February 9

2/9

Yesterday morning my usual lethargy was gone. My whole body vibrated with a strange energy. I felt like a dead frog electrified to twitch on a lab table.

I couldn't read, couldn't study, couldn't work. I skipped class and went to the computer lab and opened up a word processor document. “I am an idiot,” I typed, and then I couldn't stop. 

Words flowed out of me so incessantly and forcefully I couldn't control my hands on the keyboard. In less than an hour I had written a 3000 word short story. Then I read it over. It needed editing, but it really wasn't bad – easily one of best things I've written since I started college (although that isn't much). That happened to be just about the word limit for the literary club's new magazine, so I submitted it. This was Christopher's fault, I knew, and it felt amazing. I had to let him know.

“Tell me some more stories,” I texted, “you've been giving me some great material.”

“I don't really want to be used just for stories,” he replied.

“Relationships involve people using each other, right? I can't use your body, so let me use your mind.”

“You can absolutely use my body!”

I didn't know what to say to that, so I replied, “Flattering, but you've got the wrong parts for me.” Since last night's talk, he knew my history with women.

Then I went back to my room and tried to read my English assignments some more. I failed some more. I tried and tried until it was two in the morning and I felt like I was going to die and I texted him, “I won't be able to sleep until I figure out what's going on here. Please call.” Almost immediately, he did.

Even after all this my walls stayed up. I couldn't avoid the first fifteen minutes of small talk. Finally he asked me, “What is it you want to figure out?”

I took a breath. I let go of the breath. “I just want to know why you're talking to me. What are you getting out of these long conversations? I know what I'm getting, but what are you?”

“I just like talking to you,” he said. “I appreciate your intellect. I don't have anyone I can talk to like this right now. I used to, in college, and I miss it.” His “like”s stuck in his throat in a Southern way. “Is that all you want to know?”

I was satisfied with his answer. It was logical and tidy. “Yes,” I said. “I just wanted to know the context of these conversations.”

“Context?”

“Context, background, intent. I thought you might have wanted to lead me along like you led along all those other people,” I said. “I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that that was possible.”

“Well, at first I was … definitely attracted to you. I am still attracted to you. But you don't really like my kind -” he laughed.

“I am attracted to you,” I interrupted. “You are the most attractive person I've ever met, male or female.”

He was quiet for a moment. “It's complicated now, because I'm going away.”

“Yeah, our paths crossed at the wrong time. But me – I mean, I'm probably in love with you right now. I don't really know what love is, but if it involves thinking about a person all the time, seeing him everywhere, then I'm in love with you. Ever since that first night, you've been in all my dreams, just standing there. You're always on my mind.”

“Oh, I -” His voice was thick, more Southern than usual. “I think about you a lot, too. I love – I love talking to you, looking at you. I just wish I could make this perfect. I wish I could be physically close to you.”

“In a way, I like being so far from you because it means I can have your soul and your mind without dealing with your body.”

“No, I don't mean sex. In this relationship, I don't want sex right away – I can wait however long for that. I just – I just want to hug you.”

I laughed. “You've hugged me twice already. Hug is such an ugly word.”

“Embrace you then, hold you -”

“Hold, yes. I want to hold you. And I want to be held by you. I want that so much.”

I poured out compliments to him, to his body, his mind, his soul – way too many for Marie Claire, I knew, but I was drunk on sleep and him.

“You are – beautiful,” he said. “And I never told you this, but I love the way you dress. And your body, your waist -”

“You've never seen my body. And you can't see it on the screen, just my shoulders.”

“I saw you in real life,” he said. “I looked at your body. Is that creepy?”

“No. I looked at yours.”

“What should I do,” he said, “How can I make this perfect? I've got to leave, unless – I can always visit you at school.”

Again I was kicked in the stomach by the reality of my body. 

“Oh,” I said, “I couldn't make you do that, that would be too much for me right now -”

“But I want to. You wouldn't be making me do anything.”

“My emotions are running too high for that. I don't know what I'd do.”

“Isn't that perfect, then?”

I changed the subject. “I hope you don't forget about me in 

Colorado.”

“I won't forget you. How can I forget you? This relationship is different, this is forev-”

“But don't stop dating people or anything like that.”

“I don't think I'll be able to date anyone.”

“Why? It wouldn't be fair of me to make you do that, when I can't do anything for you.”

“You can't control what I do. It's just me. I'm stuck on you.” His accent was full strength and twanging like a banjo. “But I don't want to be selfish,” he continued. “I don't want to stop you from having experiences, meeting people -”

“I can't do those things anymore,” I said. “Whenever I'm with 

anyone all I can think about is how much I'd rather be with you.”

And on and on, for hours. I don't think I even got any of this in the right order. Finally I said I'd better hang up – the sky was starting to hint at dawn.

“Sweet dreams,” he said.

And they were sweeter than I ever thought I could have. 

February 8

2/8

Christopher may have been free that night, but I wasn't. That afternoon Mom, Dad, and Abigail arrived at my dorm to take me to the ski resort. I was glad to see them, but my first look at Abigail felt like one of those dreams where all your teeth fall out. Her hair is gone. Her beautiful gold-streaked light brown braid had been replaced with the same androgynous chop sported by all the better-looking butches here. Like them, she looks more like a boy than a girl now. An attractive boy, a really well-dressed boy, but a boy. Actually, she looked a lot like Christopher, but I see him in everything now.

I shared a bed with her at the condominium. Curled up next to her in the morning, in the post-dawn dimness, I got into a sisterly confiding mood. So I told her about Christopher.

“It's like a story,” she said when I was finished.

“Stories come from real life,” I said. I showed her a picture of him with his family.

“He is very handsome,” said my handsome sister. “My, my, my.”

Then Mom came in and jumped under the covers with us like we were all ten years younger than we are. Of course I had to tell her a little, too. As soon as she heard that he was Filipino, her mood changed.

“Filipino men use you,” she said. “They use you and lie.”

I showed her the picture I had showed Abigail. “Oh, yeah, he's baklat,” she said. “He's just using you.”

“You've only seen one picture of him,” said Abigail.

“First impressions never lie,” said Mom. “You can do better. Much better.”

“Like who?” I said.

“Maurice. He likes you.”

I recalled the face of my godbrother Maurice, a less fortunate mixture of Filipino and Caucasian features than most mix kids get, and how he couldn't talk about anything but Avatar: The Last Airbender when our families met at the museum last winter. I knew Mom was recalling his family's sprawling property in Antipolo. Abigail and I groaned in unified protest and we all jumped out of the bed.

Mom and Dad were planning to take Abigail skiing and leave me in the condo that day, but they decided that they'd rather spend the time they had with me instead. We visited the Clark in Williamstown, then had breaked for a vegan lunch at an organic co-op, then drove to North Adams to visit Mass MoCA. The exhibits at Mass MoCA were so interesting this time that we stayed there until closing, and then we went shopping at the really good Goodwill a few blocks away. Dinner was at the Mexican restaurant near the ski resort Mom really likes. The food was good, and the margaritas must have been, too, because Mom laughed and laughed and made funny conversation. When Abigail began to bring up Christopher, though, she said we should change the subject.

The next afternoon they drove me back to Radcliffe. We stopped in Lee, a summer town quiet quiet and abandoned-looking now, for cold lobster rolls at the empty fish house. By the time I got back to my room it was almost six, and I could finally call Christopher.

“So have you ever had a boyfriend or anything?” he started out asking. But I didn't want to tell him anything until he told me about himself.

“I don't really want to tell you about that stuff,” he said.  “It'll make me seem like a jerk.”

“That makes me want to hear it even more,” I said.

“My history with girls is – well, I can count the girls I've been with on one hand.

“Basically, I was selfish. I used them, I led them along. It was all very … animalistic,” he said, borrowing a word I'm fond of. “There was one girl – she really wanted a relationship, like to go on dates and stuff. So we went out a couple of times, but it was really awkward, and I just let it drop.”

“Tell me about the girls.”

“I can tell you about my first time.” I didn't really want to hear it, but I listened. He took a girl out for drinks and sandwiches and then back to his place. His place was a basement with no furniture except an inflatable mattress, which he worried she'd think would seem like somewhere a serial killer would live. From the way he laughed I knew he'd told this story before. “She was a redhead,” he said proudly.

“Oh, good for you,” I said. “Did you find red hairs in corners afterwards?”

“I guess.”

“For me it's usually black hairs,” I said, and I told him some things.

Somehow we ended up talking until one in the morning without any mention of the text exchange from days before. I didn't want to bring it up. By one I just wanted to go to sleep. I said so.

“Talking to you feels so good I don't want to stop,” he said. He did anyway when I insisted.