poignantly so much sharper than the affection they’d ever felt for Isadora Topfeldt back when they actually were friends with her.
At that first dinner party, Dennis Boyd had sat across from Jules Jacobson with slightly wet-looking dark eyes, and each time his gaze moved toward her, she received a new, pleasing little bang of his interest. It had been a long time since she had truly liked a boy, or a man, as people were now starting to call them. Up at college in Buffalo, everyone had worn bundled clothes outdoors, rendering their bodies identically asexual; indoors, the men were in hearty flannel, throwing back beers. Foosball was played, that perplexingly popular game with all those knobs; and the Ms. Pac-Man machine was a regular destination in the back of Crumley’s, the bar where everyone spent Friday and Saturday nights. Jules had had vaguely vomit-flavored sex with two different, uninteresting guys—the theater department guys were all gay, or else only interested in the very beautiful theater department girls—and had taken long showers afterward in a stall in her dorm, wearing flip-flops so she would not get a foot fungus.
Her suite mates were a group of girls as mean as you could ever find, not to mention slatternly, unacademic. It was just a piece of bad luck that she had been put with them. The suite smelled of hot comb. The girls screamed at one another with abandon and contempt, as though this place were some kind of halfway house for the deranged. “EAT MY PUSSY, AMANDA, YOU ARE SUCH A LYING SACK OF SHIT!” one girl shouted across the common room with its leaking beanbag furniture and splayed-open pizza boxes and Sony Trinitron TV and, of course, its hot combs lying around like the swords of knights during their day off.
In the first snow of freshman year, Jules Jacobson walked to the phone booth across the street from the dorm, and there she plied the phone with coins, calling Ash Wolf at Yale. As soon as Ash answered, Jules could detect seriousness of purpose. “Hello,” said Ash in the distracted, aloof voice of someone writing a Molière paper.
“Ash, I hate it here,” Jules said. “This place is so enormous. Do you know how many students there are?
Twenty thousand
. It’s like an entire city where I don’t know anyone. I’m like an immigrant who’s come alone to America. My name is Anna Babushka. Please come get me.” Ash laughed, as always. Her laughter on the phone now became for Jules the highlight of the call; the fact that she could elicit this response in Ash caused her to preen a little bit. Even in her unhappiness, she became aware of feeling a small strand of power.
“Oh, Jules,” said Ash. “I’m sorry you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset. I’m unhappy. I mean it.”
“Give it a chance, okay? You’ve only been there two and a half months.”
“Which is a decade in dog years.”
“You could go to student counseling.”
“I did. But I need more than that.” Jules had had five sessions with a disheveled social worker named Melinda, who was as kind as the kindest mother, nodding in sympathy while Jules railed against the stupidity of college life. Later, she would barely remember what Melinda had said to her, but at the time her presence had been soothing and necessary, and certainly Jules unconsciously imitated some of Melinda’s style later on when she herself started a therapy practice.
“College takes some getting used to,” said Ash. “I felt the same way too in the beginning, but it got better recently.”
“You go to Yale, Ash; it’s completely different. Everyone is always shit-faced here.”
“Lots of people get drunk here too,” said Ash. “Believe me. If you listen hard now, you can hear the sound of people puking in Davenport.” All Jules heard was the sound of a match being lit. With a cigarette in hand, Ash often looked like a fairy smoking or a delinquent angel.
“Well,
here,
people put their mouths directly under a keg nozzle,”
At that first dinner party, Dennis Boyd had sat across from Jules Jacobson with slightly wet-looking dark eyes, and each time his gaze moved toward her, she received a new, pleasing little bang of his interest. It had been a long time since she had truly liked a boy, or a man, as people were now starting to call them. Up at college in Buffalo, everyone had worn bundled clothes outdoors, rendering their bodies identically asexual; indoors, the men were in hearty flannel, throwing back beers. Foosball was played, that perplexingly popular game with all those knobs; and the Ms. Pac-Man machine was a regular destination in the back of Crumley’s, the bar where everyone spent Friday and Saturday nights. Jules had had vaguely vomit-flavored sex with two different, uninteresting guys—the theater department guys were all gay, or else only interested in the very beautiful theater department girls—and had taken long showers afterward in a stall in her dorm, wearing flip-flops so she would not get a foot fungus.
Her suite mates were a group of girls as mean as you could ever find, not to mention slatternly, unacademic. It was just a piece of bad luck that she had been put with them. The suite smelled of hot comb. The girls screamed at one another with abandon and contempt, as though this place were some kind of halfway house for the deranged. “EAT MY PUSSY, AMANDA, YOU ARE SUCH A LYING SACK OF SHIT!” one girl shouted across the common room with its leaking beanbag furniture and splayed-open pizza boxes and Sony Trinitron TV and, of course, its hot combs lying around like the swords of knights during their day off.
In the first snow of freshman year, Jules Jacobson walked to the phone booth across the street from the dorm, and there she plied the phone with coins, calling Ash Wolf at Yale. As soon as Ash answered, Jules could detect seriousness of purpose. “Hello,” said Ash in the distracted, aloof voice of someone writing a Molière paper.
“Ash, I hate it here,” Jules said. “This place is so enormous. Do you know how many students there are?
Twenty thousand
. It’s like an entire city where I don’t know anyone. I’m like an immigrant who’s come alone to America. My name is Anna Babushka. Please come get me.” Ash laughed, as always. Her laughter on the phone now became for Jules the highlight of the call; the fact that she could elicit this response in Ash caused her to preen a little bit. Even in her unhappiness, she became aware of feeling a small strand of power.
“Oh, Jules,” said Ash. “I’m sorry you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset. I’m unhappy. I mean it.”
“Give it a chance, okay? You’ve only been there two and a half months.”
“Which is a decade in dog years.”
“You could go to student counseling.”
“I did. But I need more than that.” Jules had had five sessions with a disheveled social worker named Melinda, who was as kind as the kindest mother, nodding in sympathy while Jules railed against the stupidity of college life. Later, she would barely remember what Melinda had said to her, but at the time her presence had been soothing and necessary, and certainly Jules unconsciously imitated some of Melinda’s style later on when she herself started a therapy practice.
“College takes some getting used to,” said Ash. “I felt the same way too in the beginning, but it got better recently.”
“You go to Yale, Ash; it’s completely different. Everyone is always shit-faced here.”
“Lots of people get drunk here too,” said Ash. “Believe me. If you listen hard now, you can hear the sound of people puking in Davenport.” All Jules heard was the sound of a match being lit. With a cigarette in hand, Ash often looked like a fairy smoking or a delinquent angel.
“Well,
here,
people put their mouths directly under a keg nozzle,”
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