The Italian girl he met in Nebraska
At that International Conference
For Debate Clubs
Junior Year
Travis named Emily
The girl in U.S. Government
Who gave him a handjob
During the assembly
On safe driving
Junior Year
Christian named Victoria
Who went to another school
And might have been on cocaine
But probably wasn't
They got a room
There were six of them
But at one point
Four of the others
Went out to get food
And Victoria climbed on top of him
It was July
And getting a room
Was something to do
He'd made friends
With a bunch of people
At the restaurant where he worked
And they thought it'd be fun
Since they all lived with their parents
In treacherously dull off-shoots of suburbs
To get a cheap motel room
By the beach
Victoria didn't work there
She was just someone's friend
From another school
Near his school
But he couldn't remember which one
He could remember her being wet with sweat
Hers and his own
Pouring down on him
While she rode him
Right in front of the window
With the blinds left open
So that he could see right out
Across the street
At the strip mall
That nobody ever went to
He stared at the strip mall
And barely noticed when she orgasmed
Without trying
He had managed to divert his attention
And still stay aroused
So she flung compliments at him
As if knowing that he didn't really deserve them
He wasn't a spectacular lover
He was just distracted
He never saw her again
But he named her to Travis
He called her 'this cokehead I banged once'
And there she was
Travis named Nancy Morritt
This girl they both knew
Because she had dated their friend Tony
And he'd tell them all about her abilities
How she sucked
How she smiled while she did it
How many times she'd do it
Without expecting anything back
When Tony moved to Portland
Nancy showed up at Travis' house crying
She fell into his arms
Dragging him down onto the lawn
And with nobody home
He didn't think to try and stop her
When she undid his jeans
And took him inside her
In the grass that really needed to be mowed
Afterwards
They went in his pool
And it seemed like everything was backwards
Because then they went out for dinner
And when he brought her back to his house
He didn't walk her to her car
Because she kissed him on the cheek
And looked at him as if to say
'No, don't worry. I'm all set.'
He felt weird
He felt used, really
If he was being honest
And so he didn't feel bad when he named her
'I had sex with this bitch once. We did it on my lawn'
And there she was
Christian named Mariana
The girl he took to a No Frills concert
Even though that band fucking sucked
And afterwards she was so wired
On the music and his open blue button-down
That she climbed onto him
The minute they were in the car
Why were girls always climbing on top of him?
Did they not feel safe going under him?
Did he seem threatening?
Did they think he was going to escape
If they didn't pin him down?
She turned on the radio
During it
Actually during it
Can you believe that?
She even rooted around
Until she found a song she liked
Then she gyrated to it
And closed her eyes
And Christian couldn't pretend
That he didn't know
She was picturing someone else
He'd never seen a girl
Sing along
To the radio
While screwing
It was weird
So he named her
'This girl I took to a concert'
And there she was
Travis named Jillian Lefertiti
Who they called 'Nefertitti'
But he didn't say 'Jillian' or 'Nefertitti'
Because Jillian was fat
And he didn't want to admit
That he'd given in
When she IMed him one night
Saying--'Come over'
The truth was
He wasn't even horny
He just liked knowing
For once knowing
That it would happen
That sex was going to happen
That he didn't have to try for it
That it wasn't going to be a chase
This was before Nancy
This wasn't like Emily
Who had needed persuading
But maybe only because
They were in the back of the auditorium
This was so easy
He just showed up
And Nef took over
The sex would have been fantastic
If it wasn't drenched in shame
If repulsion
For himself, not so much for her
Hadn't permeated every inch of it
From the bedcovers
To the condom they used
To the towels they used afterwards
To dry themselves off
And when Jillian called
Pretending to have a pregnancy scare
He just hung up on her
Not because he didn't care
But because it was unfair for it to live
It had been a mistake
But it was supposed to be contained
He couldn't handle thinking
That what he'd done could live on
Past those two green towels
With Jillian's initials on them
When she called
And admitted it was a scare
Her confession was given to his voicemail
She begged forgiveness
But it didn't matter
Hating her was out of the question
He just shook his head
She could go again
'I fucked this nasty bitch once.'
There she was
They named these girls
At a bar one night
From ten to closing
They named more girls than these
They named them all
Whores
Sluts
Bitches
And then they fell out into the night
Onto the wooden steps
Leading out of the bar
And onto the gravelly sand
That made up the parking lot
A few blocks away was the ocean
And they somehow got it into their head
That it would be fun to go there
To drive to the ocean
So they hopped in their cars
And by some miracle
Made it to the beach
Without killing themselves
Then they stripped down to their underwear
And ran screaming into the ocean
Christian was twenty-eight
Travis was thirty-one
They were past this, weren't they?
Shouldn't they be past this?
. . . . .
When they got out of the water
They noticed that somehow
Their underwear had disappeared
Beneath the waves
There was sand
Caked to all parts of their body
And they stared
They stared at each other
They just stared
Then they put on their clothes
Without the underwear
They knew had been lost
And lost for good
In an ocean of salt water
Of clarity and function
Of blue and green
Of drunkenness
Where all can really be forgotten
Then they got in their cars
More sober than then had been before
And they drove off
Not saying another word
And in the sand on their bodies
There were names
Names written by fingertips
The names of the girls
Their real names
Traced on the spots of their bodies
Where their muscles were
Where their lines were
Where their sex was
Traced on the beer guts
Traced on the hairy parts
Traced on the fat
The names
All the names
All there
And they couldn't remember
Who had written which name
And on whom
And how something that shocking
That intimately shocking
Could have happened
Without them remembering it
And they kept thinking
Isn't that weird?
Isn't that weird?
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