our fear of it. It got so I could barelv get a couple of hours of sleep at night.
I began to have nightmares about operating in the bright lights of the theatre with slippery, oversized instruments falling
out of my hands. The organs would be in the wrong places and my blade would slip in my sweaty grip, cutting into marrow.
One day I was home trying to find a belt to fit me before heading out the door to my nightly library date with Thuy. I was
edgy and irritable from not sleeping and I was only eating one meal a day. Usually something light like soup and rice balls
and candy was all I, or she, could handle. I realized then that I'd lost some weight, though I thought I looked relatively normal—still chubby in the face.
While I was trying to lace a hippie guitar strap into my jeans, the doorbell rang. It occurred to me then that I'd never had
guests over: the only people who ever visited the apartment were Susan's friends, while Susan, of course, on her rare visits
home, would let herself in with her key.
"Hello?" I answered the door, barefoot, and, standing there, almost seven feet of him, was Greg, the guy Susan had a crush
on at the bar.
He was sandy-haired, broad-shouldered, and wearing a purple and yellow leather varsity jacket that was vaguely disgusting
to me. His eyes travelled up and down me until he met my eyes, and I cinched my belt in place and tapped the door with my
fingernail.
"Yes?"
"I'm supposed to meet Susan here. Can I come in?"
"Uh, sure." I opened the door slightly and he swept in.
Greg sat down on the couch and flipped on the television casually, as if he owned the place, his long limbs folded over themselves
like the pink and blue origami cranes Thuy would place on my textbooks during his rare breaks from studying.
I was slightly disconcerted with the idea of a stranger in my home. I sat on the broken La-Z-Boy chair Susan and I had dragged
home during one of our treasure hunts in the student ghetto Dumpsters.
What did people do? I thought, staring at Greg. Oh, right, they offered food.
"Want some crackers? I'm sorry, I don't have anything else to offer you."
"No thanks."
I hadn't been with a human being besides Thuy in so long I wondered what to do next, and so we did what normal adults do to
pass the time in a stranger's company: we drank.
After three exquisite Caesars mixed by Greg, and an exhausting series of stories about his football injuries and his father's
oil business in the States, I got up from the La-Z-Boy.
"OK, that's it for me," I said. "Good night."
"Wait a minute." He reached out and grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.
"I don't know where Susan is, it's late . . . she might have forgotten about your date and I have to get up—"
"That's OK, sit down. Here I've been blabbing about myself all night and I haven't asked a thing about you. Are you a dancer?"
"No." I was appalled by the sensation of his arm. It was the first time I'd been sexually drawn to someone without wanting
to be. The feeling was complicated and nasty somehow. With Eve it had been uncompromising, complete. I'd wanted to lose myself
in her, like a book or a film. But I wasn't even vaguely interested in Greg's life, which seemed infinitely boring to me.
If anything, I wanted to keep myself intact, on guard. I thought this as his hand snaked into my lap and he kissed me, and
then all the thinking stopped. As his warm and spicy college-boy lips massaged mine, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
"I didn't come here to see Susan." He looked into my eyes balefully and I fell for it. I drew my fingers up the length of
his neck. He leaned into them as if they trickled warm oil, and then it w^as as if we had always been lovers, as if we were
used to these quick and easy transactions of touch and pull.
"You can kill a man by slicing one clean stroke in here." I pulled my fingers up his neck, over his carotid artery, his main
vein.
"So show me," he said,
I began to have nightmares about operating in the bright lights of the theatre with slippery, oversized instruments falling
out of my hands. The organs would be in the wrong places and my blade would slip in my sweaty grip, cutting into marrow.
One day I was home trying to find a belt to fit me before heading out the door to my nightly library date with Thuy. I was
edgy and irritable from not sleeping and I was only eating one meal a day. Usually something light like soup and rice balls
and candy was all I, or she, could handle. I realized then that I'd lost some weight, though I thought I looked relatively normal—still chubby in the face.
While I was trying to lace a hippie guitar strap into my jeans, the doorbell rang. It occurred to me then that I'd never had
guests over: the only people who ever visited the apartment were Susan's friends, while Susan, of course, on her rare visits
home, would let herself in with her key.
"Hello?" I answered the door, barefoot, and, standing there, almost seven feet of him, was Greg, the guy Susan had a crush
on at the bar.
He was sandy-haired, broad-shouldered, and wearing a purple and yellow leather varsity jacket that was vaguely disgusting
to me. His eyes travelled up and down me until he met my eyes, and I cinched my belt in place and tapped the door with my
fingernail.
"Yes?"
"I'm supposed to meet Susan here. Can I come in?"
"Uh, sure." I opened the door slightly and he swept in.
Greg sat down on the couch and flipped on the television casually, as if he owned the place, his long limbs folded over themselves
like the pink and blue origami cranes Thuy would place on my textbooks during his rare breaks from studying.
I was slightly disconcerted with the idea of a stranger in my home. I sat on the broken La-Z-Boy chair Susan and I had dragged
home during one of our treasure hunts in the student ghetto Dumpsters.
What did people do? I thought, staring at Greg. Oh, right, they offered food.
"Want some crackers? I'm sorry, I don't have anything else to offer you."
"No thanks."
I hadn't been with a human being besides Thuy in so long I wondered what to do next, and so we did what normal adults do to
pass the time in a stranger's company: we drank.
After three exquisite Caesars mixed by Greg, and an exhausting series of stories about his football injuries and his father's
oil business in the States, I got up from the La-Z-Boy.
"OK, that's it for me," I said. "Good night."
"Wait a minute." He reached out and grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.
"I don't know where Susan is, it's late . . . she might have forgotten about your date and I have to get up—"
"That's OK, sit down. Here I've been blabbing about myself all night and I haven't asked a thing about you. Are you a dancer?"
"No." I was appalled by the sensation of his arm. It was the first time I'd been sexually drawn to someone without wanting
to be. The feeling was complicated and nasty somehow. With Eve it had been uncompromising, complete. I'd wanted to lose myself
in her, like a book or a film. But I wasn't even vaguely interested in Greg's life, which seemed infinitely boring to me.
If anything, I wanted to keep myself intact, on guard. I thought this as his hand snaked into my lap and he kissed me, and
then all the thinking stopped. As his warm and spicy college-boy lips massaged mine, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
"I didn't come here to see Susan." He looked into my eyes balefully and I fell for it. I drew my fingers up the length of
his neck. He leaned into them as if they trickled warm oil, and then it w^as as if we had always been lovers, as if we were
used to these quick and easy transactions of touch and pull.
"You can kill a man by slicing one clean stroke in here." I pulled my fingers up his neck, over his carotid artery, his main
vein.
"So show me," he said,
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