by Matthue Roth
“I’m conversationally retarded. Using that word in every sense.”
“Yeah, but you do it well. It’s sweet.”
“That’s only because you see inside my soul and you know what I actually mean to say.”
“You should try it. I think you’d surprise yourself.”
“Don’t you have to go? To class or something?”
“I probably should. That doesn’t mean I will.”
It was the first time in the whole conversation that Larissa said anything about herself. It was also the first thing I’d ever heard her say in that tone—low and growly, almost criminal. It was a new level of disturbing. Not because we were good kids at heart (although we both were) or because we’d ever dabbled in being bad kids (although we both did), but because I had no idea where it was coming from. For the first time since I’d met her, I witnessed Larissa’s thoughts leaping from one thing to the next, and I had no idea how that progression happened.
“Seriously, Arty. Find someone to talk to. Right now.”
“No, I can’t—”
“Come on. I dare you. Just do it.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“That girl with the pixie-black hair—”
“No way, she’ll think I’m a stalker—”
“Or she’ll think you’re sweet.”
“I can’t.”
“Fine.”
“What?”
“Just do whatever. I don’t want to pressure you into doing it, I just thought it was a cool game. You don’t have to do it.”
“I just said, I’m not going to do it.”
“I know! That’s what I meant.”
“So I’m not doing whatever.”
“Arty. I said, fine.”
“Fine.”
And we stopped what we were doing and we laughed a little about it. But only a little. After that, we both got off the phone quickly.
When I hung up, I realized how badly I was trembling.
tight
That was the winter of girls wearing tights without pants. Leggings, they called them, although the difference between the two was almost entirely lost on me. All I knew was, at first it felt like an alternate universe—to see a school hall full of girls without pants on, or skirts—but soon my weird, tortured teenage brain just resigned itself to the fact that it was sexy, and I learned to deal. Or didn’t.
At the beginning of the year, when the weather got colder and the leggings thing just started to manifest, it felt like I was walking around on a science fiction TV show—you know, one of those ones that takes place on a spaceship and everyone is wearing sets of coveralls that are basically just an excuse to show off their curves, a “uniform” that’s a thin layer of nothing over immaculately-sculpted bodies. Except, this was school. It was real life. You were supposed to be able to think about things besides girls’ bodies.
I mean, allegedly.
Mostly I was into breasts, I guess. I had figured this out partly by default, where my eyes naturally veered, but also based on extensive research reading men’s magazines. I hated those magazines, but I always wound up paging through them anyway. Mostly in the bathrooms of friends’ houses. At first casually, flipping through them when they were around, then more obsessively. I combed them for details, those sidebars and model interviews and drink recipes, as if they contained clues to the nature of my own masculinity that I was unaware of. The magazines still terrified me. Reading them felt sort of like having a conversation with a guy who might beat you up at any moment, you just weren’t sure what would make him erupt.
Anyway, according to these magazines, you were either a breast man or a leg man. And I was sure I was a breast man—until that week. Until that morning, in English class, to be exact.
This one girl who sat next to me in English, Kendra Aiken. She had peach-pink skin that lay perpetually in between the realms of tan and made up—not just her face, but her whole body. One day she was wearing this tight shirt and even tighter pants. Non-pants. Whatever. Actually, they could have possibly been shorts; she wore boots up to her knees that might have made me think of Batgirl or Rogue if I hadn’t been thinking of her.
My mind wasn’t ordinarily this brazen. I mean, I didn’t think it was. But my objectivity had been seriously called into question a few years ago, once hormones started showing up and interfering with the way I thought about girls and the normal trajectory of my life, and ever since then it felt like a battle. Like every time I had a conversation with a girl, part of me would be forcing myself to focus on what she’s saying, focus on what she’s saying, and another part would be directing my head to break off eye contact for just one second, just one line of our conversation, and direct my gaze south, to her chest.
The female body had always been a source of mystery to me, from the inexplicably sudden appearance of breasts to the myriad of womanly parts that could be sexualized (all of which had names, none of which I knew) to the equally inexplicable reaction of our own bodies to these new discoveries. And that day, all of those discoveries seemed personified and epitomized with Kendra Aiken.
Kendra Aiken sat near me in English. She had peach-pink skin that lay perpetually in between the realms of tan and made up—not just her face, but her whole body. One day she was wearing this tight shirt and even tighter pants. Non-pants. Whatever. Actually, they could have possibly been shorts; she wore boots up to her knees that might have made me think of Batgirl or Rogue if I hadn’t been thinking of her.
The room was divided in two, each half facing the middle. The way our alphabetical order laid us out, she sat right across from me. If all we did all day was face forward, we’d have had constant eye contact. Most days we were writing, face down. That day I couldn’t stop looking at her.
She had these skintight leggings. The only creases came where her body folded, behind her knees, at her hips. Otherwise it was amazingly smooth, the way only robots and comic book characters were supposed to be. Her boots were exactly as tight as her legs. If you purposely pulled your eyes out of focus, dulled out the shine of the black leather, it looked like one smooth, contiguous flowing chassis.
Kendra’s face was otherwise occupied, alternately watching Ms. Bing and pretending to pay attention, then glancing idly around the room—maybe daydreaming, maybe checking out other people. The curve of her legs, from thigh to hip to butt, where one ended and the other began, all those mysteries of wordplay and the human female anatomy. What exactly counted as a thigh? Would I ever know? And why in the book I was reading had it said that a thigh was an erogenous zone—did that mean it was like a penis, that anything you touched could cause an orgasm?
I felt bad about looking at her. I mean, I felt bad about checking her out, experimenting on her body with my eyes. I felt so clinical and so dirty—I wondered how she could move, the way that her hips would gyrate during sex, whether her legs would be spread straight or curve around her partner’s body. What her breasts looked like flat against her chest, and dangling away from it, and upside down. How she would look at him.
She was looking at me.
I flooded with shame. A deep void at the bottom of my stomach. I was the one who never checked out girls or objectified them. I even said I was a feminist. When guys started talking about which girl in our class they wanted, I sunk into a corner and said nothing and hoped no one would challenge me. Not because I didn’t think those thoughts, but because I didn’t want to demean women by speaking those thoughts out loud. But that wasn’t enough. If I really wanted to be a feminist, if I really wanted to not hurt women, I should just shut off this part of me completely.
She was looking at me. Her mouth twisted into something impossible to pin down. It was neither a come-hither smile nor a get-lost scowl. Her lower lip hung slightly open, as if doubting my sincerity, or doubting I’d actually be capable of thinking something so raw and frankly carnal.
I had to do something. Shoot my eyes downward. Offer her an apologetic smile. Offer an a
pology? I couldn’t. I could never actually speak to her, to admit what I did out loud. I had to stop looking. I had to.
I couldn’t pull away.
No: I could have. It felt as though I were possessed, like some evil inclination had sank its claws into me and was controlling my mind. Afterward, when I was standing outside the class and I was in control of myself again, I would come to curse myself. How was it possible that I couldn’t look away? My head was mobile. I wasn’t paralyzed. She wasn’t the hottest girl I had ever seen. Her legs weren’t the skinniest (that was Kirsten Ballowitz) nor the curviest (Portia Murray). But there they were. Crossed, craven, clad in Spandex. The space between her legs, not obscured at all, an indiscernible flat wall that revealed nothing of what was beneath, but it was skin-tight anyway, no skirt or shirt to hide.
She was still looking at me. Her expression was impossible to read. Not encouraging, but not disgusted. But she had encouraged it, right? By dressing that way? It was like she wanted me to do this. It was like she was asking for it.
My face burned when I thought that. My entire body shook. Oh, G-d. She was asking for it? I was thinking like an animal. I could feel Mitch Martin inside of me, infecting me. Except, no—this was all my own doing. I needed Larissa here. Except that would be the worst thing ever; I would want to get with her; I would hurt her; I would turn into a monster. I was thinking too hard. I needed to stop myself.
I ran. I got up and ran. I let go of my book and got out of my desk and lunged for the door and pulled it open and ran out from the classroom. The process took several steps but it all happened in the blink of a second.
And then I was outside the room. I was in the school hallway, surrounded by lockers, the whole world spinning around me.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. My backpack was still inside there. My book sat on the desk, evidence of my perversion. I had been in there. Now I was not.
Was there such a thing as visual sexual assault? Was I any better than Mitch, tossing around my lust without caring who it hit? Now, in a different environment—far away from the classroom and everyone inside it, feeling the stale recycled air of our school’s ventilation system coasting in my face, it all felt ridiculous and faraway. I could have stopped myself. I was just pushing it, playing with my limits. There was something dangerous in me, the intersection of my hormone-induced thoughts and the forced daily interactions with people who I’d otherwise have nothing to do with. It made me feel these things.
I shot up. There were footsteps, crisp new-shoe footsteps, coming down that empty hall.
Carrie Moss, that girl from the bathroom. She always seemed like a sensible, even-tempered person. She had that big-eyed, gentle-smiled round full face. She waved hi when she saw me.
“Hey, Arthur. Is everything okay?”
She was wearing a sheer shirt. One of those long-sleeve shirts that’s basically a tank top with the clavicle and arms and collar made of this see-through mesh material. Her breasts strained against it. They were as large as her head.
I was staring at her breasts instead of her face. Stop it. Dammit, sexuality, just turn the hell OFF for a minute.
A month. A year. Forever.
“I told you I’m fine!”
I nearly bit my own lip off when I yeeped that.
My face burned bright red, and I backed away. “I just, I have to go! Elsewhere! Immediately!”
I didn’t stick around to see how she reacted. I turned around and snapped into something that was way too fast to be called a walk, and I beat it out of there.
I didn’t stop till I was outside. The second-floor balcony, extending over the sports field, a sleek sheet of aluminum outgrowth, stretching from the school building. I flung open the doors with both arms and sailed into the big blue day, airplanes and clouds over my head, a frozen refreshing chill on my cheeks. I was only wearing a shirt. It felt so good. I could run free forever. I could almost fly.
“Show me your school ID,” said the disciplinary aide from behind me.
I stopped in my tracks.
“Is this your lunch period? Students are only allowed on the balcony during their lunch.”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I just...I finished a presentation in class. I needed to get some fresh air. I have this anxiety condition...”
“Do you have a doctor’s note? I don’t think you’re allowed to get air without a doctor’s note.”
I scrunched up my face as if to say, Do you ever LISTEN to yourself when you speak aloud? I avoided actually saying that, because it would be perfect grounds for her to write me up for real. Instead I just waltzed back inside before she could ask for my ID again, letting the door swing shut behind me. Those disciplinary aides weren’t that bad, really. She probably just wanted to have a cigarette and figured she should do her job while the opportunity presented itself.
After that, it wasn’t long until the period finished. I needed to go back into Ms. Bing’s classroom to retrieve my books for the next class, which was Chemistry. (I also needed the lab goggles in my backpack pocket so my eyes didn’t burn out.) I waited very carefully out of sight, down the hall from the classroom, until it seemed reasonable to assume that everyone was out.
I ducked in. Ms. Bing was at her desk, marking things with a red pen. Red pens were never a good omen. Larissa always called them Passive-Aggressive Wands of Doom. And that was in Hebrew School, where grades didn’t count.
Ms. Bing looked up as I entered. “Everything alright, Arthur?”
“Yes. Fine. Thanks.”
“Good.” She watched on, waiting for an explanation.
I fished. What was I going to tell her, what was my excuse again? It had flown completely from my head. All I could think of was what everyone said—
“Sorry for that, uh, unexpected denouement,” I frowned like I really did feel bad about it. “I was having female troubles.”
My cheeks burned. I don’t know where that came from. Larissa? My fight or flight impulse? Wit was a risk.
This time, it paid off.
Ms. Bing let out a little laugh, slightly bawdy, the kind that teachers give when they’re not in front of a class.
“It’s no problem, Mr. Kestrel,” she said. “Just please try not to make it a habit.”
“Not at all, Ms. Bing.”
I disappeared before it could get any further than that.
violent mind
I had these dreams. Each one was radically different, as different as my dreams always are, but these all felt like the same dream, or a remix of the same dream, or like several different children who had all been born from the same pool of genes.
They all started when the sun went down. All the dreams took place in Larissa’s basement. Also, for some reason, the song “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” by Loretta Lynn was always playing in the background. (Ms. Lynn, a country singer in the Good Ole Opry style, was a favorite of Larissa’s and mine, after our having discovered several of her old records together at a yard sale.) Sometimes the basement was clogged with people; sometimes I was there alone. Often Larissa was there. Only, in all of my dreams, we were never there alone.
The first few times I tried to push my way through to talk to her (through a crowd of people; a zoo of animals; and a thickness of computer parts, stacked high against each other) I never could. Sometimes I’d reach people I thought were her, only to find that they were not. Sometimes I’d start talking, not realizing it wasn’t her, or realizing that and not caring, pouring out my secrets regardless. Other times the girl would be really hot, model-hot, or have some other advantage over Larissa—once it was an actress from a TV show I used to watch as a child—but the thing that I wanted to say, whatever it was, I could never fully communicate to her.
The basement was always beneath Larissa’s house, but it wasn’t always a basement. Sometimes it was my first bedroom, from before my parents moved out of the apartment and into our house. Once it was a jungle, and I pushed my way through vines and bramb
le, scratching my face, oozing out a trickle of blood. When I woke up to find my cheeks clean of cuts, I felt sad and disappointed.
Night after night, through manifold incarnations of Larissa’s basement and manifold dreams—or maybe each was an extension of the same dream—I struggled to deliver my message to her, and to force myself to remember what that message was.
Gradually, however, my dream began to change focus. Instead of trying to rescue Larissa (because that’s what I was trying to do, this whole time, like a mission in my mind, knowing I somehow had to do it) I was hunting for someone else.
I never found him.
At first I thought it was Mitch I was hunting for. I would catch a glimpse of him, push toward his shock of just-buzzed hair, but he always eluded me. I never found out for sure. I pushed through crowds, through a solid wall of people from school whose names I couldn’t remember but who I knew were judging me.
Once I almost caught him. His shiny slicked-back hair so oily, slipping out of my fingers, until I reached past it and caught his nose and chin. I brought him close and turned him around.
