Beware of Love in Technicolor

by Kirstie Collins Brote

  “You know, Greer,” she started in a condescending tone. “Maybe you could make a bit more of an effort to be a part of the gang here on the first floor, instead of working against us. We’re all getting together tonight in the lounge to watch that new show, Beverly Hills, 90210. All the girls really love it. It’ll be fun.”

  “No offense,” I started, without caring at all if I offended her. “But I really have no interest in anything but keeping my stuff here and coming and going as I please, and maintaining a good relationship with Gwen. I’ll make more of an effort to attend your ‘mandatory’ meetings, but that’s about all I can promise you.”

  “It’s too bad,” she said, backing into the hallway, but obviously wanting the last word. “You really could be enjoying your college experience, instead of wasting it with your bad attitude.”

  “I know,” I agreed with her, smiling and nodding. “I’m sure a night of vapid television would do wonders for my disposition, but I’ve actually got tickets to see Tartuffe at the Crowley Theater tonight, so you understand. Thanks for stopping by, though,” I said, closing the door on the open-mouthed intrusion.

  “Oh my God!” Gwen exclaimed, taking me by surprise when she stepped out of her closet. I hadn’t known she was in the room. “I can’t believe you just told her off!”

  “I didn’t tell her off,” I laughed, kicking my boots off and flopping down on my bed. I had a stack of mail to go through. “But honestly, Beverly Hills 90210? Isn’t that a show about high school kids?”

  “Something like that, I think,” she answered absently. She flopped down dramatically on her own bed. Her long, skinny legs could not be contained on the small twin, and draped over the sides.

  “What are you doing here in the middle of the day?” I asked her suspiciously. “I thought I was the only delinquent who lived here.”

  “Chad and I broke up last night,” she answered.

  “Oh no,” I said, looking up from my mail. “Are you ok?”

  “Yeah, I could feel it coming, you know? He was getting more and more caught up with the frat and his brothers,” she said, reaching over to her small, purple cassette player. She pressed play, and into the room wailed a thin stream of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. We were not so close that we knew many details of each other’s lives, but had a good, easy-going friendship where conversation seemed to flow naturally when we hung out. “It’s his loss, you know. What an idiot.”

  “He is an idiot,” she repeated, then stopped short. “He was a cute idiot, though. Ugh. I hate being single.”

  “I don’t remember what it feels like to be single,” I said. “Maybe it’s not so bad. You don’t have to shave your legs every day, or worry about every little ounce you gain.”

  “Yeah, but it’s also work to get asked out every weekend, and Christmas is coming, and then New Year’s,” she said, trailing off. I could hear the downward spiral in her voice. Thoughts of a nap were put away.

  “Hey,” I said, putting my mail down on my desk and looking at Gwen. I could tell she had spent time crying before I had arrived. “I have John’s car out front, and he doesn’t need it back all day. Want to go to the mall and act like girls for a few hours?”

  ***

  Back at Cloud 9 that night, after attending Tartuffe with Topher and then dropping him off at his new chippie’s dorm on the outskirts of campus, I presented John with the fruit of my afternoon’s shopping spree. At the bookstore, I had gotten him a stack of new, horribly written science fiction that he loved so much. I figured a geeky science fiction nerd was better than a creepy, pervert, porn hoarder. At Victoria’s Secret, I stocked up on my favorite pear-scented shower gels and body lotions, and even purchased a black satin chemise and matching robe that I thought John might like.

  “These are great, thank you,” he said, thumbing through some of the titles. He settled on one and placed the rest in a stack next to his bed.

  “I got a few more things,” I continued, walking to the bed where he was sprawling out and getting ready to read. I was wearing a new leather jacket over the chemise. He looked up briefly.

  “Looks expensive,” he said, glancing quickly at the coat. “Lucky you.”

  “Black, satiny things,” I continued, speaking coyly. I took the book out of his hand and tossed it to the floor.

  My heart was thumping loudly. I was not yet fully comfortable with making the first move, especially so overtly, and while completely sober. But in my quest to discover the magic key that would unlock the world of sexual gratification, I had read an article in one of my magazines suggesting that if a woman takes more control over her sex life, the fruits of her labor would be well worth the effort. I figured it was worth a try. Now that I had his attention, what to do was still an uncomfortable struggle between my mind and my body.

  “Come a little closer,” he said, grinning. He was certainly focused on me now.

  “Should I turn the lights out?” I asked, pulling the jacket up on my shoulder a bit.

  “No,” he said, sitting forward and pulling me by the lapels to the bed. He kissed me and unzipped the coat. It dropped to the floor by my bare feet.

  Clear your mind and focus on the moment, the article had said. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the kiss, on his hands finding their way under the nightgown, grazing the skin of my thighs, making my knees feel weak. The black satin felt cool and light on my skin in contrast to his warm and determined hands.

  Communicate clearly with your partner. Don’t be afraid to be selfish in bed. I summoned my courage at least half a dozen times before I finally found the audacity to suggest something new.

  “Can we try me on top?” I whispered as he kissed my neck and began the usual routine. He stopped, looked at me, and smiled wickedly.

  “Absolutely,” he answered, the fire back in his eyes. Before I could shift my weight, he was on his back and out of his jeans.

  And I tried, I really did. As I moved over him, finding a rhythm that made him murmur and grab me tight and pull me in against him even harder, I tried to focus only on the sensation of him deep inside me, moving with me, responding to me. And it was there, right in front of me, like a pinprick of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Promising, teasing. It was there, waiting for me.

  “Is that good,” he asked, breathy and broken, biting his lip, holding himself back.

  And I was back. Back in the bedroom, 100 watt light bulb glaring next to the bed. Extra five pounds I had carelessly gained on display in the garish light. Random thuds and laughter from the roommates upstairs.

  And it was gone. And instead of the satisfaction promised to me by the writers of Glamour, I was left with the same old feeling of being somehow broken. A failure at one of the most basic human experiences. And out of everything, the most frustrating thing of all was the knowledge I didn’t even know what the hell I was missing.

  ***

  “Do you want to talk about it?” John asked me about five minutes later. Normally chatty after sex, I was quiet on this evening. It had been a while since I had made an active effort in bed, instead of phoning it in. I hated failing. I would have preferred not to play.

  “Talk about what?” I asked defensively, sitting up to straighten my hair. I knew what he was getting at, but since I was already beating myself up, I did not really want any help. He sat up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders.

  “Good God, you’re tense,” he said, kneading the muscles of my bare back. “You should be relaxed after sex. You’re wound tighter than a drum.”

  “Sorry,” I offered weakly.

  “For what?” he asked, his hands stopping on my shoulders. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.” He sighed heavily, and for the first time, I realized I wasn’t even very good at faking it.

  “It’s been a year now, and I still don’t know how to satisfy you,” he stated bluntly. I was surprised by his honesty, and the urgency in his voice. I
had always been so busy blaming myself, I had never thought of blaming him.

  “It’s not you,” I said faintly. He snorted, and lay back down. His left hand rested on the small of my back. “Really, it’s not. I just don’t know...,” I faded off.

  “You don’t know what?” he prompted.

  “I don’t know what it is I’m even supposed to feel. I don’t know,” I searched my mind for what to say, how to rationalize the fear of that final let-go. That edge that was too overwhelming to get too close to.

  “You’re thinking about it too much,” he offered. “You need to relax and try to enjoy yourself.”

  “I do enjoy it,” I responded quickly. I looked at him, and I felt for him in that moment. How I wished I could just be normal between the sheets, if not for me, then for him. “But I start thinking, my mind starts racing, about everything and nothing at the same time. It’s like a war between my body and my brain, and my brain always wins.”

  “I understand,” he said, propping himself up and kissing me gently on the lips. He turned over and fell asleep quickly.

  And I knew he just didn’t understand at all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thanksgiving came and went. Like all Bennett holidays, it was an affair without drama. As an adult, I have come to appreciate the simple peace of a small family that gets along, but as a young woman, I thought lack of drama meant lack of spirit. The four days passed by, and while I was thankful for the sleep and good food, I missed school and the unpredictability of my life.

  In December, I began attending all of my classes during the week. It was getting down to finals time, and while I did not want to admit it, I was starting to stress about all the classes I had skipped. I began working on my writing portfolios, rewriting, editing, throwing away, everything I had been working on.

  This meant that I was spending more time in my room at Bristol. I enjoyed the time I got to spend with Gwen, me pounding out pages on my Brother word processor, her reading market case studies and pouring over economics graphs. Topher would often work nights at the computer cluster, then head over afterward. The three of us would get a pizza and take a break from class work.

  On nights when I had classes the following morning, I would opt to stay overnight at Bristol, sending John off, on the rare occasion I had to, with a kiss and the knowledge that he was not as committed to attending the last few weeks of classes as I. I needed to know that I would be on campus on certain mornings.

  Now, when it comes to the holiday season, I have about as much cheer as the next girl. I would have been willing, as I had been last year, to participate in a lame round of Secret Santas with my fellow floormates, even if I couldn’t tell one girl from another. But this was not my Resident Advisor’s style.

  No, what she and her other RA’s pulled off was far uglier and more evil than Secret Santas.

  It was the night I had stayed in the computer cluster until three a.m. I had three days until I had to turn in fifty pages of bad fiction writing, as well as a clip book of my best news articles, plus three new ones. Topher was working a late shift at the cluster that night, so at 3am, when he was done, he walked me back to Bristol on his way home. Gwen was still at work on her marketing case studies. When I came in, she put her books away, and we must have chatted for about a half hour before we finally decided to get some sleep. I had a ten o’clock nutrition class that would be spent reviewing for the final. I had skipped so many classes, this review was my only chance to get a grip on what would be on the exam.

  I probably fell asleep around four a.m. Not more than thirty minutes later, there was a banging on our door, and on all the doors down the hallway. Then the yelling began.

  “Get up! Get up!”

  “Outta your rooms! Everyone! Now!”

  Both Gwen and I sat up in our beds, confused in the hazy darkness of pre-dawn.

  “What the hell?” she started to ask when the banging on our door started again. Frenzied, startled conversation began buzzing through the halls, adding to the cacophony that had ripped me from my sleep. Pulling a sweatshirt on over my t-shirt and shorts, I cracked the door slightly and peered into the hallway.

  “C’mon Greer! Let’s go, Gwen!” our RA suddenly appeared in front of me wearing a goofy Santa hat and tacky Christmas sweatshirt. “You need to be in the upstairs lounge in two minutes!”

  “Why?” I asked angrily, annoyed that there was not a fire ripping through the halls. There was no other reason for me to be awake. “I was sleeping.”

  “We were all sleeping,” she answered, waddling her way back down the hall. “The lounge, one minute.”

  ***

  Gwen and I were the last ones to shuffle into the lounge on the second floor. There must have been about sixty girls squeezed into Bristol’s largest room, each with her own brand of bedhead and morning breath. But nobody seemed pissed off, which I found weird. They actually seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” called out a skinny Santa perched on a metal folding chair at the head of the room. He had to have been one of the Resident Advisors’ boyfriend.

  “I hope everyone has been nice this year,” he bellowed. I looked at Gwen and rolled my eyes.

  “Ok, good morning, ladies,” the RA from the second floor called out. The three advisors stood together next to Santa, presenting a united front. The room quieted down, and we all waited for some sort of explanation for why we were here this early in the morning.

  “Welcome to the Bristol Hall Holiday Party!” they cried out in unison, each so very pleased with herself and their covert party planning. They launched into an explanation of how hard it is to get sixty-something girls in one place during normal daytime or evening hours, and how they figured that the butt crack of dawn would be a super time to celebrate the holidays together.

  “And we have presents for all of you!” our RA sang out.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned.

  I looked for backup from Gwen, but she was talking to our next-door neighbor, whose name I didn’t even know. I looked around the room. I realized that I did not know a single person well enough to even say “hello” to. And in my typical manner, I felt the need to flee.

  “Greer, where are you going?” my RA asked me when she saw my beeline for the door in the back of the room.

  “To bed,” I retorted quickly.

  “We’d all like it if you stayed,” she tried. “Your mother took the time to send a gift, the least you can do is stay.”

  Damnit. Mom guilt. She was playing hardball. But more than I hate cheap devices such as the one she had just flung at me, I hate being challenged if front of people. I don’t know how to back down.

  “Yeah,” I answered slowly, meeting the chubby RA’s steely gaze with one of my own. “She already told me about the sweater she had to send for this thing,” I lied. I was just guessing that my mom would send a sweater.

  “So, you think you don’t have to stay, because you know what your gift is? We spent a lot of time planning this for you girls. Do you care at all about the efforts of others?”

  “Look, Laurie,” I said, lowering my voice to be sure we kept it between the two of us. I walked out into the hallway, with her close behind. Inside the lounge, the skinny Santa was ho-ho-hoing, and beginning to hand out gifts. “I’m not trying to be disrespectful, or ruin anything, or anything like that. I’m tired. And I’m busy. And did I mention, I’m tired?”

  “We are all busy at this time of year, Greer,” she countered. I remember wondering if she was at the law school. Her tenacity was impressive, if not annoying.

  “I’m going back to bed,” I said, shrugging at her. She and I both knew she couldn’t make me stay. “You can give my gift to Gwen. Thanks for the party.”

  She scowled as I walked away and disappeared down the front stairs.

  ***

  Later that afternoon, after a good nap and a bitch session with Topher over chickwiches in the dining hall, I marched myself dow
n to the housing office, and petitioned to be allowed to move off campus the following semester. It was not that I had any specific alternative in mind, but I had seen a few studio apartments available for rent in town.

  It was a futile effort, and I knew it. The university rarely let students move off-campus once they had paid their tuition. But I figured it gave me a better chance than most in moving out of Bristol and into a different dorm. Into a single.

  I hated to leave Gwen, but the thought of another semester in Bristol was already starting to stress me out, and we hadn’t even left for winter break yet. In my meeting with the housing advisor, I stressed the importance of a personal telephone to a journalism major. I needed to be able to conduct all those interviews, and be available for sources to reach. The hall phones of Bristol had already cost me some of my best stories, I told her.

  She promised to look into the matter and get back to me quickly. When three days went by, I began a series of phone calls to her office, inquiring about the status of my application. Finally, on the day of my nutrition final, I was told my application had been denied, but my name had been placed high up on the waiting list for a single. Knowing the rough percentage of how many students would not return in January, I figured my chances were pretty good.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Christmas that year was a bit less extravagant than it had been the year before. John requested we really, truly, stick to our spending limit for gifts, as he was running low on cash.

  “I mean it, Greer,” he said to me over the phone. Even though he was finished with finals, he was staying at Cloud 9 until Christmas Eve, when he would stop by to see me before heading home to his his parents’ house.

  “Ok,” I laughed. “I’ll stick to the limit. What is the limit, by the way?”