Tim Murphy - Christodora

That’s just how Issy felt. There could not be more than a few dozen other women in this packed club, going on two A.M., and she knew none of these men was going to fall in love with her, but she didn’t care. She was with her best friend, Tavi, and a bunch of Tavi’s friends. The music was great, Tavi was holding her close, it was a Saturday night, and she didn’t have to be back at work, in fact, until Thursday, the day after The Fourth of July. She and Tavi locked eyes, held that stare, smiled. Then Tavi kissed her — not his usual kiss on the cheek, but on the lips, openmouthed. Not with his tongue, but still. . it lingered!

She put her hand over her lips. “Oh my God, Tavi!” she said. “You did not just!”

Tavi laughed like a hyena. “Hahaha, yeah, princess, I just did!” That boy was fucking crazy. He was skinny with a big Boricua ’fro and a gap between his two front teeth, wearing Sergio Valente jeans, a tight yellow T-shirt saying WHERE’S THE BEEF? and three gold chains. Tavi, her best friend from the block in Corona, Queens. Whom she’d pretty much known was gay since they were fourteen. What other boy ran around the neighborhood in tiny orange gym shorts, a rainbow headband, and Mork from Ork suspenders singing at the top of his lungs, Hey, mister, have you gotta dime? Mister, do you wanna spend some time? Yep, that was Octavio. Tavi-boy, she called him. They did everything together.

She showed Tavi some of her best moves — kind of like if she were Sheila E. in the new “Glamorous Life” video she was obsessed with, in that shiny tight coat, rocking her shoulders while she thrashed away on those drums. Sheila E. was her new idol. In her mind, she was Sheila E. She did have hair nearly as big as Sheila’s, styled asymmetrically, and she thought she had Sheila’s attitude. Yet Issy was not deluded; she did not think she was as beautiful or sexy as Sheila, even as she tried to make the most of what she had: her large, bright eyes; smooth caramel skin; and fairly good curves. Even though she stood at only five feet four inches, and even if her nose was a little flatter, her forehead a little higher, and her lips a little thinner than she’d have liked, she did her best to distract away from those things with makeup, fashion, and attitude.

In her neighborhood, she was well liked. She was, after all, the younger sister of Freddy Mendes, a big guy with swagger who’d nearly made the farm team for the Mets and who, frankly, had never much paid her the time of day. But lately, having just turned twenty-five, working toward her dental hygienist certificate while watching all her friends get married and have kids, or not get married but still have kids, she’d started to wonder, What’ll become of me? Will I be alone my whole life? She would then catalog in her head the good qualities she possessed: I’m a caring person, she thought. I have a good sense of humor. I can cook. I take excellent care of my teeth. I don’t take things too sensitively — I can go with the flow! Putting this list together in her head helped her, and she would always top it off with a prayer that she meet the right man for her before she turned twenty-eight. (The previous cut-off had been twenty-five, until she’d turned twenty-five.)

Sometimes — often, strangely, in church, when she imagined she was supposed to be feeling her best — she would get deep pinpricks in her stomach that all was not right with the world, and that her usual daily belief that people were good and everything was as it should be was, well, a sham. She would think about how her father and brother held sway over the household, how she’d heard the words bitch and puta from them and other men, including her uncles and cousins, since she was a little girl, before she even knew what the words meant. She’d think about all the love children in the family and the neighborhood, about men who got off with impunity, and she’d think about the beat-down, sullen workaday indignance of her grandmother and her mother and so many older women she knew, and how those women seemed to take it out on one another in the form of backstabbing and gossip, and she would suddenly not feel so great, or that the real answers were not to be found here, in church, listening to this old, light-skinned Dominican priest drone on about rejecting the glamour of Satan. And she would seriously wonder if there wasn’t perhaps some other life out there for her that promised more than a dental-hygienist certificate. Then, to herself, barely perceptibly, she would sigh and dismiss her own thoughts.

But her head wasn’t in that melancholy place tonight. She was just having fun — and oh my God, she felt amazing! Plus, these men were hot . Here was one coming up to her right now. The DJ had just changed the song. Baby, you make my love come down, the whole room shouted along with the singer. Oh, you make my love come down. And suddenly this guy, this big-assed, hairy-chested moreno with chains dripping over a mesh purple tank top, was bumping up against her.

“Hey, baby,” he mouthed over the music. He held up poppers to his nose, inhaled, then held the tube up to her nose. She’d been watching guys inhale them on the dance floor all night and she wondered what they did, so now she allowed herself a demure sniff. Suddenly, she was feeling deliciously woozy and clinging to the guy’s neck while he stroked her breasts and buttocks. Her knees buckled in her leggings. She was going to go out of her mind if she didn’t have sex soon, she thought. She hadn’t had sex since — well, two years ago, that sort of bad incident at that party. That hadn’t been what she was looking for. Even the first time, at fifteen, with Ricky Malandrino, it hadn’t been what she was expecting, either — it had hurt, and it was over before it even began. It hadn’t seemed very romantic. And then Ricky not so much as even talking to her in the street after. That didn’t feel too great.

But this moment — wow. They were sort of swaying and grinding, and she was holding on to his neck for dear life, feeling like her whole body below was giving out under his big hands. Then, as she felt the breathless, scary swoon of the poppers fade away, he pulled back. He put a hand under her chin and smiled at her and kissed her gently on the lips. “You’re beautiful,” he told her.

“Shut up!” She laughed good-naturedly. “You’re just high.”

He lost his smile, got stern. “No, baby, you are,” he said. “You gotta believe that.” He kissed her once more, then slipped away, leaving her there, barely moving amid the dancers. Tavi, who’d witnessed the whole thing, sidled back over to her.

“Puta,” he said, then cackled. She shoved him, pleased with herself.

They kept on dancing — hours, it seemed. At different times, other men came over to them, danced with them, did the bump-and-grind with Tavi — he came to this Paradise Garage club a lot and he knew a lot of guys here — and even sometimes with her. Ooh, now the DJ was playing “Heartbeat”—ooh, she loved this song, that slow beat, heartbeat, you make me feel so weak —that’s how she felt! Weak from dancing and elation. She had her head up looking into the lighting system, her arms up over her head. She felt sexy!

“Girl, this song is turning you out,” Tavi shouted at her over the beat.

She shoved him. “You’re so disgusting!”

Some guys came over and danced with them. Kisses and gropes went all around. One of the guys, Issy noted, was very darkly handsome, a Boricua probably, with a somewhat serious, non-effeminate air about him. He looked a bit nerdy in his large, square-framed glasses, which he repeatedly took off to wipe steam from the lenses. There he was, dancing along with the rest of the guys in his tight T-shirt and designer jeans and Nikes, a bit of gold around his neck, but he seemed a little uptight.