“What?”
“That girl from your department. The one you thought none of us could hear you having sex with at night.”
Kelsey pursed her lips in horror.
“One time may have been experimentation, Kels, but at least ten times? That I know of?” Shannon could remember Kelsey whispering,“Don’t be so loud! I’d be mortified if people heard me screwing around! You know how I am, baby…”All Shannon wanted was to get a midnight snack from the fridge. “Please stop lying. You’re only hurting yourself.” Shannon shook her head. “Whatever. I gotta go.”
She walked away, carrying with her the most powerful memory from her college days.
***
Memory #16
For every part that was relieved to live out the sexual tension between Jess and me, there was a part terrified of what had happened and what this now meant about who I was.
Before Jess, I had never questioned my sexuality. I was a girl who liked guys. They liked me. Everything was natural and right in the world of human sexuality. I didn’t have to worry about that kind of oppression. I didn’t need to contemplate the logistics of making love to other women. I didn’t have that awkward realization that maybe I loved Britney Spears music videos a little too much. (Something I now remember from my childhood and think… wasn’t it so obvious?) I never had to come out to my parents. I didn’t have to worry about marriage licenses or how I could have a family with another woman if I wanted kids. I simply was. I was the status quo.
Jess challenged that. It was a lot to handle my senior year of college.
I didn’t make any promises after that night we had sex. I was too stunned by my actions – and how much I had enjoyed her presence in my bed. She didn’t ask me for any, either. She was too giddy as she tried to act super cool when she left late that night. I lay in my bed, naked and alone, imagining her kicking her heels as she strutted back to her dorm. I opened my window and smoked a cigarette, decompressing and attempting to figure out what it meant.
My thoughts soon meandered to school. To Kelsey, whom I had long suspected was in love with me and in deep denial about her own lesbianism.
I didn’t love her like that, though. Honestly, I barely tolerated her as a friend. As I grow older, I understand that she was one of those female friends who were more toxic than they were worth. Not just her internalized bullshit she took out on me. It was her general attitude. Nothing was ever good enough for her. She was so hypercritical of herself, of others, of the world that being in a relationship with her would’ve been like smashing my hand with a hammer.
I hadn’t thought of Jess like that, either, until I opened myself up to her more. Her genuine nature had thrown me off. Now I know she was also in love with me and trying to get to me. I don’t know what it is about me. I guess I have magnetism. So does Jess. She doesn’t give herself enough credit. I was attracted to her the moment I saw her at the dorm council party. When she cut her hair a few months later, I had to face that attraction. I suppressed it, like Kelsey had. We weren’t those kinds of girls.
Jess kept her distance after that night. She was waiting for me to say something first, since I was the one with the most to lose. After finals, and right before I went home to California for Christmas, I found her in the student café and sat near her until she noticed me. The glow on her face when she looked up at me made my heart do things I didn’t understand.
None of my boyfriends – older or younger – had made me feel that way. There was a safety to her. One that couldn’t be mitigated if she made love as hard as my exes or sent nothing but naughty thoughts in my direction.
I wanted to kiss her. Another thought I suppressed for years.
We made light conversation about what we planned to do for the holidays and how anxious we were for our final semester of college. It was only during a lull in our conversation, when she awkwardly looked at me and I realized that the elephant must be addressed, that I suggested we meet up the first week back from break.
She had never looked so happy.
We were going to meet right there, in that cozy student café. We were going to have coffee and cookies and cuddle on the couch. A proper if not casual date.
I fully intended to go back. Nobody makes it to their final semester of college and bails so easily.
Yet while I was at home, smoking a cigarette in my old childhood bedroom, I… can’t explain what happened.
The doctors said it was a nervous breakdown. All I remember is smashing up half my room and screaming until my father burst through my door and calmed me with the kind of hold he was trained to use to subdue perps at his security job. My mother cried to see the crazed look in my eye. Next thing I remember, I was in the emergency room two days before Christmas.
I told them the partial truth. I was stressed out about school, about my lack of direction afterward, about majoring in politics when I had realized I wasn’t cut out for it. I didn’t tell them the other parts. Like struggling with my sexuality for the past two years. About shoving it deep, deep down until nobody but Jess Mills could see it in me.
She was the most dangerous thing of all. I could handle Kelsey since I wasn’t attracted to her. Jess? Every time I thought about kissing her or touching the forbidden parts of her body, I could no longer breathe – and it wasn’t because I was too excited to inhale.
After a few conferences with my student advisor and the dean at my school, it was decided I would take the semester off and finish my degree the follower year, if I were up for it. In the meantime, I was implored to take it easy, maybe get a low-stress part-time job or take up a new hobby. Anything but dwell on the things I hated most. My own self-hatred.
I never contacted Jess. I didn’t have her number. I received one email from her a week after we were supposed to meet. Just a simple, “Hey, what’s happened?” I never replied. Until I moved to Portland, I never saw or heard from her again.
I only saw her when I closed my eyes to go to sleep every night. My subconscious knew. She was the one I was meant to be with. Long before I knew anything about fated signs or divining my future.
Too stubborn. Too afraid. That was me. During my hiatus, I took up photography to soothe my nerves. That’s how I met Cameron, a model who helped me expand my portfolio and hone my skills in between getting headshots and getting head. From me, of course.
The easiest way to forget it all was to run as far away from the real me as possible. The more I went out with men, the easier it would be to forget a woman.
