Teddy Wayne - Loner

“Maybe so,” said Christopher. “But she’s certainly got the hot girl’s need for constant male attention.”

“You’re such a misogynist,” Suzanne said jovially.

Er’uoy hcus a tsinygosim. Words had been reversing in my mind with greater frequency and celerity lately. I was nearly getting back to my preadolescent facility.

Andy cocked his head in consideration. “Actually, I’d say Christopher’s pretty gender blind in his contempt for people.”

“And anyway, I don’t think it’s a misogynistic observation,” Christopher defended himself. “It’s the fallout of sending your daughter to an all-girls’ school.”

“You should’ve seen her at Chapin,” Jen piped up. “She’d flirt with any guy that walked in the building. Totally indiscriminate. Even our Guido track coach.”

(This was how your friends spoke about you behind your back, by the way. Now you know.)

I decided it was best to keep quiet and maintain a low profile so as not to betray my inexperience with drugs, final clubs, and socializing with anyone outside of the Marauders. I managed to elude scrutiny until Andy asked, without a transition, “Remind me, how do you know Veronica?”

Everyone’s eyes found me. Now I felt coke-addled: heart palpitations, dry mouth, jittery leg.

“From class,” Suzanne answered for me.

“Your guys’ feminism class? What’s it called, again? Women Be Shopping?” Andy waited for a laugh. “ Nutty Professor , you philistines.”

“Gender and the Consumerist Impulse,” Suzanne said.

I hadn’t realized Suzanne was also in the class. “English,” I told him. I was going to leave it there, but wanted to prove I had a personality, that I wasn’t just a body taking up space on the arm of the sofa — that someone was in here. “I’m pretty sure to take a feminism class here you have to be either a woman or flaming.”

“Flaming?” Andy repeated in a campy voice.

“Excuse me,” I said, smirking along. “ Queer . I need to brush up on my microaggressions dictionary.”

The joke didn’t land. Andy and Christopher shared a glance.

“Can you believe we’re already halfway through the semester?” Suzanne asked. They began gossiping about someone named Eliot as I grew insecure about my failed attempt at humor.

You reappeared without Liam. “I’m leaving,” you announced, and grabbed your jacket. No one attempted to stop you as you stormed out.

“If they’re done, I call first dibs on Liam,” Andy said.

“That man is a beautiful specimen,” said Christopher.

“No — a beautiful species ,” Andy said. “He’s like his own category.”

Only then did I realize why my joke had flopped. I wondered how best to redeem myself, but your departure was more pressing. Without a word I stood up and left.

You were marching down Mt. Auburn Street, cigarette in one hand and phone in the other. Maybe it was best to leave you alone, judging by your brusque exit and speedy gait.

“Hey!” I called when you missed the turnoff to our dorm.

Spinning around, you looked taken aback, though I’m sure you would’ve been upset to see anyone at that point.

“Matthews is this way!” I pointed to the Yard.

“Shitty sense of direction,” you muttered, walking back toward me.

Even with your drunkenness I struggled to match your steps for the remainder of the walk to our dorm, and my conversational gambits were met with grunts or silence. The night that had held the most excitement for me, ever, had meant absolutely nothing to you, and why should it have? You’d had hundreds of these evenings in the past, you’d have thousands more in the future, and you had no interest in a romantic present with me; you had Liam, a beautiful specimen and species unto himself. That you’d allowed Suzanne to invite me to the club without much of a fight probably wasn’t indifference, I conjectured with cocaine-fueled reasoning. It was fear: you were afraid that I’d rat you out for plagiarism, though doing so would be incriminating myself. But mine was the lesser transgression, and therefore you’d offered me narcotics to even the score. Now you had something on me, too; if you went down, so would I.

As we headed upstairs in Matthews, your phone chimed, and in the scramble to fish it out of your bag, you stumbled and fell forward.

“ Fuck, ” you said.

“You okay?” I asked, bounding up behind you.

Trying to stand, you clutched your knee and moaned. You accepted my arm and gingerly rose to your feet, wincing with pain. I led you up the rest of the way, safeguarding you from another fall. First it was the accidentally-on-purpose elbow contact in lecture; already we had graduated to this.

When we reached the fifth floor, you listed in my direction and leaned slightly against me, your shoulders grazing mine.

“Are you okay?” I repeated. “Do you need to go to the emergency room?”

You shook your head no and whimpered. I became aroused.

“What is it, then?” I asked, my lips skimming your hair. You choked back a sob and I grew more erect.

“You wouldn’t understand,” you said, shaking free from my grip and limping down the hall to your room.

You’d allowed yourself to be vulnerable, for a few seconds, against my body. You weren’t totally indiscriminate — not anymore, at least; you’d picked me for the role out of all available suitors. And even if you were, I would find a way to show you that I was much more than some guy who walked in the building — that you could tell me things, and I would understand.

In my room, under the covers, I revived my erection and cocooned it inside your bathrobe belt with an opening at the top. But I didn’t want to bring myself to orgasm with it, as I usually did; no, this time I would use a light touch, just enough to sustain the engorging bloodstream, delighting in the tactile sensation and the memory of you on the stairs, extending my priapic ecstasy for hours.

But after a few minutes I was overtaken with eagerness and consummated my lust with the banal satisfaction that comes after getting what you so fervently want too easily.

I was awoken the next morning by Steven passing through my room on the way back from the shower. Dripping wet with a Doctor Who towel around his waist, he stooped to pick something up.

“This Sara’s?” he asked.

Your bathrobe belt. I’d carelessly left it beside me in bed as I fell asleep. It had slipped onto the floor overnight and was now dangling from Steven’s hands.

“No,” I said through a phlegm-clearing cough. As I reached out to take the belt, he retreated a step and examined it more closely.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just found it.”

“Where?”

If I named a Harvard building, upstanding-citizen Steven would recommend I bring it to a lost and found. “Au Bon Pain.”

“Mind if I take it?” He balled it up in his palm. “I’m learning this trick for my magic show in the common room Sunday night. I want to pull a long strip of material out of my mouth, and I haven’t found anything that can fit inside.”

He brought it up to his open maw.

“Don’t!” I said. “Your braces will tear it!”

“What do you need it for?”

“A sweatband,” I told him.

“You don’t even exercise,” he grumbled, dropping it on the floor as he proceeded to his room. I got out of bed and returned the belt to its proper place in the dresser.

That night at dinner, as I ferried my tray out of the food area, I considered ditching the Matthews Marauders and sitting down at your table with manufactured self-assurance. But that would raise understandable questions from Sara. Furthermore, the previous evening had been a bust with the others; I needed to focus on only you before trying to ingratiate myself with your group again.