You’re still in those early moments—the delicious serendipity of free drinks, his smile, the sweet, un-nameable taste on his lips—as you stand next to him in CVS, waiting for him to buy condoms. At this stage, it is okay to let yourself believe he is just like you.            

But if you find yourself recalling aloud, as he waits for his debit card to approve the purchase, how a month ago, during Sex Awareness Week, on-campus volunteers in front of the quad were handing out free condoms and you said no, thinking I won’t need them anytime soon, even though the volunteer girl thought you seemed a little weird, then you’ve gone too far.

_

When you see his place, the cleanliness of his room, how the bed is made, books perfectly aligned in alphabetical order on a shelf above, don’t let this unnerve you.

As he takes off his jacket and slings it over the back of a chair, try not to think about when you had your last wax, or about the general lack of genital grooming that has accompanied this semester due to taking eighteen hours, all of the essays you’ve bullshit your way through.

He doesn’t need to know; he goes to another school, a private one. But you should warn him you haven’t done anything in a while, it’s been too long since you went all the way with anyone. Like, over a year. The admission makes you look humble, more virginal, and southern men seem to prefer virgins. Don’t mention it has really been two-and-a-half years.

_

That first night, when you’re finished, tell him that back home, you used to give all of your friends piggy-back rides. Even to the guys who were twice your size, you would say, “hop on!” proving that your muscles were every bit as strong as the boys’.

“But there was this one time where Chad’s buddy jumped before I was ready, and my neck did this awful twist” [mime the action] “but I didn’t go to the doctor and the pain went away after a few days so I figured I was alright.”

_

You can’t tell him that when you first moved here, you went down on two dudes in Sigma Alpha Whatever. You weren’t drunk, there was no party, and you can only remember the dudes by the way their yellow and black shirttails made them look like wasps. Keep something for yourself.

_

Ask if he’s ever thought about being gay.

“Do you want me to be gay?” he says.

Don’t reveal that it would make the afterwards easier; that picturing him with another guy is a kind of turn-on; while picturing him with another girl is a kind of evisceration.

But your first boyfriend is gay now, which makes you uncomfortable, like you had treated him so poorly or been so unattractive that women ceased to arouse him, that sexuality was something you could adjust like the temperature in a room.

“And when I asked if his flip was because of me, he said, ‘does a chicken have lips?’”

_

And no, you won’t know what to do with the after, when a jostle on the T ride home reminds you of how he moved within you, how, miraculously and at the same time, you seemed to move in him, like a great ship of old, doomed perhaps, but plunging ahead nevertheless at full steam.

_

Try football. You will seem more like one of the boys, and he will appreciate your trying. Plus, you like the idea of exhibiting a more traditional manliness than he does, so when you go to Charley’s Pizza Café because he doesn’t know how to cook, stay after your food is ready and watch the Patriots because you want to.     

Yell “get, ge-et him!” as the Saints make an eighty-yard run. If they score, chew on your jacket and pretend he isn’t there. “Oh my God!” you could say and maybe slam your fist against the table-top, startling the other patrons as he laughs. Take this time to remember, it is only a game.

_

Resist the urge to laugh as he explains to you how he’ll know the one.          

“It’s simple: Thanksgiving. Without my asking or complaining, she will make a plate of leftovers and join me on the couch—we’ll be so in sync that we’re hungry at the same times.”            

Don’t laugh but acknowledge the feeling that this is most likely not the first time he has told this to a girl while he folds his underwear in front of her.            

“So?” he will ask.            

Say you’re sure he tells that to all the girls.

_

Explain the yellow umbrella, how he holds it in your dreams, how everyone who has ever been anything to you has held this same umbrella in these same dreams, how your mother had similar premonitions right before one of her boyfriends died in a car accident, for which she blames herself—“and I love you so much I could eat you.”            

“Really?”            

You nod your head. “But don’t let me get fat.”       

“I won’t let you get fat.

“I’m serious,” you say.

He assures you that under no circumstances will he let you get fat. You pause, let him think this conversation is over, then ask if he would still love you, if you were fat?

“Of course!”

“No, no, no.

_

You may want to rearrange your priorities: him, school, job, friends, family, then you. If you have reached this stage, then congratulations! This is what we call devotion, this is when someone matters to you more than he was meant to. He will feel it in how you won’t leave him alone, in your love that others will claim looks strangely like paranoia. And if he—what’s that?

If he leaves? Well…know that it will hurt only as much as you allow it to hurt.

————————————————————————

Lukas Tallent lives in New York City. His work has recently appeared in On the Run, autofocus, SORTES, and many other places. You can find more of him at lukas-tallent.com.

Art on title page:
Roger Camp
Rope:Webbing, Hawaii
Photograph
Taken on Kodachrome 25