Authors: David Gilbert
"How long have you been under my bed?"
"Three hours."
"Jesus, that's creepy. All that time."
"Fucking hot."
I reach over and punch him in the stomach, hitting him in the place my father calls the breadbasket. It makes him grunt and
fold.
"So is this your idea of a romantic Saturday night, you idiot?"
"What?"
"A little raping, you sentimental fool."
"Give me a break."
I slap him a good one across the face, catching him with the bone of my wrist.
"Jesus, you cut me," he says, dabbing his lip for blood.
"Oh, poor baby." I lean over him, a carrion-eating vision of beauty, and
give
him a tongue-loaded kiss. He tastes like an eight-volt battery.
"You're crazy," he says after I have my fill. "All this outrage for something you suggested." His voice shrills into the international
parody of a bitchy woman. " 'Hey, Chip, wouldn't it be a kick to play out a rape thing, you know, a fantasy of some sorts.
Maybe you could do that sometime, surprise me.' That's what you said, don't try to deny it; you practically scripted it for
me."
"I didn't expect you to take to it with so much vigor."
"Hell, I didn't want to do it in the first place. Freaked me out."
I straddle his chest, my knees on his arms, my hands on his sternum. "There's some awful statistic that one out of three women
are raped in this country. Isn't that unbelievable? When I heard that I was shocked, really shocked."
"It's awful," he says.
"Is this what your older brother used to do? Pin you down and make you eat his spit?" A strand of saliva inches from my mouth,
growing longer and thinner, the tension approaching terminal elasticity before I suck it back in.
"Don't you dare."
"Repressed memories, huh?" I make a fist, knuckling my middle finger for a noogie kill. "How about drilling for oil;
did he do that?"
"I can flip you when I want."
I start to tunnel on his sternum, and true to his word, he rolls me. Now he's on top of me. "All I have to do is grab your
balls," I tell him. "I couldn't stand going through life with such a blatant piece of vulnerability. There for the taking.
A bull's-eye."
"You have to give birth" is his lame retort.
"That's all by choice, honey. Besides, my uterus is so screwed up that there's no chance. My contraceptive is all natural."
He eases up on his grip. "I thought you were on the pill," he says.
"No, no; I said I was a pill."
"Funny."
"I try."
"You should've told me. Something I'd like to know." He gets up and leans against a wall, his face an expression of supposed
caring. "I mean, that's harsh, that's really harsh."
"Trust me, it's not. It's simply a fact. And please don't look at me like this is some revealed secret, it's just scarred
ovaries." I'm on my feet now, brushing my thighs, pulling my hair back and tying it with an elastic. "I swear to God, you
boys watch too many soap operas."
He takes off his mittens and drops them on the bed, looking like a surgeon after he's lost a patient. "I don't know about
you," he tells me.
"You have an inkling."
"I really don't." He unzips the top of the jogging suit, revealing a white triangle of T-shirt.
"But you're smitten anyway."
"Maybe."
"The danger," I say.
"The what?"
"The danger."
He heels off his shoes and flicks them into the corner. "Oh yeah, I forgot."
Outside cars rev by, their mufflers purposefully destroyed to create a distinctive sound of approach, the owners christening
them The Beast and The Land Shark and T-Rex. They cruise around with an accompaniment of bass-laden music, mostly hip-hop
though occasionally the windows shake with Led Zeppelin. And tonight there seems to be an abundance of fireworks on campus,
a rural approximation of urban gunfire.
"So," I say.
"So," Chip parrots back.
I go over and sit on the bed next to him and call him "My little baby freshman."
He answers with "My over-the-hill junior."
"My boy toy."
"My hag rag."
Then I ask him, "Would you ever hurt me?"
"Huh?"
"You know, hit me or something."
He touches his lip. "If I remember correctly, you're the one who hit me."
"You were raping me."
"I was doing what you asked me to do a couple of days ago."
"I wasn't serious."
"Oh, please," he says.
"I was thinking out loud."
"Just stop it," he says.
"You certainly took to it naturally."
"What is this?"
"I'm just wondering if you could ever get mad enough to hit me, that's all."
"No. Never. What do you think?"
"One in three women get abused by their husbands."
"Everything is one and three with you. I don't think you even have the right numbers," he says.
"So you question the validity of my statement?"
"No. I only question the validity of you," he says.
"That's sexist."
He stands up and walks toward the door. "I'm not going to play this game. It's tiring."
"So you're tired of me. Just up and leave when you're tired of me. It's just that simple. Married for twenty years, three
kids, and one day, 'Hmm, this is a bit dull, so good-bye.' Is that what you're implying?"
"What are you saying?" He smiles an uncontainable smile, a smile for the humorously unwell.
I ask him, "Are you having an affair? Have you lost all of our money? Are you molesting the kids? Do you have terminal cancer?"
"Yes. No. No. And it's a distinct possibility."
I get up and go over to him and place my hands on his hips and squeeze and ingratiate myself with his groin. "That's what
I love about you," I say. "You think fast."
"Whatever you say."
"I say we go to Katrina's room."
"Is she next?" he asks.
"She sure is."
We walk down the hall, impressionist posters on either side of us, mostly Monet and his lame garden, the blues and greens,
the bridge, the water lilies; then there are a couple of Renoirs, the girls playing piano, the girls bathing, plump and pasteled,
their beauty soft and non-threatening. Renoir sucks. And Monet isn't much better. But the girls of Greek Way love them, this
Martha Stewart version of art. We stop at Katrina's door with its erasable message board, a palimpsest of different colored
inks leaving behind the news of a visit—
Hey Kat, stopped by, guess you're out, talk to you,
Laura
—and the schedule of the occupant's night—
At Sig Ep to
party!
I pick up the tethered Magic Marker and pop off the top and write
Cuntrina
in big red letters.
"Jesus," Chip says, laughing.
I surround my portmanteau with hearts and daisies, with the faces of geometrical dogs I learned how to make in third grade.
I open the door. No one bothers with locks at Kappa Kappa Gamma. "Shall we?"
"Sure."
Katrina, the senior, the vice president of the sorority, the hayseed debutante, the cocaine whore, the occasional slut, the
straight-A student, the majestically unbeautiful but always loved, has one of the seven singles in the house and I hate her
for it. The walls of her room are plastered with cutouts of advertisements: men in underwear, men in fine Italian suits, men
playing volleyball, their squinted eyes staring into the center of the room. Her well-intentioned bed is piled with a pyramid
of comfy pillows. Strewn on the floor is the chrysalis of a jogging outfit: a support bra, Lycra tights, a terry-cloth headband,
blue anklets, Nike cross-trainers. Makeup inhabits the top of her bureau like a futuristic city, and the sock drawer sticks
out with the impunity of a brat's tongue. The closet door is open, the light left on, and a variety of outfits hang there
with a Cinderella melancholy.
"Well," Chips says seconds before he plops down on the bed. "How many more after this?"
"Seven," I tell him. "At least I think it's seven."
"And what 11 we do after that?"
"Who knows?" For the last month we've been having sex in each room of the house, fifteen rooms to date—ten doubles, five singles—though
we haven't tackled the living room or the dining room or the kitchen. But that wasn't part of the deal. The plan just mapped
out bedrooms, the private space of my fellow sisters, and me the spy to their world, their sheets, their clothes, their desires.
I am collecting evidence, researching histories, crunching the numbers, the data of their dreams, and Chip finds all this
extremely sexy, but then again he'd find dark missionary love sexy as well.
"We're going to get caught at some point," he says. I can tell he wants to show me something unsurprising in his pants. He's
practically squirming on the bed.
"No doubt," I say. I turn toward the closet and run my hands through Katrina's things: summer dresses, short black skirts,
Indian print blouses, almost the same exact wardrobe as the other fifteen closets. "And we will be burned at the stake," I
add.
"They could have a party," he says. "A Joan the Arc party."
"Of," I say.
"Huh?"
"Nothing." I've picked out a dress, what looks like an old prom dress with taffeta and chiffon and fine lacework. I hold it
against myself. "How's this, darling?"
"Fab," he says.
I turn around and slip out of my sweats—Chip oohs like it's the Fourth of July—and step into the dress. Though Katrina is
smaller than I am by a good four inches, I still manage to squeeze into the contraption, the crinoline high on my thighs.
I twirl and say, "Will you marry me?"
"Oh, Katrina," Chip replies, his eyes dewy.
"Because I think I'm pregnant."
"I don't care."
I skip toward him. "That's why I love you. You're going to be such a good father."
"I'll try."
I slide off his jogging pants. The elastic of his jockeys catches on his hard-on, and when finally freed, his dick slaps against
his stomach like a foot stepping down on a puddle. Already his hips are gyrating, and his mouth is grimaced in porn-star heat,
and his arms are held outward, ready to be filled with my approaching body. Seeing this, it's hard to respect a man.
"Calm down," I say.
"What?"
"You're so . . . never mind."
I mount him—I love that word, "mount," so imperial, so portentous, to mount, very popular in romance novels, she mounts this,
she mounts that, it's the only active fuck-verb for a woman, mount mount mount mount mount, I swear, I could say it forever—and
Chip groans and tells me that I feel so good, and I look down on him from my kneeling position glad that his eyes are closed
because I have a smile on my face. Just a little one. A mounting smile.
"Chip?"
"Yeah?" His eyes open but they hold a creased need, like a boy who has to go to the bathroom but can't find Mommy.
"What would you do if I was pregnant?"
"Huh?"
"Well, I'm late."
"Late?"
"Yeah. Five weeks."
His body freezes in mid-thrust. "Five weeks!" I feel his erection subside within me. Penile introspection. I imagine the blood
rushing to the panicky heart. "But you said your ovaries are not right, you said you were on the pill, you said, well, it
was taken care of."
"That's what I thought. I guess you have stubborn sperm." I reach behind and cup his testicles; the scrotum is shrink-wrapped
around his walnuts. "You must have a bunch of engineers in there."
"But five weeks? Why didn't you say something?"
"Sometimes I just miss my period. I'm not regular."
"Huh? Wait a second. Are you Katrina right now or Sally?"
"I'm Sally, stupid."
"Come on, you're fucking with me."
"Well, I'm trying to fuck you, but you're like some old man, you thirty years from now, impotent with a pregnant lover while
your wife is drunk at home with the kids."
Chip wiggles out from beneath the crinoline. "This isn't funny, you know, this whole thing, getting tired. Like the HIV thing."
"That was a legitimate fear."
"The seizures."
"Do you want to talk to the doctor?"
"I don't know. And when do I know?
"Not until the game's over." I stand up and step out of the dress and toss it into the bottom of the closet. My skin is itchy
from the synthetic material.
"So," Chip says. "Is this legit, this I'm-pregnant deal?"
I put my hands on my hips because I can't resist such a pose.
"What do you think?"
"No," he says.
"Then no it is." I walk toward the door. "I'm taking a shower. You're welcome to join me, especially if your flaccid little
friend feels like playing."
From behind I hear him mutter something about Demi Moore and Sharon Stone. I don't mind the comparison. I can handle it. And
as the warm water from the shower slides down my body, I think of the history of obligatory shower scenes, the perfect opportunity
to show some tit and ass, from slasher flicks to prestige films, the ideal mesh between the dirty and the clean, and as I
lather up, moving the soap along my long legs—Foal was the nickname my father gave me—Chip appears and begins washing my hair,
his fingers massaging my scalp, suds raising then falling down my face, always a vulnerable situation, that childhood fear
of getting soap in your eyes, the endless stinging, the implied danger of a blinding incident, and as I squeeze my lids tight,
Chip fumbles his way inside of me, hopeless until I guide him in.
"Mmmmmm," he says, as if I'm a hamburger in a commercial.
"Who wrote this dialogue?"
"Hmm?"
"Nothing," I tell him. "It's just that you feel so good. Yes. So good. Oh, fuck me. Yes. Like that. There. Yes. Ahh. Cock
hard. Yes. Good." Sexual conversation is the equivalent of talking to a foreigner; words are often repeated, verbs are dumped
for the charade of movement, and understanding is feigned with a smile. "Harder. You. Yes. You fuck. Good." This, of course,
makes him come in a second, and I play along, a performance worthy for an audience of more than one.