like food and sweat and steam.
I’m actually glad we have to wear a baseball cap.
At least I can pull it down over my eyes.
Jason’s photo is tacked
to the bulletin board above my desk.
It’s in a corner almost completely
covered by bits of paper with phone numbers,
postcards from friends, and other junk.
I’m sure nobody would even notice him
in all that mess, but he’s there.
I miss him.
I hear myself say that
and I know it’s ridiculous.
How could I miss someone who was never there?
Especially since I just hooked up with Adam,
but I do.
I miss things about Jason that used to drive me crazy,
like how he never gets angry.
I wish I could be calm all the time,
never neurotic, never obsessive.
I miss how things were familiar with him,
even if it was the familiar feeling
of being let down.
Living with Sarah the first few weeks
is like an extended sleepover party.
We put on mud masks,
sit around, smoke cigarettes, get high,
and listen to the Violent Femmes.
Our dorm room isn’t big,
but at least we’re not in a triple or a quad.
Sarah and I have been moving around our furniture
to get the room just right.
Now our beds are on opposite sides of the room
and there is some sense of privacy.
The best part of our room is the window seat.
Every room on campus has one,
but ours looks out into the woods.
The leaves have already started to change color.
I can be anything I want here.
No one has to know
that I wasn’t popular in high school,
that I’ve never stayed out all night,
that I’m a virgin,
that everything I see reminds me of Jason.
I am born again here.
I’m taking art classes, writing classes, dance classes—
all the things there was no room for before.
I reread Anaïs Nin’s journals
and write in my own
sitting underneath this one tree on the green
with a curved trunk that perfectly fits my back.
I am curled up in my window seat
watching some kids playing Frisbee
when my parents call.
They say my sister isn’t going back
for her junior year of college.
They say she needs to take some time off
and will be moving home to figure things out.
I imagine her back in our house, with our parents,
and it makes me feel like I am the older sister.
Then they ask how classes are,
how bad working in the dining hall really is.
They want to know if I’ve made any nice friends,
or met any nice boys,
and before we get off the phone
they say, “It’s all up to you.
You’re the one in school now.”
I think it’s supposed to be a joke,
but it’s really not funny.
Meeting new people
feels like dating.
I try to find someone I like,
casually start a conversation,
and hope we have things in common.
Only sometimes when I talk to people
I have no idea what they’re saying.
I only hear my voice in my head
as their lips move, telling me
if they looked hard enough
they would see fear behind my eyes.
Things move fast here.
Adam’s already ended things,
saying, “This is too much, too soon.”
It was just like when Jason and I broke up
for the first time, a few weeks before my prom.
As he told me that he couldn’t deal with me
trying to deal with him,
I tuned him out, focused on some leaves
blowing back and forth.
I did it again in Adam’s room,
stared at his leopard-print sheets
and thought to myself,
my heart can’t take this again.
The weather has turned
and Sarah and I put on jackets
before we leave for an off-campus party.
It’s dark—
not like New York City dark,
but pitch-black-middle-of-nowhere dark.
It feels like when Claire and I snuck out at camp,
only this time we aren’t going to get caught
and I can smell dry leaves in the air
instead of earthy humidity.
We cut through the trees and someone’s backyard
and end up on a gravel road.
I can see the house in the distance,
smell the smoke from the bonfire,
and hear the hum of people and music.
It feels weird being here,
watching people talk—
I try to look comfortable.
I try to look relaxed.
I try to drink the beer,
but I can’t stand still.
Sarah and I walk around
and meet a pair of freshmen, Brian and Steve.
I start talking to Brian,
manage to get down my beer, fill my cup again,
and lose Sarah.
Brian walks me back to my room
and before I know it, we are kissing
and my top is off.
It feels good to kiss him,
to have his weight on top of me.
We are only kissing a few minutes
before he goes to unbutton my jeans.
I pull his hand back
and he lets it get tangled in my hair.
It doesn’t take long
before he is back at my pants.
I move his hand, but he tries again.
I break away and just stare at him.
Is he stupid?
When I tell him to go
he gives me this wet-eyed-puppy look,
gets out of bed, picks up his sweatshirt,
and leaves.
I move through friends quickly.
I rarely see Josh anymore
and things with Sarah aren’t as easy
as I thought they would be.
We barely talk now.
We are all looking for someone
to stay with,
someone to be permanent.
The possibilities are overwhelming,
they make me restless.
There were forty kids in my graduating class
and here there are more than seven hundred.
I hang out inseparably with someone
for a few days.
We devour each other,
tell all our stories,
and then move on.
Things here are not stable.
I think I might be turning into a slut.
I stay out late,
don’t tell anyone where I’m going
or where I’ve been.
It’s barely been two months
and I’ve hooked up with four guys:
Adam;
Brian;
Tim, who kissed like a frog;
Bob, who didn’t believe I was a virgin.
I’m not used to there being so many guys around,
so many parties, so many people who don’t know me.
The not-so-funny part about Adam
is that now he’s got a girlfriend
only a few weeks after telling me
he didn’t want a relationship.
She
’s gorgeous, with blond hair,
green eyes, big tits.
At first I thought
he was a lying shit.
But now I see
he just didn’t want
a relationship with me.
This strange thing happens
when I am lying in bed with a guy.
I cannot breathe.
My breaths are either too deep
or too shallow.
Too slow or too quick.
Feeling the guy’s chest rise against
my back confuses my own rhythms.
I feel like I have to match his
and I can never seem to catch up.
I just lie there, waiting
for our breaths to sync
or to be able to pull myself away
enough to breathe on my own,
uninfluenced.
It’s crazy, but I miss Jason.
With him there were never any surprises.
I could always count on him letting me down.
I shut my eyes
and I see Jason.
I see his skin.
I can feel him kissing me.
I should take down his picture.
It shouldn’t even be here.
I don’t understand what’s happening.
I am sitting in Writing Seminar
and it feels like my hands are shaking,
like I’ve got a tremor.
I try hard to focus, stare at my hands,
but I can’t tell whether or not they’re shaking.
I don’t understand why I can’t tell.
I should be able to tell
if my own hands are shaking.
My eyesight can’t be trusted.
I’d try sitting on my hands,
but that would make people stare,
if they haven’t already noticed the shaking.
I try clasping my hands together,
but that’s no good, either.
I can see myself with my hands together,
banging them up and down on the desk
like a piston, like a cartoon sledgehammer.
I see myself doing it,
but I know I’m not.
I can’t be.
If I were, people would be staring.
When class is over,
I am tired and sweaty.
I didn’t see anyone looking at me,
so I must not have done anything crazy.
Maybe I’m getting sick
or maybe I’m finally addicted to cigarettes.
This feeling, the sweating, the shaking—
it must be a nicotine fit.
I go outside with the other smokers,
suck down a few cigarettes before class,
hoping it will make me feel better,
hoping it will calm my nerves.
A friend of Sarah’s from psych class
comes by to pick her up for a party.
Her name is Rebecca.
When I introduce myself
she says that we’ve met before—
that she remembers my eyes.
I feel kind of stupid
for not remembering her,
but she doesn’t seem to care
and invites me to go with them to the party.
When we get there,
Rebecca and Sarah start dancing.
I lean on one of the speakers instead,
let the bass crawl over my back like fingers
and watch kids in big pants
dance in the light and smoke.
Rebecca grabs my hand
and pulls me onto the dance floor.
I can’t stop watching the people around me—
watching what they do,
watching to see if they are watching me
dancing like an idiot.
Rebecca is dancing with her eyes shut
and she is smiling.
She doesn’t care what anyone thinks
and it is amazing.
Rebecca and her friends
have been together since the first week.
There’s her roommate Rachel,
and Amanda, Tara, and Jennifer.
We all hang out in Rebecca’s room and they joke about
how they stopped hanging out with this crazy girl Monica
at the same time they started hanging out with me—
like I took her spot.
Being with them is like walking in
after a play has already started.
You try to slip in quietly and find your seat,
but people turn around, give you dirty looks,
and whisper to their neighbors
about how rude you are.
A few months ago,
leaving for college seemed glamorous,
but now it’s hard to believe
that this little dorm room,
with its scratchy sheets
and a lock that sticks,
is home.
It’s hard to accept
that this is my new life,
that these are my new friends.
I am one in many here.
There are dozens here as good as me,
even more who are smarter,
funnier, prettier.
And it scares me
because before I stuck out
and now I blend in
like a pair of khakis
and a baseball cap
at a keg party.
I can’t sit still in class.
I can’t hear what the teacher is saying.
All I can hear is my voice in my head
telling me that things are not right—
that I am not right.
I am trapped in this classroom.
It feels like something
is trying to push its way out of me,
out of my chest.
I feel like everyone can see it bubbling up,
like they’re waiting for me to burst,
to boil over.
I have to get out of here.
I fake a coughing fit and leave,
but once I get in the hallway
I realize I’m still trapped—
stuck inside of this shaking, sweating body.
I’d rip my skin off if I could.
The only place that seems safe
is the bathroom.
Sitting in a stall, with my chest on my thighs,
I try to breathe,
But the more I think about my breathing,
the more I feel like I can’t breathe.
It feels like I have a raging fever,
like my insides are melting.
This must be what it feels like
the moment before you die.
I have been telling myself
that these feelings are new,
but they aren’t.
I just didn’t connect them before.
I felt it the first time I smoked pot junior year.
At first things were fun,
but then everything broke.
It felt like my chest caved in
and I couldn’t tell the difference
between the bass in the music
and a car alarm going off outside.
I couldn’t get my mind to stop racing.
I felt like I had no control over my body—
like my arms and legs were twitching.
I thought I was going to have to go to the hospital.
I thought I was going to die.
I told myself it was the pot.
But it happened again,
before college,
when I wasn’t high.
I was in Staples with my dad,
shopping for school supplies.
All of a sudden the ground felt soft
and the sounds around me
were too fast and too slow
at the same time.
I thought I would lose control,
do something crazy—start scr
eaming
right there in the pen aisle.
My dad would know.
Everyone would know.
Now this feeling follows me
everywhere I go.
It clings to me,
makes my skin crawl,
makes my skin burn
when I walk across campus,
when I check books out of the library,
when I talk to my friends.
It sits with me in class,
whispers in my ear,
tells me that I shouldn’t be here.
iii.
Please God make this feeling stop.
I can’t take it.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Make it stop.
Please.
Must concentrate on something,
anything.
8:00 A.M.
Smack alarm clock.
Haul ass out of bed.
Shower with very hot water.
8:23 A.M.
Dress.
Paint over dark circles under eyes.
Add color to cheeks.
8:47 A.M.
Eat breakfast alone.
Avoid caffeine.
Try to ignore all the noise.
9:03 A.M.
Smoke cigarette.
Go to Writing Seminar.
9:34 A.M.
Feel light-headed.
Feel like passing out.
Fake coughing fit.
Leave class.
Drink water.
Go to bathroom.
Pull down pants.
Sit on toilet.
Put chest on thighs.
Stare at tiles.
Breathe deeply.
Breathe deeply.
9:39 A.M.
Get a grip.
Return to class.
10:00 A.M.
Go back to dorm room.
Get under covers.
Sleep.
12:45 P.M.
Eat lunch with friends.
Try to ignore the noise.
1:20 P.M.
Smoke cigarette.
Go to Freshman Seminar.
1:46 P.M.
Feel like people are staring.
Feel hot.
Feel cold.
Feel out of control.
Fake coughing fit.
Leave class.
Drink water.
Go to bathroom.
Pull down pants.
Sit on toilet.
Put chest on thighs.
Stare at tiles.
Breathe deeply.
Breathe deeply.
1:54 P.M.
Get a grip.
Return to class.
There’s this warm white light
that comes in the window