Authors: C. K. Kelly Martin
When we’d first
gotten close at the end of ninth grade, Iliana and I were both honor roll
students without specific career aspirations. For a long time I thought that
I’d pick up a BA and then, if I still hadn’t figured anything else out, try for
teacher’s college. Iliana hit on what she wanted to do before I did and at
first she tried to guide me in the same direction. I helped her design posters
and buttons for her election campaign at the end of eleventh grade, but the
thought of having to do typical student council things, like organize funding
drives and plan pep rallies, bored me to tears.
If Iliana and I
both weren’t such loyal people we probably would’ve drifted apart in twelfth
grade. People change, especially during high school. But we hung on. Busy as
Iliana was, we still hung out together, and every once in a while I put my name
down for council led initiatives, like the time I signed up to do the student
volunteer day at our local food bank. Bastien, one of the few black students at
our school, was volunteering at the food bank that day too. We sorted dried and
canned goods next to each for over an hour, until someone asked him and a
couple of the other guys from school to help unload a truck of donations in the
warehouse out back.
That hour was the
most interaction Bastien and I ever had during high school. We’d shared a
couple of classes over the years but moved in different circles and had never
really gotten to know each other. Bastien’s grades were as good as mine but he
was one of the kids you’d always see carrying around a sketchpad, stubby piece
of charcoal and some manga novel or comic book. Our first real conversation
happened at the Operation Foodshare bank. This was back when the Winter
Olympics were being held in Vancouver, so all of B.C. was wild with Olympic
fever. Jon Montgomery had won the gold in men’s skeleton for us only the night
before and Bastien and I talked about watching his final fast-as-lightning run
down the track.
When Shaun White
and the halfpipe came up, Bastien’s eyes popped and he switched the topic to
Torah Bright. Her name was on the lips of practically every guy at school the
day after she won gold, so that wasn’t anything new, but I teased Bastien about
it before admitting that she was hot, the kind of girl who’d be hot walking
down the street in an old sweatshirt but was
extra
hot because she had
super hero powers on a snowboard.
Bastien grinned
at me. “You know, you sound like you might have a thing for her too.”
“Everybody can
tell when someone’s beautiful,” I said. “Whether they like him or her or not.
Guys can tell about other guys too. They just don’t like to admit it.”
Bastien, still
smiling, shook his head like he wasn’t going to entertain the idea. I started
naming male athletes anyway, and then actors and rappers, which was when things
got interesting because Bastien said he didn’t listen to pop music and hip hop
much anymore and didn’t even know some of the people I’d mentioned. “I mean, I
hear it around, you know, because it’s everywhere,” he added. “And some of it’s
all right but I prefer, like, jazz, blues and classical.”
“So you’re an
intellectual,” I kidded.
Bastien squinted
at me, his smile biting deeper into his face. “Yeah, look who’s talking, Little
Miss Honor Roll with her best friend in student council.”
“By honor roll
standards I’m a slacker,” I countered, my hand wrapped around of a can of
mandarin oranges that I’d pulled out of the sac between us. “But Iliana makes
me look good. Besides, aren’t you Mr. Honor Roll yourself?”
“True,” he
conceded just seconds before he was called away to unload the truck. And that
was pretty much it for Bastien and me in high school. I had no clue which
universities he was applying to—would barely have given him a second thought if
he hadn’t popped up in my life again eight months later clear across the
country.
Iliana got into
McGill University in Montreal while I’d been accepted at the University of
Toronto (I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do but was curious to see
what east coast life was like). We’d sworn we’d take the train out to see each
other whenever we could but lost track of each other fairly quickly. My classes
were okay, especially anthropology, which I later decided I wanted to major in,
but all through September my roommate Marissa made my life hell by sneaking a
guy she was hooking up with into our room while she thought I was asleep. On
the first occasion the sex was so swift and rudimentary—before they passed out
and then both started to snore—that I pretended I was still sleeping, but that
got tougher and tougher to do as they grew rowdier on each subsequent occasion
until I felt like was part of a psychological experiment designed to chart
people’s reactions to unwanted exposure to live pornography. Watching their
sloppy sex made me want to hold on to my virginity until I was least thirty.
When I
complained to Marissa for the third time she acted like I was a stuck up prude
and said, with a sullen expression, that they’d try to be quieter. “Quieter
isn’t going to cut it,” I said bluntly. Even sexiling me would’ve been a step
up, but she’d never even tried to knock out a workable arrangement with me.
“I’ve had enough. You need to go someplace else. I would think you’d want to
anyway—unless you get off on being watched.”
Marissa folded
her arms rapidly in front of her and scrunched up her eyebrows. “You’re just
jealous. Not like you’re getting any action, is it?”
“Jealous?
Please
.
More like totally grossed out, Marissa.” That’s not something I would normally
say, even though it was the truth, but I was so sick of Marissa and her
ridiculous fake orgasm noises (because even without any practical experience of
my own I was certain there was no way that Trev, with his jackhammer
impersonation, was giving her any real ones) that I could barely look at her
without my mouth dropping automatically into a frown.
Several other
unpleasant things were said by us both but Marissa didn’t bring Trev back to
our room after that. She stopped talking to me entirely and the unspoken
tension between us proved almost as toxic as being an unhappy witness to her
sex life.
When Yunhee Kang
from my humanities class happened to mention that her own roommate had just
dropped out and gone home to North Bay due to persistent health problems, I
explained about my disastrous roommate experiences and begged her to let me
move in. Thankfully, she didn’t like living alone and readily agreed. By
Christmas Yunhee, who reminded me a little of Iliana before she’d discovered
her interest in politics, and a girl named Katie she’d gone to high school with
in Ottawa became my closest friends at university.
None of us
partied hard, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t like to have a good time. We
joined the Asian Film Club, went to see bands together, and dressed up for the
zombie walk near the end of October. As a zombie bride, drenched in blood and
with an eyeball dangling from her cheek, Yunhee had the best costume of the
three of us. She clutched a dismembered prop arm and bared her teeth as the
three of us lumbered through the park amid throngs of assorted zombies—cop
zombies, pinup girl zombies in push-up bras, cross-dressing zombies, you name
it and they were represented in the park that day. Katie and I felt almost
under-dressed in hoodies and jeans, our faces pale and trails of blood spilling
from our mouths. Still, with my hair slicked back, a vacant look in my eyes and
both my hands drenched in red, I would’ve thought I was fairly unrecognizable
and anonymous.
Trying to stay
in character while simultaneously checking out everyone else’s costumes and
zombie swagger was a big part of the fun. We lurched, growled and contorted our
bodies, our faces fastened into blank expressions as we pretended to lunge at
onlookers. But it was impossible to stay zombie for the entire duration of the
walk and the three of us slipped periodically back into our regular selves to
make small talk. We were ambling along, having temporarily returned to our
human states, when a guy in broken glasses, green face paint and torn clothes
fell into pace beside me. He bent his head to look into my face and said, “Leah
Fischer, is that you?”
It took me a
couple of seconds to get past his makeup job. “Bastien!” I exclaimed. There was
dark red makeup smeared under his eyes and his tattered navy blazer flapped in
the wind. “Hey, what’re you doing here?”
His top teeth
peeked out from between his lips as he smiled. “I’m taking a design program at
York—living off campus with a few guys. What about you? I didn’t know you were
going to school out here. You still see Iliana?”
“She’s at
McGill. We keep saying we have to get together. Hey.” I grabbed Yunhee’s
shoulder. “This is my roommate, Yunhee, and my friend, Katie.”
“Hey.” Bastien
nodded at them. “This is the first time I’ve been introduced to zombies.”
“We prefer the
term undead,” Yunhee joked, both her arms reaching claw-like in front of her as
she delved back into her performance.
I spent the rest
of the zombie walk talking to Bastien about our new lives in Toronto. It felt
like catching up, which was funny considering we’d hardly ever spoken before.
Bastien suggested that we should hang out sometime, and we exchanged cell phone
numbers. Over the next couple of weeks we texted a little and then went for
coffee twice. I thought we were just being friends until he dropped by my dorm
room on his way to a basketball game and casually happened to mention another
girl he was hanging out with. Instantly I was jealous, which could only mean
one thing: I was interested in Bastien Powell, a guy I’d gone to school with
for four whole years and only really bothered to speak to once.
When had his
body changed from skinny to lean but well-muscled? When had he evolved from a
comic book carrying dork into a creative, independent-minded person who had
confident, interesting opinions?
And did he like
me back? I analyzed our hours together with Yunhee, feeling at a disadvantage
because of my limited romantic experience. I’d only had one boyfriend in high
school and that had lasted a grand total of two and a half short months before
we’d mutually lost interest.
Yunhee advised
me to be bold and tell Bastien how I felt. At first I resisted, afraid my
confession could change the dynamic between us in a negative way if he didn’t
share my feelings. But after approximately ten days spent burning myself out
with wondering whether Bastien could ever be with me or if we were just meant
to be friends, I turned to him, right in the middle of the Oscar buzz movie we
were watching at the Varsity theater together, and whispered, “I need you to be
absolutely truthful with me about something, okay?”
He stared
quizzically at me in the dark. “That sounds heavy, Leah. What’s up?”
“I’m going to be
okay with whatever you say but”—I focused on the screen and then back at
him—“is there something going on with you and Tabatha?” She was the girl he’d
been mentioning from time to time, a fellow York U student. My left eyelid
pulsed as I continued. “Or do you
wish
there was?”
Bastien tensed
next to me. I felt that nearly as strongly as if it’d been my own body. Then he
hunched over in his chair and said, “What do you want to hear?”
“Just the
truth.”
He nodded
soberly. “So it would mean something to you if there was something going on
with Tabatha?”
“It would mean…”
I pulled my chin close to my chest and took a deep breath. “It would mean that
I shouldn’t think about you in any way other than how we are right now.”
I watched
Bastien exhale. “I didn’t know you were,” he said. “I mean…I never got that
feeling from you.”
“I guess I’m a
little slow at figuring myself out,” I admitted. My face was burning and I was
grateful that it was dark so he wouldn’t see the color in my cheeks. I could
just about keep my voice steady, but I couldn’t control an embarrassed blush.
“And now I think I should just shut up so we can get back to watching the
movie.”
“No, no, Leah.”
Bastien’s voice spiked, competing with the movie dialogue. “I didn’t mean it
like that.” A lady shushed him from several rows behind us. “I meant…” He
dropped to a whisper. “We can’t talk here. Come with me.” He cocked his head in
the direction of the exit and was already getting to his feet. I trailed him
out of the theater and we stopped in front of the tropical fish tank in the
lobby. A handful of spilt popcorn littered the ground between us. I dug my hands
into my pockets and looked Bastien’s way, suspense building in the silence.
“Tabatha’s
strictly a friend,” he told me. “But you...” He tilted his head as he gazed
back at me. “I’ve been thinking about you too. I would’ve said something sooner
but…” He shrugged, a shyness creeping into his eyes that I’d never seen there
before. “I read you wrong. I thought I was just picking up a friendship vibe
from you.”
Behind us a
luminous yellow fish was looping around an equally colorful piece of coral. I
shook my head and broke into a giddy smile. “Maybe in the very beginning,” I
confessed, “but not now.”
Bastien smiled
too. Neither of us could stop. Then he took a step closer to me and said, “So,
hey, why are you still standing so far away?” He bent to kiss me and his mouth
on mine felt right from the start. I threw my arms around his neck and leaned
into him. We went straight back to his place, made out on top of his bed and
then in it, the sound of his roommate’s music thumping through the dividing
wall.
We didn’t go all
the way, though. We held back. It turned out that I wasn’t the only virgin in
our relationship and we were both having too good a time exploring to rush
things. It wasn’t until we were home in Burnaby for Christmas, curled up on a
gray flannel blanket in front of my parents’ fireplace while they were at a
friend’s dinner party, that we actually went ahead. And when it happened it was
like a floodgate had opened up. We had sex so many times that night that we
both started to feel raw and had to stop before we really wanted to.