Wants a piece of tail.
No. I’m not going to think that.
Gary’s history, and Greg, my lovely boyfriend, Greg, just reclaimed home base.
It’s true. I’d preferred Gary to Greg, just a little bit, just the very beginning of a brand-new love to take the place of a tired old one. But Greg is great, really great, and I love him. I love him completely. I just got distracted for a little bit.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why can’t I just be happy with the guy who loves me?
I will be. From now on, I will be. Just don’t let Greg find out. Please, God, don’t let Greg stop loving me.
“It’s been real,” I say, half turning away from Gary. “Are you going back in?”
Gary studies me, trying to figure out . . . what? That I’m not going to cry? That I never cared all that much? That I’m putting a good face on a broken heart?
Let him wonder.
“No, I’ve got my last final tomorrow. I need to get going,” he says.
“Good luck. Hope you ace it,” I say, smiling freely and easily. No broken heart here, Gary; keep moving. Nothing to see.
“Okay,” he says. “Well, bye, Karen. It’s been great.”
I don’t bother to answer. I’ve said good-bye, wished him well, played it cool ten times in the last two minutes. The performance is over.
Gary jaywalks across Figueroa and disappears slowly into the city-bright darkness, walking hurriedly toward The Row.
It hits me then like a club: the crawl of pain banging at my heart, that upswell of nausea, the tears pressing against the back of my throat and behind my eyes.
“Hey! Are you coming or going?” Ellen shouts from across the street. She’s about to jaywalk her way over. She just has to wait for a few cars to get out of her way, one of them an ugly white Ford.
I clear my throat and say, “Going. I think.” I shrug and point to the car that’s double-parked for a fraction of a second while Greg hops out.
Greg came back. Okay. Here we go. The performance isn’t over yet. God, I’m so tired. I just want to rest for a minute, to let down my guard and weep for a few hours.
“Where is he?” Greg says softly, but his look isn’t soft. It’s hard and angry. “Who was that?” He’s not making a huge scene because of Ellen, because if there’s anything Greg hates, it’s making a scene and looking like a fool.
Join the club.
“Just some guy I met at an exchange once,” I say, which is nothing but the truth. It’s just not the whole truth. This isn’t a court of law; I’m not under oath. There is no penalty for perjury.
“He was hugging you.”
“I was hugging him. He told me that he just graduated. Congratulations, you know?” I say. Again, the truth. Sort of.
“Hi, Greg!” Ellen says, breathless from running across the street. “Are you all finished?”
She means is he all finished taking tests, but the words have a different meaning for me. Are we all finished? Is Greg finished with me?
He can’t be. I love him. I can’t imagine life without him. Or not easily imagine it.
“No. One to go,” Greg says, all smiles for Ellen. He’s like that. Greg really hates to not look good, to not look perfectly composed and charming and on top of things. I’d say that’s perfectly normal. “How about you?”
Ellen raises her hands in the air and does a little dance. “Finished! The end! Let the party begin!”
Greg laughs easily, but I can feel the chill buried in his eyes, hiding behind the happy twinkle he’s displaying for Ellen’s benefit.
“Karen? You done?” Ellen asks. “Are you ready to party with me? Greg can’t, poor slob. He has to crack the books.”
“I’m done, but I’m exhausted,” I say. “I’ll see you later at the house, Ellen.”
“Okay,” she says joyously. “See you later.”
Greg smiles until Ellen swings past the curtain into the Four-O, the sounds of talking and laughter, the smells of smoke and beer, slithering out into the street.
Greg and I stand on the sidewalk silently. I’m looking at him. He’s looking out at the street.
“I’ll walk you home,” he says after a few tense moments.
“Thanks,” I say. I slip my hand into his and we wait for a break in the traffic. “I’m really going to miss you. I wish we could spend semester break together, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” he says as we rush across the street.
I mean it. I make myself mean the words because I actually do, even if I don’t feel the words. Say what you mean and mean what you say, and I do. I really do. I just don’t say what I feel, or even feel what I say. Not this minute, anyway. But I will feel it. I will. I’ll love Greg again because he’ll love me. He does love me, and that’s the only thing that matters.
“Do you still need to study for your English final?”
“Yeah. I guess you want to go home.”
We’re in front of the Beta Pi house, our steps faltering. The brick walk calls to me, but I can’t give in. I have to make sure everything is fine with Greg.
“No, not at all,” I say. “Why don’t we go to your place?”
He smiles slightly and, holding hands, we walk down The Row. His apartment is just off Adams, a long walk down The Row and across Vermont. Greg is talking about his roommate and his Spanish final and how his mother’s uncle taught him how to ride one summer; Greg likes to talk and he mostly likes to talk about himself. I don’t mind. He’s an interesting guy. At the moment, because of trying so hard to get my Gary reaction under control, I’m not actually paying much attention to Greg. It’s foolish of me, I know, but I feel kind of loose and weepy at the moment. I’m definitely not at full strength.
Why I should need to be at any strength just to be with my boyfriend is a question I’m in no mood to wrestle with.
We climb the concrete stairs to his second-floor apartment and walk in as his roommate, Bruce, is walking out.
“Hi. I’m going to see a movie. I’ll be out late,” Bruce says, taking the steps two at a time, slowing long enough to give me a leer and Greg a grin. I don’t enjoy being leered at, but what can I do about it?
Greg ushers me in to his apartment, an almost identical layout to my apartment last year. The carpet is rust-colored shag that hasn’t seen a vacuum in months, and the kitchen is a single sliver of linoleum and Formica dotted with dirty dishes, a dingy washrag, a quarter of a bottle of Joy, and a stained dish towel hanging on the oven handle. Beyond the kitchen is the sole bedroom with two twin beds sitting on the floor. The curtains only have two-thirds of their hooks. It is, overall and in particular, a dingy, unhappy, unloved-looking apartment. Of course I give in to the urge to love it and take care of it whenever I’m here. I can’t help myself. Who could?
The kitchen table is piled high with textbooks and spiral notebooks and a dirty coffee cup. Greg doesn’t seem to notice the mess, or even his books. Greg puts his arms around me from behind and presses himself against my back, murmuring against my hair, “You look so good.”
The drapes are open and the picture window is black and shiny, reflecting us. I don’t know who’s out there in the courtyard watching us, but anyone could be. Greg doesn’t seem to care. I guess it doesn’t matter who sees us. We’re in love and we’re only hugging.
“I just look good in red,” I say.
“You look better out of it,” he says.
Still behind me, his hands come up to cup my breasts. I can see this in the reflection. I can feel it, too, but it’s seeing it that has me sort of frozen deep inside. I have to do this. . . . What a stupid thing to think. I want to do this. I love him. He loves me. We’ve been together for more than two years, so I know that this is the real thing and that this is the guy I’m going to marry. Greg is re
al. Gary was a distraction. I’ve got to stop letting myself get distracted.
Greg, his arms wrapped around me from behind, walks me to the bedroom, kissing my neck as we go. The bedroom is dark, the light from the alley streetlamp dim behind the dingy curtains. I can feel his hard-on at my back, an insistent, heavy weight, pressing against me. Greg turns me in his arms and I wrap my arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe to kiss his mouth. Two kisses later and I’m naked and on my back, Greg lying between my legs, his hands on my breasts.
I’m trying so hard. I’m trying to lose myself in this, to feel something, to want Greg and to want this. And I do. Kind of. I almost do, if he’d just give me a few more minutes, just a few more kisses and a few more caresses and just one whispered I love you. But instead I get a hard shove into me that goes nowhere. And I get Greg shoving a pillow under my butt so that I’m angled up toward the ceiling.
“Here we go,” he says. “That works.”
And then he’s pushing into me, and I can feel that I’m not wet enough, but I guess he can’t feel that because he grunts his way to orgasm and then lies down on me with a smile of pure bliss, and I hold him to me, tight. Holding him to me, pressing him against me, molding our bodies together. That’s what I do, whispering, “I love you,” against his neck, running my fingers through the hair on his nape, embracing him with my whole heart and my entire body.
“Me, too,” he whispers, sliding out of me.
He goes to the bathroom and gets a washcloth and hands it to me; I wipe the wetness from my crotch, trying to look pretty and sexy while I do it, and then he says, “I’ve got to study. That exam is going to be a bear and I still need to analyze three poems I haven’t read yet.”
In a minute or two, we’re back in the living room, Greg at the kitchen table, dark head bent over his books, a contented air about him. The light in the living room and kitchen is so bright, so painfully bright. I put my arms around Greg from behind, hugging him, kissing his neck as he sits at his studies.
“I’ve got to study, Karen. Can you keep yourself busy for a while? Then I’ll walk you back to the house,” he says.
“Sure. Take your time,” I say.
I look around and pick up some newspapers that were on the floor, straighten them into an orderly square, no ragged edges, and put them on the coffee table. I plump the cushions on the couch and close the drapes. I go into the kitchen and wash a frying pan, three plates with melted cheese stuck on them, five glasses, a butter knife, and three forks. I put the dishes away, humming a little tune that has no true melody, just something I’m making up as I go.
“Karen, could you keep it down? I’m trying to study.”
“Sorry.”
I straighten the dish towel on the oven handle and scrub the sink. I make sure the Joy bottle is perfectly straight and lined up with the faucets. I walk into the bathroom and go, fixing the toilet paper so that it unwinds the right way, then wiping down the sink and countertop so that they’re spotless and dry. I fold and straighten the towels.
Greg is still at his books, seemingly oblivious to my presence. That’s okay. He’s got to study.
I wander into the bedroom and make his bed so that no one can tell what we did. Even me. And then I wander back out to the living room, things looking much better, much tidier and more organized and as pretty as things can look in a college apartment shared by two guys. There’s not a single picture hanging on the walls, but there is that Farrah Fawcett poster, the one of her in the red bathing suit. I don’t look anything like Farrah Fawcett, nothing at all. She’s so beautiful.
“I need to get going,” I say to Greg.
“Can you wait awhile? I’m having trouble understanding this one poem.”
“Which poem is it?”
“‘In Distrust of Merits,’ by Marianne Moore.”
“I know that poem,” I say. “‘Hate-hardened heart, O heart of iron / iron is iron till it is rust. / There never was a war that was / not inward . . .’”
I’ve remembered those lines; I don’t want to think why. Also, the last line: Beauty is everlasting / and dust is for a time.
“That’s it. It’s nuts.”
“What don’t you understand?” I say. “Maybe I can help.”
And so I do. An hour later, Greg, feeling less nervous about his final in American Literature, walks me home. We hold hands and he tells me about a summer camping trip with his parents at Yosemite when he was eleven and of a prank he played on his high school girlfriend that wound up in the yearbook. I listen and laugh at the right moments. At the steps of the Beta Pi house, Greg kisses me good night and then I wave good-bye.
I let my eyes wander over to the front of the EE Tau house twice during Greg’s monologue. Okay, maybe three times, but overall, I think I did pretty well.
Actually, I think I deserve an Academy Award.
Ellen
– Spring 1977 –
“I thought this class was supposed to be a Mick,” I say.
Mick is short for Mickey Mouse, shorthand for an easy way to get course credits in required fields. It’s a ULA thing.
“That’s the word,” Karen says.
“I needed one more class to max out my biological sciences,” Diane says. “Hello, Human Sexuality.”
“Have you read any of the book?” Karen says. “It’s five hundred pages.”
“And cost forty bucks, used,” Diane says.
“You’re the one who talked us into taking it,” I say, looking at Diane down the row. We’re sitting in the dark of Bowman, the room nearly full, the professor talking, everyone sitting quietly, taking notes. Everyone but us. We’re sitting side by side, whispering.
“Hey, I heard it was a Mick, too!” Diane says. “No one said the first midterm was twenty-six pages long.”
“Selective memory,” I say.
“They said it was a Mick,” Karen says. “Everybody says it.”
“Everybody is a liar,” I say. The first test was brutal. Does it really matter that I know how many sperm are in a single ejaculation when it takes only one to do the job?
“At least today we’re seeing a movie,” Karen says, balancing her purse on top of her books, on top of her lap, snuggling down in her seat. Karen loves movies like nobody else I know. She’s seen them all, not just the famous ones.
“Yeah,” I say, already wondering what kind of movie they’re going to show us in Human Sexuality. It can’t be X-rated. It has to be illegal to show a bunch of minors an X-rated movie. Still, the midterm was twenty-six pages long. All bets are off in this class.
The professor says from the stage, “And so our perception of male and female sexuality is formed and controlled by cultural norms that become fossilized over time. Today we’re going to see two films on masturbation—”
“What?!” I say.
“Oh, God, no,” Diane moans.
“—and I want you to notice the differences in the artistic quality of the films and how those differences, subtle or not, influence your reaction and therefore define your perception. I’ll leave it at that for now, but be ready to discuss this once these two short films are finished.”
The lights go out. The professor gets off the stage and sits in the front row. Karen hunches down in her seat, looking like she wants to crawl under the seat in front of her. Diane has her hands over her mouth. I’m too shocked to move. There are more than a hundred people in this room and I’m being forced to watch somebody masturbate.
I can’t believe I just thought that.
The film starts. A nice-looking girl with a trim figure and long dark hair walks into a bedroom. She’s in her underwear. It’s a nice room. It’s clean, her bed’s made, there’s a cute little lamp on her desk, and the lamp is on. She lights a candle and the flame looks kind of cozy. She puts a record on the stereo in her roo
m, all her movements calm and deliberate, like she knows what she’s going to do next and she’s cool with that. Soft music begins to play, not hard rock, but something upbeat. She takes off her bra and lets it fall to the floor. She lies back on her bed and starts touching her breasts, rubbing her hands over them, playing with her nipples.
Some guy four rows down and off to the side makes a chortling noise. The professor turns around and looks at the students in his class. We all sit perfectly still, eyes front, like students are supposed to do.
The girl slides her panties off. One hand stays on a nipple and the other winds its way down to her crotch. The camera stays steady, not moving, and the shot is from the side so we don’t actually see the goods, just her hand going like crazy between her legs. Then her legs twitch, her breath gets short, she dips her head forward, and she makes a here I come noise.
The audience is silent, watching her.
The shot fades out, the music still playing, until that dies out, too.
The next film starts right away; I barely have a chance to look over at Diane and Karen. Karen is wide-eyed and so low in her seat that I don’t know how she can see over the chair in front of her. Diane has her hands over her eyes and she’s shaking her head.
All I know is that I feel assaulted and shocked. I don’t have anything in my head but pure horror.
In the next film, there’s no music and the lighting is really dim, almost murky. There’s a sloppy-looking guy with messed-up hair and dirty jeans in a pigsty of a room. His bed is unmade and the sheets are gross. There is crap all over the floor: record albums, an overflowing ashtray, piles of clothes. He looks at a Playboy centerfold, drops his pants, grabs his dick, and jerks off as fast as he can. The whole thing takes less than five minutes, and I’m talking about the film. The guy jerking off, maybe three minutes. The minute he’s finished catching the goo—oh, excuse me, three hundred million sperm—in a dirty rag he picks up off the floor, he wipes himself, yanks his jeans on, and that’s the end of it.
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