Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

“Aren’t they uncomfortable?” Paulina asked.

“What?” Sadie said, dancing.

“The boots.”

“I love them,” Sadie said.

Paulina was in disbelief that anyone could dance at such a lackluster party. I should be running through a field, she thought. I should be drafting my will. I could be betting on horses. She imagined there was a car outside waiting for her. “Just drive,” she’d tell the driver in a sultry voice. “Drive until we run out of gas,” and the driver would be Tim.

A powerful boredom pushed Paulina into Angel’s kitchen. Though she wasn’t hungry, she searched the cabinets for something to eat. She was thirsty and she was dizzy. On the counter was a vial of orchid food she thought she could use in her latest homemade conditioner. She put it in her coat pocket and drifted into the bathroom. Shoving aside the shampoos and lotions, she found a mud cream from the Dead Sea and read its label.

She crouched in the bathtub, feeling faint, noting the faded ring of dirt. Paulina closed her eyes and remembered buying her coat at a vintage shop she had believed at the time to be mystical, when she believed in such things. But what was she thinking? She still believed things to be mystical. She always guessed the correct time on a clock. Certain foods gave her visions. Paulina weakly pulled the shower curtain shut. Sweat dotted her hairline. A sun burned behind her eyes.

“Party at the Color Club!”

They ran down the street in a pack. Sadie’s face was lost in a dream. “What’s with her?” Paulina asked.

“She met a boy,” Allison said, “on the train—”

“Oh yes, the train,” Paulina said, striding ahead.

“We forgot Gretchen!” a boy said and stopped, but no one went back.

They passed old Victorian houses. Paulina hugged her fur. The cold air stung their faces. Occasionally a car drove past, its headlights thrilling Paulina.

“What’s Color Club?” a small graphic design major asked, and Paulina pitied her.

“Club Homo?” Sadie said. “Have you heard of that?”

The girl shook her head.

“Do you know that beautiful boy Dean? Angelic face, really funny?” Sadie asked.

“Sort of,” the girl said.

They passed people they knew and the group got bigger. “What about Troy? He looks like a nutcracker figurine.”

Paulina shut out the clueless graphic designer. The boys at the Color Club were the coolest guys in school. They weren’t hippies or punks, or part of any group. They were unlike the mainstream gays one got used to. They’d formed a woozy cult-like community. There were drugs, but that was only some of it. There were rocks in their bathtub, cats with dyed hair. Their clique was like a dance song — catchy, violent, beating with life.

Paulina, Sadie, and Allison had spent their sophomore year discovering this house and the boys inside. Sadie squealed each time the boys drove by in their old van, blasting “the song”—their theme for a while — a seductive redemption song sung by an electric, androgynous voice, recorded in the eighties then forgotten. Paulina scolded Sadie and Allison for being obsessed with them, but Dean&Troy was the password to her college e-mail account.

“They’re like sexy orphans,” Paulina said.

The graphic designer made a face. “Dean is gay?” she asked.

“Everyone is gay,” said Eileen. Paulina had yet to form an opinion of her.

Far from the college, they walked past Portuguese bakeries and soccer fields of dead grass. Before she could see the house, Paulina felt the beat through her shoes. The house was big and crumbling in places. Dream catchers and colored glass hung haphazardly from the porch beams. A painting had been smashed into a tree and remained there, gathering rain and leaves, breeding mold.

Inside, the house was hot from bodies. The living room was dark and empty of furniture. Paulina immediately separated herself from the group she’d come with. There was beer and she took one. Everyone looked good at the Color Club — everyone danced. No one hunched in the corner making small talk. A boy Paulina had once made out with was wearing a George Washington wig and making out with the Venus Flytrap. Paulina could hear Sadie speaking loudly over the music, again about the boy she’d met on the train, and how they’d kissed in their seats.

Paulina ran to Dean, who was dancing in a crowd, his face coated with paint. “Paulina!” he shouted. “Sadie!” he screamed. Dean was as nimble and high-spirited as a teenage girl, and revered like a gay Christ. Paulina hugged Dean and Troy and felt drunk. Paulina searched the room for Zane, a boy so filled with good feeling that, using the bow on her dress, Paulina had once tied herself to him on the dance floor.

The Color Club boys were exactly who Paulina wanted to surround herself with. Her whole life had been a search for charisma like theirs. Unable to seduce them, she’d tried to be their best friend, but the Venus Flytrap had gotten there first. She lived with the boys and rejected Paulina, once forcibly pushing her out of the house. Paulina made friends with the boys, but she was still unsatisfied. She wanted them to replace Sadie and Allison. She wanted friends she didn’t talk shit about to other friends. If such friends existed, they must be boys like these, who seemed famous.

When cars drove by, Paulina saw the faces of her classmates in brief flashes of light. How necessary everyone seemed at a good party! People who’d looked lifeless at Angel’s looked vibrant here, and Paulina wanted to have sex with them all.

Apollo walked by and Sadie trembled with laughter. The figure models at their school were usually unattractive or awkward. They didn’t seem clean. Their wrinkles showed up in dark lines on the page. Some sulked in their poses, but not Apollo. He posed with a big walking stick and stared defiantly into the eyes of the figure drawers, who looked away. There was a sharpness to his movements, a fanaticism to his beliefs. Naked at the break, he walked easel to easel looking at the drawings. He was often spotted outside class, shirtless on a patch of campus grass listening to his Walkman, doing his own speed tai chi. He was a celebrity of the school, the subject of countless jokes, while drawings of his body smudged between pages of newsprint, and hung framed in the homes of the students’ parents.

“Don’t make eye contact!” Sadie whispered to Paulina.

“One day, I’ll go where no figure drawer has gone before,” Paulina said, watching Apollo, feeling his energy in waves.

Dean and Troy danced violently until they crashed into a mirror. Paulina watched the shards fall in blinking pieces. Dean laughed hysterically.

A girl danced in front of the mirror looking at her broken reflection.

“Farm Girl Fashion Disaster!” Sadie shouted to Paulina.

Paulina slowed to watch the girl’s crazed dancing.

“Why ‘farm girl’?” Allison asked.

“She caught a frog in the quad once, remember?” Paulina said without turning.

“Her name is Fran,” Allison said. “She’s in my painting studio.”

Paulina had never given this girl much thought when she saw her sashaying across the cafeteria or sleeping through artist talks, but now she saw that the girl’s face was beautiful. Her nose wasn’t simple. Paulina contemplated the bones of it. Fran’s green eyes looked lost. Light, curly hair whipped against her forehead. There was something innovative in the layout of her face, but her expression showed no understanding of this.

Fran was absorbed in her jagged reflection. She wore a short dress with tiny hearts on it, and a man’s flannel. Paulina stared, realizing Fran was friends with one of Paulina’s enemies. Paulina couldn’t remember which girl. Her idea of Fran darkened. She wanted to be her, or be with her, or destroy her. She watched Fran’s breasts bounce in her dress. No one in the room seemed connected to her. Her cheeks concealed things.