She laughs quietly. “Hey, easy,” she says. She puts her hands on my shoulders and leans in to kiss me slowly, but I have no patience and I mash my mouth against hers, working my tongue in. With one hand I reach behind her, jerking at her bra hook. She wriggles under me and tells me to stop it, to cool it, but I pay no attention, I’m too far gone. I
feel my hardness against her softness. I’ve never gone all the way with a girl, but right now I need that in an entirely new fashion. Yes, I want to seize her, to fuck her, but something in me is also flying toward surrender. Is that hard to believe? Do my actions seem to contradict it? I assure you it was true. There’s something in Aviva that calls out:
Drown.
Everything that is solid about me is meant to sink inside her and dissolve; my mouth wants to be sealed and my eyes sewn shut. I want not to know myself anymore. Not to be this squat, impotent body, this restless, angry mind. And there are so many obstacles to get past, so many real, hard, solid things. Her breasts—I am wrenching them out of her bra and squeezing them; what to do about them? Her sweater, nauseatingly hairy, the tangle of her necklaces . . . I am frantically trying to manage all this when I become aware that Aviva is seriously fighting me. She is pushing back against me and shouting, trying to duck under my arms. I’m startled but unbelieving and press her even closer to the wall, pinning her mouth with mine: surely she needs me just as I need her. This is all supposed to be.
She puts her palm against my chin and gives me a hard shove, backing me away long enough that I can see her face, the unmistakable rage that is there. Long enough to make me wonder what the hell I am doing. Aviva steps away from the wall and stares at me, breathing hard.
“You motherfucker,” she says. “You fucking motherfucker.”
I move toward her again, slowly this time, trying to show her I mean to be different, to be careful, and she flinches
and raises her fists. She is tiny: five feet tall and delicate-boned, but if I continue I will find teeth, muscles.
“You touch me and I will report you,” she says. “I will get the entire disciplinary system to come down on you. I will . . .” I watch the strength rise up in her, light her up.
“You come on and try me,” she says. “Come on. Come on.”
I can’t move. She holds my eyes as she pushes herself back into her bra, her sweater, sidling along to the barnlike door before deliberately turning her back on me, daring me to interfere, and wrenching it open. The light smacks my eyes and by the time I make Aviva out again she is halfway up the hill. She takes small steps, transparent in her desire not to seem to be hurrying. Her hand reaches up and smooths back her hair.
I have never heard a girl say the words
disciplinary system
before.
At that time I am used to thinking I have more than one chance at things, many chances, in fact. I do poorly in prep biology, but my transcript is revised after I attend summer school. I crack up my father’s car, but the insurance company pays out, and my driver’s license is reinstated. Over and over again my parents convince themselves that my bad study habits, slovenliness, deep pessimism, and lack of ambition will undergo a change. And I believe too that when the moment is right, when I want it enough, I will in fact succeed as a student, son, lover, and friend. This time, for the first time—though not the last—I know I’ve truly blown something. I don’t know how I know. It’s an unfamiliar feeling.
That Saturday I hang lights for the dance in the Student Center before meeting my girlfriend, Lisa, who wants to go out to a movie. The Saturday Night Committee usually gets the Dramat to help out with setup. I never stay for the dances themselves, so I don’t see Aviva and Seung together, swaying under the lights I’ve put up, pressing themselves close for the very first time. “Wild Horses,” by the Stones—they would have danced to that. What else would there have been? “Money,” by the Flying Lizards. “Oh, Atlanta.” “Refugee.” “Rock Lobster.” The beat is jumpy and strong, and Aviva can’t stop herself; she has to move. She keeps Seung out on the floor for every song; in the short breaks between sets they plunge into the night air and wipe their wet faces with their sleeves. The rambunctious, cynical music streams through her, makes her laugh aloud. She’s never happier than when she’s dancing. Even her makeup can flake and rub away; she still believes she’s there.
Carlyle moans in her sleep. Her short nightgown is up above her knees. Her legs are open, quivering; her breath is quick and shallow. Aviva looks up from her math homework. She is writing by the light of a table lamp set on the floor. She likes to work late into the night and regularly she stays in her friends’ room after they have gone to bed. They don’t mind. Carlyle and Lena ask Aviva to report on everything they do and say while they’re unconscious, because both are incorrigible sleep talkers and sleepwalkers. Once, Carlyle walked straight out of the dorm and Aviva found her playing hopscotch on the blacktop out back, her eyes glassy, mumbling about winning a ribbon. Earlier tonight, dreaming, Lena called out: “You play piano so well! Don’t cry, don’t cry.”
What is happening now, Aviva will not report. Carlyle’s eyes move rapidly beneath the lids. Aviva watches her,
fascinated. Carlyle knows, she thinks. She knows the pleasure that Aviva wants to know. Not the kind that comes from touching yourself but the other kind, the kind that involves the man on you and inside you. Carlyle’s legs jerk hard several times, and then, finally, she passes back into silence.
Aviva gathers her books and papers and leaves the room. She never goes to her own room until she is so tired she knows she will fall quickly to sleep. It is 11:00
PM
and she is not tired. She finds the pay phone, an upright coffin with a clouded glass door that smells of
BO
, petrified chewing gum, old, sour wood. Names of long-ago students, all male, are carved in the frame.
The phone rings six, seven, eight times. Marshall picks up.
“It’s ten o’clock there. You should be in bed,” Aviva tells him.
“I
was
in bed. I got out to answer. I knew it was going to be you.”
“You did not.”
“I did. I always know.”
“Angel face.”
She can see the face he makes, not angelic.
“Are you doing well in school?” she asks.
“Um.”
“Marshall. You don’t want to have to go to summer school again.”
“I know,” he says sadly. “I want to do summer baseball.”
“So do yourself a favor.”
“We’ll see. Do you like it there?”
“I love it.”
“Good. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Yes. Next question?”
“Do you want Dad?”
“I guess so. Yes.”
A short silence. “If he doesn’t tell you something interesting, ask for me again,” Marshall tells her. She can hear the creak of the old floors as he walks away. She can picture him perfectly. He wears cotton pajama pants with a faded Cubs T-shirt on top. He still looks like a little boy, with a little boy’s round face and soft feet.
“Hello,” her father says. He speaks to her the same way he speaks to his patients, clearing his throat first.
“I just wanted to say hi.” Despair moves inside of her. Why did she think it would make her feel better to call home? How many times does she need to make this same mistake?
“Well, hi.”
“Is everything all right with Marshall?”
“Well, I think so.”
“Where’s Mom?” Stupid question.
“I really don’t know.”
Aviva begins to talk quickly, hardly knowing what she is saying. “I’ve been invited to my friend Lena’s for Thanksgiving. She lives in Philadelphia. I went to a play here last night,
The Chairs.
You know, by Ionesco.” Silence—either her father hasn’t heard of Ionesco or he has nothing to say about him. She asks him if he can send money for the train fare to Philadelphia. “Is everything okay there?”
He breathes in and out, that familiar labored breath. “Well, your mother is a very, very difficult person,” he answers.
“I know.”
She almost forgets to ask to speak to Marshall again.
“What?” she begs. “He didn’t say anything.”
“They’re finally splitting up,” Marshall tells her. “Mom moved out for a few days so Dad could get his things together and find an apartment. Then she’ll come back and he’ll go. I’ll stay right here, in my room and everything.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” she cries.
“I did. This girl went to look for you and said you weren’t there. She said she’d give you the message.”
“Jesus H. Christ. I never got it. Who did you talk to?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You do remember.”
“Well, I won’t tell you, you’ll just get angry at her. Do you think it’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I don’t know,” Aviva says. “They both hate being alone.” She’s quiet a moment. “I bet it won’t take long for Dad to disappear.” Suddenly she is very afraid. “Oh, God, what if he stops paying my tuition?”
We claimed to despise Auburn, its endless restrictions, its earnest propaganda of order. We disobeyed the rules, called Auburn a prison. But the truth was—and we knew it—Auburn was freer than any place we’d ever been. There were no parents here and little supervision. The eyes watching us, when they watched, did so without the jealousies and fears and hopes of our families. In this radical garden we could reinvent ourselves; we could seed the adults we would become.
Gnaritas et Patientia
read our school motto—Knowledge and Patience—but the knowledge we wanted was knowledge of the body: how to enlarge it through pleasure and how to make it disappear. Sex would yank us into adulthood; drugs would dissolve our dumb physical limits. Infinitude of the mind and the body. Somewhere God (the principal, the dean of students, our dorm heads) walked at a distance, allowing us our experiments, our discoveries. The worst thing that could possibly happen to any of us, we knew, was to be brought home, shipped back to childhood.
They are still quite new at this, but they know what to do. They put it together out of what they’ve read in books and seen in magazines, out of dreams, instinct, in imitation of the others, the very few, they’ve been with. Her lips are always soft, barely parted at first. This excites him deeply, the patience she insists upon, the way she opens to him only slowly. She sets their rhythm, yields a little, then a little more, and once she is open and gaping, she exacts submission from him in return, plunging into his mouth, licking roughly. Then she is tender and soft again. She leads, then she lets him lead. They are young, they can kiss and press against each other for hours, gradually twisting out of their clothing. For other acts there is plenty of time, all the time in the world.
Where can they go for privacy, for these hours of leisurely pleasure? There are the woods beyond the gymnasium: clearings with crushed soda cans and used condoms, and, if you know how to get there, the Bog, although often
the tree-ringed lake known by that name is populated with students getting wasted on the muddy banks. There is her room or his room on a Saturday night. Parietals are from 8:00 to 10:00
PM
, with the lights on and the door open a minimum of two inches. Many of the faculty members on duty never come upstairs to check. If they do, one can gamble on technical compliance and a cheeky argument (“We thought the desk lamp counted!”—when the overhead light is off and a tall stack of books blocks the lamp’s glow).
There’s the bank of the river where it dwindles to a creek as it passes through the woods and there are the alleys on Nut Street and there’s the Guignol Theater in the darkness. There are the music building’s practice rooms, whose doors have a window that can be blocked by a record album cover. Faculty members—some of them, anyway—pretend they don’t see. There is plenty of opportunity.
Seung lays his head on her breasts. He traces the deep indentation of her waist. “
W-O-M-A-N
,” he spells out, drawing the letters along the swell of her hip. “That curve spells
Woman.”
She laughs. Three months ago, even three weeks ago, she was still only a girl.
The gray light of late afternoon washes the floor and the bed. Sunday, Seung’s room. Seung spent the hour before their meeting on the case of a prep whose homesickness has not let up, who is desperate to leave school. “I’m not cut out for this place,” the boy keeps saying. He cries at night, and then cries some more when he remembers that his roommate will tell everyone else about the crying. Seung called
in the roommate and told him that this kind of ratting-out wouldn’t be tolerated. “Be a man; show some compassion,” Seung said. He thinks he may have gotten through to the kid, and the homesick one has agreed to give school another week. They’ll talk again next Sunday.
“You’re a good proctor, a good model,” Aviva says, splaying her hand to look at it against Seung’s strong thigh. Her white skin, his olive skin.
“Maybe,” Seung says. “The kids know I break more rules than they do.”
“So long as the faculty don’t know.”
“They know. Everyone knows. I’ve never been able to be all good, baby. I’m just very good at
looking
good—and not getting caught. There’s an unspoken deal: as long as I’m not obvious, the Powers let it go by.” He bends and kisses the curve he so likes. “Anyway, something like you can’t be truly against the rules.”