Dear Delilah (Hudson U)

by T. Bester

  “Yeah?” Brian smirks. “Then prove it.”

  11

  SAVANNAH

  ZOEY LEANS CLOSER to her canvas, while I sit on the floor beside her and make a lame attempt at working. It’s only our second week of classes, but already, I’m bogged down with several assignments. Because of my degree, I have yet to choose a definitive major so I’ve plied my timetable with a variety of classes. Right now though, I regret the decision. There’s no one subject that jumps out at me, and most of the work is theory-intensive which I find somewhat boring. Zoey, on the other hand, seems to be settling into her new school year at Hudson with no effort at all. I kind of envy her free spirit, the way she just does what she likes and if she gets bored, she moves on. I can’t do that. Once I commit to something, I’m all in, no matter how bored I get, or how pointless I feel the subject might be.

  “Frown any harder, and your face will get stuck like that,” mutters Zoey. She glances at me and smiles, holding her brush up mid-stroke. “You wanna talk about it?” She goes back to painting, her face drawn tight in concentration. We turned the open dining room space into a mini art studio, with an easel, plastic sheeting, and a whole story worth of oil paints and brushes. Turns out, Zoey is insanely gifted when it comes to the creative stuff.

  “This assignment has numbed my brain,” I tell her. “Our Professor wants us to analyze a movie or television series and write a critical feminist essay. Whatever the hell that means.”

  “I know that’s not the only thing bothering you, but let me see if I can help you with your assignment, and in return, you can tell me what’s really got you so cranky.”

  “I am not cranky,” I retort. “I’m just…preoccupied.”

  “Because I’m your friend, I’m going to call bullshit, but for now, we’ll focus on your assignment.” Zoey dabs some yellow paint on her brush, and starts painting again. “Hit me with it.”

  I frown at her, but at this point, I need her help more than I want to be annoyed with her for seeing through me so easily. “By drawing on the prescribed readings by Andrews, Miller and Ball, conduct a critical feminist analysis on any film or television program of your choice.”

  “Oh,” she perks up. “I know this. This is for your Visual Culture Studies, right?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “I did this last semester when I was in Austin. It’s pretty easy.”

  I scoff. “I’m glad you think so, because I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Fear not, I have you covered.” Zoey straightens from her spot on the floor. “Do you have a film in mind?”

  “No, I haven’t been able to find one. I was thinking of using Girls, the series.”

  “Oh, no. You’ll get a big fat ‘F’ if you use that. It’s too obvious a choice because everyone knows it’s feminist.” She bites her lip, and squints at the ceiling before turning her gaze back to her canvas. “I know, you should use Wonder Woman. That’s perfect.”

  I open a new document, and make notes as Zoey starts explaining.

  “In a nutshell, a critical feminist analysis is a critique of how women and their roles are represented in film, and how their roles are always subservient to her male counterpart. Even in a movie like Wonder Woman, the heroin is dressed in a way that appeals to the male viewer, and in a way that tells a female viewer how she should dress or act in order to be appealing to a man. The fact that she is the lead in the film is actually a secondary observation.”

  “So, she’s still there for the man’s viewing pleasure, even if she’s the main character?”

  “Exactly.” Zoey surveys her work, and then continues, splitting her attention between me and her art. “Hollywood wants you to think she’s there to represent female empowerment, but if you consider how she’s dressed, and even her physical attributes, she’s there to please the eye of a male spectator, which is almost always the intended audience. She’s flawlessly beautiful, her features symmetrical, her body the ‘ideal’ image, and she’s always showing more skin than necessary. Why is that?”

  It starts to make sense. “To catch the attention of the man watching her.” I type furiously, and look up. “And she’s always positioned in a way that makes it look like she’s being watched, but never the one doing the watching.”

  “See? You’re getting it.”

  “But why do you think that is? Why do you think a woman’s role in a movie is always secondary, even when it’s not?”

  “Please,” scoffs Zoey. “A woman’s role has always been unassertive and docile, since the beginning of time. Think about it. Even when women started getting more rights, what they could do was still determined by men. I mean, when a woman was thought to be uncontrollable, they called it ‘hysteria’. Hell, being horny meant a woman had hysteria, and they were either hospitalized or underwent a surgical hysterectomy. And all because men were afraid to have their masculinity threatened by a woman who was educated, independent and God forbid, sexual.” She snickers. “Complete fucking madness, right there. Too bad we still have to deal with that shit, even if it’s to a lesser degree.” Zoey wipes her brush, and then faces me. “And don’t even get me started on sex. Apparently, it’s still frowned upon for a girl to be in non-committed sexual relationship. Can’t imagine why though, we like it just as much as guys do.”

  I try to come up with a response, other than ‘I agree’ but Zoey beats me to it. “So, do you understand now?”

  Surprisingly I do. “Thanks, Zo. I should have this essay done on time, thanks to you.”

  “It’s nothing.” She waves me off. “But now you have pay up.” She wiggles her brows. “What has you so cranky?”

  I expel a weighty breath, and shut my laptop. “Toby hated my first article for the column,” I admit. I know why, but it’s been bothering me all day. I’ve been unable to think of anything else. “He said it reads like something from a medical journal, and needs to be more personal.”

  “Let me read it.” Zoey waits for me to open my laptop back up, and when I have the article open on the screen, she reads it. Her expression gives nothing away, but when she pulls a face mimicking that of a constipated moose, everything inside me shrivels up. Toby was probably right to hate what I wrote, and Zoey’s face confirms it.

  “It’s not bad.” She winces, and then places my laptop on the floor, away from her oil paints and dirty brushes. “But I kind of see his point.”

  “Please explain it to me,” I cry, throwing my arms in the air with dramatic flair. “Because I’ve wracked my brain all day trying to understand what he means.”

  “It’s about the female orgasm, right?”

  I nod, and when Zoey sees my woeful expression, she snickers. “God, no wonder he wants you to rewrite it. Any girl who reads that is going to forget all about the experience, and worry too much about where all her blood is going.”

  “Not helping,” I pout, earning another round of snickers from Zoey. Eventually, she takes pity on me.

  “It’s not bad, but you need to approach it from a different perspective, more feeling and less logic.”

  The frustration builds like a noose around my neck. “I don’t know what that means!”

  Zoey places her hands on my knees, and gives me a hard, but assuring look. “You do, Sav.”

  I feel like I’m supposed to catch her meaning straight away, by the way she’s looking at me so intently, but whatever she’s hinting at is flying straight over my head.

  “Didn’t you, uh, have an orgasm with Nate?”

  I flinch as if she’s just struck me, and the heat rises up my neck, to my cheeks. “I..uh…” Oh, God. Could this be any worse?

  Her gaze softens. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but just hear me out.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. Fucking thing came out of nowhere. “Zoey, I don’t know…”

  “Please, just hear me out, and you can decide what to do with it.” When I nod, albeit reluctantly, Zoey continues. “Did you…”
This time I catch her meaning without her having to explain. Another nod. “Okay, that’s good. So when Toby says make it personal, you need to write about what you felt when you were with Nate, describe the emotion behind it, and then the physical sensations. Was your mind racing? Did your heart beat so loudly you couldn’t hear anything else? Did it feel like you were hit with a tsunami? How did it feel when he touched you? Did he kiss you? Did he make your needs a priority, or was he being a selfish fucktard? Did you like it? Those are the kinds of things you have to keep in mind if you’re going to write something another girl will relate to. They need to see themselves in your experiences, not the experiments that some old fart wrote in the dark ages, before vibrators and butt plugs existed.”

  I try to smother a laugh, but fail. Dismally. And before I know it, Zoey and I are giggling like school girls. “Can you describe an orgasm?” I challenge.

  “I’ve had some that are a solid 1 on the Richter scale, and then I’ve had some that are a 9. One guy actually came prematurely, and his orgasm face looked like he was sneezing.” She shrugs. “And then I’ve had a guy who made my toes curl, that’s how good it was.”

  “Hey, can I ask you something?” I blush, because this conversation is still somewhat out of my comfort zone.

  “Shoot.”

  “Do you think it’s possible for girls to have the whole ’no strings attached’ thing, without getting attached?”

  “Of course I do, but I do believe that you have to trust the person you’re with. We have every right to express who we are, and to admit that we like uncomplicated sex.”

  “Is it even possible to have that? Uncomplicated sex?”

  “Well, yeah, but only if you don’t romanticize sex. You read a thousand romance novels, all of which depict sex as this magical moment, this ethereal connection with another person — and while it can be that — most times, it’s awkward as all hell, and your body is doing all kinds of funky things. The moment you take the romance out of it, and just see it for what it is, you uncomplicate it. It becomes a baser need that needs satisfying, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, sometimes I think we need it.”

  I sigh. “I really think you should be writing ‘Dear Delilah’. You’re so much better at this than I am.”

  “Oh hush. All you have to do is trust your instincts, Sav. They will always lead you to the right place, even if you have to see your ass to get there.” Zoey claps her hands and stands. “Okay, I don’t know about you but all this sex talk makes me want ice-cream.”

  She pulls me up, and I giggle. “Sex and Ice-cream?”

  “No,” Zoey bounces to the kitchen. “Ice-cream instead of sex. I’m on a hiatus from anything with a penis.”

  “You’re so crude,” I tease.

  “Why? Because I said penis?” She opens the fridge and takes out a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Blonde Ambition. “You’re going to have to get over that if you’re going to be writing an advice column about sex. You can’t be afraid of words like penis, or vagina.”

  I shake my head, both amused by and envious of her openness. “Anything else, Sensei?”

  “Yeah, stop blushing when we talk sex, and orgasms, and get comfortable with a whole new vocabulary, like cunnilingus and fellatio.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Own it,” says Zoey. “Own your body, Sav. Own your sexuality. And remember, follow your instincts.”

  TWO DAYS LATER, I’m ready to pitch a new idea for the pilot article of Dear Delilah. I sit at his desk, anxiously biting my nails while he reads. His silence is killing me, and in my mind, I’m running through the entire thing from start to finish to make sure I didn’t leave anything out. After my chat with Zoey, her observations about how women romanticize sex kind of stuck with me. I could have easily written about the female orgasm like Toby wanted, but it seemed superficial to me, a topic that has no doubt been worn out by every woman’s glossy magazine in publication. I wanted something with more meat, and a subject that every woman is familiar with on a deeper level. I also wanted to write from a place of honesty, and it was only after talking with Zoey that I understood it.

  We are taught from a young age that for us, sex is never really just that. Our mother’s tell us that it’s a sacred experience, a moment of pure vulnerability that has to be treasured. We share a part of ourselves that we never really get back, and while I agree, I’ve also come to see that sometimes, we forget to recognize it for what it is — satisfying a baser need, the same way a man does. And why is that? Why can we not accept who we are as sexual beings, women who are able to identify sex and love as two separate things, rather than one that cannot exist without the other? Maybe it’s the way we are hardwired, to believe that they have to co-exist and the moment we separate them, we worry about the stigma that comes along with it. It’s no secret that a man who sleeps with multiple women is praised for his conquests, while a woman who sleeps with multiple men is perceived as dirty and promiscuous. What I really set out to do was understand why we feel shame for that, why we feel the incessant need to substantiate the choices we make when it comes to relationships that never extend past the physical, and what I discovered is that we find comfort in the gray area, the collision between sex, and emotional connection and fear the possibility that it doesn’t have to be that way. We have as much right to express our individual sexuality as anyone, and should be allowed to explore those aspects of ourselves without fear of ridicule and disapproval. At least, that’s what I think.

  Despite the fact that I’m not a writer, I thought it was rather intuitive on my end. Of course, I could just be blowing smoke up my own ass and deluding myself into thinking it’s any good, but Toby gives nothing away while making me sweat bullets.

  After 10 minutes of hell, he finally lifts his gaze, and places the paper on his desk. “Remind me why I asked you to do this?”

  Oh shit. He hates it. He’s going to fire me before I can even get started. I might not have wanted this job, but being fired is the equivalent of a fig fat failure, something I have never done in my life. I’m a straight A student. Except for English Literature, that’s a solid B and I blame my inability to read between the damn lines for that.

  “Uh, because there was no one else?”

  Toby smiles, his first genuine smile in weeks. “Well, yes, but I also had a feeling you’d nail it, Sav. And you have. This,” — he taps his desk — “is great. It’s insightful, and so well written. I’m both impressed and surprised.”

  My shoulders sag, and I exhale, relieved and a little surprised myself. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t expecting such high praise for my second attempt. “I wasn’t sure you’d approve of me pitching my own idea.”

  “I value independent thinking, and I must be honest, I’m intrigued. What made you want to write about this?”

  “Zoey was helping me with some homework, and we started talking about it.” I swallow. “And then I started thinking about me and Nathan, and how I might have built it up in my head to be more than it really was.” I shrug. “Maybe I should have realized…” I cut myself off with a shake of my head, not wanting to delve too deeply into my own thought process when it came to writing this piece. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re happy with it. You’ll let me know when we run it?”

  I can see by the expression on his face that he wants to say something else, but he assuages my concern when, instead, he nods. “Yes, we should be up and running by Monday, if everything goes as planned. Until then though, you can relax, go back to being an intern. I’ll edit this myself, that way we don’t have to worry about anyone finding out who Dear Delilah is.”

  I give him a pensive glance. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  I’ve been wanting to talk to him about what really happened with Griffin, but Toby isn’t the type to ‘kiss and tell’ and Griffin has been ignoring my calls. I’m worried about them.

  “I’m fine, Sav,” he sighs. “Griff and I, we haven’t been the same for quite some time, and I figur
ed it would blow up eventually. I just didn’t want to see it because I love him.” His throat works, and the sadness in his eyes is bright, and sincere. “But right now, I love me more, and I think it’s best we part ways now rather than later, as hard as what it is.”

  I’m in no position to give any kind of relationship advice, but I can offer my support the best way I know how. I reach for his hand across the desk, and give it squeeze. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m here for you too, not just Griffin.”

  His smile is weak, but I take comfort in knowing it’s there. “Thanks, Sav. I appreciate it.”

  He gets back to work, and in spite of the way our impromptu meeting ended, I leave his office feeling excited and somewhat more confident. I flop down into my office chair, and pull out my phone, ready to shoot Zoey a text. Her response is immediate.

  I freakin’ told you it was amazing!!!!!!

  A few seconds later, she sends another…

  Dinner on me tonight?? Might be a bit late, busy painting a naked guy, but I’ll grab some food on my way home? Anything specific fancying your tickle?

  I snicker. She’s such a dork.

  Surprise me. I text back. I drop my phone back into my bag, and get back to work.

  12

  SAVANNAH

  ZOEY HOLDS up a glass of soda. “To Dear Delilah, and Hudson U’s newest darling!” Our glasses clink. “I knew you could do it!”

  I laugh, and then take a hearty sip. This past week has been a blur, but for the team at the Hudson University Press, months of hard work has finally come to fruition. The new website and digital app went live at Midnight on Monday, and alongside it the Dear Delilah segment. Toby showed me the analytics for Dear Delilah, and it was nothing short of a shock for me. Over 12 thousand page views in 48 hours, and after that, they kept climbing. Toby had a private email account set up, and because the letters are chosen at random, he prints them out and sticks them in a box. We’ve received close to 50 letters already, and I’m not sure whether I’m excited about it, or anxious because it’s really happening. I’m the new sex advice columnist at Hudson U.