Love and Learn

Is this a joke?

College.

It was time. The high school hallway was getting claustrophobic. Too many girls looking at me sideways now, Freshmen being warned to stay away. Dudes shaking their heads asking me how I managed. And too many people wondering why I didn't have a girlfriend. Do you have a girlfriend, Jackson? Why not? Coming up with answers got real tedious.

But why would I want a girlfriend? Of all the things to play with at the park, how could I possibly choose just the one frisbee to catch?

Filling out the paperwork for housing, they asked, Co-ed floor or boys only floor?  Check a box.

Is this a joke?

Seeing girls outside was one thing. Living in close quarters, something else. I was not prepared.

Girls on my floor, in pajamas, carrying their shower caddies, hair wet, toothpaste smell. Barefoot on the rug or flip flops if they're squeamish. Walking in groups or alone. Flipping their hair or tying it up. Girls with their doors open, putting make up on, on their laptops, folding laundry, or just sitting there, as if they're saying come on in. Well, don't mind if I do. Bumming around all night on the floor, room to room, getting the lay of the land, then up to the other floor, room to room there. Then get invited to the quad across campus, same but different. Different girls. So many, each one filled with her own secrets and things she could show me, show me and not even realize it.

Say what you will about me, but I remember every single one. Every single one meant something, no matter how people judge.

Jennifer. Jennifer was round all over. Round face, round breasts, round belly, round ass, blond hair soft like a cloud in a round bob. She came in one day, hey can I borrow some microwave popcorn, and stayed. Door closed, roommate sexiled. Looking at her trying to figure out if I was reading her right, sitting there on my bed, biting her lip. Then, she knelt up, reaching for something on the top shelf, tiny shorts riding up, little flash of the crease between her round ass and back of the thigh. Her skin as smooth as if airbrushed. I touched it, that sexy crease with that smooth skin. She froze but didn't move away.

"Well, finally," she said over her shoulder.

So, I'd been reading her right.

"Don't you have a boyfriend?"

"He's not here, is he?"

Apparently, who gave a shit about a theoretical distant boyfriend at a different school? She didn't, obviously. Why would I?

I asked, "You wanna hook up with me, Jennifer?"

I got bedroom eyes in response.

I touched that butt crease again but looking her in her bedroom eyes this time, watching them glaze over. Reading her right and now she told me straight out.

Burying myself in female flesh, enveloped everywhere by softness of skin and thigh and downy hair, arms wound around my neck, her mouth an O, and another O down below. How soft and open a girl can be. How gentle I could be in a museum of meringue.

I think she broke up with her boyfriend eventually. I saw her eyes seeking me out in a crowd, the caff maybe, or at a game, like she was looking for something. But we'd stopped messing around by then.

***

Mallory. Catholic as fuck, didn't know they made them that way anymore.

She warned me. "I have hangups," she said, "I know it, but I don't care."

"Everyone has hangups."

Now I was curious, curious about what she meant by that.

She was an anything-but girl, is what she meant by that.