by Mara White
In group therapy there’s this one bald white guy, he’s got to be around fifty years old. He wears a leather vest and he’s got a tat in the middle of his forehead. I just stare at him, wondering where this dude went wrong. When he talks he doesn’t sound like he’s crazy, but he musta been at some point. He pegs me right away as his amigo and we smoke outside together between breaks for coffee. He’s the only person here I tell about Belén. He’s cool and he gets it right away. He says I’m not in rehab for shooting smack since the age of fourteen. I’m not here for selling weed. I’m in rehab for a serious addiction. Her name is Belén and I gotta fight to work her out of my system.
Brett is his name and he cries at the meetings, but somehow he still manages to look tough. His fingers are stubby and he has trouble moving. Rheumatoid arthritis and deterioration of his heart lining, on account of years of injecting so many drugs. I tell Brett I have heart deterioration too, but we gotta work no matter what the cost. I get him outside and doing some pushups—dude could use a little weight taken off. He watches me work out in the afternoons and times my sprints. He gives me a high five when I come in under time and keeps a cold bottle of water waiting under a towel. It makes me wish I’d had a dad all those years. Someone to high five me, someone to encourage me. It’s weird to be sober.
I don’t even call my ma when I’m here. She and Belén are just too close. I’d be calling a phone two floors away from her phone and I don’t think I could take the stress.
When I graduate the program there’s a ceremony with a minister. I get a certificate with my name in cursive and I get my very first clean piss test. Brett wears a tie to the ceremony and we take a picture together in front of the coffee station. My one-on-one counselor Virginia gets lipstick all over my cheek. People make speeches and say nice stuff about me. Brett breaks down when he says how proud he is of me, that he himself always dreamed of being a Marine.
“It’s not like I made it through boot camp yet, guys. Don’t get all carried away.”
They groan in protest and say I’m a shoe-in. But it’s not so much my physical stamina that has me worried; I’m actually looking forward to running myself dead. I think I can handle the mental stuff too—you just obey whatever they say and always give your best. And it’s not like I can’t survive being away from her, because I’m pretty sure I can do that too. I’m fucking terrified of going back home again. Seeing her when everything‘s changed. What happens if one of us moves on and the other one can’t move at all?
Belén
I chose Vassar for the campus and the name. I guess maybe I’m shallow like that. The scholarship money is enough for Mami to at least relax a little. She cries so hard during parent week that she has to take a tranquilizer. I didn’t realize how much it would feel like a goodbye. I promise her up and down that we’ll Skype and visit as much as possible. The Amtrak ride isn’t so bad and we’re at least still in the same state.
My roommate is a butch lesbian from Chicago named Lucy. I think they put us together because we’re both Hispanic, but I’m not sure how the roommate mix-and-match works. I like Lucy right off the bat. She’s serious about studying but she’s also really funny. She has me in stitches within minutes describing her drop-off, and offered to let me have the top bunk. We get dinner in the cafeteria together and it turns out she eats like a hulk. She downs two bowls of macaroni and cheese and then finishes what little was left of mine too. I love her already.
All through first semester I convince her Jeremy is my boyfriend. We chat on the phone and email and he even comes to visit me one weekend. Jeremy is blonder; he looks tan, has lost some of the pudge. He’s decided to do a three-two program at Wharton at UPENN in Philadelphia. He teases me a bit about my four-year liberal arts degree. The kids at his school apparently have a lot of money. Some of them live off-campus and drive fancy cars; they’ve already got their jobs secured after graduation and are using this time to party hard and do coke. I don’t ask him if he’s selling or dealing. I don’t ask him about home. He takes me out to dinner and we share a bottle of wine over pasta without getting IDed.
“You look amazing, Belén. Even better than in high school,” Jeremy says and runs his socked foot up my shin bone. It doesn’t feel natural. It seems like he’s acting out something he watched on a bad TV show.
“Thanks, Jeremy. You seem really grown up. I wish my goals were as clear as yours are. Knowing your path that well is really enviable.”
In the car on the way home he’s got his hand up my skirt. I’ve never been hot for Jeremy after that night in the bathroom. We made out a few more times after the incident and went on a lot of dates. All the romance fizzled out, but we’ve always remained close friends. My apathy toward Jeremy’s hand makes me think there’s something wrong with me.
“Pull over, why don’t you? Maybe we should kiss first.”
Jeremy pulls into the parking lot of an empty strip mall. All the stores are closed and the lights are low. I shed my jacket and turn to him and touch his face. There’s a lump in my stomach as I lean in to meet his mouth. I let him tongue me and I try to keep up his pace. There’s no heat in my veins, no blood pumping to the places it should. He takes my hand and moves it down toward his cock. He’s hard through his pants and I give him a squeeze. He unbuttons my dress and slides his fingertips inside my bra.
“Remember that time, Belle, at my parents’ house in the bathroom? We’d known one another five minutes and we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other?”
My blood runs now because he can’t say my name. I told him in the beginning that it doesn’t rhyme with Helen. That the first part is “Bey”, just like “sitting on the dock of the bay” and for the second part say “lend” without the “d”. I want to scream it now because I’ve told him so many times and he obviously didn’t listen. It’s not too much to ask, that he at least try, is it? And the sexiest thing about that night was when Lucky inspected me ruthlessly in the elevator, while I, humiliated, pulled up my underpants in front of him.
Nothing is sexy now about his pointy tongue and hot, hard, poky dick. He gropes my tit with his sweaty hand and it reminds me of dancing with the awkward kids at school dances—who asked you to dance but had absolutely no swagger. Their hands were always humid and shook a bit with nerves. The pimples, the braces, seeing your friends—well at least Yari—laughing from the wings at the awkwardness. Feeling sorry enough for the guy to accept the dance but brave enough to call it at one. I don’t want sex to be like this. It wasn’t ever awkward with Lucky. I honestly think I got so far with Jeremy in the first place because I was so turned on by Lucky.
“Let me tie you up, Belle. I’ve got handcuffs and rope in the trunk,” Jeremy says and continues to finger my nipple.
“WHAT?” I’m so taken aback that my head starts to hurt a little. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Let’s try it. Come on, it’ll be fun,” he says, pinching hard on one breast while he palms at the other one.
“I think you should probably take me home.”
Jeremy sighs and moves back into the bucket seat of his Audi. He adjusts his penis in his chinos and pushes back while he restarts the car. He peels out of the parking lot so fast that it scares me a little. He says nothing while we drive and glares straight ahead at the road. He pulls up at my dorm with a screech, jerking hard and unsettling me even more. I’m at least glad he took me home and didn’t suggest any more weird foreplay.
When I lean back down to the car to say goodbye he says, “You could have at least finished me off, you know. I came all this way.” He’s looking straight ahead, his hand on the wheel.
“Oh, is that what you came for? You should have specified over the phone. I could have saved you a lot of driving time. I’m sure it’s easier to find a quick hook-up at home.”
“Yari was right, Belle. You’ve always been a cold fish.”
“Oh my God! You fucked Yari too? When, that night after Lucky’s party?” I ask, wondering if that’s the only reason Lucky came to me instead.
“Get over it, Belle. We were all kids!” he says and pulls out with a flash, spinning the tires, upsetting the fall leaves on the curb and leaving me in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
I walk back to the dorm feeling like my body weighs a thousand pounds. I wish I wanted to get laid. I wish something turned me on. Whenever I masturbate I think about his body and his kiss. I only want to touch myself when I think about Lucky; I don’t even have normal fantasies.
Lucy has her face an inch away from her book when I close the door behind me. I try so hard not to cry that my face probably looks distorted.
“How was dinner with the boyfriend?”
Lucy has a black longshoreman’s wool hat on over her closely-cropped black hair. She’s wearing thick-framed hipster glasses and bright red lipstick. I feel like I’d rather make out with her than Jeremy and I’m not even gay.
“Good,” I say. My throat hurts from being such a faker.
“Bey, is he really your boyfriend? That dude vibed me out and you’re vibing me right now, girl.”
I shake my head and the tears start to rain. Lucy grabs our coats and drags me to a local bar that we know sells to under-age. We get pints of beer and sit at a dark booth in the back by the pool table.
“Okay, BeyBey. Spill me the beans now, please,” Lucy says, taking a sip of her beer.
I tell her the whole story. From the first feelings to the first kiss to the note when he left, which I’m too embarrassed to tell her still sits in my wallet. I tell her about Jeremy, the bathroom, the graduation party, even the kiss and the handcuffs. How nothing turns me on and how at nineteen, I’m still a virgin.
She listens like a pro and takes off her glasses to clean them. She looks at me as she exhales onto the lenses and then wipes them on her shirt. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”
“I haven’t. I don’t even ask my mom or my aunt about him.”
“Is he deployed or is he here?”
“I think he’s overseas. But I don’t know.”
“Can you come when you masturbate?”
“Yes.” I blush a little and take a sip of my beer.
“Have you ever tried to masturbate and think about Jeremy, or anybody else for that matter?”
“Yes, but it always goes back to Lucky.”
“Are you attracted to other people? Do you think anybody is hot even if they don’t make you horny?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
Lucy nods. “Want to play a game of pool?”
“Huh? Okay. I thought maybe you were evaluating and forming some kind of answer.”
“Yeah, right! I don’t think there’s an answer for you. It’s a weird situation, Bey. Do you think you’ll ever get over him?”
“I was really hoping you’d have some insight.”
“Nope. Just listening. Being a good roommate.”
“Do you think it’s disgusting? Do you think that I’m sick? We slept in the same crib. Learned to ride the same bike.”
“I think that nobody can help who they love. That shit just happens and you’ve got to figure out how to deal with it. I don’t believe it’s a choice. Ever.
Lucy looks sad, like she’s talking about her own experience.
“Your story is really sad, Bey, and it’s also kind of hot in a way. I feel like it’s too bad he would never fuck you because, you know, then maybe you’d figure it out. It seems like that’s where the answer is. Or at least that’s where you got hung up and now you can’t get past it.”
“He would never do it, no matter how hard I tried. And believe me, I tried.”
“That’s weird, ‘cause you’re hot. You know that, right, Bey?”
I just shrug.
Lucy creams me at pool.
We hang out every single weekend.
I make the dean’s list and Phi Beta Kappa and get a work study position in the library.
I decide to do Continuing Ed and stay on campus for summer school.
Lucy says I’m crazy. She’s going to Spain.
Everyone leaves. This place is a ghost town.
She writes me two post cards from Ibiza and I stare at them in the library. She says the pussy is hot and she’s eating octopus, calamari, and Manchego every day. She’s taking Spanish classes and learning to dance Flamenco.
I write her back and tell her that I’m the only one left here except for some high school students getting credit for college. That the entire operations crew knows me by name. I’m honing my pool hustle nightly. That I accidentally racked up so many credits in the past sixteen months that I’m already a junior. Whoops.
I don’t go home to the Heights once.
Fuck that.
But I do study every book of spells I can find in the library. Every night I dream of Lucky when I start casting them. Who knew there were so many love spells from so many different cultures? It makes me think something is working and my whole room starts filling up with witchy things. I even build an altar.
I often see him in my dreams, like I’m looking through a watery lens. I’m suspended above him and I see him magnified, but he’s tiny and way far below. I watch him do things like I’m looking at a moving diorama. I sometimes see him having sex with other women. But he’s also working and sweating and laughing with friends. He looks older, more cut, but his face is still young and ruggedly handsome. He’s still the Lucky I remember.
Then early one morning before fall semester starts, I get freaked out by all of my parapsychological advances and I cart everything outside and trash it in the dumpster. I promise myself to start fresh and make new friends and go on some dates. The weekend Lucy gets back I’m so relieved that I end up crying in her arms.
“I guess I missed you,” I say, laughing.
“You look like a ghost, campus girl,” she says.
“You look really healthy,” I say. “Like you had a ton of fun.”
“I did. And I think we need to get you some professional help.”
Thursdays are individual sessions with Dr. Davison. I’m doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and trying to deal with my issues logically and rationally. I’m also doing exposure therapy—not exposure to Lucky but social exposure—going out, making new friends, online and speed dating, which are supposedly normal and healthy things for a girl my age.
We also talk a lot about sex. My roommate thinks it’s awesome that I’ve been prescribed erotica for therapy and she steals the books as soon as I’m done.
“Lucy, why do you wanna read about a hot woodsman if you don’t even get turned on by men?”
“Sexual tension is sexual tension, Bey. Even if it’s between a demon lord and a frog prince. I can relate to human experience, I’m not an alien.”
“Okay, you’re right. Sorry I’m insensitive,” I say. I’ve got a lot to learn about real lesbians, not just girls who kiss at parties.
My therapist assigns a bunch of stuff I read in my English classes—D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin and Flaubert. But some stuff is new to me, like Nabokov’s Lolita and Pauline Réage’s The Story of O. I don’t know how much I relate to any of it. Sometimes I feel like my therapist is trying to expand my definition of what’s deviant, so that I can learn to accept myself.
But one thing I know for certain—I loathe O and everything she stands for, but switch her lover René out and replace him with Lucky and I’m on the floor in chains right next to her, taking every single blow.
Dr. Davidson thinks that I don’t necessarily have to have sex or lose my virginity, but she does want me to engage with people outside of my family.
So Lucy helped me set up my online profile for dat
ing—she took all the pictures. I’ve been on three dates but Poughkeepsie is small and it seems like everyone here either goes to the University or works there. That, or they never left town for some terrible reason, like poverty or mental illness or utter lack of ambition.
What I really like best for exposure is going out with Lucy. She takes me to the only lesbian bar in town, out for sushi and to parties. Lucy has surpassed Yari in the friend department. She doesn’t judge me or try to force me to get laid. She just likes to have a good time, enjoy life and learn new things.
“Bey, you’re the only sexpert I know who’s a virgin.”
“It’s good to understand things fully before you agree to participate in them. Studying variants can help you decide what you like.”
Lucy throws her arm around my shoulder and lays a kiss on my forehead.
“You’re a trip and a half, girl. I’ll buy your beer just to hear the shit you say.”
Both Lucy and Dr. Davidson suggest that I be open to dating to women. They think that I have some repression issues going on and that’s why I stay infatuated with my cousin, because it’s safe and it keeps me from ever stepping out of my comfort zone. I guess they haven’t met Lucky, because nothing about him is safe. But I can still see their point. Lucky is safe, because he can’t un-cousin me.
So I’ve been trying to be open to the idea—here. I could never be at home. I don’t think dating girls would go over well with my mother. So far, I don’t think I’m attracted to women, but what do I know? I tried watching some lesbian porn Dr. Davidson gave me. I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t like it any more than straight porn, either. Maybe I’m frigid, like Yari told Jeremy. But I sure as hell don’t feel frigid when I’m standing in front of Lucky. In fact, all I have to do to get my blood racing is imagine him standing right here with me now, his smile, his mouth and all that he can do with it.
