Carrie shifted away from the rest of us, an imperceptible amount for anyone else but enough for me and Little Jen to notice. Instantly, it was as if the rest of us didn't exist. Little Jen and I exchanged looks. Uh-oh, her eyes said to me.
The party was being thrown by ___ _______, a patron of Philadelphia’s experimental arts scene and a board member at several local theater companies. He was a friend of Carrie, though not yet a close one, and Little Jen had warned me earlier that Carrie intended pretty heavily to flirt with, and possibly eventually date, Mr. _______, and tonight was the night when she fully intended to launch her plans.
“Which means,” Little Jen summarized, “don’t get in her way.”
“Okay,” I saluted her like a soldier. “Duly noted.”
When Little Jen and I started going out—or doing whatever it is that we’re doing—I asked if Carrie would be mad or jealous of us. Little Jen laughed in my face, lips so red and plump you’d think you could drink juice from them. I pulled back, startled. Little Jen told me I shouldn’t be offended. “If you aren’t at least twice her age,” she said, “Carrie won’t even think of you as possible boyfriend material. That’s just the way she is. It’s the way she’s always been.”
And indeed, back at the party, a polished, austere gentleman with a two-day beard, hair that was just beginning to go grey, wearing an Italian-tailored jacket over a ripped Pixies t-shirt, had dignifiedly jumped the drinks line and was now leaning on the bar.
He was gesturing to the bartender with one hand. The other was perched on the small of Carrie’s back.
“Let’s get out of here,” Little Jen said into my ear.
Warm, warm breath. Lips you could seriously drink juice from.
*
I only call her Jen when we’re alone. She gives off airs of being a bimbo, but that’s only because she doesn’t like dealing with people she doesn't care about. Conversations about bands and religion bore her. Guys try to charm her with money and tech and worldliness, and she just zones out.
That’s not what she likes about me.
She locates a bedroom with impressive speed. It is small, and warm, and out of the way. She holds my hand and I trail after her. She pauses at the doorway, looks around, surveying the place. Doesn’t turn on the light.
She pulls me in.
The door clicks shut behind us. She turns the knob with one hand and with the other she twists into me and traces the buttons of my shirt. One, two, the unfastened third button at my collar. Her fingers grind to a halt at my clavicle, the fleshy part between shoulders and neck.
My heart is vibrating hard. I can’t slow it down. Her fingertips are confident and decisive. She traces out my muscles, my bones. I lean in and she’s even warmer. The air in front of her. I want to kiss her.
It’s so strange to be this close to someone. I don’t even know her that well, I have to keep reminding myself. I never even thought I’d let someone else get this close to me, violate my personal space like this. No, that’s a lie. I’ve been thinking about this forever. I just never thought it’d be like this.
I never thought she’d be the person I felt like this about.
I never thought I could be the kind of person that somebody felt like this about.
Jen’s hands hands catch me before I can reach her. Deflecting my purposeful head, redirecting it from her lips to the air. Her laughter in my ear. “Not yet, cowboy,” she murmurs.
I let myself unclench. I retreat.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you...”
“Don’t be sorry. I want you to. I want you to a lot. Just, not yet. Wait.”
Her hands trace my torso. Curves I didn’t even know I had. Sinking lower, around my waist, keeping me close. She begins to explore me. Hips, pectorals, ribcage—to her, it’s all fair game.
Our breathing gets heavier. It sounds like the dramatic moment on a hospital TV show. Or porn. Omg, what if other people here can hear us?
“What’s wrong?”
Her hands stalled in their grabbiness.
“Nothing. I’m just—”
“Touch me.”
I am already touching her. I continue to do so, but more, my fingers moving stronger, more purposeful. Like my camp counselors yelled at me when I was a kid—Use a man handshake, not a limp one.
“Uh...”
“Yes, Jen?”
“Not like that.”
Her whole body gives a sigh. It changes from the pert, ready-for-anything pose of a second ago into something that feels more...resigned? “You don’t have to touch me like you’re afraid to do it,” she says.
“OK,” I say.
I try to sound assertive and guylike. They come out as the two least confident letters to ever leave my mouth. I brace myself for the put-down. Or her just leaving me. Or her saying don’t worry, it doesn’t matter, and it mattering.
Is she the charitable type? I still don’t know her well enough to tell. There are so many things I don’t know about her. Does that mean I also don’t know her well enough to be here, with her? To do this?
My eyes adjust to the light. I can make out just enough of her face to see her scoping me out, concerned.
“Are you afraid?”
The bed is only a few feet away. Strewn with coats, but that doesn’t matter. We could throw them on the floor. We could sit together, not messing around, but I would probably just try to explain and lose it, explode into tears. I was good at losing it.
Or I could keep some stuff to myself.
I remove my hands from her hips, trying to keep the movement from being too awkward. Epic fail.
“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want,” I say.
“You’re here,” she says. “I want you here.”
“You really, definitely want me to touch you? I mean, to do all this stuff to you?”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes. But I don’t want you to participate in this stuff just because I want it, because I’m a horny teenage boy or whatever.”
“Arty. I’m doing it for you. But I’m also doing it for me.”
“Do you promise?” I say. “Are you sure?” My bottom lip starts to quiver. Not now not now not now. I seriously am not sure whether I’m going to have an orgasm or break down crying. I don’t know what to do with myself. My soul is thrashing back and forth against the walls of my body, ready to explode. My body is not sure how to react. It trembles: in desire. In fear.
She takes my hand in hers. She lifts it up to her chest.
There is skin, and warmth, and fabric, too, a cool clingy spandex that moves with my finger and pulls away to offer more warm skin underneath. I find that skin and I trace her veins. Her blood is thumping, skin throbbing, touching my fingers, a rush of blood moving quicker and louder, now, and the pulse of it in my fingers, too, my own circulation matching it in speed and velocity, as if our veins connect and weave into one contiguous circulatory system, and although in the future we will have different experiences, and different things will alter our pulse rates, and some of those things will be other girls or other guys, others as innocent as a pop quiz or the thought that G-d was watching us in every moment, doing everything we do, right now—right now—we have each other, and we are holding onto each other, and together we are holding onto the universe, if only just barely. My hand cups her breast and her feet hover just above the ground, the entire world is spinning beneath her, and she wants me here, she wants me to be touching her and her hand sits on top of mine, keeping me there, and I don’t know why this single sensation of touching her breast makes me feel so perfect or how she knew it would, but right now, for just this moment, the universe fits together completely and everything is right. It just is.
the end
thank youse
OK, the idea exists in our culture at large that it’s cheesy when people start out by thanking G-d, and the only people who really do it anymore are hip-hop and country singers, but I want to say it anyway. I’m not in contro
l of most things in this world, and the fact that I could stand on the subway and write a whole freaking book and not get injured or tripped over or spilled on must be more than coincidence. The odds are against it on such a cosmic level. So thank you, G-d. Also, I really like both hip-hop and country music. Okay, you can think less of me now.
I wrote the first chapter (well, what was the first chapter at the time) (it was “birthday,” if you’re curious—yes, at one point, I really thought the story started there) and put it away. Then I had a long conversation with Michael Northrop, who told me about the holy trinity of what sells a book (a good title, a good concept, and a good cover) and told me that this one had legs. I dug it out. I wrote it.
Also, I was walking in Chinatown and talking on the phone to Laurel Snyder, who told me other amazing stuff. One thing I remember is to make each scene come out of the last, and have a harder punch than the last. I was like, “You know, the book starts with a rape,” and she was like, “Then you’d better make everything else hit even harder.” I hope it worked.
I finished writing this at a coffee shop on Cortelyou Road, made an impulse call to Alex London, and told him I needed an agent. Alex, my shadchan, my Yenta, sent me straight to Robert Guinsler, the most kindly, gentle, patient and understanding mama bear there ever was. Over years, breakdowns, and my own inner naysaying, he was the exactly what this book needed—a shadchan of its own.
Keeping sane when you write is the hardest thing in the world. You lock yourself up in a private room for hours and days and eons, and you come out a few years later with a book, and you’re never quite sure if it’s any good. I am tons and tons of grateful that I don’t write in a vacuum. Thank you, Eric Kaplan and Liz Matusow and Harbeer Sandhu and Goldie Goldbloom, for reading this book from the start and for giving us hell. Thank you, MFA cohort, and all my professors, and the other students who threw themselves into this, and especially Kate Simonian for keeping us all together, and also Caitlin Campbell for being the cement. Thank you, Elad Nehorai, for sharing my dreams and letting me gang up with yours, and to everyone who’s written for Hevria.com, and who’s read it and shared it and made a real live community for oddball Hasidim and weird religious people and really everyone who doesn’t fit inside the margins.
The nonfictional artists who let me work with them and let me share our imagination: Fred Chao, Katie Skau, Ethan Young, Rohan Daniel Eason, and Tim Chi Ly.
Everyone who was around, and everyone who helped me, and everyone who let me steal little bits of their lives. I hope, with the one obvious exception, I managed to honor the good stuff and exorcise the demons of the bad stuff.
Thank you Itta for being the responsible one.
Yalta, you create worlds in your imagination that I can’t wait to live in. Freda Belle, you turn every moment you’re awake into art. Rashi, let’s never stop holding onto each other. Mishaela, never stop waking me up. I love you.
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