“Hey, everybody! Get with this girl, so she’ll like you!” He trudged across the yard to his car. “Whore.”
As soon as I heard it come out of his mouth, I had a moment. Like one second I was in idle, swimming in the shock of it all, and the next, I was shooting like a bolt of lightning toward him across the grass. Other kids at the party stopped what they were doing, if they hadn’t already. “Oh, snap.” I heard someone say. I didn’t stop. My heart was thudding away; I couldn’t control myself. My stomach contorted into a twisted knot of rage as I flew towards him.
*************************************************
Brian Gary was a boy with two first names who lived on campus where I went to college. He lived across the building from me, and we bumped into each other several times. I worked the front desk of our residence hall, which really meant I kept a watchful eye out for people sneaking in or out, and called a Resident Assistant if anyone happened to report large quantities of blood or feces anywhere.
“Hi.”
I looked up from my copy of Winesburg, Ohio to see Brian staring at me across the desk.
“Hi.” I looked back down. “Can I help you with anything?”
“What are you reading?”
“Winesburg, Ohio.”
“No, what are you reading?”
“Winesburg, Ohio.”
I could feel his confusion at my Who’s-On-First answer so I looked back up.
“It’s a collection of short stories by Sherwood Anderson. He taught Faulkner how to be Faulkner. He’s the inventor of Southern Gothic. He’s… It’s a good book.”
“Cool. Hey, what’s your name?”
Brian was twenty-five and an aerospace major. He didn’t look either of these things. He had thick-lensed prescription glasses that made his eyes look small and squinty. When he took them off, he looked like a timid little mole rat blinking at you, half blind. He had psoriasis around his hairline and terrible dandruff in his scalp. He had prescription creams on the bedside table in his dorm room, and I shuddered to think of what evil residues lurked in the fabrics of his pillow. His room was a single, meaning he had no roommate. It was furnished with staple dorm furniture intended for two, and a futon that his mom had bought him for the first apartment he had never procured. He liked Seinfeld, non-fiction, and ramen with shrimp.
We watched television for hours and I discovered too late that he was a terrible kisser. He took his glasses off to do so, and the whole mole rat thing was just too much. His hair was a course shock of black. Totally disappointing to the touch. He was one-sixteenth American Indian and I didn’t know the rest of his ethnic background, but in a first for me, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know. All I wanted to do was get rid of the sick feeling I felt when I stared at the imperfections I couldn’t get past.
I was a bitch. Sure.
“Why are you being so weird?”
We sat outside the backdoor of our building, on the concrete steps, both of us staring at the mud.
“I don’t know. I’m not being weird. I’m just being me. Maybe I feel weird.” I felt like he kept edging toward me. I made no move to stop it, but the whole gesture just seemed so pathetic and clingy that I wanted to shake free of it, of all of him. I wanted to stand up and away out of his petty reach.
“I don’t think you’re acting like you used to. Is something wrong?”
I looked up at him, and the pleading look in his eyes behind those thick little glasses. Screw it. I’d just tell him the truth.
“I can feel myself doing it again.” I looked back down at the mud.
“Doing what?”
“It seems like, every time, I’ll start a relationship, and then something happens. I either become dominated or I dominate. Neither is healthy, of course, but its always one or the other! And-- I think I’m just going into bitch mode on you.” I laughed a little helpless laugh. I knew this would set him off a bit, but I really only anticipated his little hopes to be crushed. I didn’t expect anything more than a dejected look.
“Dominate? What, you’re dominating me?”
“No. I’m just... I’m being a bitch about it. Something in me is destroying this thing we have.”
“This thing we have?”
He looked at the ground between his knees. His face was all tense and rigid. Still. And yet I sensed a movement behind it all. He stood up.
“As far as I’m concerned, we don’t have anything.” He spat the words.
“Okay.” I looked up, masking my ripple of surprise. I wanted to smirk, and play innocent at the same time.
“All right!” And he walked off around the corner of the building with his head up high, like some kind of super hero. ‘Wounded Pride!’ I thought to myself. ‘Great Indian name for poor Brian.’
We didn’t see each other for the next two days unless I was working the front desk and he happened to walk through. He would nod at me, like I was some comrade Homeboy or something. Maybe it cracked me up a little too much.
I didn’t flinch when he declared that he would come with my friend and I to a party I made plans to go to while working the desk.
“What’s with him?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I made him mad.”
************************************************
“Hey, everybody! Get with this girl, so she’ll like you!” He trudged across the yard to his car. “Whore.”
He had been giving me the evil eye all night, and it had finally come to this. His lecture to me from an adjacent folding chair on the smoking porch of some stranger’s house, filled with strange people, had been horrifying. It was something I couldn’t make stop. I couldn’t argue back. Public humiliation is always like this. Whether the one humiliating you is your family member, or some guy you thought you knew. You have to sit quiet and wait for it to be over.
But he’d pulled the right trigger.
As soon as I heard it come out of his mouth, I had a moment. Like one second I was in idle, swimming in the shock of it all, and the next, I was shooting like a bolt of lightning toward him across the grass. Other kids at the party stopped what they were doing, if they hadn’t already. “Oh, snap.” I heard someone say. I didn’t stop. My heart was thudding away; I couldn’t control myself. My stomach contorted into a twisted knot of rage as I flew towards him. I lunged at him for all the humiliation I’d ever felt and I’d ever tried to force myself through quietly.
“Just who the hell do you think you are? You’re damn right I didn’t give a shit about you. Who would? You don’t even know me. You wanna tell me who I am? I’ll tell you what you are. You’re just a drunk, twenty-five-year-old, college student loser. Your life doesn’t mean shit and it never will. And how DARE you call me that!”
I slapped him across the face as hard as I could.
For a single beat I stood shaking, not knowing what to do next. I thought maybe I wanted him to hit me back. I heard the witnesses behind me go quiet, but only for a split second.
“You are so lucky you’re a girl right now it’s not funny!” He got right up in my face. “I’d beat the shit out of you.”
He stepped back and opened the door to his car.
“You really think you’re something, huh?” He got into his car laughing this awful, mean laugh. It made my stomach turn.
Then he drove away while I stood shaking in the tall, wet grass watching his red taillights disappear down the road.
I think it ended like all humiliations end, too.I smiled a little bit, still shaking, and walked back to the party, pretending nothing had happened at all.
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