Dave laughed, his hand going to the back of his neck. “Probably not the exact same, no.”
“Absolutely not. I mean, if the desire men feel is anything like what I feel—and, I’ll admit the flaw in this argument, since I don’t really know a thing about male desire, if it’s the same thing as female desire or a whole other beast—there are different grades of it. There’s the longing to be with someone you love”—here she gave him a stomach poke—“there’s the instinctive desire you feel for someone who you find attractive even though you have no intentions to pursue the desire. There’s the slight desperation in thinking that particular desire wouldn’t ever have the chance to live itself out. There’s the kind of sad desire that comes along with loneliness, the mad desire from sexual frustration. If the sexist question of how many times you had an erection had a perfect female equivalent, it would still have the completely erroneous assumption that all boners are created equal.”
Dave’s eyebrows were raised, his jaw ever so slack with surprise. As if to punctuate her speech, the bell rang, which caused the basketball players to groan in complaint. “Next point wins,” someone called out.
“Well, shit.”
“Plus,” Julia added, standing up and slinging her bag over her shoulder, “no erection could equal the amount of joy that a Marroney erection provides to the world.”
Dave made a face. “Yup, gonna throw up.”
“That got weird, didn’t it?”
“I want to say ‘massively weird,’ but I’m now strangely put off by the word ‘massive.’” They hopped off the bleachers and exited the gym, Julia leading them the long way around so they would avoid as many people as possible. It felt cruel that there was still an hour and a half left of school.
“Let’s skip class,” Julia said, pausing at the entrance to the hallway. “I can’t go through those doors.”
“I don’t know, Jules.”
“I promise to not bring up Marroney’s erection ever again.” She bumped him with her shoulder, suddenly desperate at the thought of going to class, of staying in a room, staring at all those home-printed quotations about knowledge on the wall, the same ones she’d reread millions of times throughout the year. “Come on, let’s do something.”
Dave’s eyes flicked ahead, as if his desperation lay in the exact opposite direction. “I feel like I’ve been slacking in class, and finals are coming up.”
“I can’t do it, Dave. I can’t sit in a classroom right now. My life can’t handle it; I’ll explode.”
“How about after school?”
“Nope.” Julia reached in her bag and found her car keys. She started to turn away, sure that Dave would follow. He’d always followed. She even made a big gesture of jangling the keys, motioning with her head toward the parking lot, the entire world outside of school that was waiting for them. “Right now. You, me, adventure. Erections optional.”
Dave stood frozen, his eyes downcast. “I don’t want my grades to drop too much, Jules. UCLA can pull my scholarship.”
“They’re not gonna drop, Dave.” She took a few steps back toward him. A group of girls sneered at them as they walked by and though Julia had no idea who they were, she had that sudden rush of guilt that had been seizing her lately, that I-broke-up-Dave-and-Gretchen guilt. “Come on. Your grades are fine.” She put a hand on his side and pulled herself to him, raising up on her toes to kiss him gently. “Your girlfriend wants to do stuff with you.”
The second bell rang out, and the sound of doors shutting echoed down the hallway. Dave attempted a smile, but his eyes went over her shoulder, toward the one place she wanted to get away from. “I’m sorry. I think we have a quiz today.” Now he initiated a kiss, but it had the distinct taste of a kiss good-bye.