Charmed Thirds

  Without you . . . Without you . . .

  the eighth

  I just woke up from a classic anxiety dream in which I'm supposed to be taking a very important math class over this winter break, the kind that covers whole chalkboards in formulas and sines and cosines and daunting stuff like that, a class I need to pass in order to graduate but that is only available during this two-week vacation period. In my dream, I sign up for this class, but never show up because I'm too busy hanging out with The Winter of Our Discontents. And when I suddenly realize that I'm supposed to be in the Mathematics Building with the rest of my classmates, huddled over our final exam in this subject I know nothing about, I start running around the Living and Learning Center screaming, “My life is over! My life is over!”

  And then Kieran shrugs and asks, “How do you know your life exists at all?”

  And then I stop running and screaming and say, “Shut up, assclown.”

  And that's when I woke up.

  the ninth

  Take note: This is how bad things happen.

  Yesterday, I got a call from Bridget.

  “We're back!” she said.

  I didn't know they were gone.

  “We spent the holidays with Percy's extended family in Chicago,” she explained. “But we're back in New York now, and we called your mom and she said you're in the city, too, so we should hang out.”

  And so that's how Pepe and Bridget joined The Winter of Our Discontents. It's only been nine days, but it seems like we haven't left Wallach in years. And it's the first time any “outsiders” have entered our little world, so they were treated like exotic explorers from distant shores.

  “You're a Metropolitan Studies major at NYU? What's the program like?? Do you think I should transfer???”

  “I love your coat! Where did you get it? You got it downtown, didn't you? Oh, the shopping is so much better down there. Tell me about it, please? Please?”

  “Take the last two shots of Ketel One. We'll take the Brita-filtered Vladimir.”

  And so on.

  In honor of our special guests, ALF had dragged a TV and a PlayStation into the usually low-tech lounge. He and Pepe got along famously over Grand Theft Auto, as guys often do. And Tanu and Kazuko had a slightly delayed, but enthusiastic recognition of Bridget from her short career as the model-actress Bridge Milhouse.

  “You're the Hum-V girl!” they screamed. “The one from Bitch (YUB Trippin'?)!”

  Bridget instinctively grabbed for her ponytail to start chewing—as she always does whenever anyone mentions her one and only professional acting credit as one of the video hos for the already-forgotten baaaaaad boy band Hum-V—but the phantom hair wasn't there anymore. Recently, she was stopped on the street by a rep from a new striving-to-be upscale salon who offered her a free cut in exchange for her work as a hair model. Her choppy mess of a new 'do is not altogether different from The Mitch of yesteryear, and yet she looks more stunning than ever. If she were anyone else, I'd hate her.

  “Can you believe we were both Hummers in high school?” Tanu cackled.

  “How embarrassing!” Kazuko cried.

  Bridget's perfect complexion turned red and itchy. “Not as embarrassing as, like, actually going out with one . . .”

  Only after Tanu and Kazuko had exhausted all their questions about what the Hum-V demi-himbos were really, really like did they agree to run out to Rite Aid to get a $10 case of whatever Lite beer was on special. Bridget and I finally had a moment to ourselves.

  “So, let me guess,” Bridget said, gesturing toward Kieran. He hadn't said much all night and was, at that moment, sitting at the piano, gently hitting the same somber, low note, over and over again. “He's the one you're going to sleep with.”

  “Oh, stop,” I said.

  “You totally are!” she said.

  “And why is that? We haven't even talked since you arrived.”

  “I know,” she said, eyeing him again. He had now drifted away from the piano and was watching Percy and ALF score coke, pick up hookers, and run over innocent bystanders in their alternate lawless universe. He looked bored. “It's, like, a very obvious not talking.”

  As is often the case with Bridget, I hated to admit that she was right. But she was. Kieran and I had barely said more than “hey” since our National Enquirer afternoon. Our relationship was very bipolar. (And I don't think Dexy would be offended if I described it as such, which I probably will when I share this story with her on the phone.)

  “He's exactly like Marcus,” she continued. “Only shorter.”

  I nearly fell over. “He's nothing like Marcus!”

  “Yuh-huh,” she insisted, exaggerating the affirmation. “He's exactly like Marcus.”

  “No one is exactly like anyone else,” I said. “Not even the Olsen twins.”

  “Well—duh!—they're fraternal.”

  “I was only trying to make a point how no one is exactly like anyone else,” I said, trying to steer the conversation away from NYU's most famous coeds and back to me, me, me.

  “I know,” Bridget said, grabbing the back of her naked neck. “And I was only trying to point out how Marcus and Kieran are like, of the same . . .” She paused, trying to find the right word. “Archetype.”

  “Wow, NYU has made you really smart.”

  “You know it's true but you don't want to admit it,” she said, ignoring my gentle teasing. “They've got the same stonah lovah man thing going for them.”

  On cue, Kieran flip-flopped over to us.

  “You look like you're having an intense conversation,” he said.

  “With this hair? Not possible,” Bridget said, running her hands through her platinum locks. “Do you think I should get it dyed black so I'm taken seriously?”

  I loved seeing Bridget like this. She had ditched acting altogether and was studying Art and Public Policy. She's particularly interested in the development of theater and music programs for kids who, like her, have nothing but an empty house to return to after school every day. She had gained so much confidence in her intelligence at NYU that she could now mock the whole dumb blonde stereotype. It made me wonder what my mother, and to a lesser degree, my sister, would be like now if they had ever allowed themselves to have even a vaguely intellectual thought.

  “So Kieran, do you have a girlfriend?” Bridget was a little drunk.

  Kieran coughed, looked away, and rubbed his eyes before answering. You don't need to know a damn thing about microexpressions to interpret his desire to avoid the question.

  “We just broke up,” he said with a ragged edge to his voice.

  “What a shame,” Bridget cooed, looking at me instead of him. “Why did you break up?”

  “I'm not sure,” he said, his eyes drifting away. “Maybe because she's still in high school and I'm here. I'm not the one who did the breaking.”

  “You're the one who's broken!” Bridget said brightly.

  Kieran and I waited for her to explain why such a sad statement would bring such glee.

  “You're just like Jess!”

  “Okay, enough about breakups,” I said, cutting her off before she said anything more incriminating about my past with Marcus. “Let's talk about what a thrilling example you and Percy are setting for monogamy.”

  “I love him,” she said, gazing at him adoringly. “So I don't sleep with anyone else. He loves me, so he doesn't sleep with anyone else. It's not too difficult.”

  Sometimes Bridget and Pepe's love for each other can be so . . . annoying.

  “But what about a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now?”

  “Jess doesn't believe in marriage,” Bridget said, slightly off topic.

  “You don't?” Kieran asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “All marriages are ill-fated. The biology is boring, but humans just aren't hardwired to be with one person our whole lives.”

  “You don't believe in love . . . ,” Bridget began.

  “I think my girlfriend and
I were in limerence, not love,” Kieran cut in.

  Bridget grabbed her hair again. “Like, hello? Duh! Explain!”

  “Limerence is that euphoric, almost obsessive feeling you get when you can't stand to be away from someone. It usually occurs when you first meet,” he said. “But in some relationships it can last for years. It's rare, though.”

  “So limerence is mostly about lust,” Bridget said. “Love is deeper.”

  “But how deep is it really?” I asked. “When most relationships go bust?”

  “Oh, not this again,” Bridget groaned.

  “So you think people should just jump from person to person, from limerent state to limerent state,” Kieran said with an amused lilt to his voice.

  “I didn't say that,” I replied, a bit boozy myself, and woozy with words.

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “Do you really think that people are capable of loving only one person?” I asked.

  “One,” Bridget answered softly, almost reverentially. “If you're lucky.”

  I barely considered this before pressing on, dismissing her loyalty for Pepe as an anomaly, a glorious exception to the disappointing rules of romance.

  “Well, I think it's possible to love someone and still be curious about someone else. And I think you should be able to act on that impulse without impunity. But in our society, where monogamy rules despite all the evidence that it doesn't work, a person is demonized for wanting to break from that traditional model of relationships. I think you can love someone, truly love someone, and still be drawn to someone else. Enough to want to kiss that other person, just to see what it would be like. Or maybe to help confirm that what you've got is better than what else is out there. Because isn't the desire alone a form of betrayal? So what further harm does it do to put those thoughts into action? Ideally, you would be able just to go back to the person you love after you've kissed that other person and discovered it wasn't as interesting as you thought it would be, which I would imagine would be the case most of the time. And in the event that it is unexpectedly amazing, isn't it better to have experienced that moment of bliss rather than imagine what it could have been like?”

  I stopped talking because it was all getting too personal. Bridget's mouth was pinched shut. Kieran's hinted at a smile.

  “J wants to be a swinger,” ALF said, apparently having eavesdropped on my diatribe.

  “She's very polyamorous,” Pepe said, slapping him on his furry back. Percy was ALF's new best friend.

  “You should move to Japan, where hardly any women want to marry,” suggested Kazuko, setting down a brown bag full of beer. “But I don't think they're having much sex, either.”

  “And we all know how much J loves cock,” ALF joked.

  “I was being hypothetical!” I shouted over the laughter. Then I downed the rest of my nasty plastic jug vodka.

  “Let's play a game!” Tanu suddenly proposed, much to my relief.

  “POKER!” shouted ALF and Pepe simultaneously, which delighted them both to no end.

  “I'm so sick of Hold 'Em,” Kazuko said, referring to the tournaments that have become a significant part of social life on campus. “Let's play a girl game.”

  ALF and Pepe looked at each other for a split second before responding, again, in unison. “STRIP POKER!”

  “Forget it,” replied all the females in the room.

  “Beirut?” suggested ALF.

  Kazuko yawned, then addressed the ladies. “You'd think these boys would've gotten beer pong out of their system in high school.”

  “How about Shut Up and Drink!?” ALF suggested.

  “How do you play that?” Bridget asked.

  “You shuffle a deck of cards. You take one off the top. If you can read what it is, you do a shot.”

  “I don't get it,” Bridget said.

  “You keep taking cards and doing shots until you can't read the card anymore.”

  “Or until you die of alcohol poisoning,” Pepe added.

  “Or that,” ALF concurred.

  “Let's play Truth or Dare!” Bridget offered.

  Her suggestion was met with a chorus of excited oooooohs. Self-conscious regression is very popular among otherwise sophisticated college types. Nowhere is adultescence more popular than in Manhattan, where everyone's got the jihad jitters. This goes double when cheap alcohol is involved.

  But I had another idea. A better idea. The best of all.

  “Why don't we just cut to the chase and play Spin the Bottle?”

  “What do you mean ‘cut to the chase'?” Bridget asked.

  “Well, Truth or Dare is really all about kissing,” I said.

  “Go on,” Pepe said.

  “Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.”

  “We don't know what you're talking about,” the room said simultaneously (or at least it seemed so at the time).

  “Okay. You start off with nonkissing-related Truths or Dares. Like, ‘Have you ever run outside naked?' Or, ‘I dare you to run outside naked.' But that's just so you don't seem too eager. Because all everyone is really thinking about is kissing. As in, ‘Who in the room do you want to kiss?' Or, ‘I dare you to kiss so-and-so.' It always goes that way. Always! So why don't we just skip over the preliminaries and just play Spin the Bottle, which is all about kissing.”

  The room was silent.

  “She's right, you know,” Pepe said.

  “She really is,” Bridget said.

  And then the room got quiet again and my body buzzed with anticipation.

  “Well,” Kieran said.

  He picked up an unopened bottle from the bag and pointed it in my direction. He flip-flopped toward me, framed my cheeks with his hands, and gave me a delicate kiss on the lips.

  “How was that?” he asked, his lips lingering on mine, tickling me with his words.

  It was a kiss that left me wanting more. But that's not what I told him.

  “There was one thing I forgot to mention about Truth or Dare and kissing,” I said, still pressed against him.

  “And what's that?”

  I pulled away so I could whisper in his ear. “It's really about fucking.”

  He reared back in astonishment before saying, “That's . . . so . . .”

  “What?”

  “True.”

  I can't say I have any clue what the rest of the room was doing during this exchange, because I wasn't paying attention. I can only suspect that they were doing what I would have done in the same situation, which is make silent, immature, “OH MY GOD!” hand gestures behind our backs because I knew what was going to happen next—SEX!!!—just as Bridget had predicted. This automatically put us in an embarrassing situation because when everyone knows you're rushing off to hit it, there's a certain pressure to make it really hot because you already know that they will ask you for details the morning after, something they feel at liberty to do since you so publicly made your coital intentions known.

  But this sex was not hot.

  Oh no, it was not.

  I'll spare you the inelegant in-the-act details. But here's a watershed moment:

  Kieran slipped off his boxers.

  “Oh my God!”

  “What?”

  “I've never seen one before!”

  “You've never seen a penis before?”

  “Not one that looks like . . . like . . . a pig-in-a-blanket!”

  “It's uncircumcised.”

  “I know that. I just wasn't expecting to see one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that's so . . . ethnic. And you're, well . . . from Connecticut.”

  “Do you want to get a closer look?”

  “Uh, not really. Can we just get under the covers now?”

  “Okay.”

  “And turn out the lights.”

  “Okay. Do you want a blindfold, too?”

  “Uh, no. Just a condom, thank you.”

  This exchange pretty much set the tone for what would fo
llow, which can be best described as the clumsy rearrangement of unfamiliar limbs and the execution of signature moves (the shocker!!!) that would only work with partners who were far, far away from the mattress on which they were being performed. And it got worse.

  In the moments after the act, when his penis was retreating back into its fleshy burrow like a groundhog, Kieran started talking and wouldn't stop.

  “I just gained at least forty-odd sex partners in about ten minutes,” he said.

  It was more like two minutes, but that wasn't worth quibbling over when the statement as a whole was so ludicrous. “How so?”

  “Well, I just had sex with you. And you've mentioned that your ex-boyfriend had sex with forty-something girls before you. And they say that when you have sex, you are having sex with every person your partner has ever had sex with, which is kind of a beautiful concept, when you think about it, all of these people bonded through what Socrates referred to in the Phaedrus as the blind, unreasonable eros . . .”

  “Is this your idea of pillow talk?” I asked, my neck muscles strained with incredulity.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm out of practice. I haven't had sex with someone new in more than two years. Usually my girlfriend and I would hurry up and get dressed so I could get her home before her curfew.”

  “Well, that doesn't apply here, now does it?”

  “We could just roll over and fall asleep,” he suggested.

  “I think that's a very good idea,” I said, turning away from him.

  Should I have expected any better? I've only really known Kieran for a week, and I'm not sure I even like him very much, yet I had sex with him. I've become the type of person who has sex with someone she's only known for a week. When did I become this person? Casual sex isn't unusual for most college students, but I've never been most college students and sex has never been casual for me.

  I think that final postcard fucked me up. (Ha. In more ways than one.)

  the tenth

  This afternoon Kieran came knocking on my door.

  “We owe it to ourselves to try again,” he said.

  “No offense,” I said, waving him away with a National Enquirer with Vanna White on the cover, “but why would anyone want to relive what happened yesterday?”