The New Friend

Unfinished. Any input would be appreciated.


Something was not the same. Someone had left the lights on in the empty offices upstairs where I like to take my walks. I hate when they do this. I always expect to bump into the movers with the last of the boxes. Or worse, Trish. Hard-faced Trish who sneaks around corners to catch me walking in circles, wearing down her carpet. Instead of moving at my normal, confident speed, I creeped slowly, like a child sneaking up on a small animal.

I rounded the first corner in silence. I didn’t dare turn on my music or even hum to myself until I knew I was alone. I only like to walk on my breaks if no one else is there. If anyone turns up, my secret ritual is ruined and I go and make coffee and sulk.

I finished my figure eight around the empty cubicles and no one was there. So I played my music and I hummed and I even did a little sashay dance while I walk. And then there he was.  

A man was sitting in one of the empty green chairs in the empty green cubicles. He had a laptop set up on the desk in front of him and he typed intently.  I walked past quickly, eyes scanning the floor. The walk was ruined. As I turned to sneak out the back staircase, I remembered that I had left my bag in the break room. I tried to shuffle past the man silently, unnoticed. He turned.

Hello, he said but he did not smile.

Hello, I grinned, sheepishly. His face was stern, his green eyes betrayed no thoughts. His puffy mouth gave the odd appearance that it had recently been punched. New here? I asked and immediately felt idiotic.

You could say that. I’m Abram. He reached out his hand and I took it. It was cold and dry. Sadie. I wanted to go back downstairs but I knew it would be impolite to stop the conversation so soon. Why did they put you up here by yourself?

Now he smirked, barely. Are there any empty desks down there?

I guess not. My face flamed. Well, welcome. I rushed away as he turned his back to me.

At my desk, I told Sara about the strange new man. She sometimes walked on her breaks, too, with Amy and Missy. They rushed up to meet him. But no one was there when they went.

By the next morning, I had forgotten about him, until it was time to walk again. I decided that since Sara hadn’t seen him, maybe Trish had moved him.

I left my music off while I rounded the corner where I had found him before. No one was there. Until he was. He came striding up the center aisle. Walking again. Not a question. Why do you do that? It’s sort of creepy, don’t you think? Lurking around in the dark?

I wanted to explain that it was because I had so much energy, sometimes it took all of my willpower to stay still and work. If I could just walk around for a few minutes, my mind could settle. Something in his face told me a response would be wrong. I shrugged. How long have you worked here, Sadie?

Two years.
And you like it?
I do. I like it enough. The people are nice. He nodded at this.
Nice. Pondering my word choice. You are certainly nice, Sadie. The nicest person I have met here. He pushed his close cropped red-blonde hair back from his ear.
Who else have you met?
Everyone who matters. I laughed, not because it was funny, but because when men say things like this they expect you to laugh.
Do you have a family, a boyfriend?
Pardon?
Are you married?
No.
Boyfriend?
No. I did not want to talk about myself with this person any more. Do you have a wife? I knew this was a mistake once it was said. He might think I was interested in him.
No, I’ve never had time for a wife. I don’t have a girlfriend, but I know a girl who will kick me out if she hears me saying that. I give another expected chuckle.
I’ve gotta get back. I tried to excuse myself.
He simply nodded.

I told Sara to hurry upstairs and get a look at this creep. But he wasn’t there again. So she pulled up the employee directory and searched for an Abram. He was not one of ours. She laughed at me.

Good one, you really had me going. I laugh, too, but not because it was funny. I didn’t want her to know how crazy I actually must be.

That was when I knew I was making him up.

I had done this, too, as a girl. I had two playmates, sisters, who lived up the road and would play paper doll with me. It was only when I was older and they had stopped coming around that my mother told me she had worried for a while about my imagination.

But I knew that since I could stop imagining them, I would stop imaging him. I just had to remember what he was.

When I told him he was not real, he raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

Sadie, how is that possible? I told him about the sisters.
How do you know they weren’t real? Honestly, this is the strangest conversation I have ever had. You are a sweet girl, but, Jesus. You are strange. You should see someone.

I knew he was right there. But I also knew that these things could come and go like a headache. And I knew I could ignore him until he went away. I told him this and he shook his head.

Listen, Sadie. I want to be your friend, but if you are really concerned that I am somehow made-up, he paused to sigh his annoyance. So be it. He stared at me with his humorless eyes. I won’t bother you at work anymore. Just stop skulking around my desk, okay?

And so we agreed. I could compartmentalize him away, neatly at his upstairs desk. And he would slowly pass out of my life like a July parade. I slept nicely that night and dreamed of a stampede of white puppies on a snowy hill.

Work the next few weeks were peaceful. I ate lunch at my desk and brought my own coffee to avoid the upstairs break room. I was safe on the ground. Sara only brought up my hilarious new-hire joke one time. I went home nights and drank cabernet and held the cat and talked to friends on the phone.

One Thursday, I came home and my lights were all on. I hadn’t called maintenance. I hated when my landlord came without warning me.

Sadie.

Abram’s flinty face was staring at me down my hall. Your landlord let me in.

Why are you hear? I asked, barely above a whisper. Why the fuck are you here?

That’s not very nice language, he hinted at a smile. I didn’t think you would be upset. My girlfriend kicked me out and I had nowhere to go. You have always been so nice to me. I knew you’d let me stay.

But I won’t, you can’t stay. How did you know where I lived? I recognized it didn’t make sense. Of course someone from my head would know. It just seemed the right question to ask someone who shows up in your home.

Everything is on the employee directory.

How did you get in? I knew the answer. He wasn’t so much here as he had come unstuck from the spot I had glued him in my mind.

Your landlord, Leo, he’s a good guy. I told him I knew you and he just let me in. I thought about calling Leo, but I knew this didn’t make sense either. Of course Abram knew the landlord’s name and of course he had never met him because figments don’t meet people, they don’t see people, they don’t even really interact with people. You do all the work with figments by yourself.

Abram. You have to leave. We had a deal. You stay at that desk. In the upstairs office? And you never come out, not ever. You leave me alone.

You know how crazy you sound right now? He reached out both of his arms, brushed mine in an up and down motion that I supposed was meant to be comforting. I wriggled out and backed toward the door.

Don’t touch me. Don’t you goddamn touch me. Leave.

His face changed. Instead of serious, he looked feral.

I don’t think you understand. I am staying. The look in his slate green eyes told me this was true.

So I made him dinner. I know, this is crazy. I cooked pasta for an imaginary friend. Who wasn’t even terribly friendly. But what else could I do?

Abram stayed for two weeks. Then three. Having him there began to feel normal, and the more normal I felt, the kinder he became. We watched movies and I told him my stories and he cleaned my house while I slept. Apparently, apparitions do not sleep. His face even softened a bit, though still square and serious. Sometimes, when he looked at me long enough, I though I saw a glimmer of affection for me. In those moments, I thought about kissing him. And remembered that he was not real and that kissing a fabricated person does not make sense. I still wondered how it would feel.

One night, I woke to the bedroom door opening.

Abram? He had never gone into my bedroom before. He didn’t reply. I couldn’t see his shape moving in the dark, but I knew it was him. And then I felt a thing that I don’t know how to explain. It was like having a rock set on my chest, cold and smooth. But the rock vibrated and silently hummed.

Abram, what are you doing? Now I could see him, inches from me. His face had the wild look it had the day he told me he would stay. He didn’t say anything. He pinned my chest down with one arm and pulled away at my brassiere; I only wore underthings to sleep. Part of me wanted to struggle away, but I was curious to see what he would do. He grasped at my body with those cool, cracked hands, forcing them across my back and between my legs. The vibration of his energy sank into my chest, but the weight of him stayed on top of me.

It wasn’t really sex. There was no thrusting or grunting or sweating. He entered back into my body, where he had come from. It was warming and safe and terrifying. I cried, wetting him with my tears as I came.  Afterwards, he kissed me on the mouth. His lips were cracked and tasted of dry tea leaves.

The next morning, he wasn’t in the apartment. I waited until I was going to be late for work. The doorknob felt like pins. I called in sick and waited. The afternoon wore on, bright and dusty, and I held the cat and my breath. I cooked myself pasta and felt empty, though I knew it was silly. Abram had been a dream and it was good that he had gone. That meant I wasn’t crazy anymore. I went to bed and touched all the places he had touched and tried to call back the memory, but it wasn’t the same. I fell asleep late in the night, wrestling over my relief and my despondency.

The next night, Abram came back. This time, he spoke, harshly. Told me to do things. Things I had read about in my older brothers’ dirty magazines but didn’t really want to do.

Why are you doing this? I asked.
You’ll like it.
What if I don’t? He didn’t reply.

I did like it. And I was so grateful to have him back.

Up North - Part One

Okay, I've gone soft. But, be fair to me, I had a rough and sleepless night (and not the fun, sexy kind) and a very scary day at work and all I can think about is tucking to a Little Caeser's cheese pizza and the bottle of cab on my counter. Forgive me. Enjoy part one of the Up North saga. More to come tomorrow, I promise.


I rolled down the windows as we reached the Vilas county line. The coolness of the air licked down my arm. I left the city under a ceiling of steamy air that pressed down on us all like a damp washcloth, the kind they used to give you on airplanes. I could already feel the pressure letting out.

Scott was anxious and I thought I understood. I wished we could stop the truck on the side of the highway where all the wildflowers and ragweed reached for the softer sunshine and just sleep in a field and spend the week in this perfect desolation. But he knew better. I had never been Up North. That’s what they all call it, Up North. All I understood was that a bunch of kids pooled their money and bought a house and food and a lot of beer and lived by a lake. The thing communists are probably jerking it to in their mind’s eye. The kind of life that can only exist one week every year.

Part of me felt sad when Kara had explained it. The fact that this week in the woods was the social highlight of the year. When you pin so much love on one place, one time, one idea, how much can you leave for the rest of your life? But I had been hungry in those days.

Really hungry. The kind of starvation when you are walking to work in a heat wave and your fridge has been empty for a week and your family and your bank and your government are all calling you, asking you things and asking you for things and all you could think of to say is,
When was the last time you were really, truly hungry?

When Kara had told me they were going Up North and that I simply had to go, I asked her this very question. And she understood. And I went back to my job at the bank and didn’t think about their communist vacation any more.

Until she called again. She had figured a way to pay my share if I still wanted to go. And then I had to go. Because who had ever sought my company so ferociously? When a hand reaches out to you, whatever length their reach is, it is an atrocity not to reach back.

27July2011

I apologize. I have nothing to show for myself today. If this is your first visit, dear god, skip ahead. This is no good first impression, no miraculous talent. Today, all I have is a diatribe.


It's been an exhausting, swampy day. The heat in this city is pressing down like a damp washcloth, smothering everything. My home has nearly-shot air conditioning, my car has none. I'm changing clothes at midday, sitting in the bathtub for hours at a time and hiding from everything in the dark of my house. I'm taking showers in the middle of the night when my bed is too hot for sleep.


Going out for work, being forced to be around people in this state rubs my nerves raw. I hear everything: phlegmy coughs and ringing phones and the sound of my cubemate's endless chip crunching. All I want to do is get home to my quiet and my dark.


And now that certain man-friend who wanted to go out for dinner is no longer such that kind of friend and so it goes. No stories to tell today, except the one where I am still spending time with people who are disinterested and distant and dull and hating myself and wishing I could just be by myself.


I'll be back at it tomorrow, I promise.

The Story

I think he’s almost two now. I’m not even really sure he’s a boy. That’s just the only way I can see it. I haven’t spoken to her since we came back, and that was the way I wanted it. Not because I felt ashamed. I just didn't really like her.

I tell the story about her often, at parties or dinners, lying in bed with a new lover, whispered over the phone. It has such a great opener.

     Have I told you how I got a girl pregnant?

This is funny because I am, myself, a girl. It piques interest. This story really kills at parties. It’s the kind of narrative that, when you tell it just so, everyone in the room leans in and strains to hear you.

I lead in with the part where was just me and Andi and it was Europe and we were the best of friends. The part where everybody loved us, even our German boyfriend’s mothers who liked our long, reckless hair and our twangy accents when we said words like bezhalen and flugzeug.

Until Bonnie showed up. I say how she was home-schooled, and everybody groans and rolls their eyes. We all know what this means. They see her already: frizzy, braided hair, dumpy body, old-maid dresses. Awkward and unsure. The way she trailed after us every moment away from school or work. Even my birthday when Konrad and Michael took us for an absinthe, she insisted on going.

When I tell that, I call up how she sat in that chair to my left, staring forever at the wine list, asking me what to order, pulling on her too-long skirt. Like a 200-pound backpack, slung over that one shoulder. But I don’t say that in my story.

Oh, but that’s not all, I explain. That would not have been so bad. She also thought she was so clever. Better than Andi and I. Everyone always nods. Everyone knows a Bonnie. So, she both trailed us and loathed us, inserting herself into our every conversation and confidence to make note of herself. She spoke two more languages than I had learned. She had gotten A’s in Biology when Andi managed a mere B+. Constant, exhaustive lists of ways in which Bonnie was somehow preferable over us.

One day, in a beloved side-street cafe, over a plate of pommes frites, Andi confessed she had done something awful. The look on Bonnie’s face said she has never wanted to hear a thing more. I mimic the face for everyone, eyes wide, lips pursed. They pause in anticipation. Andi had slept with her German boyfriend. I laugh. Everyone listening laughs along, how cute it is. It’s such a silly reason to be ashamed. I looked to Bonnie, awaiting the imminent denunciation. She was awestruck. For the first day since she had arrived, she had no opinion. She sat in silence for five minutes, finished her coffee, and quietly excused herself.

At this point, everyone laughs. The story is fleshing out. Like driving on the edge of a blizzard, we can finally see where the road is going and we’re comfortable.

Once we realized that sex was the only thing that Bonnie had no interest in, the only arena where our opinions could be valid, Andi and I found more excuses to bring it up. We transformed into skanks, sluts, nymphomaniacs. We padded figures of how many lovers and described invented scenarios in ghastly detail. We made sure to bring every male guest into our bedroom, locking her in the living room alone to imagine. This was a fun game. I make sure to smile as I tell it.

One day, I said I hoped I was not pregnant. I even bought a test and left it in the bathroom. Andi thought that was a good touch. I don’t tell this part to the audience, either.

One afternoon, we came home to find the apartment was locked up and Bonnie was not in it. She had the only key, since never left. We didn’t know where she had gone. People sometimes gasp here, although I’m not sure why. If we had died or something, this story would not exist.

We found her two hours later; she was working late. She let us in, then left again, to the market, she said. Andi and I drank huge bottles of Beck’s while we watched some dubbed cartoons and said how uncomfortable she seemed with us. That maybe this joke has gone on long enough. We were ready to say sorry when Bonnie got home.

Only Bonnie didn’t come home. We called everyone we could think of in the city. No one had seen her. Some didn’t understand who we were talking about, weren’t sure who she was.
     Wer ist Bonnie?          
The boys we knew brought more Beck’s and we all napped in shifts. Getting buzzed and waiting for the buzzer.

When day had begun, she finally came back. Andi and I were livid. We took the keys from her, demanded to know where she was. Then, she said the most incredible thing. She was with her boyfriend. She told us she had met a man who worked the falafel stand by the train station and she was moving in with him. And she did. She moved in with a stranger rather than spend another moment with us.

While we packed her things, Andi and I told her we know how big of a deal the first time is and we are here if she needs us and use condoms and call us so we know you are alive.

And then she was gone.

The rest of our time in town, people who knew would ask. Her teacher was my friend, would call me in the mornings. Why wasn’t she in school?

Wo ist Bonnie?

I didn’t know, so I made jokes.

Ich weiss nicht. Ist es Bonnie-freie Freitag? Bonnie-free Friday.

Andi and I hiked, boated, drank every stout beer on the bottom shelf of the rack at the supermarket. I tried not to picture her pasty, dimpled body writhing under some aging, hairy Turkish man as I kissed the smooth faces of nineteen year old Patricks and Jakobs.

We went home more tan and blonde, our bottoms firm and round from all of the walking and biking thrust upon us. We went home with hundreds of pictures and dozens of names and phone numbers. We hugged at the train station, knowing it was a thing we would think about forever.

The next time I saw Bonnie, it was September and I was back at my alma matter to visit a friend. I was seated on a park bench, pushing buttons with my phone the way you do when you're trying to look busy. It was the type of day when it’s still warm but the fog creeps up on you as the morning wears on. The sun had come out and lit everything so it seemed as though we were all inside a Chinese paper lantern. Bonnie walked past me, but she didn’t notice me sitting there. Unless she did. She had the same frizzy hair, still half braided. She wore a sad, matronly dress. This time, though, it was covering a shockingly distended belly. I nearly dropped to the sidewalk at the sight of her. Everyone listening gets wide-eyed and ooohs.

I leave out the part about how I called Andi and she told me that the man never came for Bonnie in the States like he said he would. And how she was so scared of her Baptist parents that she claimed she had been raped and they threatened to sue the school. And how, when she met us, she had said wanted to be an opera singer. And that she really did have a nice voice when she sang around our apartment.Those kinds details might really bring down a party.

And I guess no one has seen her since she popped that thing.

Usually, at this point, we all raise our glasses of Guinness or whiskey or cabernet sauvignon and laugh.

To Bonnie! They say.

To Bonnie-frei jeden Tag! I joke. Bonnie-free everyday.

Keith

Today Keith is twenty-three. He was born under the sign Leo, and he is very proud of this. It makes him feel powerful, regal and dangerous. I wrote him a card, off-white with a pen-ink Scottish lion drawn on the front.

Keith-

Wishing you a very happy twenty-third year.
Today, you get to change your name. That is the gift I am giving you.
Which one would you like?

Keith hates his name. This is what I have loved about him. The way his body, his face, his name can never seem to contain him the way other people’s do.

We were pen-pals, in the beginning. I was living with my invalid mother and selling baby clothes at Sears. It was summer and every hope of love and kindness had evaporated from our rural town like morning’s soft dampness on the hoods of cars. The inside of Keith’s skull became my tree house, someplace shady and secluded, made for introspection.

His complaints were numerous. His family was dysfunctional. He wrote that about his father’s depressions and his aunt Mary, who he described as a cantankerous she-beast who frequented both bars and psychics.

His friends were loud. He wrote that he loved them but you'd think it was open mic night the way they carry on. They just bombard you.

He bemoaned his fate with women. None of the decent ones liked him. If attracting crazies were a job, he explained, he would easily be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

I understood these things. My sickly mother was both needy and cruel and my kindly, aging father was incurious. The few people I did know in town confused me. They seemed to spend their lives working half-heartedly, aiming for nothing. They were terrifyingly content.

And I was desperately alone. I started buying drugs so a dealer would come visit me. He and I had ridden the same school bus and I liked the softness in his brown eyes. When I confessed that I wasn’t using his wares, he started buying back from me in the dry spells.

When I was finally offered a job in the city, I wrote Keith.


Keith-

Planning on moving to the city. Be there a week from Saturday.
Would you meet me and fill me in on your thoughts on living there?
I’m sure you could write volumes, but it would take less time in person.
Plus, I just think you’d be fun to talk to.
If you’re concerned that I’m a kidnapper, you’re not obligated.

We met in the kind of cafe that hangs painted plaster casts of fat women as art to challenge your standard of beauty. I hate this kind of art, but I didn’t say anything. He wore a Stooges shirt and a terrible moustache that curled into his top lip. I didn’t mention that, either.

Compared to the quiet astuteness of his writing, his physical persona was jarring. His eyes were large and feral with mental activity. His hands danced in all directions as he spoke. He would later tell me that all he was thinking about that day was kissing me, but if he had tried, it would have terrified me.

Days later, the kissing came. After a glass of wine and a movie had soothed the animal burrowing in his brains. After some weeks and a walk in the zoo calmed the flightiness of his fingers, he asked to be my boyfriend.

Months later, after bottles of wine and countless pipes of hash had rubbed the softness from his vulnerability, I began to see how Keith sees everything. The wrong way.

His friends are jovial and warm with modern sensibilities. They would take me to bars to watch football games while we waited for Keith to finish work. They included me in debates on which beers were better, which team should win. I had no opinions, but they always asked.

His family was, although wealthy and eccentric, entirely average. They allowed me to join their Christmas when I was trapped by endless snow in the city. And while my dying mother screamed every epithet to me over the phone in their basement, they drank wine upstairs and opened their gifts: magazine subscriptions and sweatshirts.

And I tried to love him. I did try. I had not realized what it would be. Keith has a strange way of loving a person. He loves you like someone loves their arm. Negligently. The tighter you draw, the less present he becomes. Like a far-sighted poacher, always aiming at kills in the distance, as we all sat in the same room, invisible.

After I had gone, I offered him kindnesses, my friendship. In those days, he could see me again. Like an amputee, he now fretted over me. Would ask things. When he never asked me anything as I lied in his own bed.

And for the next year, he looked me in the eye as we shared pints at the pub up the street. Fell asleep in my lap, crying, as I massaged his temples, gently pulled his hair. Drunkenly asked if we could make love. Sometimes, he would even hug me.

And now, today, my Keith, my sweet prince of mistaken narcissism, is twenty-three. If there is a party, I was not invited. Somewhere, they are all drinking pints at some pub, likely that one up the street.

People he cannot see through the fog of his poorly-reflective mind are toasting him. Across town, I, who will love him more than he’ll ever know, am at home, drawing the symbol he has chosen for himself, one so ill-fitting of a Keith, one that would be better for a Stephen or a John, on off-white card stock. I am offering him the gift he wants more than anything. But to be honest, I don’t think he deserves it.

The Threesome

The threesome happened on a Tuesday. I know it seems an odd day to decide to try that kind of thing, but that was how it was.

Daniel came home from work, sloshing spring snow off his shoes at the door. Paul was already tucked into his bottle of Evan Williams - Green Label, of course. I was tucked into a stiff blanket on the couch that seemed to breathe with the shift of bodies. Ready for sleep or stupor or whatever would come.

A documentary on some band I’d never heard was on television. Daniel was wearing his shabby gray stocking cap which he pulled off in always the same way. His right hand came over his head and pulled back so his brown hair would come out perfectly mussed. He dropped his skinny body onto the other couch and changed the channel. I tucked my frost-numb toes under Paul’s legs to try to warm them and drifted away, drunk on the sound of their voices clamoring over one another.

I woke to the shift of Paul’s body attempting to stand. Daniel had gone to bed. The whiskey bottle sat empty on the coffee table. I righted myself and helped lift his staggering torso toward his room. Instead, he pulled me toward the bathroom and shut the door.

     What are you doing? Am I supposed to help you piss?

     No, I need to talk to you.

Kissing my neck, bunglingly pulling my hair back.

     Daniel wants to, you know, he wants you. I told him I’d ask.

     You want me to fuck your roommate? No. No. God. Ew. No.

I pictured his square but boyish face, the loveliness of his blue eyes. A flush of something rose in me. I was somehow flattered? Maybe intimidated. Surprised.

     Why not? I’ll be there, too. It’ll be alright.

     You cannot be serious. Now I now you’re joking.

     No. We want to do this. Come on. How many times in your life will you have two young guys wanting to try this with you? This might be your only chance.

Now I just stared at him, his drunk-slit eyes. If I were more sober, I thought, I would run. But I was across town in a blizzard and too drunk to drive. I thought of that rape-y Christmas song that always bothered me, the man trapping her in his house in a storm, plying her with booze.

     That’s a little insulting. You don’t know what people have asked me to do.

Paul didn't realize I’d had more men ask me for threesomes with their friends than with mine. It suddenly came to me that maybe every man is a bit gay and they like to prop women in the middle to make it okay.

     We’re all friends. It’s not that big of a deal. You don’t like him or what?

And the truth was, I did like Daniel. His long, lanky body and fat mouth that turned down at the corners, even when he was laughing. His apologetic presence. I had seen him watch me. While I smoked or ate or read, if he were there, I felt him noticing. Noticing the length of my neck as I laughed or the curve of my breast when I pulled on my jacket.

So I agreed. Before I could stop myself.

     Okay.
Stern.
     But lights off and everyone does what I say.

I suddenly felt very powerful, the way people with guns must feel, everyone on the floor, begging me for something, and I could give it to them. Or I could not.

We opened the door to Paul’s bedroom and Daniel was sitting on the bed with his shirt off. His shoulders were rounded and he was picking at barely-existent fuzz on a blanket. His face when we walked in was meant for a worthier moment. We found a donor, it said. It’s a girl, it said. It said.

It seemed strange, at first. Having so much attention focused on me, this body. The feeling of walking into a surprise birthday party. You hadn’t been expecting so many eyes on you at that restaurant, but there they all are. They’re all calling out for you and everything is about you you you and part of you wants to turn and walk back out that door to the street where no one knows it’s all about you but they’re all here already so you stay and just pull on your dress uncomfortably and smile.

I was the only adult in the room. Their giddiness, which they tried to smother with as much machismo as the frail painter-waiter can muster, filled the room like a thick smoke. Lips and hands flew in every direction, touching and talking and pulling. A movie montage, except that instead of ending up in a ball gown or boxing gloves, I was just some naked girl. Their touches were rough and hurried; they were wrestling over positions and vantage points. I had become only a body, but that body was a thing to be revered.

Once the lineup was agreed upon and everyone had settled in, the boys' bodies began to relax. Paul’s was familiar and comfortable as a favorite hangover sweater. I knew every jerk and moan he was capable of. Daniel’s touches softened and lingered and his kisses just grazed me. His skin felt smooth and cool and smelled of outdoors. He sighed with every contact our bodies made.

During smoke breaks, we debated going out into the cold, early air; they never smoked indoors. But we were already naked and it seemed like too much. We huddled around an open window, shivering in the nearing-dawn moon. Occasionally we would share kisses or jokes, trying to keep things light and ordinary.

When we finished our cigarettes, Paul went and sat on a chair in the corner and plucked absently on an old acoustic guitar. Daniel and I kissed. The thing no one will tell you about a threesome, the thing you never see in dirty movies, is that someone always ends up with their feelings hurt. That’s just how it’s designed, you see? Someone will get bored or feel ignored or be fazed out. No matter how fair you try to be, your body tells you something different, tells you what it wants. It feels cruel to be in that position of power, see-sawing between the latent brutality of two male egos.

After a while, when Paul had that look that said that the guitar was the only thing he could conceive of, Daniel took me by the arm to his room.

His twin mattress sat on the floor next to a fish tank. It occurred to him to be ashamed of this. He shrugged at me.

     I’m a student.

     I know.
Reassuring.

I just wanted him to keep touching me so kindly. As though he supposed there may be a person inside this holy anatomy.

I sat on the corner of the mattress and he joined me. He kissed my neck and whispered into my clavicle.

     I’ve wanted this for so long.

     Yeah?
I feigned surprise.

     When you sleep over, I shower with the door open. I really do. And I, well...
He glances at me, shamefully.

     What? You can tell me.

     I beat off in the shower and I always hope and imagine that you’ll come in and join me.

This really does surprise me. It’s so pathetic and desperate and lonely. I imagine him in the shower, just stroking himself, waiting for me while I sleep in the next room, not feeling a thing.

     That’s the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me.

And he pulls me down on top of him and touches me in that sweet way and kisses me with that downwards mouth.

When I wake for work, everyone is still entirely asleep. I sneak into Paul’s room for my clothes and dress quickly in the dark, icy bathroom before anyone besides the cat can hear.

While I drive home, squinting over the morning snowshine, I think about all these other people driving on Maple Street at 7:37, off to work or school or daycare. I watch them glare through sunglasses at red lights, absently fumble with the radio. I catch their eyes as I pass them, imagine what it is to be them. I wonder how many of them would hate a surprise birthday party as much as I would.