Adam (24 page)

“Everyone gets hung up on,” said Nadia. “Guys will, like, get themselves right on the verge, call up, hear a girl say ‘hi,' then come and hang up.”

Adam had done that, once. Something told him this wasn't the thing to chime in with.

“You know who I heard is doing
real
sex work,” said Claire.
“Heather.”

“No . . .” said Gillian. “Oh my god.”

“I thought I heard Heather was straight now and, like, pregnant,” said Lauren.

“What?!” said Gillian.

“Wait, no, I'm thinking of that girl she worked with, Finley.”

“Finley was always straight,” said Gillian. “Nobody believed she was gay for a second. God, Finley was lame.”

“As I was saying,” said Claire, “apparently Heather's, like, a junkie and has sex with femme girls in front of guys for money. I'm not sure if she does stuff to them or not. Her name on Craigslist is ‘Sage.'”

“How do you know this?” asked Nadia.

“That's so . . . sad,” said Gillian.

“
Not
surprised,” said Kate.

“Wait,
who
is Heather?” asked Jackie.

“You never knew about
Heather?
” said Lauren.

“It was freshman year,” said Claire, “before you came.”

“Do we really need to go into Heather?” said Gillian. Her face was getting red.

“Tell the Heather story! Tell the Heather story!” said Claire.

“Adam, Gillian hasn't told you the Heather story?” asked Lauren.

Adam looked at Gillian and raised his eyebrow.

Gillian covered her face with her hands. “
Gahhh!
OK! I'll tell it! Jesus.” Gillian took her hands away. She looked embarrassed but also kind of thrilled. She took a swig of her margarita. “OK, so I'm a freshman at Smith, and there's this girl named Heather who works at this coffee shop near campus, and I'm, like, obsessed with her. I mean, I just thought she was like the hottest thing on earth. She had this choppy black hair and a lip pierce, which I thought was incredibly cool.”

“And, like, the worst skin ever,” said Kate.

“Whatever, I thought she was really hot. I mean, I guess she's, like, a prostitute now, but—”

“Sex worker,” said Nadia.

“She kind of looked like Tegan from Tegan and Sara, so that was probably a big part of it.”

“That was all of it,” said Claire.

“Wouldn't that mean she also looked like Sara?” said Jackie.

“No, they look different. Sara's hotter,” said Kate.

“Tegan's hotter,” said Gillian.

“Sara,” said Lauren.

“Tegan,” said Claire.

The waitress came back up to the table. She paused by Adam. “What are you doing here?” she said.

Did she just ask
. . .
?

“We're doing great, thanks!” said Gillian.

“Another margarita,” said Kate.

“Me too,” said Jackie.

Adam wanted another one, too, but was worried he was getting too drunk. The waitress walked away.

“Ah, me too,” he called after her.

“Anyway!” continued Gillian. “So, I'm pretty much living at the coffee shop—like, I do all my homework there and just kind of pathetically eavesdrop on any conversation Heather is having. And one day, at the beginning of winter break, she's, like, telling this guy how she just broke up with her girlfriend and needs to move out of their place immediately but doesn't have anywhere to go.”

Gillian was addressing the whole table, but her eyes shifted to Adam every few seconds.

“And my heart starts racing, and before I know it, I go over and I'm like, ‘Hey, I uh, I have a place if you need one.'”

Everyone at the table laughed really loudly. Adam wasn't sure what was funny yet but laughed along with them.

“‘I have half a dorm room!'” said Claire.

“Let me tell it!” said Gillian. “Yes, I had half a dorm room. My roommate was away for two weeks for Christmas break, but I sort of led Heather to believe she was gone for good and that it wasn't exactly a dorm room, but . . . ‘off-campus housing.'”

“Are you insane?” said Jackie.

“Yes, I'm completely crazy,” said Gillian. “So the next thing I know, Heather, this girl I'm beyond obsessed with, is moving
all
her stuff, like including furniture, into my dorm room on top of my roommate's stuff. And she's, like, sleeping in the bed across from me. Can you imagine? You have this crush on someone, and then all of a sudden they
live
in the same
room
as you.”

“It's like Anne Frank,” said Lauren.

“So, a week goes by, I still haven't worked up the guts to tell her I, like, like her, or whatever, when all of a sudden one day we're hanging out in the room, and my roommate leaves this message on the voice mail, being all, ‘Hi, Gillian! It's Stacy! So I think I'm coming home early, see you tonight!' And me and Heather just kind of stare at each other for this totally loaded moment, and I'm like, ‘You can share my bed.'”

The table erupted. This time Adam was laughing too.

“So she, like, spends one night in my bed. I whisper ‘I like you' when we're falling asleep, but she doesn't respond, and I'm not even sure if she heard me—”

“She heard you,” said Kate.

“And she moves out the next day and gets back with her girlfriend.”

“Oh, man . . .” said Claire.

The laughter trickled out.

Gillian looked at Adam with her anxious eyes. He smiled big at her to let her know he liked the story. He did. She was crazy and stupid, just like him.

“And now she's eating pussy in front of old men for smack money,” said Kate.

“I wonder how much she makes,” said Nadia.

“Baby,” said Jackie.

“I'm not gonna do it. I'm just curious. And besides, if I
did
do it, you would support me, right? I mean, it would be for my writing.”

“Excuse me,” Jackie called out to the waitress. “A round of Patrón shots?”

“So who's in for Bound?” said Claire.

“I thought we were going to Throb,” said Kate.

“They changed their name—legal issues,” said Nadia.

“Just watch me run into my cardiology professor,” said Jackie.

“So what if you do? You're both
there
,” said Kate.

The waitress dropped off a platter of shots.

“Tequila was Heather's favorite drink,” said Gillian, staring into her shot glass. “God, I really do hope she's OK . . .”

“To Heather!” said Claire, raising her shot.

“To Heather!”

“To Heather!”

“To Sage!” said Adam.

Everyone laughed really hard, and Adam couldn't help laughing too, even though it's corny to laugh at your own joke. He felt
good.

They all downed their shots.

“I think I wanna actually play tonight,” said Nadia, leaning in toward Jackie and gazing at her intensely. She was slurring her words. “I mean, with you and another butch. Double team.”

Adam was feeling really drunk too. He looked at his sloppy plate of mashed-up enchiladas and mangled chile relleno.

“Let's talk about it on the way there,” said Jackie. Jackie had had as much to drink as the rest of them but didn't seem drunk at all. Adam looked at Gillian.

“I'm, like, not looking to actually do anything,” she said. “Unless you wanted . . .” He could tell she was really drunk, too.

“I bet you as soon as we walk in, Sling Girl will already be in position,” said Claire.

“Every time we've gone, she's there, like, claiming the sling, spread-eagle, waiting for the first person to come up and stick something in her vagina,” said Lauren.

“It must get cold, all aired out in the breeze like that, waiting for someone,” said Claire.

Adam could feel himself getting hard. They were going to a sex party.
A sex party.
He felt simultaneously excited beyond belief and like turning to the side and retching onto the floor. There would be no way to keep his dick down at a place like that. He needed to go to the bathroom now and jerk off to try to wear himself out. He needed to do it twice.

“I'll be right back,” he said to Gillian.

The men's room was locked so Adam leaned up against the wall, waiting. He'd only been there a moment when Kate flopped up against him. She was wasted.

“'Sup, dude,” she said. Her breath was hot and sticky and smelled like tequila.

“Hey,” he said.

“You like that? Me calling you ‘dude'? I know you guys are really into that.”

Adam was having trouble making out what Kate was saying. Her extreme drunkenness was making him feel even drunker too.

“But you know what?” Kate continued. “I don't buy it. Sorry. I just don't.”

“OK,” said Adam. He wished the person would get out of the bathroom already.

“Trans girls, yeah. That shit is real. But you guys—fuck that. You think I don't feel like a dude sometimes? What fucking dyke doesn't. Like I'm not sick of wearing sports bras and getting my fucking period? Are you kidding? But you guys are all, ‘No, man, it's not about that, I'm just really a guy, I have a
boy
brain.' Whatever the fuck that means. You're a fucking trend, and everyone kisses your hairy asses for it and comes in their pants at the idea of ‘giving you your shot.' But you're a girl. Sorry. That's just how I see you. Who the fuck likes being a woman? It's shit. And yeah, I'm jealous. You think I don't wanna fuck a girl with a giant clit? Get up in there. Actually be inside her? Fuck yes, I do. But does that make me a guy? I bet Gillian gets all into giving you head, treating your clit like some kind of cock, right? Bullshit.”

The men's door opened and a little kid walked out, still buttoning his pants.

“Well, enjoy,” said Kate, motioning toward the men's room as she walked into the women's. “The one good thing we women still have is a cleaner bathroom.”

Adam walked into the men's room and locked the door. The smell of shit was overpowering, and there was piss all over the seat and floor. He tripped a little, too drunk to stand up straight, then unzipped his pants and took out his penis.

***

The gang walked down the street supposedly in the direction of Bound.

“How are we supposed to know what door it is if it's unmarked?” said Gillian.

“I'll remember,” said Claire. “It's definitely on Houston. I'm just not sure of the cross streets; I'll remember it when I see it . . . I think.”

The streets were getting emptier and darker the farther they walked. Adam was nervous, but Jackie and Kate basically looked like boys from far away, which made him feel safer. If they got attacked, it would be the three of them protecting everyone else. For now, he wanted to stay as far away from Kate as possible, though.

“It's just not really my thing,” Jackie said to Nadia. They'd been having the same conversation since everyone left the restaurant. “I mean, I'm happy to go along and watch, but . . .”

“Well, it wasn't exactly
my
thing to spend all last weekend playing board games with your parents upstate,” said Nadia.

They turned the corner and walking ahead of them was a man wearing a wig, miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and platform shoes.
Drag queen
, thought Adam.

“Or we could just follow her,” said Lauren.

The drag queen entered a steel door in the middle of a brick building. The gang followed.

Inside was a short line of people and a woman taking money and stamping hands at a folding table. Behind the table, people entered through a drab black curtain. Adam got the sensation that he was back at EBP, buying his ticket for the annual school play.

“It's fifteen bucks,” said Claire, looking at the group.

Adam took a twenty and ten from his wallet and tried to position himself in front of Gillian in the line.

“No,” she said. “You always pay for everything.”

“You bought my slice of pizza,” he said, reminding her.

Gillian rolled her eyes and smiled. Adam noticed Kate rolling her eyes, too. He also noticed a large sign that read:
WOMEN ONLY
. The woman at the folding table had that snotty look that people in charge of letting other people in somewhere usually have.

Adam held out his money and was horrified to see his hand was trembling.

Why had he thought he could get away with this?
The confident plan he had formed on the C train suddenly seemed wild, ludicrous.

The woman looked Adam up and down and sighed loudly.

“Excuse me, women only,”
she was about to say. But before Adam could finish the thought, the woman had accepted his money and was stamping Gillian's and his hands.

The gang walked through the curtains.

“Oooh! Onion dip,” said Claire. “I can't believe I'm still hungry, but I am.”

“I'm not sure what I imagined when I thought ‘sex party,'” Gillian whispered to Adam, “but it definitely involved some degree of people having, you know, ‘sex.'”

Adam looked around the space. This was not the case with Bound. First of all, there was barely anyone there. And those who were here were a handful of unattractive older women in jeans, corsets, and running shoes, sitting on the couches by the entrance, hunkered over the onion dip and cubed salami. Only the drag queen in platforms wandered through the empty concrete main area, trailing her fingers along what looked like a children's backyard play castle and examining a wooden cross propped against the wall.

“Um, yeah, it's not exactly what I imagined either,” said Adam.

“It will pick up,” said Claire. “I bet Sling Girl's in the back. Let's go look.”

Sure enough, as the gang moved—
like a school of fish
, thought Adam—toward the back of the room, they came upon an extremely fat woman in a pink princess dress splayed out in a sling. The dress was pushed up so that her vagina was completely exposed. Adam had never seen a real vagina, an actual real vagina in real life and not on his computer screen, before. And here he was, where it was totally appropriate to simply stand and stare at it. Instead of excitement, though, he felt a wash of sadness. He had fantasized that Gillian's would be the first he ever saw. A fear struck him that for the rest of his life, whenever he masturbated, this alien, sling-swinging, heavy-breathing vagina would be the only thing his brain could see.