A girl sits in the corner of her classroom, looking at all the backs of heads, trying to take deep breaths and notice without judgment the feelings of rage bubbling up inside her. She tries to remember the mindfulness techniques she learned over the summer. The only way out is through, she repeats silently to herself. She waits for the feelings to drift away like clouds.
It’s so strange how someone can be one person one day, then be transformed over the course of a few months, then come back to their previous life with completely different insides but all anyone still sees are the same old outsides. It’s not like she thought she’d come back from rehab and suddenly be able to have a normal high school experience, but maybe a part of her hoped there’d be space for a tiny reinvention. She thinks maybe she should do something different with her hair, dye it some drastic new color. But all people would see is the same girl with different hair. Her place has been carved out for her already. There is nowhere else here for her to fit.
She watches a couple flirt next to her. She notices the rage bubble up again, but focusing on her breath does nothing to distract her. She hates them with a fury that scares her. How dare they flaunt what this girl knows she’ll never have—that innocence, that romance, that feeling of potential? Whatever possibility of that she ever had was burned out of her a long time ago, before she even had a chance to know it was something she wanted.
*
A few seats away, in the desk assigned to Adam Kowalski, sits another student, nameless. The student watches the flirting couple with yearning, with a thick, heavy sadness that makes it hard to breathe.
I just have to make it one more year, the student thinks. One more year until I’m out of this school and out of this town, until I won’t have to hide.
But even then, they think. Is there anyone who could ever want a freak like me? Is there anyone who can love someone whose outsides will never fully match their insides?
*
On the other side of the school is a different set of students, kept mostly separate from the rest. Erin sits in the back of Mr. Trilling’s AP American History class, trying not to look in the general direction of Otis Goldberg, in fear that he’ll turn around the way he always seems to do at the precise moment she happens to be looking at him, his eyes making contact with hers like annoyingly precise lasers. Not that she looks at him often, or on purpose. She looks at all kinds of things. That’s just what eyes do. Erin’s eyes just happen to occasionally fall on him.
She can’t help it. He’s always raising his hand and saying surprisingly smart things. He’s always sitting there with his neck that’s tan and just a little muscly from cross-country, with tiny blond hairs that catch the dim light streaming through the classroom window. Sometimes he even says hi to her, and she can never figure out what to say back in time. Everything about him is confusing. How can someone who has all the usual trappings of a nerd be so incongruously cute? How can someone so cute be so nice? No classification seems quite right for him, which is excruciating for Erin. It’s almost like he chose to be a nerd instead of being forced into it like everyone else.
Otis Goldberg is very problematic.
*
This girl walks home after school, attempting to stay dry under her joke of a cheap umbrella. It’s not even that windy, but the umbrella keeps getting blown inside out, like it actually wants to catch the air and carry her away, which wouldn’t be that bad now that she thinks about it. Maybe then she could leave this world, this life, and she wouldn’t have to hate herself yet again for sleeping with a guy last night who, she realized, as soon as he rolled off her, was never going to want her for anything more than that.
She doesn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of counting how many times this has happened, how many times she’s convinced herself maybe this time is going to be different, maybe those moments when their bodies are touching actually mean they’re connecting, and those brief moments when he looks into her eyes actually mean he sees her.
She doesn’t want to ask herself why this keeps happening, why she seems doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It’s like as soon as a guy touches her, she goes on autopilot. Her body moves to his, but it’s like she’s not even there anymore. It’s like she’s half awake. It’s like she’s half dead.
*
Another girl is on her way to Eugene, to the U of O campus, driving way too fast on the rainy highway. She can practically taste his lips already, and her lap is warm with anticipation. It’s such torture that he lives so far away, that they must coordinate their love life with his college-dorm roommate. But it beats having to resort to the backseat of a car or worry about parents coming home early the way you do with high school boys.
She doesn’t think she loves him, but it might be a possibility down the road. That’s not important right now. All she cares about is ripping his clothes off and feeling his firm stomach rubbing against hers, his hands searching the warmest parts of her body until they find her breasts, her ass. She arches her back and presses her foot on the gas when she thinks about him inside her, the way it feels when everything fits so perfectly.
It’s like as soon as he touches her, she goes on autopilot. Her body moves to his, and it is something so natural, so primal, so right. It is in these moments when she feels fully alive, fully in her body, fully herself, and she wishes there was a way she could stay forever.
The Real Men of Prescott
Quite a few readers have asked me for this, so here it is—a detailed inventory of all my lays, starting with the most recent. I would like to note that this list only includes the full conquests. If I included every blow job and hand job, I’d be here for days. So without further ado, here is:
AN ANALYSIS OF ALL MY HOOKUPS
1. Late-thirties MILF. Regular at my work, buys a bottle of cheap wine almost daily. Great body for her age, must do lots of yoga, definitely the oldest I’ve ever fucked. Did it doggie style in her basement while her kid played video games upstairs. She came into my business a few times afterward, but I made it clear I wasn’t interested in her anymore. Must have started going somewhere else to buy her wine.
2. Early-twenties community college student. Picked her up at local bar where she was out with girlfriends. She was definitely hottest of the bunch. Negged her into submission by first hitting on her friend to make her jealous. A little too drunk, so she just sort of laid there. Passed out in my bed, puked in my bathroom, and made me drive her home in the morning.
3. Midtwenties hippie chick with big tits. Didn’t realize she had hairy armpits until it was too late. Her wildness in bed made up for it. Would consider adding her to my long-term harem if she agreed to shave and wash her hair more often.