That night I got epically shitfaced. Zack and I pregamed with vodka, and then we visited a bunch of room parties in Einstein, wandering from one to the next like it was Halloween, taking a bong hit here and a shot of Jager there, a slice of pizza in a room that belonged to a skinny white dude named Evan who was supposedly a great rapper. There was dancing in a room where two girls named Kayla lived—Hot Kayla and Less-Hot Kayla—and a foosball tournament in the fifth-floor lounge.
At Will and Rico’s, I drank some jungle juice that really knocked me on my ass. My father called when I was there, the first time I’d heard from him since I arrived at BSU. I must not have been making much sense, because Zack grabbed the phone out of my hand and started chatting with him like they were old buddies. All I remember after that was puking in the bathroom, and bumping into that douchebag Sanjay on my way out. He was wearing pajamas and a plaid robe, and carrying a little bucket with all his toiletries in it.
“You okay?” he asked. “You don’t look so—”
“I’m fine,” I said, giving my mouth one last wipe. “Ready for round two.”
I went back to the room to change my shirt, but I guess I must have crashed, because the next thing I knew it was three in the morning and Zack was stumbling around in the dark, totally wasted, telling me that he’d tried to hook up with Less-Hot Kayla, but she wasn’t into it, which was fine, because he wasn’t really into it, either.
“I mean, if it was Hot Kayla, that would be another story, right?”
After a while he got into bed, and it was quiet again, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. I was thinking about maybe getting up and seeing if anybody was still awake when Zack started jerking off. I could tell he was trying to be quiet, but our beds were pretty close together.
“Dude,” I said. “Seriously?”
“Oh shit,” he said. “I thought you were asleep.”
“Nope. Wide awake.”
“You want me to stop?”
“Nah, it’s okay. Just, like, hurry it up, okay?”
I don’t know how long it took after that. Maybe just a few minutes, but it felt like a long time, long enough that I said fuck it, and decided to join the party. I thought about Becca for a while, but she was already far away, almost unreal. And then I tried the two Kaylas, imagining a threeway in their room, which was kind of interesting, but only up to a point. It was Amber from the Autism Awareness Network who got me across the finish line. And the weird thing was, we weren’t even doing anything. She was just standing on the beach in her one-piece bathing suit, smiling at me with her pretty face and those big shoulders, and for some reason that was enough.
“G’night,” Zack said, in this soft, peaceful voice when he was finished.
“Night, bro,” I said, floating on the same cloud that he was. “Catch you in the morning.”
Live and Learn
Suffering from a mild, not entirely unpleasant case of back-to-school jitters, Eve wandered through the Humanities Building of Eastern Community College, searching for Room 213. She was relieved to pass a number of “nontraditional students” like herself in the corridors, some of them even older than she was.
The chairs in her classroom had been arranged in a circle, group-therapy style. Eve chose one and sat down, not noticing until it was too late that some bored artisan had carved the words I AM SO HORNY into the desktop, and then highlighted the incisions with a red marker. She covered the graffiti with her brand-new notebook, and opened it to the first page. It was a heartening sight, all that blank white space waiting to be filled, the fresh start she’d been hoping for.
Once she was settled, she looked up and gave a friendly nod to the handful of students who’d arrived even earlier than she had. Only one nodded back, a worried-looking black man who appeared to be in his early thirties. The other three were staring at their phones, unaware that a greeting had been extended, let alone that they’d missed a chance to respond.
*
Eve already had a master’s in Social Work, which she’d earned by attending night classes for four long years back when Brendan was in elementary school. Ted’s resentment of her absences, and the parental responsibilities they shifted onto his shoulders, had been one of the major tensions in their marriage. His subsequent lack of interest in her work—his refusal to take it seriously—had been another, though that seemed mostly ironic in retrospect, now that he was raising an autistic child and had to rely on all sorts of specialists in the caring professions.
In any case, she didn’t need another advanced degree, and had no interest in polishing her résumé. Her decision to return to school was purely personal. She wanted to read and think and reconnect with her collegiate self, which had been so much more open and fluid and hopeful than the versions that had succeeded it. And it was nice to have a reason to escape the empty house twice a week without having to convince someone else to join her.
The class she’d signed up for was called “Gender and Society: A Critical Perspective,” a writing-intensive seminar that met on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from seven thirty to nine. She had no special interest in the topic; it was actually her third choice, after “Vegans vs. Carnivores: The Ethics of Sustainable Eating,” and “From Jane Austen to Downton Abbey: The English Country House in Fiction and Film,” both of which were full. But the class itself wasn’t the point. The important thing was that she was here, trying something different, meeting new people, making her world bigger instead of hunkering down, disappearing into her own solitude.
At seven thirty on the dot, a tall, striking woman in a black pencil skirt and stiletto heels breezed through the door, her eyes widening in faux astonishment at the sight of the assembled students, as if this were a surprise party in her honor.
“Well, hello there,” she said, in a throaty, oddly seductive voice. She was slender and athletic-looking, with narrow hips and attention-grabbing breasts bulging against the fabric of her tailored blouse. “I’m Dr. Margo Fairchild, adjunct professor.” She took a moment to let that sink in. “In case you’re unfamiliar with academic terminology, adjunct is another word for very badly paid.”
A handful of students, Eve included, chuckled obligingly as Dr. Fairchild entered the circle and sat down, smoothing her skirt and crossing her enviably muscled legs at the ankles.
“Let’s wait a minute or two for the stragglers,” she said, languidly tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “There are always a few lost souls on opening day.”