estate. But I pay rent.” I understood his embarrassment at parental help. But it made me feel even more confused by finances. Every once in a while my father sent a check, which made me feel rich because I never bought anything, since I also felt poor. I made ten dollars an hour at Barnes and Noble, working half-time as a way to signal to myself that translation was my real work. When my coworkers worried about student loans and maxed-out credit cards, I almost wished I too had the boundary of debt to help describe my place in the world. It was lonely to be both spoiled and blue collar, just one more way I was a stranger to what most people considered the real world.
We sat on the edge of Brian’s bed for a long time, staring at the wall a few feet in front of our faces. I was thrilled to feel myself blushing. It had been so long since I was nervous for a first kiss. “So, I got you back to my room,” he said finally, rubbing his hands on his corduroys. I helped him tuck the hair behind my ears. And then the black bar on my roller-coaster seat snapped in place over my legs—complete freedom, nothing to do but surrender to the grip of a machine whose sole purpose was exhilaration. He didn’t try to take off my underwear and eventually the ride slowed to a stop in a breezy, unmown field.
As soon as I opened my eyes the next morning, I willed myself to stay awake. My body yawned and rolled toward Brian. “Get up,” I commanded it. The clock on Brian’s desk told me it was seven fifteen. It was a Saturday and I had nowhere to be. I dressed silently, kissed Brian on the cheek, and slipped out his bedroom door. As I clanked home in my high-heel boots and one earring, I grimaced against the thought of the long black hair in my right nipple, which I’d forgotten to tweeze before I met Brian the night before. Maybe that was why he hadn’t tried to take off my underwear. I crawled into bed when I got home, hoping to sleep off the shame of a new attachment. He wouldn’t call me and I would stop liking him. I put my left hand on my breast and my right hand between my legs and slept until noon.
But he did call, and kept calling. He courted me perfectly, waiting a dependable two or three days after each of our dates before inviting me to a concert or a movie the following weekend. All that was required of me was to say yes. If he waited longer than usual to call, I felt relieved to be alone in my own bed, instead of hyperconscious in Brian’s, where I waited for my new need to crash over me in the dark.
—
Brian and I had been dating for weeks before I let myself stay in his bed until late morning. He yawned and rolled on his side toward me. “You’re still here,” he said, and kissed me once just above each of my nipples. I bit my lip to keep from moaning. I wanted his sleepy lips on my breasts again and again and nothing else. I felt sad knowing I would have sex with Brian one day. Sex was the cracked, pink, mammalian tongue of a stranger who had promised me a line of coke in the bathroom of a dive bar; the pointy coarseness of the unknown cock between my legs when I woke up facedown in an unfamiliar room; the pair of hairy, pudgy thighs imprisoning my torso one cold, grainy morning on a secluded beach that had seemed exciting a few hours earlier; Jared’s stern voice telling me not to move, he was almost done, he needed to be relaxed when we met his father for brunch. I wanted sex with Brian to salvage my body from memory. So the first time it happened while we were drunkenly making out, a voice in my head said, “Tell him to stop. Make this stop.”
The good voice in me is always male. Not because men are wiser but because men are calming, before you get to know them. You ask a man a question, he answers. He asks you one back or doesn’t. End of story. I listened to the unknown male voice telling me to make this stop until Brian said, “I’m gonna come.”
“No!” I said—aloud this time, but it was too
We sat on the edge of Brian’s bed for a long time, staring at the wall a few feet in front of our faces. I was thrilled to feel myself blushing. It had been so long since I was nervous for a first kiss. “So, I got you back to my room,” he said finally, rubbing his hands on his corduroys. I helped him tuck the hair behind my ears. And then the black bar on my roller-coaster seat snapped in place over my legs—complete freedom, nothing to do but surrender to the grip of a machine whose sole purpose was exhilaration. He didn’t try to take off my underwear and eventually the ride slowed to a stop in a breezy, unmown field.
As soon as I opened my eyes the next morning, I willed myself to stay awake. My body yawned and rolled toward Brian. “Get up,” I commanded it. The clock on Brian’s desk told me it was seven fifteen. It was a Saturday and I had nowhere to be. I dressed silently, kissed Brian on the cheek, and slipped out his bedroom door. As I clanked home in my high-heel boots and one earring, I grimaced against the thought of the long black hair in my right nipple, which I’d forgotten to tweeze before I met Brian the night before. Maybe that was why he hadn’t tried to take off my underwear. I crawled into bed when I got home, hoping to sleep off the shame of a new attachment. He wouldn’t call me and I would stop liking him. I put my left hand on my breast and my right hand between my legs and slept until noon.
But he did call, and kept calling. He courted me perfectly, waiting a dependable two or three days after each of our dates before inviting me to a concert or a movie the following weekend. All that was required of me was to say yes. If he waited longer than usual to call, I felt relieved to be alone in my own bed, instead of hyperconscious in Brian’s, where I waited for my new need to crash over me in the dark.
—
Brian and I had been dating for weeks before I let myself stay in his bed until late morning. He yawned and rolled on his side toward me. “You’re still here,” he said, and kissed me once just above each of my nipples. I bit my lip to keep from moaning. I wanted his sleepy lips on my breasts again and again and nothing else. I felt sad knowing I would have sex with Brian one day. Sex was the cracked, pink, mammalian tongue of a stranger who had promised me a line of coke in the bathroom of a dive bar; the pointy coarseness of the unknown cock between my legs when I woke up facedown in an unfamiliar room; the pair of hairy, pudgy thighs imprisoning my torso one cold, grainy morning on a secluded beach that had seemed exciting a few hours earlier; Jared’s stern voice telling me not to move, he was almost done, he needed to be relaxed when we met his father for brunch. I wanted sex with Brian to salvage my body from memory. So the first time it happened while we were drunkenly making out, a voice in my head said, “Tell him to stop. Make this stop.”
The good voice in me is always male. Not because men are wiser but because men are calming, before you get to know them. You ask a man a question, he answers. He asks you one back or doesn’t. End of story. I listened to the unknown male voice telling me to make this stop until Brian said, “I’m gonna come.”
“No!” I said—aloud this time, but it was too
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