I arrive now at an incident that I strenuously think around when I think of Nell. All night long, from the moment I spotted her on the street, I’ve been avoiding the memory. I’ve been avoiding the memory for fifteen years. My hope, I suppose, is that if I go long enough without thinking of it, I’ll eventually forget it. But I doubt I ever will.
If she remembers it (of course she remembers it), she most likely misunderstands it. I had just received my Smith rejection in front of her, which she might reasonably assume flooded me with shame and jealousy, but she would be wrong. Reading the letter, I felt neither shame nor jealousy. I felt nothing at all. Or I felt feelings so disparate and conflicting—affront, embarrassment, guilt, relief, unwillingness to let any of this show on my face—that it was easy enough to round them down to nothing. I would most likely have continued to feel nothing, had Nell not said what she said next.
“You wouldn’t fit in there anyway.” She half-laughed. “You’re not gay, so …”
All the rage I had ever carried in my body sharpened itself to the pin-prick point of that unfinished sentence. “Comma-so-dot-dot-dot,” I said. “So what?”
And then I hit her.
I struck her upper arm, just barely redirecting the impulse to slap her in the face—for I truly wanted to hurt her, emotionally if not physically. I hated her. I hated her only for an instant, but I hated her intensely enough to derive catharsis from the impact of my palm on her body, the resounding smack of resistance through her jean jacket sleeve. Then, just as swiftly, the rage passed, leaving in its wake a sick self-horror.
The pause that followed couldn’t have lasted more than a second or two, though what a slow second or two it was. We were standing in the vestibule of my father’s building. I envisioned Nell refusing for the first time to follow me down the stairs, Nell turning and walking out the door and hailing a cab to go home. I don’t know if anything in her demeanor suggested this intention. I have no memory of her face in that moment. Perhaps I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. More likely I looked at her and failed to see her.
I forced myself to smile. In an affectedly breathy voice I lilted, “Bitch-ass motherfucker, don’t even.” I wasn’t imitating ebonics so much as a white gay man’s imitation of ebonics—which is to say that I was imitating Theo, and thereby implying that I was also imitating Theo when I hit her, and that the correct response was to laugh.
Nell laughed, or pretended to. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Theo.”
“You’re right.” It may have been the first time I ever said those words to her. It was certainly the first time I said them in a spirit of anxious appeasement. “When the musical is over,” I said, ignoring its looming cancellation, “we’ll go back to normal.”
I placed my hand upon her shoulder, right above where I’d hit her. I rarely touched Nell, and certainly never touched her with gentleness, so the gesture felt at once momentous and false. I clasped her shoulder through the stiff denim, as though rehearsing my blocking for a play in which I’d been miscast. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go in.”
I was desperately grateful when she complied. As we descended the stairs, I realized I’d felt increasingly desperate around Nell for some time now. She was going to Smith. I was going to lose her. And now, insanely, I had pushed her further away still.
My father’s apartment was dark. On the living room couch, Gareth snored. Nell and I quietly hung up our jackets and tiptoed to my bedroom. I closed the door.
Nell sank to the floor, taking her usual spot on the Persian rug. She rested her back against the wall and settled into a cross-legged position. “I’m so tired,” she said. Her eyes fell shut.
At the sight of her closed lids I was seized with panic, an almost infantile sense of abandonment. She was telling me, I thought, that she would prefer to be unconscious than in my company right now. That was how thoroughly I had wrecked things.
Or she was simply tired. God knows I was.
I lowered myself to the floor beside her—right beside her, closing the careful distance I usually kept from her body. I was acting on instinct, refusing to think about what I was doing or why I was doing it. “Me too,” I said. “I’m just gonna take a quick nap on you, okay?” Theatrically, I fell sideways to the floor.
I positioned my head so that it landed on her thigh. Her flesh squished under the pressure of my face. The rough fabric of her jeans chafed against my cheek. I closed my eyes, shifted slightly, let the full weight of my head settle onto her.
It was the closest physical intimacy I’d ever had with Nell. It was the closest physical intimacy I’d ever had with another girl. It was the closest physical intimacy I’d ever had with anyone. I could tell, by the smell emanating from between her legs, that she was on her period. It was not a smell I found pleasing. Under other circumstances I’d have pulled away from it. Instead I tried not to notice it, tried not to be in my body at all. I wanted her to touch me. I didn’t want her to touch me. I closed my eyes and held my breath.
After a long pause, I felt her hand upon my head. She stroked my hair—a single stroke, so light and gentle it was almost unbearable, like the tickle of an insect on the skin. In the clenching of her thigh under my cheek, in the warmth of her crotch-sweaty lap, I was relieved to feel my own desirability radiating back at me. That would be enough, I thought, to make this endurable. I was beautiful to her. I would not fade into translucence, not so long as Nell loved me.
She spoke, at last, in a strangled voice. “You’re hurting me.”
Trying to interpret this as a direction rather than a rejection, I stiffened my neck to support my head and lessen its weight on her. “How’s this?”
“Get up.”
“I can’t.” I kept my eyes stubbornly closed. “I’m stuck.”
“I have to pee.” She shifted and rolled her way out from under me.
Something tore open inside me. Come back, I nearly cried out as she opened the door and left my bedroom. I was still lying on the floor. I was cold. In the absence of Nell—I was certain of it—I would never be warm again.