as unattractive so rather than be judged, they were trying to downplay every reaction.
Raina introduced herself and then me and gave the girls a little spiel about the difference between gender and sex, noting that sex was biological parts, but gender was something that we performed based on the culture’s definitions of what was masculine and what was feminine. The two girls both confirmed that they defined themselves as feminine, and then Raina asked if they thought that their gender definition was a source of privilege or oppression. Neither one gave a very complicated answer. They kind of looked at each other and giggled and then said that they loved being girls… so privilege. I took a deep yogic breath through my nose and started repeating the mantra unicorns over and over in my head. Raina was masterful, patient and calm, never making either girl feel silly or stupid. She respectfully disagreed with them, and then she turned to me. I had already marked that my gender was a source of oppression for me, so like Chris before her, Raina asked me to explain my perspective.
I imagine that Raina was hoping for a few sentences but once I got going, I couldn’t stop. There was so much just under the surface of my skin. There were these two uninformed unicorns in front of me who desperately needed awakening; there was crazy-Chrystal’s weird helpful anger; there was Isaac’s sympathy, and Raina’s joy, and then there was Drew. Fucking Drew. I felt angry and passionate, broiling with anxiety, and I needed to push all that warped energy out of my chest before I exploded. Feminism was something I knew. It was something I could rant about all day, so I did.
At first, I discussed laws, like the fact that despite the efforts of activists since 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment, a law that would make it so that the constitution guarantees equal rights to women, repeatedly comes up for a vote in Congress and repeatedly it is denied. Then I talked about the double standard and slut shaming. I mentioned that a guy gets egged on and cheered for his sexual desire and expression of that desire, while women get ridiculed and demeaned. Next, I was on to the example of playground bullying, noting that a bully will likely call a dude a ‘pussy’ on the playground to demean him, in other words, a bully will call a dude a vagina, or if you will a girl, to point out male weakness, which implies that for a man or a boy, being a girl means being less than a man. Three points in, a crowd started to gather around the gender table, making me realize that perhaps I was a little out of control, so I capped off my feverous tizzy with a riddle which I directed at the two freshmen unicorns even though I knew others were listening, “A man and his son are in a car accident. The man is killed. The son is brought into the hospital in critical condition. The doctor takes one look at the boy and says, ‘I can’t operate. He’s my son.’ Who is the doctor?”
Raina knowingly smiled. The freshmen quirked their faces, struggling to answer. A voice or two from the crowd whispered, and then I heard him. Behind me, Drew cleared his throat, and then as if his voice was a deep resonating beacon summoning my glance, he said, “It’s his mother.”
I smiled. I didn’t look back, but I smiled.
One of the unicorns, the curvy one, dropped her jaw. For a second, I thought she had caught sight of Drew and was going all gaga over his appearance. A spark of jealousy started to flare in my chest, but it extinguished quickly when she turned to me, eyes gaping wide, shaking her head, her face all twisted in confusion.
“How did we not see that?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s the word doctor, it implies man. Just like nurse implies woman. Director, dentist, boss, captain, general, all positions of power, all assumed to be men.”
She turned to Raina. “Do you have an eraser?”
Handing her the eraser, Raina smiled at me. “See, it’s like a video game—potential unicorn magic triggered. Level up and recharge, Lua, the next round could happen at any time.”
The girl looked up in confusion, but when she realized that Raina was talking to me, she just went back to un-circling privilege and circling oppression.
At around noon, the first half of the orientation ended, and as directed by Isaac and Raina, we all moved into an adjacent room, which was set up like a dining hall. A buffet table, covered in platters of catered sandwiches and other goodies, was surrounded by ten or so empty tables where people could sit and eat. I’d been told that on a college campus, free food drew a crowd and this turnout seemed to confirm that idea. There were about fifty people there. Maybe sixty. Like cattle, everyone gravitated toward the food, lining up to grab a plate and claim their lunch, but I hung back. I wasn’t super hungry and standing in line seemed silly. I could sit, be patient, and go up once the frenzy calmed down. I grabbed a chair at one of the tables in the back corner and without really thinking about it, scanned the line for Drew. I told myself that I wanted to know where he was so I could make a plan to strategically avoid him.
He was standing in line with his back to me. As soon as my eyes landed on him, I erred toward ogling and forgot all about planning my escape. It was the first time all day that I could watch him without hesitation. Believe me, I didn’t miss the span of his shoulders shifting and pulling against the blue fabric of his shirt, but it was the bobbing of his head—just a little bounce—that really caught my eye. He was dancing. Not like full-on free-spirited body invigoration dancing. Nothing like that at all. It was just, a little tiny rhythm coursing through his muscles. I spotted the telltale white glimmer of an earbud peeking out of his right ear, and I wondered what he was listening to. Instantly, I wanted to dance with him, to feel him pressed up against me. At first my thoughts of dancing were very ’50s prom style, cheek to cheek, slow and rocking, and then my thinking shifted to the madness of feeling him grind against me in the flashing lights and mind-numbing loudness of a club. That was all it took, two seconds of imagining my body pressed and pulsing with his, and I was lit up like a neon sign, goose bumps all over, breathing erratic, skin flushing. I bit my lip and squeezed my knees together.
Drew leaned over the buffet table to grab something just out of his reach and his shirt rode up a little, allowing me a tiny glimpse of the skin and muscle that lived just above the waistline of his pants. Anyone looking at him saw it, but for me it was so intimate. It was a part of his body I had touched and wanted to touch. It was a reminder that he was off-limits, and then it was a news flash. He hurt me. He was still hurting me and somehow, I kept losing sight of that; it was kind of like having amnesia. I mean not really like having amnesia because I imagine that’s totally bizarro. It must feel very sci-fi-crazy to look in the mirror and not recognize your own face. So perhaps amnesia is a little too bold of a comparison. All I’m saying is that being in Drew’s airspace made me
an idiot with no sense of self-preservation.
Desperate to escape the pull I felt toward Drew, I shifted my glance away from him, and for the first time, I really took in everything that was going on around him. While Drew innocently bobbed his head and took his food, the people in his vicinity kept their distance, but not without openly staring and whispering. It was almost as if the line stopped and held back, letting him peruse the food offerings solo. Every time he grabbed something or contemplated a food choice, they glared and spoke in hushed tones. My two fresh-faced unicorns were in the bunch, so for a second I thought that the behavior of the crowd could possibly be people being all girly giggling at him, all flirtsy and such, but it wasn’t like that at all. This was judgment; this was fifty or sixty supposedly open-minded people eyeing him up and down, only to brand him as utterly unworthy.
Despite their disdain, Drew carried himself like a pro. He filled his plate, poured himself a soda, smiled if he made eye contact, never flinched, never shuttered, never showed a flicker of the way it must have felt to be so utterly unwelcome. Once he had his food, he crossed the room, finding a seat at an empty table, just about as far from me as he could be. When he was seated, the momentum of the food gathering returned to its normal pace, but as the hungry took their seats, they avoided the table where Drew was sitting. In contrast, the table that I was seated at seemed to be like a magnet. One by one the chairs filled with smiling faces, all eager to meet me and introduce themselves. I wasn’t into it. I kind of hated them all. I hated that they were treating Drew like a leper. I hated that these were the people who were supposed to be open-minded and accepting and they hadn’t even given him a chance.
I stood and excused myself from the table, taking everything that was mine with me. I had no intention of returning to that seat. I drifted toward the food line with purpose. I still wasn’t really hungry, but I didn’t want the real reason I left the table to show, so heading in that direction gave me purpose. By that point there were very few people still getting food, so I just kinda lingered there like I was scoping the offerings.
Raina and Isaac, who had been nowhere to be found since they ushered us from the former orientation space into this one, entered the room. Both had their lips wrapped around old school silver whistles, like the kind that gym teachers always have in the movies. Prepping to command the crowd’s attention, I watched Raina silently count to three with her fingers, and then they simultaneously blew. The whistles squealed. It was effective; all heads turned in their direction. Dropping the whistle from her mouth, Raina opened her arms and said, “Welcome to S.A.F.E.’s fall orientation!”
A smattering of applause drifted about the room before she continued. “For those of you who don’t know, I’m Raina, S.A.F.E.’s student director, and this is Isaac, my second-in-command slash counselor.” She paused and then cupping her face as if she were dramatically sharing a secret with the whole room, she added, “He has some other official title that I religiously forget because I like to think of S.A.F.E. as the U.S.S. Enterprise, and in my dream scenario, I’m Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard and Isaac serves as both Riker and Troi, a daring gender queering combo. He’s unstoppable.”
Isaac rolled his eyes at her, but Raina was undeniable. She commanded your attention with her charisma and utter confidence. Somehow, she stood up there and rattled on about stuff that should have been very perfunctory and honestly boring. Rules and regulations, the organization’s goals, the details of membership, and yet all the people in the room listened, smiled, and laughed. She didn’t talk for very long, maybe ten minutes or so, but still it was impressive. Once she had moved beyond what she called the ‘nuts, bolts, and no-no’s,’ she handed the reins to Isaac, who was equally impressive albeit in a much less dramatic way. He wasn’t crass or goofy or brazen; he was sturdy, smart, and organized. His smile was reassuring, and his tone created the sense that this was a community, a safe space, no pun intended.
It was Isaac’s job to introduce the next phase of the orientation exercises. They had told us to keep our privilege/oppression index cards, and now it looked like we were going to pair off and discuss our choices one-on-one; the only catch was we weren’t allowed to partner with someone who had exactly the same ideas as we did.
With a grounded resonance and slight smile, Isaac noted, “We aren’t asking you to make nice with strangers. We are asking you to embrace what S.A.F.E. stands for, open dialogue and respect. Feel free to argue and disagree, but exercise your intellects. Recognize that only when we figure out how to embrace difference, do we fully grow.”
This time Raina rolled her eyes at him. “Thank you, Buddha-Sir.” Again, she did the weird whisper aside thing to the crowd. “His enlightened state of being would be totally awe-inspiring if I wasn’t so fucking jealous.” Laughter rippled through the crowd. And then, as per Isaac’s instructions, people started pairing off.
I’d been standing off to the side while they were talking so I quickly busied myself with making a plate of food. I wasn’t ready to pair off just yet. Glances shifted in my direction, and I could tell people wanted to partner with me. The table I had been sitting at seemed to be at a standstill, paused, waiting for me to return, waiting to see who would be lucky enough to capture my attention. A part of me was flabbergasted and honestly kind of exuberant to find that they were eager to befriend me, but then there was this other part of me that was enraged, because literally no one moved in Drew’s direction.
Drew remained seated. He kept a pleasant, placid expression on his face, like he was completely unfazed by what was happening. My guess was that Drew wasn’t used to being unwanted. I couldn’t imagine that he was often the unpopular kid or the kid who got picked last for a soccer scrimmage. But somehow holding his own in the face of rejection suited him. He was bold and magnificent. He didn’t back down or appear weakened. It didn’t matter if his confidence was real or performed. It was powerful. He didn't come off as the monster they were making him out to be. He was exactly what Isaac had asked for, open and ready to exercise his intellect. I recognized him. He was the boy on the bed, my Drew.
I glanced quickly in Raina and Isaac’s direction, both seemed focused on Drew and they were conferring, perhaps trying to find a solution for the situation at hand. I’d gotten the idea that they were going to hover, circle the room facilitating, drifting in and out of conversations, so neither of them was clear to take on Drew as a partner. My guess was that they would tap one of the other veteran members of S.A.F.E., one of the cowards who was staying seated, hoping to avoid the possibility of being paired with Drew.
Fuck that.
25
Drew
One of the smiling assholes from that table Lua had been sitting at started to approach her, but before he got within speaking distance, she turned away from him and made a beeline for me. She looked determined, intense, and militant, like she’d sounded when she rescued me from my attackers at Bonnaroo. It was a bold choice. Completely unexpected, and it made me want to fucking stand up and cheer. In all honesty, up until she turned and drove full force in my direction, I was having a shit day.
Raina was fine and that Isaac dude seemed okay, even if he was a little too interested in Lua, but overall, the people at the orientation were not feeling me. Raina had tried to warn me that her crew wasn’t into having me around, but still I wasn’t totally prepared for their drafty and cool reception. I could be wrong but after my completely out of control exchange with Isaac (Not Lua, I didn’t actually talk to Lua.), I almost touched her, but somehow, I maintained my oath not to speak directly to her, obviously a technicality, but true nonetheless. Anyway, after that exchange with Isaac, I don’t think one person had said more than a handful of words to me.
I hoped that Raina had asked them all to be respectful toward me, like she’d asked me to be toward them. In that scenario, they universally decided that the only way to honor Raina’s wishes was to follow the kindergarten adage, if you don’t have anything nice to
say, then don’t say anything at all. But honestly, it seemed more likely that they were just a bunch of hypocritical assholes, like everyone else. Still, I took my cues from them. I quietly wandered from table to table, trying to listen to conversations without interjecting my opinions, but as soon as I got close, the exchanges grew tense and quiet. Eventually, I did what I really wanted to do. I shadowed Lua.
As usual, she blew my mind. Sure, she looked achingly beautiful. Sure, that dress she was wearing was short, and I had a hard time keeping myself from imagining what it would feel like to let my hands drift over her thighs, up under the hem. Sure, I repeatedly wondered if I could get close enough to smell her without being a gross creeper. Sure, there was a moment when she pulled her hair up, and I’d caught myself staring at the nape of her neck, desperate to walk up behind her, press my body against hers, and hear that little sound she made when my lips made contact with the soft spot just north and to the left of her shoulder blade. But what blew my mind wasn’t any of that.
What blew my mind was Lua being Lua.
She was smart, poised, and passionate. She knew her shit. When she talked about something she believed in, she was ferocious—fierce and powerful, like a predator, an undeniable wild cat, only not scary at all. She was a force of nature. It was like watching tigers hunt on the Discovery Channel. One of those moments when instead of categorizing their kills as violent, you recognize their aggression, precision, and skill as a necessary part of the food chain. It was fucking majestic. That’s what Lua was, majestic, regal even. I was a politician’s kid. I knew majesty when I saw it. Only she wasn’t a fucking asshole like all the politicians I knew. Her arguments were down-to-earth, things the senator would call idealism, but she made them using such practical, powerful examples.
