Dare

by Edward Beuchert

Just after me and John took it, Sue came up. Of course it hadn’t yet started to take effect but right then I got bad feelings. There’s no going back though. As soon as it’s in your mouth you’ve committed yourself, so to speak.

Sue thought I owed her emotional support in her times of need, but I had decided I didn’t want to fuck her anymore. I didn’t know how to tell her so I just ignored her.

After she finally left, red and blue squiggles began peeping out of the cracks on the wall. I didn’t feel too good. My mouth was dry. I wanted to throw up. John turned on the TV and selected an empty channel. We watched the snow, waiting for a poltergeist. I slumped down in my chair and the screen dripped to the floor.

*

Petula buttered her toast and smothered it with strawberry jam. She wore a delicate, white lace dress which had been bought for her First Communion, to be held later that day. A reception was to follow and Petula’s mother had spent the last few days fretting over all the arrangements that had to be made.

"Pet," her mother cried from upstairs, "remember to brush your teeth after you eat. And don’t you dare get any of your breakfast on that dress."

"Yes Mommy," Petula groaned in response. She crunched on her toast. Jam dripped off the crust.

Her sister Amy came into the kitchen.

"God, all this for you, you stupid brat. I have to wear a gown even."

"I going to get lots of money too," said Petula, wiping some jam off the plate with her finger and licking it.

"Yeah and I’m the one who’s had to put up with all her ragging lately." Then in an imitation of her mother’s sharp voice Amy said

"Change the litter box, take out the garbage, come to the store with me, what do you mean you changed the litter box this morning, it needs to be changed again dear."

The cat strolled in from the living room, carrying with it a dank odor. Amy pulled her foot back as though to kick it.

"No don’t," shrieked Petula. She rushed over to pick up the cat.

"What’s going on down there?" yelled their mother.

"Amy tried to hurt the cat."

"Did not."

"Did too."

"As if we didn’t have enough problems with that animal these days Amy. Come up here and help me zip the back of my dress."

Amy sighed and went up the stairs. Petula hauled the cat back to her chair and played with it.

"Oh poor Pus," she said holding the cat up in front of her by its arms. It struggled to escape. Petula set it down and returned to her toast. When she got up to put her plate in the sink she noticed a few red spots on her dress. She anxiously glanced towards the stairway then lifted the material to her mouth and sucked out the wet stains.

*

When I was a freshman in Prep school there was a boy named Joseph Petermann who was in most of my classes. We were both Early Admissions, which meant we entered "The Prep" from seventh grade. I didn’t tell any of my fellows, but Joseph let everyone know so his brilliance would be recognized.

Initially everyone held Joseph in great respect but by the end of the first week jokes were being told about him. During the second week somebody sprayed him with water in Biology lab while the rest of the class laughed. Soon after that his books came to be defaced and stolen, soda was regularly poured in his locker and most freshman knew that the "Petermann Pop" involved sneaking up behind Joseph and flicking the tip of his ear with one’s middle finger. Petermann hunts were organized at lunchtime.

Joseph developed his own defense tactics. When harassed he attempted to kick or grab his attackers in the groin. He also acquired a German accent and professed a belief in Nazism. It was said that Joseph was a homosexual. When he was so taunted he didn’t deny it but rather threatened to prove so on the first boy who came close enough.

Joseph and I were in two of the same classes which met consecutively three times a week. Our Biology teacher often dismissed us early which required that Joseph find a way to protect himself until Fr. Hofstadter would allow him into the classroom. Typically Joseph would take refuge in a nearby stairwell that was off limits to students under penalty of jug, the Prep’s traditional two hour detention. If Joseph was attacked he would close the door to the stairwell. Despite all the commotion that was often made, he had never been caught by Dean O’ Brien violating the stairwell’s sanctity.

One day some of my friends concocted a plan to flush Petermann out from his hiding place. One of us was to come up the stairs from the floor below and surprise him, causing him to run out into the corridor where he would be easy prey for the rest of us. The strategy worked. We surrounded him and took turns popping him amidst his shrieks of "Get ahvay vom me, get ahvay vom me." Suddenly he came at me. I felt his fingers brush against my testicles. I grabbed his leg and wrenched it from the floor. Joseph fell at my feet. My classmates cheered. I kicked him in the ribs.

Then I heard the voice of Dean O’ Brien bellowing from the stairwell: "Both of you—to my office immediately."

Later, when I called my mother to tell her that I would be home late because I had to start serving my sentence of a week’s worth of jug, tears dribbled down my cheeks.

Joseph left the Prep a little while after the incident. The rumor was that he had a breakdown and wasn’t going to school anymore. It was said that didn’t matter though because his father had a lot of money. Soon some other students found out that I was an Early Admission and it was suggested by one of them that I be deemed "the new Petermann," but by then I had enough friends.

*

When Christine was a child and she was left alone in the house she would play "Pretend." She wandered through the entire house, making sure that everyone was gone. Ending up at the door of the room shared by her two sisters, which was always closed, she knocked and when no answer came from within she slowly turned the knob and peeked through the crack, calling out her older sister’s name.

She’d slip through the door, careful to leave it just slightly ajar, and make her way over to a pink dresser. Inside the topmost drawer there was a pile of panties. Christine liked to pick up a pair, put one hand on the inside and gently stroke the the fabric with the other. She’d put her hands through the leg openings and stretch the material taut. Sometimes there would be reddish stains on the crotch, or faint lines of brown on the inside, or even black, curly hairs that poked through the woven threads. Holding a pair up to her face, she would take a deep breath and revel in the musky odor.

In the drawer below there were brassiers. Some were cotton and plain, others were silk or nylon and decorated with ornate lace patterns. Christine held these up to her body, imagining what it would feel like to have breasts that could be held, supported, cupped in the smooth cloth. Opening the drawer further, she removed the layers of garments stuffed in the back. There, at the bottom, lay a sheer, black camisole. Christine carefully lifted it out with both hands and set it down on the bed. She diligently replaced everything else and closed the drawers.

Draping the delicate piece of lingerie over her arm, she walked down the hall to her mother’s room. She closed the door behind her and kicked off her sneakers. Standing in front of the full-length mirror attached to the back of the door, she slowly unbuttoned her shirt, pausing to lift up the front and bare her stomach, or pull at a sleeve and expose her shoulder. She would unzip her pants, let them fall to the floor and daintily step out of them. Next she would roll off her socks and finally, watching her fingers on the body in the glass, she pushed her thumbs underneath the elastic band on her briefs, easing the underwear down over her hips. She slid a hand around to her belly and spread her fingers over her crotch, undulating her hips and pouting at the image facing her. She turned around, took off her briefs and climbed into the camisole. The frilly chiffon falling down past her nipples, Christine pulled the straps from the back before examining herself in the mirror. She pushed her fingers through her hair and caressed her thighs, wondering what an older boy would think, how he would watch, where he would want to begin kissing her. She would make him sit down on the bed and slowly dance in front of him, thrusting her privates at him, waiting for him to beg to be allowed to touch her.

*

Sarah snuggled next to Philip and kissed his smooth chest. He pulled the sheets up over their two intertwined bodies and held her tightly.

"What was Christine like?" asked Sarah.

"The girl has a lot of problems," retorted Philip. "That’s why she went to California, to run away from them."

Sarah rubbed her cheek against the soft skin of Philip’s arm. "Do you still love her?"

"Of course not," Philip said curtly. "I mean," he continued slowly, "I still care about her. We talk on the phone, she tells me about her waitressing job, I tell her about school. We’re only friends. For a long time I was in love with Christine, but that has passed, especially now that I have the proper perspective on her. She’s quite immature. It was stupid for her to do high school in two years. She never had a chance to go through adolesence. When she came here she was obsessed with being popular, what she had never been in high school. And she had to find love. She always had to have love. If I didn’t pay her constant attention she’d get upset."

"How long did you go out with her for?"

"A year and a half. We broke up several times, but usually only for a couple of hours, or at most a few days. She was theatrical. Once when I told her I didn’t want to see her anymore she chopped off her shoulder length hair and put it in a bag. She came over to my room and threw it at me."

"How soon did you end up going back to her after that?"

"Well," he paused. "That night actually."

"Why did she leave school?"

"Christine said she couldn’t deal with her family. She said her father wanted to kidnap her and have her committed."

"Did he really want to do that?"

"I think he tried to get her to see a psychologist. She refuses to do that. She slapped me once when I suggested she could use some professional help. It doesn’t matter though. I’m over her, she’s no longer an important part of my life. I don’t think we should talk about her anymore."

Philip kissed Sarah’s forehead. Her hand traveled underneath the sheets and she stroked his warm belly.

*

I had invited Sue over for dinner. When we were finished eating I took off her clothes and screwed her. She climaxed three times. When I was done I nestled behind her and kissed her shoulders. Soon I was hard again. She crawled into position between my legs. For fifteen minutes I lay sprawled on my back as she used her mouth. She grew desperate, not realizing I was trying to prolong my stay in her warm, wet organ. Her fingers wrapped around me and followed the urgent pumping of her head. My groin was drenched with saliva. Her lips became even tighter, her tongue even more forceful but still I was able to resist. She withdrew me from her mouth and whimpered to herself "I just don’t know what to do."

After she began nicking my flesh with her teeth I made her stop.

<newpage>

Dare is a game. Dare is the game. There was once a girl who used to stare at me in the Freeman Room. I called her "the skanky bitch" because I was attracted by her sensuality: her full lips, her fawn eyes, the solid, feminine curves that she cloaked in bizarre clothing—and I was disturbed by the contempt she seemed to display towards me. Despite my ungenial opinion, John developed a crush on her. We first talked at a party, when, after having quickly downed several drinks, I urged her to go out with him. She continued to spurn John’s advances and he found other interests. I fell in love.

There were a few problems. Christine Reschafe claimed to have affection for two others. Philip, who she had met the first day at our college, had gone out with her for two and a half years, except for a six month period when she was in California. They had planned on getting married when they graduated, as Philip wanted to avoid being drafted into his socialist country’s army. Three months before though, they had broken up after Christine discovered that he was sleeping with another girl, Sarah. Her other suitor, also of the same nationality as Philip, was a twenty-nine year old graduate student. He had already served his time in the army and was looking foward to returning to his country after he received his degree. He had recently proposed to Christine. It was at that point Philip expressed renewed interest in her and I talked to her at the party. My friends didn’t like her, I thought because they were put off by her sharp and sarcastic wit, but even her friends advised me against having a relationship with her, warning that Christine and Philip were a pair who ended up hurting anybody who came to be involved with either of them.

Over the next few weeks I frequently talked to her in the Freeman Room, but if she was with one of my rivals I ignored her. At other times she would stop by my room. I offered her a chair and sat with my feet propped up on a table across from her. We would have conversations about philosophy, psychology, the books we read. No other girl I had ever met seemed to be as well read as Christine. She had as big a collection of books in her room as I did in mine.

Christine, like myself, had skipped grades. She had finished high school in two years. At age fifteen she was in college. It was there that she met her first boyfriend. She explained to me how she had longed for someone to share her feelings with. Joseph was tall and lean and resembled me in many other ways as well. That’s why Christine had stared at me before we met. She described him as "a very disturbedboy."She told me that Joseph used to physically abuse her. She didn’t know any better she said, she needed then so desperately somebody to love that what he did to her didn’t matter as long as he showed her some affection. "Although the physical scars run deep," said Christine, "the emotional scars are the ones that take longest to heal." After a year at the local state college both Christine and Joseph transfered to better schools.

Christine was the most emotional person I ever met. Often as we talked, especially if the subject of one of the others came up, her eyes would glisten and soon she would break down completely. I approached her on my knees, wiped away her tears and kissed her but I wasn’t able to convince her to be my girlfriend. She said she would rather not have relationships with any of us than to hurt the other two by going out with one. After three weeks of this I came to a decision. I explained to her a way out of the dilemma she presented me with. Even if she couldn’t choose between the three of us, a decision had to be made. I reasoned that if I really loved her I shouldn’t cause her to suffer, which I was apparently doing by going after her. And if I didn’t love her then I shouldn’t be pursuing her in the first place. Therefore I had decided not to see her anymore. As I told her this her mouth hung open and when I finished her eyes were ablaze. I asked her to find a fault in my argument but all she would say was "It doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter," before storming away.

I got drunk that night and wrote a letter telling Christine that I still loved her---despite the logic of my argument. I delivered it myself, casting it down on the floor in front of her room.

The next evening as I walked through the Freeman Room Christine sat talking to Philip. I watched them for awhile before wandering downstairs. There was no one there who I cared to talk to either. I made my way to an exit. As I raised my foot to push open the door I heard Christine call my name. I half turned around, considering simply walking away.

"Don’t you want to talk to me?" she asked. I said I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if talking could change anything between us.

Pouting her large, carmine lips, Christine played with my jacket, upturning the collar and adjusting the lapel. I leaned against the brick wall behind me, taking out a cigarette and lighting it.

"I couldn’t believe what you told me yesterday," she said. "I suppose I don’t mean that much to you if it’s that easy." I explained that it wasn’t an easy decision but it seemed to make sense, either way.

Christine reached into the pocket on the front of my jacket and callously pulled out a cigarette. "I wanted to write you a letter. It would have only one sentence," she said. "But I was afraid it would be misunderstood." I tried to consume my cigarette. Its smoke drifted into my eyes. Christine refused to tell me what the sentence was, claiming I should be able to guess. "Come on. Be brave," she goaded me. "Three little words." I didn’t want to be brave. There were two possibilities: if I said the first she could laugh at me—"You’ve got to be kidding. How could I do a silly thing like that?"—if I said the second I would show her how little I trusted her. She held my jaw in her hands: "Come on. Be brave." I pulled away from the wall and turned to her.

Staring straight into her ruthless eyes I said "I love you."

A sneer on her face, Christine stuffed the cigarette she held into my pocket, breaking it, and then marched away as I stood so suddenly alone.

*

With just me and John it didn’t go that well. Paranoia set in pretty early and although John tried to talk me down, it was a traumatic experience. But when we came off it I realized how absurd it had been. Dan came over and asked us how it was. Powerful stuff we told him. He was pretty interested. It didn’t take me and John long to convince ourselves that it would be a lot different if we were doing it with a pillar of stability like Dan.

We took some more and began setting up our toys. Candles, aluminum foil and Kool-Aid. We lit the candles and turned out the lights. I put on Tangerine Dream and we waited. It felt a lot better to start with. John sunk into his chair and smiled behind mirrored glasses. Dan sculpted aluminum foil. I watched the music. I saw a face in the speaker. Who was it I wondered. Who did I want it to be I answered. Like everything else, it’s what you want.

Dan invited me to join him in a candle. We dipped our fingers in the hot wax, examined them as it solidified and then melted the wax off in the flames. As our ritual developed I realized that the pain was only as real as you wanted, but because it was still real anyway Dan and I were sharing something important that John sitting over there wasn’t .And John knew it too. So I suggested that we go outside and look for it. It said John what is it. Dan liked the idea but John wasn’t sure. He was afraid and I was afraid but I wasn’t afraid of my fear like he was. Or so it seemed. Or so I hoped. Because I really didn’t know what it was and I was sure John didn’t because that’s why he was afraid but Dan seemed to because he wasn’t afraid but he wouldn’t tell me what it was or even do more than just hint at it because he thought I knew what it was. Or so it seemed. Or so I hoped.

So we went outside and we walked in the shimmering slush in which there were these marvelous arabesque patterns that I felt bad about stepping on and breaking because they were so 3-D until I realized that you couldn’t break them you could only change them. And John wanted to know if we were coming to it yet so I asked him if he thought we were coming to it yet. Dan liked that because he laughed. And I knew it was me and Dan against John.

And where we were then the field was below us about thirty feet so I told John it could be over the edge why don’t you go look. But he was really afraid more so than before which was hard but it was easy because Dan had laughed and he didn’t know where I was coming from even though he sort of suspected I think like I suspected because just then it occured to me that me and Dan were trying to get him to kill himself. Or if he wouldn’t do it we’d have to do it for him all because he was afraid which was why he deserved to die. So he didn’t want to look over the edge because if he didn’t throw himself over then we might but he couldn’t very well not look over the edge because that’s where it was and he couldn’t be afraid of it not when we weren’t and besides we were his friends and didn’t he trust us. So he had to.

But then I realized that I had been afraid before and he John had helped me. And if I was afraid and he was afraid who was Dan to try to get him John to kill himself just because he was afraid. And I realized that it should be me and John against Dan. So I told Dan that we should all look over the edge to see if it was there because I wasn’t sure either and then Dan admitted that he really didn’t know himself and I knew he lied so I was sure we should make him die. And so we all walked over to the edge but as we got there I realized that I was in the middle and maybe it was them against me. So I backed off and John laughed and Dan laughed and just to show them I wasn’t afraid even though I was more terribly scared than I had ever been I laughed but I wasn’t convinced and I didn’t think they were. And Dan asked me are you going to look over the edge or aren’t you. So I said he should look over the edge first and tell me if he saw it. And then John said the same thing and Dan laughed at the both of us because he really was afraid but he couldn’t let us know even though right there he gave it away worse than he ever could have.

*

"I met him at a gay bar. I didn’t often go out, I preferred to stay home, put on make-up and clothes and look at myself in the mirror. But when I did I could never go to a straight place. I would get harassed by the guys who hang out at those places and even when I didn’t, what was I going to do? Pick up girls?

"He bought me a drink and we talked. He asked me a lot of questions about myself. I explained how I didn’t have enough money for the operation. He said that was too bad, I could be a very pretty girl. He kissed my hand and I blushed.

"He offered me a proposition. He had just come into a lot of money and he was looking for someone like me. He said he would pay for the operation and the treatments and in return, he was to be the first man I would have. I was unsure, how could he be willing to do all that? Why? Of course I accepted though—it was all I could ever dreamed of.

"He escorted me home that night and when I asked him up for a drink he declined, but said he would call me the next day and take care of the details. He gave me three one-hundred dollar bills and told me to buy some pretty dresses. I lay awake all night. The next evening when he called he gave me the name and address of a doctor with whom he had made arrangements. I had an appointment for the following day.

"Over the next two months I saw him only once or twice a week. He gave me a bank account which he regularly refilled. I quit my job and spent the days shopping. He would take me out to dinner and then maybe a show. When we went back to his place he often took pictures of me. He said he wanted a record of my femininity blossoming.

"He was always gentle. He liked me to sit on his lap and slowly undress me. He would cup his hand around my breast and comment on how full it was becoming. He would kiss and lick me and I felt him becoming hard underneath me. I massaged him through his pants and tell him how much I wanted him. He’d take my shoulders and push me down between his legs. I’d unzip him and take him in my mouth. He never penetrated me from behind. He insisted that I wear a strip of heavy white material wrapped tightly around my genitals whenever I was with him. My ‘turban’ he called it. My organ was pressed between my legs and even if I became excited, it was difficult to see that last remnant of my masculinity.

"He took me to Mexico for the operation. The night before I went into the clinic he asked me to undress for him. I wore a dress that he had picked out. It was a print: thousands of gold flowers peeked out through a black backround. He sat in a chair and smoked a cigarette. A strip of fabric that tied in back draped around my shoulders and held up my breasts. I untied the the strip and the dress slipped off my chest, still held to my body by a large, black belt around my waist. I pushed my fingers up through my hair and reached up for the ceiling. He watched me impassively.

"I loosened the belt. I held it tightly against my back as I let each notch slip by. Finally I cast the belt aside and let the dress fall to the floor. Still wearing my garter belt, stockings, high heels and turban I walked over to him. He puffed on his cigarette.

"I straddled him and put his cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘We’ve done well Chris, Christine,’ he said. He put his hands down around the back of my turban and buried his face in my breasts. He nudged me off his lap and fell to his knees in front of me. He slowly removed the strip of white cloth, kissing my stomach, hips and thighs.

"When my flesh was fully exposed he held it in his hands, first running his tongue around the glans then encircling me with his lips. He penetrated me with his two fingers. I wrapped my hands around his head and pulled him as close as I could. He took all of me in his mouth. As I felt that final surge stream out of me I looked down and saw his lips nestled up against my flesh, my hair, my mons veneris.

"After the operation, when I was still in the clinic, he visited me each day. He always brought me flowers. He would hold my hand, and when we were alone he stroked my thighs, telling me how soft my skin was. He pushed my hospital gown up gradually until the bandages that covered my newly created organ were exposed. He told me how perfect he knew I would be.

"The day I was released he brought me back to a hotel room he had reserved for me. He told me to look inside the closet. I found the most beautiful pink nightgown. I took off my clothes and dressed myself in the gown. I put on make-up. After of few minutes of modeling for him, he said he had to take care of some business. He fed me some of the sedatives they had prescribed at the clinic. Before leaving he kissed me, saying he’d be back later. He left me to sleep, locking the door from the outside.

"When I awoke, I found each of my arms and legs tightly tied with harsh strips of cloth. He stood next to the bed, staring at me. I asked him why he had bound me to the bedposts. He said only that I was so beautiful, so feminine. He knelt down before the bed, running his hands over my body, kissing my legs, my arms, and through the soft silk of my gown, my stomach and breasts. He asked me if I thought I could trust him, if I thought he would ever hurt me. I told him no, he had done so much for me. I told him I trusted him with my life. He took another strip of cloth from the table next to the bed, and a pair of panties that were there too. He instructed me to open my mouth. He leaned over and gently stuffed them inside my lips. He adjusted the cloth around my mouth, tying it behind my head.

"Standing up over me, his pants buldging, he smiled. He grabbed my gown near the shoulder, pulling until the strap broke. He laughed. He tore the rest of it off the top part of my body. I struggled but my bonds remained secure. The gag muffled my screams. He straddled me on the bed, wrapping his fingers around my arms and leaning on me with all his weight. He licked my neck. I squirmed and he slapped me. He took my nipples in his teeth and pulled them away from my body, alternating between biting and violently sucking them. He undid his pants, taking off his belt and looping it around my neck. He tightened it. I choked and gasped. As I lay there, my crying muffled, he said that it was always a little rough for girls the first time.

"He spread apart my legs and tore away the white piece of gauze. He pulled the rest of his pants off. One hand pinning down my arm, the other around his organ, he pushed himself into me. I felt my flesh rip open. I tried to scream, I tried to beg him to stop, but he kept going, pounding me deeper and deeper. I lost consciousness.

"When I awoke in my bloody bed, my bonds had been cut, my gag removed. A wet towel lay on my head and some semblence of a bandage was attached over my wound. Five thousand dollars lay on the table. I’ve never seen him again.

"I thought I had to tell you this. You’re the first person I’ve ever been able to love. You have to understand why it’s going to be difficult for me, for us. You seem so gentle. I’m sure you’d never want to hurt me Joseph—you know that was his name too. It’s so hard for me to trust. But I know I can trust you. I love you..."

*

Christine and I both kept journals. She told me Philip had once taken hers and read it cover to cover. She said she felt raped. As a measure of my trust for her and because I wanted her to know me as completely as possible, I gave Christine my journal to read. Afterwards she asked me if she could look through it anytime she wanted. I told her if I was going to be as honest in it as I had been, I couldn’t make that kind of promise.

*

"Some of the boys I know have girlfriends who, as a token of their devotion, fill entire sheets of paper with the words ‘I love you ______.' I think that is inane. Maybe such things express affection but I require more. My ideal lover writes poems, stories, even novels dedicated to me. Perhaps I am too demanding but I know that if that kind of person is one in a million there are four thousand of them on this planet."

*

Kierkegaard say: "When a young woman is emotionally disturbed, one may successfully venture much which would otherwise be ill-advised."

*

Three days after Christine decided that she would go out with me rather than Philip we slept together in her room. In the morning we took a shower. We lathered each other with white froth, explored hidden places with sudsy fingers and kissed under the cascade.

When we were finished Christine opened the bathroom door and led me out. A few feet away Philip was sitting on the stairway. He looked up, first at Christine, then at me and then again at Christine.

"I heard your voice in the shower," he stammered. "I thought you were alone." He skulked out through the door.

"Oh no," said Christine. She covered her face with her hands and placed her head on my breast. "I didn’t want to hurt him."

That evening, when I came back to my room after studying, there was a letter from Christine on my table:

Paul,

I stopped by because I had to speak with you. But it’s probably easier this way.

I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. And it seems that’s all I’ve done.

Today I told Philip I will marry him this summer. He will get his citizenship. And I will be his basic financial and emotional support for the next three years. I love him because he has been my best friend for a long time. After three years we will probably divorce. He has agreed to put me through college and, if he is able, law school.

Is it escape? Possibly. Perhaps I am even trying to punish myself, but I don’t think so. I have nothing to do in the next few years anyway. And this arrangement will allow me to finish to college.

I don’t know where I’ll be in three years. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet you again. But please believe that I’m not doing this to hurt you. I love you so much, it’s just that I have to do what I feel I must. I never wanted to lose you but I know I can never keep you. Please understand.

I love you, Paul. I probably always will.

 

Christine

*

John and I spent a summer hitch-hiking around the country. One hot, humid day as we lumbered down a rural highway a neon blue van stopped alongside us. When we asked the driver where he was heading he said on down the road, he wasn’t sure how far yet. Though his reply struck us as odd, rides had been infrequent and we weren’t about to refuse air conditioned transportation. We climbed aboard, setting our backpacks down on the carpeted floor. I took the front seat while John sat behind me and the driver. John complimented him on his van. He acknowledged that it was good for taking trips.

Our benefactor had short, dark hair and a thin, almost emaciated body. He wore khaki pants and a ripped A-shirt. Around his head was tied a white strip of cloth with a large red dot on it, like those donned by kamikaze pilots in the movies.

I tried to engage him in conversation, as I would anybody who gave us a ride, but he seemed not to want to talk, although occasionally he mumbled to himself. He drove with his mouth open in a half-smile, exposing his yellow stained teeth. Although his large, black eyes were always directed foward, it seemed at times as though he was gazing at the windshield rather than the road.

After driving this way for a quarter hour he spoke: he asked us if we wanted to take LSD with him. He directed me to look inside the glove compartment. I did so and found a clear plastic bag that held several sheets of multiply perforated paper. On each piece four hundred "Felix the Cat" faces grinned at me.

John glanced at me apprehensively. He told the driver the last time he had tripped he had a bad experience. Although he appreciated the offer, he didn’t think he wanted to take anymore LSD for awhile. I echoed his sentiments. "This is really good acid," the driver said. "I made it myself. You don’t have to worry about having a bad trip." He paused for a second and licked his thin lips. "I took two hits before and I can see the God in everything."

John and I looked at each other anxiously. I asked if he would let us off. He urged us not to go. I said if he was to let one of us drive, we’d stay on with him. I suggested he might have a better time if he didn’t have to concentrate on the road. Reluctantly he agreed.

We stopped and I exchanged seats with him. As I drove, the traffic became heavier. He sat in his chair, alternately watching me and the cars that zoomed past us on the other side of the road. He told us that he used to be a Marine. He had served in Vietnam. It was really a beautiful country he said. There were a lot of jungles and swamps he explained, but they were very beautiful at certain times, like the morning or the afternoon or the evening or the night. He stood up and announced that he was going to drive. I told him if that was what he really wanted to do then I would stop the van and John and I would get out. He pleaded with us to stay on with him but as he insisted on driving we refused.

After we unloaded our gear from the van he shook our hands. He said he hoped there were no hard feelings and slipped a sheet from the plastic bag into my knapsack.

We stood at the side of the road and watched him depart. The van pulled smoothly away from us, cruised down the road for about two hundred yards then eased across the double yellow lines and smashed head-on into a car. We later learned that the woman and her two children in the car, as well as the van driver, had been killed.

<newpage>

*

I met Christine in the Union and invited her back to my room. When we got there I lit a candle and turned off the lights. The aluminum foil sculpture we had once made and taped next to my other art reflected little sparks of light; shadows danced on the wall. I poured us each a glass of wine and sat down. I began toying with a knife, first sticking it into the table between us then drawing it across the dried lines of blood on the backside of my hand. Christine told me to stop, I might injure myself. I said it didn’t matter. She took my hand and kissed it. She asked me why I had hurt myself. I said I didn’t know. She grabbed the knife from me and poised it above her flesh, as though readying to cut herself. She said that she was the one who had hurt me and it was her who should bleed, not me. I placed my hand over hers and suggested that if we both cut ourselves and then mixed the blood we would be bonded together in such a way that hurting the other would mean hurting oneself. She thought about it a bit and agreed. When I took the knife from her fingers and held it over my hand, Christine stopped me. She said we should each cut the other. I didn’t think it was a good idea: we couldn’t judge how deeply the knife was in the other’s flesh as well as we could our own. But she insisted.

I gave her the knife and held out my hand. She returned it to me, explaining that she only wanted to see if I trusted her.

I looked into her eyes and sliced my skin. At first only a white line appeared in the wake of the blade but red droplets quickly grew out of it. Soon a little puddle formed and dripped around my wrist.

Christine picked up the knife. Paying close attention to her hand she made about ten quick slashes across her flesh. As she made a fist and flexed her wrist blood collected on her skin. We pushed the backsides of our hands together.

I stood up and took her hand in mine. She rose. I kissed her. As I unbuttoned her blouse, spots of red appeared on the fabric. She brought my hand to her mouth and brushed her lips across the wound. I pushed the blouse off her body and smeared her cheek, her neck and the top of one breast with blood. Once again I kissed her. Her salty saliva became mine. As her bra fell to the floor, I licked her skin clean.

*

Christine and Paul sat together in a chair. Christine’s arms were wrapped around Paul’s neck. He wiped away the tears on her face.

"I don’t like your friends," said Christine.

"And your friends don’t like me," replied Paul.

"But that’s different. Your friends are vicious. Everytime I come here they are abusive, calling me a ‘buddy’ to my face. I hate that word. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t even visit you anymore because of them."

Paul looked away from her and examined one of the canvases on his wall. "They’ve seen me go through a lot. They’re trying to protect me."

"From me! Do you think you need to be protected from me?" Christine said angrily.

"No," Paul softly replied. "While it’s true that the last few weeks have been very painful for me, I don’t hold you responsible."

"I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you so much. But it certainly hasn’t been a pleasant experience for me either."

"I know." Paul kissed Christine’s fingers.

Holding him tightly she said "Paul, whatever happens, whatever I do, please don’t let me go. I’m afraid. I’m so afraid I might lose you again and I never want that to happen."

"Don’t worry. You have me now." Paul playfully looked up at her, imitating her practiced "fawn eyes."

"Stop that, you don’t understand. Like nobody else you see what I am capable of, what I could do. But what you don’t see is that I’m a coward. I’m afraid that if I really try, if I put in everything I can, I will fail. So I think I should just stop now. That way I’ll never know if I could have done it or not. Sure, I’d be condemning myself to a banal, undistinguished life but that won’t matter because I can always tell myself I could have done it but I

chose not to. I told you about David. He wanted me to marry him. We would have lived together in a little pink house, we’d have children and I’d stay home and take care of them. I’d learn how to cook and watch soap operas and get excited about the latest floor cleaner. Sometimes that kind of life seems so tempting to me, to marry an ordinary boy, somebody who’ll tell me what I want to hear and let me escape from myself, somebody who’ll let me forget my dreams."

"You know you can’t do that," Paul said firmly.

"Oh yes I can. So easily. It may mean betraying myself but that doesn’t matter. That’s why I don’t know how I can possibly love you. You make me feel ashamed for even considering those things. You hold me up too highly. You expect too much from me."

"I don’t think that’s true."

Christine tightly embraced Paul and began to cry again. "Paul I know I will hurt you again, so many times. I’m so weak. But please, please don’t let me go, don’t let me do anything I’ll regret for the rest of my life."

*

One of the most intimate things I’ve ever done with Christine was breathe. Sitting on my lap in the darkness she told me to expel all the air in my lungs. She inhaled, sealed her lips over mine and filled my chest with her breath. The sound of rushing air filled my ears. As I exhaled she took my breath into her. Sychronized like that we could breathe together indefinitely. When most of the oxygen became consumed, Christine would quickly exhale through her nose and take in a fresh supply of air. As I felt her body expand with my breath and then contract to fill me again I came to believe that we were really only one being whose two halves had finally been rejoined.

*

I entered Christine and her whole body tensed. I kissed her neck and shoulders. She pushed my hips back and then pulled me into herself. She whispered in my ear "Welcome home."

*

*

Of course.

*

Christine’s best friend for the first three months I had known her was Sarah. I was confused about how they could have forged a friendship; Sarah had apparently been responsible for Christine and Philip breaking up. Christine explained that Philip had deceived them both. Having been so hurt by him, they each understood what the other had been through.

I liked Sarah’s unconventional clothes and mannerisms. I was impressed by how seriously she took her bonds of friendship. In the early hours of one morning Sarah had pounded on my door. Christine, thinking she lost me forever because she said she was going to marry Philip, had chopped off her hair and seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown. She had come to Sarah earlier and talked about how her whole life was ruined. Sarah thought I was the only one who could reason with Christine. We went to Sarah’s room. The door was open and Christine was gone. We started searching the campus. After fifteen minutes we spotted Christine several hundred feet away. I called out to her. She ran into a building, hiding herself in the women’s room. She was hysterical, crying and yelling. Sarah went in and tried to calm her down. Through the door I heard Christine sob that I was the worst person Sarah could have brought. I knocked on the door and Christine shouted for me to go away. Sarah came out, saying she was sorry for having caused me all the trouble. She would stay with Christine and prevent her from "doing anything stupid." She told me to go home. Things would probably be better in the morning.

A few days later Christine told me that Sarah was no longer her friend. Christine said she would never talk to Sarah again. I was never clear about what had happened. Christine said Sarah had tried to make her stop seeing me. I suspected that Christine was warping the truth: it had seemed like Sarah had encouraged her to choose me. Sarah and I remained friendly, but we rarely talked about Christine. Sometimes Christine lamented about Sarah’s "betrayal" of her but I sensed that it was Sarah who had been more genuinely hurt by the turn in their relationship than Christine.

Although I was surprised by Christine’s friendship with Sarah, what was only slightly less unusual was Christine’s friendship with the girl I had gone out with just before her, Karen. The first time they met was at a party on my floor. Christine asked to be introduced to Karen. She then took Karen out for a walk, explaining they had to do some "girltalk."They both came back in good spirits. Christine told me that she was impressed by Karen and Karen said that she really liked Christine. Christine and I saw Karen occasionally at other times. During the first part of the summer we saw Karen waiting at a bus stop. After a few minutes of conversation Christine suggested I meet her in a nearby store. I felt anxious. Why did Christine want to speak privately with Karen? I convinced myself there was no need to worry. There weren’t any real incongruities between what I had told each of them. My relationship with Christine was secure: Philip was out of the country and all his letters and pictures were thrown away.

*

Christine had a necklace made of large, white plastic beads. I told her that I wanted something of hers to keep, to remind me of her when we were apart. She said I could have anything I wanted. I choose the beads. She tried to persuade me to pick something else but I insisted. Although she gave them to me unconditionally, she later said I had to give them back to her if I stopped loving her.

*

Christine told me that she experiences orgasms in two different ways. One is a pleasant numbing that centers on certain parts of her body, like her stomach, and then spreads to surrounding areas. The other is manifested in violent contractions of her muscles; her whole body tenses and writhes. Whenever we had intercourse and Christine climaxed in this way she would clutch and grab me, pulling my body into hers, but if I were to use only my fingers or mouth she would push me away upon reaching orgasm. Throughout all other phases of my manual and oral lovemaking she enjoyed the physical contact of my body but as the worship I gave her reached its fruition she would turn away and close herself off from me, experiencing the pleasure I gave her in solitude. The first time I brought her to orgasm using my tongue this behavior surprised me but I learned to accept it. Although I never felt quite right just lying there beside her convulsing body.

I think I was reminded of the way sex had been with girls other than Christine. As soon as I felt the liquid surging up through my loins I be over come by a wave of disgust. I only had intercourse with one other before Christine. There were many other occasions when I was in bed with an eager girl but I never wanted to put it inside. That place. I had them use their mouths or hands because I felt that fucking was something special, a kind of way of saying "I really love you." I knew what it would be like if I did it with someone who I didn’t love.

Christine said she felt the same way. Actually she said that was the way she felt. She said she could only have sex when it was pure, when it was an expression of love. She thought I used to be quite promiscuous. Although I admitted to having been in bed with other girls, I never told her that she was only the second one I’d had intercourse with. I think that was the only secret I ever ever kept from her. That and one other. I was afraid that she’d somehow think I was less of a man.

Christine had one secret from me too. I never figured out what it was. She told me that there was something in her past that if I were to know, I would think of her in a completely different way. Christine said she couldn’t risk losing my love by telling me what it was. There were many things it could have involved. At times I thought it was the most important thing Christine could have told me about herself, the key to understanding her personality. Was it guilt for something she had once done, thus motivating her self-destructive tendencies, or had somebody done something to her that caused her to live in fear? Or shame? Christine wondered about why she was so attracted to me: I bore a strong physical resemblence to Joseph. "Isn’t that scary?" she once asked me. Making love with her, it had been Christine who first suggested that I bind her arms and legs to the bedposts. She claimed that Joseph still tried to call and write her; he wanted her to marry him. "It’s easier to forget when you’ve hurt somebody else than when they’ve hurt you," she said. "Our powers of rationalization are so much more developed." Christine refused to elaborate on what Joseph had done, only saying that she was worried that she might not be able to have children. Having a child someday was very important to her.

Although she was on the Pill, Christine said her periods could be erratic. She told me that because she felt so strongly about motherhood, she could never have an abortion. There was one time when she had been acting especially unusual for several days. I tried to get her to tell me why but she refused. At one point she even seemed to be suicidal. I didn’t let her leave my room. I resorted to holding her down in my chair. She told me I couldn’t kidnap her. I said I wasn’t .I would call anybody who I thought she could be trusted with, even Philip, and let her go in their care if she wished.

After a few hours she seemed to have calmed down and I walked her back to her room. The next day, crying, she told me what it was all about. She had thought she was pregnant and she knew I wouldn’t want to get married. Because she didn’t want to screw up my life, she said, she would have run away to California and raised the child by herself. She told me she had her period that morning, so there was no more need to worry. I was amazed that she would have done all that for me. It seemed like such self-sabotage. Couldn’t she see how miserable her life would have been? But she seemed to be full of painful experiences. In addition to Joseph and Philip, she was plagued by allergies to most synthetic and natural substances. Sometimes I wondered how unavoidable her suffering really was. When she shaved her legs she sliced her skin. She stumbled on sidewalks and tripped on stairs. Christine always showed me her cuts and bruises. After I expressed my concern she would say "I’ll just have to be more careful." I wondered how many of her problems were really accidents and twists of fate. It wasn’t hard to notice that her allergies would flare up at the times she most wanted to avoid dealing with life. During the final weeks of her last two semesters at school she developed medical problems, and as a result most of her professors gave her grades of "Incomplete," grades she never made up. Her allergy attacks seemed well timed with the periods of conflict in our relationship. I didn’t even think about it in these terms at the time, but on the morning of the first night we had planned to make love, she ended up in the Infirmary with pains in her abdomen.

Christine liked my own leanings toward androgyny: wearing eyeliner and buying shirts and vests in women’s departments, but she was insecure about her own. I think that slightly androgynous clothes and behaviors focus attention on the features that normally distinguish men and women, and thus emphasize our own sexuality. Christine agreed but she was afraid that she might be mistaken for a boy. She told me she was once walking in the city with her sister, who wore a dress. Christine had on a sweatshirt, an old pair of jeans and no makeup. Some panhandlers were accosting passerbys. One of them looked up at Christine and warned his friend "Now there’s a guy you don’t want to mess with."

I never doubted Christine’s femininity. She was a person ruled by her emotions, much like my own manic-depressive mother. As a boy, I had been told to behave rationally. Women were emotional, not men. I accepted Christine’s emotions as an expression of her femininity. I didn’t realize the kind of bind it got me into. While Christine could make a decision based on how she "felt," mine had to be based on more. If Christine felt dissatisfied with our relationship, all she had to say was "Something is wrong. I feel something is wrong." The problem was with me: what had I done to displease her, to make her feel the way she did? If I "felt" there was a problem I had to justify myself. "But why do you feel that way?" she would ask.

While I found her inexplicable burts of anger and depression frustrating, the intensity with which she adored me seemed to make it all worthwhile. I could question the appropriateness and genuine nature of her negative emotions but not the adoration and joy she felt when she was with me. One rainy night as we walked to the store hand in hand, Christine kept lurching me to a halt on the sidewalk or even in the middle of the street. I faced her and she kissed me, explaining "I can’t move." I asked her why and she replied so urgently "I love you. Don’t you understand? I love you so much I can’t do anything except stand here."

*

The philosopher Sartre said that our greatest fear is of the Emptiness. When we first become conscious we become aware of a pervading nothingness inside us. From the moment we recognize it exists we try to deny it. Sartre talks about holes. From birth on, humans are fascinated by holes. Children dig holes in the ground and put their hands inside. Cracks and spaces in walls are stuffed with pieces of paper and other garbage. We stick pencils in our ears and we put our fingers in our noses. We eat and we copulate. Afraid to confront our own Emptiness we can project it on to someone else. We’ll think them to be empty and we’ll try to fill them. If we can fill the other than we must not be empty ourselves. There is scarcely a human activity that can’t be interpreted to involve filling up or being filled.

Perhaps the human need for companionship is based on a longing to be filled. Maybe the reason relationships founder in the long term is because when we come to know the other as intimately as ourselves, we feel they are as empty as we are. This idea is interesting when related to sexuality. Women are the holes; men must fill them. It must be much more traumatic for girls to learn about sex, to see that in the most fundamental, inescapable way, they are empty. Perhaps this is one reason why girls can be convinced to be so concerned about marriage and children. In marriage they hope to find somebody who can fill the Emptiness they are so much more conscious of. Then by having a child, they can further deny their own sense of Emptiness, first because they have produced this other inside themselves, and then by filling the other—the baby’s mouth with their breast and its being with their love.

There are many ways to deny the Emptiness. We can tell ourselves that we are smart, beautiful, rich or loving. But there is something fleeting and uncertain about these things. We worry that we may not really be intelligent, that we aren’t at all attractive, that our wealth doesn’t mean anything. We aren’t sure that these things really fill us. There may be only one thing that we can be sure of: pain. Whether somebody else causes or we do, pain is real, something that fills the Emptiness. It doesn’t matter whether our pain is physical or psychosomatic, whether somebody has actually tried to hurt us or we just believe they have, whether the pain is caused by forces not in our control or if it is self-inflicted. All pain that is experienced is real. All pain blocks our awareness of the Emptiness.

*

It seems that without conflict in my life, the art I produce, if any at all, is trivial. Since I’ve been with Christine, the only interesting things I’ve made have been collages expressing not so much my love for her, but my fear of losing her. I’d like to think that if I reach a certain level of maturity I’ll be able to be happy and yet still create pieces that are profound. But I don’t know any artists who have been able to do this. I tell myself I don’t want a happy life, I want an interesting life. I don’t care about Nirvana. If there was a heaven I’d probably enjoy being in it for a little while, but soon I’d become frustrated. I’d try to kill God.

*

As twilight gave way to darkness, Paul sipped a glass of wine. He and Christine sat opposite each other on a black steel sculpture in the middle of a freshly cut lawn.

"Are you sure you want to stay out here?" asked Paul.

"Yes, I’m alright. I’ll probably pay for it later but it’s so romantic," said Christine. Paul offered him his glass and she drank a little. "When I was a little girl sometimes I would take a piece of wool and rub it against my face or arm. My skin would get all red and prickly but I liked the power I had over my body. I could cause myself to have an allergic reaction or not."

"But that’s only a negative kind of power: to choose to hurt yourself or not."

"Sometimes I think that’s the only kind of power I have."

Paul pushed his feet along the grass towards Christine. He wrapped his legs arond hers.

"You know the summer’s been really good," she said. "Really good, but it’s not going to last forever. You’ll be going back to school and I’ll be working, who knows where. We’re going to have to come to a decision about the future of our relationship."

"I suppose," mumbled Paul, turning away. "I still want you to be my girlfriend."

"Well that’s nice Paul," Christine said sarcastically, "but I think we should talk about more than that."

"Why does it always come down to this? What’s the rush? I’m twenty-one, you’re nineteen why is marriage so important to you now?"

Christine grabbed his hands tightly and looked into his eyes. "Because I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’m willing to make that commitment to you. Can’t you do the same for me?" she pleaded.

"I think were both still adolescents. There’s a certain level of maturity that I have to reach, that you have to reach, before we could do something like that if it’s going to work."

Christine let go of him and leaned back against the cold metal. "I’ll be married within a year. If not to you then somebody else." Paul stared at her, his arms folded.

"You told me once that you thought Philip’s parents had an ideal marriage, that after all the years they were still in love with each other. Who else do you know who’s happily married?" Christine was silent. "You don’t think much of your two sisters’ marriages, you certainly don’t think much of your parents’ .But you’re sure you know enough about marriage to have a good one."

"O.K., I’m afraid. I’m afraid of being alone. I need security in my life, the kind from knowing somebody else is always there."

"Is your father always there for your mother?"

"Stop!"

Paul picked up the glass of wine and swirled some in his mouth. He reached out and stroked Christine’s wrist. She pulled her hand away. "I used to really hate certain ways my parents used to deal with me," he said. "When I was a child I told my mother that I’d never treat my children the way she and my father treated me. But last year, when I worked at the summer camp, I realized I was acting the same way towards the kids as my parents had towards me. There are certain patterns of behavior that we pick up from our parents and we don’t even realize they’re there. We say ‘Oh I’m nothing like my mother,’ or ‘I’ll never be like my father,’ but we really turn out to be."

"So what are you saying, I’m like my mother?" asked Christine.

"I’m sure you are, in ways you don’t even suspect."

"I love my mother."

"I know that. And you say you hate your father. How true that is I don’t know. What I wonder is how much of your parents’ problems are due just to your father."

"There’s nothing wrong with my mother. It’s just that sometimes she trusts and loves people too much."

"Wouldn’t you say that about yourself?"

"Touch<lceacute> Paul," said Christine.

"You are your mother’s favorite and it’s not because of the differences between you and her. With you she has been most successful implanting her fears and insecurities. You and your four sisters all share them to some degree. You all have this same idea that what a woman does is get married and raise children. Why? There are so many other things you could do instead, or first. You told me your mother eloped when she was seventeen and had your two oldest sisters before her husband left her. I’d imagine she must have been traumatized, alone in the world except for her two young children. So alone… And then she met your father. You say they were happy for a few years and then something happened. You say your mother hates your father now but she’d never divorce him because she’s afraid of what’d he might do. Or is she really afraid of being alone? Is that why you’re afraid? You say you hate going home but you visit your parents five times as often as I visit mine."

"You don’t understand," said Christine.

"O.K., I don’t understand." Paul looked up at the stars. "You once said that because you were so much in love with me, I had a great deal of power over you. I think we believe that a lot more than it really is true. I can stop you from doing some things but I don’t think I can make you do anything. Any positive change in you has to come from inside. The things I say are only there to be considered by you. The choice to believe or reject or even ignore is yours, and yours alone."

Christine looked at the moon. It was obscured by the thin haze of a cloud. Paul lit himself a cigarette. Stroking Paul’s arm Christine said: "I’ve often thought that one of the most tragic things in life would be to get married at a young age, then meet someone else who you realize is the only person you could ever really love."

"What would you do?"

"I don’t know."

*

Once when I lay in bed with a girl, my arm underneath her backside, my fingers deep inside her, I realized that her body was like a machine under my control. With each thrust into her interior I felt her respond. At first I alternated between slow tempos and faster ones, guiding her gently around the curves and racing her down the straightaways, gauging the perfection of her response. I decided to test her more completely. I increased speed continuously, feeling the whole of her shudder, gasping and groaning to a rhythm that only I controlled. I pushed her further and further, trying to discover her ultimate limits. Suddenly she jumped up and pulled my fingers out of her, crying "O.K .you win!"

*

Although Philip and I didn’t talk to each other we had several friends in common. One of them, Mark, told me how he had ordered a girl with whom he was involved, Lisa, to sleep with Philip. Mark didn’t want her to become too attached to him which he reasoned could be assured if she took on another lover. I suppose if Lisa got pregnant she wouldn’t know who the father was either. I tried to picture the situation from Lisa’s view: in order to prove her love for Mark she had to submit to someone of his choosing. I wondered if she would ever think of Mark as her pimp. Of course no money ever exchanged hands. Mark only received the goodwill of those he gave her to.

*

She leaned over to kiss me and I reached out for her lips with mine. Her breath smelled of intimacy, her tongue tasted of a kind of love, and I realized that it was not my own. A little while ago she had been on her knees kissing some part of another boy, but now she dared to stand in front of me and ask for my affection.

*

You love me loving you loving me. You knew there were others who wanted me, who had flattering images of me. I rejected them for you.

There was something in you that I felt I needed in order to be complete. At one time I thought it was all of you but now I’m not so sure. Painful as it might be, I think I could live without you if I had to.

*

Philip’s head lay propped up on a pillow as Christine walked down the hall to the bathroom. Alone for a few minutes he reflected on the events of the last three days. Christine had called him on Thursday evening and in the course of the conversation she had asked about Paul. It was obvious that she wanted to know if Paul had been seeing other girls. Although Philip was sure that Paul had been faithful to Christine a few well planted innuendos led her to believe otherwise. She had called Paul the next day, accused him of betraying her and promptly hung up. Paul’s phone call to her immediately afterwards received a repeat performance. When Christine then called Philip, he had consoled her, reminding her that he had never thought highly of Paul, aside from everything else.

On Saturday when Christine called, Philip mentioned that Paul had talked to him on the phone and invited him over for dinner, explaining "It’s been awhile since we’ve talked. It somehow seemed appropriate for us to get together now." Christine was enraged. She had forbidden the two of them to talk to each other about her. Any doubts in her mind about Paul betraying her were quelled. She asked Philip if she could come in from Boston and visit him. It would be her birthday on Monday and she needed to be with somebody who was her friend. Carefully containing his delight, he agreed.

When Christine had arrived on Sunday afternoon, she fell into Philip’s arms and cried. She asked for forgiveness from Philip, explaining how she now realized how much Paul had deceived her. Philip told her that she could always count on him to be her friend. Christine hugged and kissed him and pulled at his clothes. She said she needed him to be her lover.

"But I don’t love you," he argued, knowing that Christine wanted to hurt Paul more than hold to any principles she had claimed to have all the years he had known her.

As Philip lay back in his bed congratulating himself on the complete rout of his rival, he thought of the girl he had just won. Paul would never be able to forgive her. Even if Christine were to find out that she had been wrong she would still find some reason to hate Paul. Her powers of rationalization were extraordinary. Philip was sure that eventually he and Christine would get married. He would go through grad school and a few more girls, but Christine would be his wife someday. Paul would be forgotton. There would only be a few scars on Christine’s wrist. To remind Philip each time he held her hand that Paul’s blood flowed in her veins. To remind him each time he made love to her that Paul had been there before, making her beg and moan and shudder as much as he ever could. To remind him each time he kissed her that Paul’s flesh had been in her mouth, wrapped by her lips and stroked by her tongue.

*

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I lay awake in my bed. I heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs in the hallway but no door opened. Five minutes later there was a knock on my door. I got up and answered it, finding myself face to face with Philip. He asked if the dinner invitation was still open. When he came over two days later he explained that he and Christine had an argument over whether he should accept my invitation. He asked me why I had extended it. I told him about my last two phone conversations with Christine. I said that as irrational as she might be, I believed it unlikely that she would come to think that I was sleeping with other girls. I thought that perhaps he might have had something to do with giving her such an impression. Philip was silent. I watched him silently for a half minute before saying "I’m sure you have more integrity than that." He agreed.

I wrote Christine a letter. I told her that she had been totally wrong, but it didn’t matter anyway. Now I saw what she was really like. Despite all her talk about sex having to be pure and an expression of love, she had used it as a weapon against me. For a transgression I never made. I told her I never wanted to have any contact with her again. "If you write I will return your letters unopened. If you call I will hang up the phone."

I went home for a few days at Christmas and then to Boston. I had a job interview with the company John worked for. Christine knew I would be staying with John and secretly I hoped she would try to call me there. I didn’t know what I would do if she did. Once when I went home and three times when I was at John’s the phone rang and the caller hung up after I said "hello" twice. When I returned to school I received similar calls. Although I couldn’t be sure who it was, I knew they had to be from outside the campus because external calls were characterized by a quick double ring.

Towards the end of January Christine sent me a postcard. I smiled when I recognized the handwriting. It would be impossible to return a postcard unread. On one side there was a picture of Virginia Woolf forlornly looking down and to the left. On the other there was a short note: "Please return my beads. You no longer have the love that is necessary to keep them." I was annoyed because it seemed to indicate that it was me who had betrayed her. I wasn’t about to give them back to her. I was still emotionally attached. A few weeks later I decided to break my vow of silence.

What have I done to be forgiven for?

I loved him. There are some girls who don’t care who they sleep with but—

I hung up the phone. I waited for a few minutes and redialed her number. After three rings she answered. She asked me why I called back. I couldn’t give her a reason.

I heard the phone slam down, and then a dial tone.

*

The next day Christine called me.

Why should I do any favors for you? Because of all the kindness you’ve shown me?

*

I asked Sarah about her relationships with Philip and Christine.

"I first started going out with Philip the Spring after Christine went to California. He seemed to be a really neat guy. He expressed no regret that Christine was gone. He said he was glad their relationship was over. During the summer we both saw other people, but it was agreed that our relationship would continue when school resumed. That Fall Christine came back from California. I asked Philip if that changed anything and he said it didn’t, he wanted me to be his girlfriend. Whenever I saw Christine on campus she gave me dirty looks. Of course she never talked to me. I was shocked when two months into the semester Christine decided to move into the dorm next door to me. It was obvious she wanted to create problems for me. Perhaps in some warped way she thought it might help her get Philip back.

"At Thanksgiving Philip told me that Christine had asked him to go home with her for the holiday. He said she was really afraid of her father. If she had a guest, Mr. Reschafe wouldn’t make a scene. I told Philip to do what he thought best. He assured me that he and Christine were ‘just friends.’ The first day of classes afterwards I saw them walking together holding hands. Later when I confronted Philip he admitted that the two of them had ‘fooled around’ but said that he had only done it because he felt sorry for her. I asked him if he still wanted to see me. He said he did and he promised that nothing more would happen between him and Christine. I forgave him. But soon after that we ended breaking up anyway.

"One day Christine knocked on my door. She said ‘Don’t you think we should cut the shit. Philip is such a loser. It’s stupid of us to be enemies over him.’ We came to be friends by telling each other jokes about Philip. Even though we were close, best friends actually, I was surprised by the intensity of her feelings for me. She wanted to spend hours a day with me. Even when she did normally solitary activities like reading, which she did an awful lot, she wanted me to be in the same room with her. Once I went home with her for a weekend. We talked into the early hours of the morning with her mother. Christine raved about how incredible our friendship was. She said that only two girls who had been deeply hurt by the same guy could have such a strong bond between them. Mrs. Reschafe asked me about that and I agreed that Christine and I would probably be friends for the rest of our lives.

"It’s interesting to compare Christine and her mother. Both seem to have serious medical problems that interfere with their lives, Christine with her allergies and Mrs. Reschafe with her spine. Pain seems to be a central part of their lives. But it seems like there’s a psychosomatic element somewhere. Christine’s most serious medical problems happen when she doesn’t want to deal with life. She never did make up all those grades of ‘Incomplete’ she got both semesters last year, did she? Her physical problems also seem to flare up when she doesn’t think people are paying attention to her. Although I liked Mr. Reschafe when I met him, Christine says he is a very violent man. I’m sure she told you that her first boyfriend, Joseph, used to hurt her. Christine admires her mother because ‘she has gone through so much.’ Is that what Christine wants to be respected for? According to Christine, Mr. Reschafe sleeps with other women. Didn’t Christine say that’s what you were doing when she came and stayed with Philip in December? Philip said she always worried about him doing that when they were going out. It’s hard to say what Christine really believes. It seems as though she thinks if she gets all the people around her to believe a lie, then it becomes the truth. I suppose we all do that to a certain extent but with Christine it’s a way of life. I heard she forbade you and Philip from talking to each other about her. She told you both so many different things. When she decided that she wanted to marry Philip after she agreed to be your girlfriend, she told him that she hadn’t made love with you. I couldn’t believe that.

"I really tried to be a good friend to Christine. You remember when she thought she lost you forever because she became ‘engaged’ to Philip? That night she cut her hair? How many other people would go chasing a girl like that around campus at 3 a.m. because they were worried she might do something stupid? The next day I tried to get her to see the school’s psychologist but she claimed she didn’t need to. Our friendship ended when I told her I didn’t think it was fair what she was doing, saying she was going out with you, then saying she was going out with Philip, then saying she was going out with you, changing her mind daily. You were both getting so terribly hurt. I told her she had to choose. That was my ‘betrayal’ of her. She went around telling everyone we knew that I had turned on her and was trying to sabotage her relationships with you and Philip. That was just too much.

"I feel sorry for anybody that gets involved with that girl. Did you ever think about what it would be like to be married to Christine? I mean really think? What was the longest period of time you had together without her pulling some kind of shit? When she discovers that marriage isn’t like the prince and princess living happily ever after she’ll decide she wants a baby. She’s entertained fantasies about having a child for a long time. Somebody who will love her more than her husband does, who by that time she’s probably accusing of seeing other women. I can just see that happening with Philip, who needs to be married for three years before he can apply for citizenship.

You don’t love me anymore, I do love you, Then why don’t you want to have a baby?, Because it’s not the right time, If you don’t love me then we should get divorced.

That would really screw him over. Actually she’d probably just forget to take the Pill for awhile. So Christine will have a kid and then when she finds out it’s not the little bundle of joy she expected she’ll end up in the hospital, maybe then with a nervous breakdown. And after that? I don’t want to think about it.

"Don’t worry, whatever happened, you should be glad you don’t have anything to do with her anymore. Just forget about her and find a mentally healthy girlfriend.

"It’s too bad really, she is pretty bright, probably a genius. But nothing will ever come of it. I used to wish there was a way to get inside her and straighten her out. But that just can’t be done. Oh well."

*

During Spring recess I made a visit to Boston, staying with John for the weekend. Friday night we got drunk together. Late the following morning I put the beads in my pocket and took a train headed into the city. I got off at the suburban station that was two miles from where Christine lived. I clutched a note in my hand: "Here are the beads. You no longer have the love that is necessary for me to keep them." I knew Christine left for work sometime after 12 p.m., and I wasn’t sure if Philip was spending the holiday with her. Wishing to avoid an awkward situation with either him or Christine’s roommate, I had decided to go around to the back of the house where she lived and softly climb the stairs to her apartment. I would put the beads around the doorknob and leave the note on the floor.

I walked decisively along the route Christine and I had once taken together. As I neared the house I saw a girl marching away on the other side of the street. She wore black stockings and a dark wool coat. From the hundred feet that separated us, she looked back. It was Christine. She didn’t seem to recognize me. I remembered that she had lost her contact lenses several months ago and couldn’t at the time afford a new set. She came to the corner and I quickly crossed the street. I walked in Christine’s footsteps, barely inches behind her. I took the necklace from my pocket and held it up with one hand. The beads brushed up against the back of her head and she became aware of being touched. As I let them fall around her shoulders I caught a glimpse of her scowling face. Her cheeks were blushed by an allergy. I turned around and walked away.

*

I took the train and a subway to where Sue lived. While we waited for John’s arrival in several hours, Sue fed me alcohol. I asked her about Christine. Sue said she hadn’t seen Christine in many weeks. For awhile they had spent a lot of time together, but Sue, being a private person, had explained that there was a certain frequency factor in a relationship which shouldn’t be exceeded if things were to remain interesting. "Christine wanted to be with me all the time, like we were going out together." Christine had gotton angry and had called Sue only once since then, sarcastically thanking her for a certain Valentine’s day card. I smiled. I had bought a package of children’s cards, and to my amusement one of them was captioned "Be my buddy." I cut out the heart that enclosed the words "I love you," and threw it away. I had somebody else write Christine’s name and address on the envelope and arranged to have the card sent from Boston.

Sue got stoned and I drank. She hadn’t had sex for almost a year and she said she preferred it that way. Physical involvement could really complicate relationships she thought, and the pleasure one derived was overrated. Sue said that the dominance and submission inherent in every sexual act turned her off. She didn’t understand how I could still be in love with Christine. "How could you have ever asked her to marry you?" I was surprised. I had never asked Christine to marry me. That was the main source of conflict in our relationship. Christine had always talked about "commitment" but I didn’t think either of us was ready for marriage. Whenever she brought up the topic I assured her that, at age nineteen, there was much time before she should consider making a decision to spend the next forty to fifty years with one person.

After I finished the bottle of whiskey, Sue led me into the kitchen to show me where another was. As I filled my glass, Sue played with a rusty razor blade, scratching the skin on her arms. I noticed several thick, white scars running across both of her wrists. Sue once told me she had tried to kill herself two years ago. I asked her what she was doing. "Oh, I just wanted to see some blood," she replied. I watched as she pushed the brown blade into her fingertip and made a half inch incision. Red liquid spurted from the wound and Sue exclaimed "See, I’m bleeding."

*

I talked to the cab driver who drove me to the airport. He was middle-aged and balding. He wore large pink sunglasses. He told me his wife was a novelist. Her last two books hadn’t done that well he admitted, but she was working on a bestseller. It was a story of adventure and romance. His wife was modeling the hero after him. And when this new novel of hers hit the market, he predicted, the other two would come back into print and they would be rich.

*

Christine sat in an armchair and contemplated the man who stood across the room looking out the window. She had known Joseph for only two months but in that time he had been so good to her. He had been a friend who helped her get over Philip’s repudiation of her love, a sympathizer who explained Paul’s vicious behavior: "Sometimes when relationships just naturally come to an end, like they did with you and Paul, it takes awhile for the less mature person to accept it." And now there was even more between them: they were in love. Joseph was thirty-one and she was twenty, but hadn’t Plato said that the ideal marriage was between a man and a woman who was half his age plus seven years? Joseph was gentle, kind, understanding, mature and he was ready to make a commitment, to give her what she had dreamed about for so long.

"Joseph, love," said Christine. "There’s something I have to tell you. I’ve made a decision." He walked over to her. She stared up at him, glowing, preparing herself for one of those few perfect moments a woman has in her life. She held out her hand, and he kissed it. Christine motioned for him to get on his knees before her. "You have a question for me?" she said warmly. Joseph smiled at her.

"Will you marry me?"

"Yes, I will marry you, Joseph. And we will be happy forever."

*

I went to the Union to pick up a pizza I had ordered. I saw Mark waiting in line. With a smirk on his face he told me that Christine was getting married. I tried to be casual and simply remarked "Oh, how excellent."

Mark said all he had heard was that she was engaged to a thirty-one year old guy. "We all know Christine should be institutionalized and the institution of marriage is as good as any to start with." When I came back to my room and tried to take a cigarette out from its package, I noticed that my hands were shaking violently. I poured myself a drink and spilled half of it on my clothes. I called Philip and he came over. We talked for three hours. He said that before he went home for Christmas, Christine had talked a lot about marriage. Philip wasn’t sure he wanted that quite yet but Christine was insistent. She told him to think about it and give her an answer when he returned to the United States. Three weeks later, a few minutes after he arrived back in his room, the phone rang. It was Christine, wanting to know his decision. Philip explained he was sorry, but he wasn’t sure enough about his future that he could say she was the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. A week later Christine called him and said she thought she was pregnant. He told her to keep him informed.

Philip told me that Christine still claimed to be in love with him for the next two months, but during the last few weeks she had talked a lot about somebody named Joseph. She had recently written Philip a letter and mentioned that Joseph had proposed to her. The day before, Christine had called Philip and said that she had accepted. A friend of Christine’s here had been the first one she told, but Christine didn’t want Philip to find out "through the grapevine." Philip congratulated her and expressed hope that she would be happy.

Philip and I both agreed that Christine had been obsessed marriage for a long time. I mentioned how Christine had lied to Sue, telling her that I had proposed. Philip was surprised. Christine had told him as well. Smoking a cigarette and staring at the carpeting, Philip said that he had never asked Christine to marry him either. I fed Philip some of the cold pizza and we talked further of incongruities between what Christine had told him and what she had told me.

Philip said he was over Christine. I said I wasn’t as fortunate. He wondered what the nature of my attachment to her was. I told him that I had always hoped that despite all the betrayals, each incident was, as Christine had once written me, "the turning of another page." This latest development though, seemed to be quite the closing of the book. When two people get married they don’t keep things from their former lovers. I was disturbed by the vision of Christine throwing away all the soft, furry stuffed rabbits, dogs and bears I had sent her for her birthday. Everything I had ever given to her would be destroyed, if that wasn’t the case already. It wasn’t really the objects that I wanted preserved though, it was the image she had of me, a way of believing that certain qualities were my essence and being. I felt bad not being the object of her adoration, or more simply, not being anything to her anymore.

At around 1 a.m., after having drunk a liter of whiskey in the preceeding twelve hours, I crawled onto my mattress, but I caught only one short nightmare. I saw myself breaking into Christine’s apartment. I walked into her room and climbed under the covers of her bed. I heard a car drop her off outside and when she came into the bedroom and saw me, I was paralyzed with fear. I woke up thrashing in my sheets.

When it became light outside I gave up on my efforts to sleep. I made a postcard by rubber-cementing two four by six inch postcards and a Xerox collage I made from cut out magazine pictures. I addressed it to Miss Christine Reschafe:

<indent left 1, indent right 1>

Congratulations. I sincerely wish you the best. There’s too much pain in the world for me to be against two people making each other happy. I have one request which I hope you will consider. Instead of throwing the letters, stuffed animals and other mementos you have of me away, could you please send them back? I will pay for the expenses involved.

<indent left 4, nl>Paul

<indent right off, indent left off>

*

Sometimes I think I want to go to Christine, grab her by the shoulders and tell her "Can’t you see what you’re doing. You’re ruining your whole life. You’re destroying that which used to make you better than others." But I know I can’t do that. I have to let her go. Is it no longer my right to affect her, or no longer my responsibility?

*

I found a letter from Christine in my mailbox:

<indent left 1, indent right 1>

<nl>Paul,

I’m afraid I received your postcard too late. I discarded all of your things (art, letters, pictures, etc.) months ago.

Best wishes for your future.

<indent left 3>Christine Reschafe (Panchaz)

<indent right off, indent left off>

*

*

I let the phone ring twice before I answered it. I said "hello" but the only sound I heard was the hiss of a long distance line. After I said "hello" again she hung up. In the evening I visited Philip, borrowing a few albums he had suggested I listen to. His girlfriend Mary Beth was there and when I left he locked the door. Although I remember her face quite clearly, I can’t recall the sound of her laughter. Somebody once told me the choice is between dissociating yourself from failures or becoming one.

<newpage>

Paul accepted an invitation from Mark to go to a bar on a Friday night. He and Mark had two drinks together before Mark left him to engage a girl in conversation. A short blonde came up to Paul and introduced herself as Samantha.

"Are you alone?" she asked.

"Yes, I think so," said Paul, glancing at Mark several tables away.

"You know I’ve seen you around for a long time," said Samantha. "I think you’re a pretty excellent looking guy. I don’t sleep around but I’d really like to make it with you."

Paul looked her over and said "Let’s go."

They walked to Samantha’s apartment. She took his coat, fed him a drink and led him to her bedroom. He removed her clothes and then his own. She lay down on the bed and he entered her. She told him he made her feel like she was in heaven. Paul separated himself from her and turned away. Rubbing and stroking his organ, Samantha asked if he was alright. He got on top of her and held her arms down. "Anything you want to do to me baby, anything." He spread her legs with his knees and put it inside. For the next twenty minutes Samantha moaned in ecstasy as Paul pounded her. Finally he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled himself into her depths. When he took it out he tried to think of the next canvas he would paint, hoping he could quickly become flaccid.

*

Christine sat strapped behind the wheel of her rusting sedan, unaware that she exceeded the speed limit by a full fifteen miles per hour. The stereo was turned up just enough to blanket a peculiar mechanical buzz. She wore no panties. Images flashed in her mind: beautiful men and handsome women, some from her past, some from magazines and movies, others purely the product of her imagination. She pictured herself engaged in an embrace with one of these women. Cheek to cheek, breast to breast, pelvis grinding against pelvis, they ravished each others’ bodies while whispering words of love. Her companion faded away, replaced by a man she held in her arms like a nursing child. His wet tongue circled her erect nipple. She pulled his head closer to her breast and his mouth enclosed her entire aureole. She suckled him, gently swaying back and forth, sometimes lifting her hand to caress his sweet, boyish face. Christine had long ago concluded that a life of fantasy was far more satisfying than that she actually experienced. Inserted deep inside her were two metal balls the size of apricots. Two bands tethered around her thighs held a small flat vibrator in place. A sliding control was wedged between a garter and the naked, stubbly skin of her leg. By a practiced flexing of certain muscles when the device was on she could manipulate the ben-wa balls to experience an exquisite trembling of her flesh that originated from both inside and out. Sitting in her rocking chair at home or out driving in her car she spent her days drifting in a warm sea of languid pleasure.

"MOMMY will you tell Amy to lay off me!"

"Mother, can you tell Petula-child to give me back my lipstick?"

Wrenched out of her daydream Christine yelled to her two children in the backseat: "What’s going on back there?"

"Amy won’t let me alone," said Petula.

"She took my lipstick Mother, and she won’t give it back," countered Amy.

"Why can’t you two girls just behave yourselves? Everytime you’re left alone you always fight. You’d think you girls would learn how to get along," said Christine.

"Can I sit up front please?"

"No Amy. You know I get nervous if somebody is sitting next to me while I’m driving."

Amy brooded in her seat, grimly staring at the back of her mother’s head. With a quick motion of her hand she tried to grab the object wrapped by her sister’s fingers. Petula screamed.

Christine turned around to face the backseat and shuddered as her entire vulva was jolted by a sudden increase in the intensity of her mechanical toy. She bit her lip and looked at Amy, never noticing the neon blue van that crossed the center of the road and slipped into her lane.

Copyright © 1985 by Edward Beuchert

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