Ask me a Question, Please

[I just finished writing this in all my early morning insomnia, and I’m realizing now that it reads like a young adult paperback that bronzed middle school girls buy as a diversion during their summer beach trips, but I don’t really care.]


Today, for Accepted Students day, I stood by St. John’s pond for nearly two hours, branded with a sunflower yellow question mark badge. I had volunteered my time to give directions to all the confused high schoolers and their parents, who were lost in the labyrinth lanes that weave throughout campus. The kids at St. Mary’s interrogated me more than any of the prospectives, in part to mitigate my hands-on-hip boredom and in part to be smart. One boy was rolling his bicycle up the path towards the bell tower with two friends when he turned around to talk with me. 

“Yes, hey, I have a question for you.”

“You go right ahead, sir” I said, taking one fist off of my torso to point at him. We had met the week before in the kitchen at a townhouse party on the greens. My cup was empty, and he was the force field between the oversized Tupperware container (begging to have more red liquid ladled from its bottom) and me. He looked in my direction, smiling but distracted. “What’s a clever way I can tell that guy his fly’s down?” I was so drunk I had to keep one eye closed so that he would remain in focus. “Your barn door’s open,” I told him, leaning in too close and characteristically letting a single lid flutter before he took a side-step so I could reach my intended destination. While I was bending down in my too-tight paisley silk dress (I bought it three years ago at a consignment shop when hunger pangs were a source of pride), I heard him delivering the phrase to the shaven head white boy with the unzipped khaki cargoes. I twisted the upper half of my body around, feet still pointed at the plastic tub (as though they were the fixed roots of that cask) and gave him a thumbs up. The next day at brunch, he saw me and reminded me what his grin looked like. 

So here I was, meeting again with the blue-eyed boy who had to probe drunk girl for a one-liner. He looked at me with all the seriousness he could muster and said, “Are you wearing sunscreen?” I shook my head at him, returning the smile for the first time. 

“You really should be.” 

“Yeah,” his friend to the left agreed. “We should bring you an umbrella.” 

“A parasol!” I said. “And I could wear a dress.” I gestured to my own figure, attempting to show them what my imaginary frock would look like. 

“A kimono,” the boy said. “And you could pose under the cherry blossoms. It would be a whole Japanese theme.” We all stopped to imagine for a moment, and then he said, “But really, you’re right in the sun.” 

“Oh, but don’t worry; I never really burn,” I confessed. “Of course, I say that now, but tomorrow I’ll probably be bright red.”

The three lingered for a few minutes longer to chat, blocking the brick walkway, before the boy from the party asked me to show him the way back to the dormitories. And then there I remained, enveloped in the sun, asking every high school senior who passed if he had any questions. “Really,” I pleaded with them. “I’m bored. Ask me anything. I’ll tell you all the secrets you want to know.” 

Throughout the day, I found myself continually verbalizing this same locution: “The Princeton Review lists St. Mary’s as one of the happiest campuses in the country!” “Everyone does seem really happy here,” they would respond. Or, “So, really, you’re a freshman and you’re already this content? Wow.” And I was happy. I was excited to be sharing with these people, divulging my experiences, telling stories to strangers. (I found myself wishing I had one of those question mark badges to wear every day. All I really want is someone to talk to; it’s so difficult to watch a day drone by without having stumbled upon any sort of real human connection.) 

Later, after a two-hour drive back to Baltimore, I sprawled on the couch in my living room, talking to my mother while she waited for dinner. “Hey, Larry,” she called to my father, who was at work in the kitchen. “How about a beer?”

“I could go for a beer right now,” I said, off-hand. 

“Do you drink a lot of beer?” my mom asked. 

“Do I drink a lot of beer?” I said. It was half a question, half a flat statement, and the words echoed in my head while I tried to formulate a response. “No,” I finally told her, realizing that this would be the first Friday in a long time that I wouldn’t be getting barely-stumble-back-to-my-room drunk. I thought back to all my sloppy dance floor kisses, all my public grinding; I thought back to how typically teenaged I’d let myself become. A year ago, last semester, even, I would’ve looked on at girls like me, partly envious, but mostly disgusted – disgusted by how I’d morphed into a paradigm for all that is wrong with my generation. 

I tried to piece together the events from last weekend – how I’d found myself switching from boy to boy, searching for something stable, someone who would hold me until neither of us could stand up any longer. There was the guy in the navy, the guy who drank from an open bottle of wine (“Classy,” I told him in earnest), the guy who sailed, the guy with the Chinese characters crawling up his arm. Tattoo boy was my answer. He wouldn’t let me leave, but not in the way that’s overbearing, just in the way that we both knew we needed one another for the night. I let him kiss me, even though on his first few tries I told him it wasn’t a good idea. We danced. His hands were everywhere, and I mimicked his touches, and he laughed and asked coyly if I was copying him. “I’m just following your lead,” I said. “That’s what I do – I’m a follow. You have to show me.” At one point, the flower in my hair fell out, and I bent down towards the floor, feeling around to find it. He asked what I was doing, and when I finally had my hands on it, I rose back up to his height, and said, “I can’t lose this. I’ve had it since the eighth grade.” “The eighth grade?” he asked. “Yes,” I told him. “I keep things forever. I hate temporality.” We danced even grittier, and my sequined flower started slipping away once more. “You keep knocking it out,” I said, and he grazed the side of my neck with a few of those half-wet, half-dry kisses. “Is that better?” he asked softly, and I answered with my hands, pulling him in tighter and allowing my fingers to loiter on his back in exploration. We talked about how we couldn’t see anything in front of us, and what we were studying (“I’ll write your papers if you take my tests,” I told him. “We’re a good match.”) We talked about how I liked girls, and how neither of us could really hear the music, and other fragmentary thoughts that I can’t remember now. Eventually, I got angry with him for no reason. 

“This isn’t about you, just so you know,” I said, pushing him away a little. 

“Oh, it’s not?” he asked. 

“No,” I replied, shaking my head. 

“What’s it about?” 

“It’s about this hipster poet thing who I really like,” I divulged, biting my lip. I looked him in the eyes, or where I imagined his eyes would be if I could see, and said, “Why doesn’t he like me?” 

This time, he shook his head at me. “Has he ever danced with you?” he questioned, bringing me in towards him again. 

“Yes,” I whispered, and then looked towards his face once more. “Yes.”

“Then how the hell can he not like you?” he asked, and kissed me for the thousandth time. I didn’t like the way it tasted, and I couldn’t decide if it was because of my own breath or his or a combination, or just the simple fact that I knew I could never like this boy after the evening had concluded. I can’t really coherently remember how the night ultimately did end, actually. A few days later, a friend told me that the smoke detectors went off in the building we were crowded into, so everyone had to evacuate prematurely. What I do recall is that I initially left tattoo boy without much prying away on the part of my sober guardian, Isabel. As we made our way to the door, though, I panicked, and found him again, reaching out for his hand, and he leaned in towards me, but I laughed and shook a finger at him and said, “Not with the lights on, not with the lights on.” Isabel dragged me outside, and I was fine until we had nearly reached our dorm. But as we trekked back on the dirt paths leading towards Queen Anne, I found myself wishing I had asked him back to my room, just so I could have someone to lay next to – a puddle of limbs, limp arms and legs all wrapped around one another. Even in my drunken haze and uncertainties and exhaustion from a week jammed full of dance rehearsals and homework, I knew that in the very least, I needed that.