More Desperate Than Me
by Jamie Lin
It is strange the way the bugs crawl across the ivory surface of the bathroom sink with their tiny combination of limps. They pause when the lights turn on to blink and know enough to avoid the stream of ice-blue water. There is nothing technically cheap about this place but that’s all it reeks of. He lays an arm on my leg as we flip through the channels, squished together on the couch. I keep babbling about a sunrise at five o’clock. He laughs at me, swings an arm around my shoulder, strokes my hair and asks me how I am. It is almost three on a Saturday morning. I am tired but fearful of closing my eyes. This is supposed to be a rowdy house party. It’s only the five of us. He offers me eight different kinds of alcoholic drinks. I am not interested. I told my two friends before we came that they must keep him away from me. At the dance floor two nights ago, he had a hard time letting me go, kept searching for my mouth. His friend fumbles through a stack of DVDs. I rather do his friend. He is taller and he doesn’t try to say shit like I can make you happy.
My friend looks at the one pressed next to me. A moment later, they’re against my leg kissing loudly. I push them over until they both tumble to the floor. His friend covers them with a blanket. I see his hips crushing down on hers beneath the spread of the fabric. I tell them to get a room. They do. We turn the television louder once we start hearing the harsh bed springs, the thumping against the wall and her high-pitched yelps. My other girl friend starts drinking hard liquor with his friend. Before long, she’s laughing too hard and he’s trying to kiss her. They press against my leg too. He grabs her hand to go to another room and I make them stay. She told me earlier that she didn’t want to lose her virginity tonight.
At the very least it is warm in here. Before, we were standing outside of Walmart waiting for him to show up because he didn’t know how to give directions to the cab driver. We thought the cab driver was rather crazy. He told us the continent of Africa looks like the number seven. He had grits and did us a favor of charging fifty dollars even. It was a one and a half hour ride with lots of narrow turns and hasty presses on the brake.
I flip through the channels on his tiny screen, watching the colors flash, blur and blend together. There is a new guy in the room. He arrived a few minutes ago. He is worried because his friend is in jail. That friend may or may not be a drug dealer. I keep my cell phone warm in my hand incase I need to make a quick call. I search the living room and kitchen for cigarettes. My stomach is in knots and the sunrise is nowhere to be found. I dislike being responsible for someone else’s virginity, innocence, so forth. I’d never forgive myself if she ends up like me.
I am not sure what I am doing here in some stranger’s apartment. I thought that it’d be better than lying in bed, sleepless like so many nights before. I can’t sleep because I stopped dreaming. Now when I do close my eyes, I have nightmares. I imagine someone chasing me with a needle aimed for my neck. I imagine half of an arm found in the middle of a green field. I just wanted to have a good time so I’d forget. I want to stop feeling, thinking, yearning. I now realize that what’s worst is going somewhere as an act of desperation with girls more desperate than I am.
At five a.m., after my friend walks out of the bedroom, wet from a quick shower and relaxed from a satisfying fuck, I pull her aside and tell her I want to go home. A few weeks ago, I began calling my dorm room home. It doesn’t even surprise me when I say it anymore.
The three boys agree to drive us back because the taxi ride will cost more than fifty dollars, more than she has. In the back, the boy keeps an arm around me, touching my hair and smelling my ear. His fingers reek of her cunt. I don’t know why I don’t push him out of the car and into the backdrop of the swirling white-lined gray highway. His face is too close to mine. He says, “Smile.” He leans closer and tells me he likes my eyes, my lips, that I have a cute face. He asks me why I look unhappy.
I tell him that I have problems, a lot of problems. He says he can solve all of my problems. I ask him to stop the genocide in Darfur. He says, “Sure, baby, I’ll do that for you.” He strokes my arms, to keep me warm. My friend pretends she doesn’t notice what’s going on in the back.
Once home, I take a shower as hot as I can stand. I watch my skin turn angry and red. I scrub his cologne and his fingerprints from my skin, from my hair, from my ears. I crawl under my bed wet and naked. I stare at the windows and pretend I am better off alone, feeling this way, numb.