Chapter 19: Sex and the Single Undergrad

Is That What You’re Wearing?

The humid summer weather came back to campus at the end of the month.  Temperatures were in the low 80s by noon.  Ben walked out of Spanish class and was trying to tie his jacket around his waist with little luck when he spotted Jeremy, in his Lycra shorts, sitting on the wall by the Fine Arts Center reflecting pool (empty as always due to leaks). 

“Well hey,” Ben said.  “Are you heading to the gym?”

Jeremy gave him a puzzled look. “No, why?”

“Never mind.”

Jeremy, Ben had learned, took things seriously and didn’t get sarcasm.  But then, you’d need to be serious with Arturo as a boyfriend.  Ben had learned that Arturo wasn’t just being friendly when he’d seek out the new kid in the room. There was an inappropriate hand on the ass, or brush against the crotch, usually followed by a “just kidding.” But Arturo wasn’t always kidding. Apparently that monogamy didn’t exclude groping green undergrads, but Jeremy never acknowledged if he saw anything. 

Jeremy kept his distance from most of the other guys his age. Ben had yet to see him acknowledge either Richard or Tobe.

“So where are you off to?” Jeremy asked him.

“To the fabulous dining hall,” Ben said. Stop with the adjectives, you sound like an idiot. “Are you on the meal plan?”

“I am, but I ate.  I’ve got to study for a chemistry test.”

“Hard sciences, ugh,” Ben said. 

Jeremy didn’t react. “Are you going to the party Saturday?” he asked.

“No where? Here on campus?”

“No, in Hampstead at Josh and Sharon’s.  Have you met either one?”

“I’m not sure; I’ve been introduced to so many people so far…”

“Josh has a ponytail, he’s Richard’s boyfriend?”

“I don’t know Richard all that well.”

“Sharon is short, shaved head,” Jeremy continued. “About two hundred pounds …”

Ben had definitely seen her in the UGLBA office.  She’d struck Ben as being unfriendly and moody. 

“What time does it start?”

“No idea. I figure Arturo and I will get there at about nine or so, but call me and I’ll give you directions.  I’d go with you, but Arturo and I are going to see La Femme Nikita beforehand. Hold out your hand …” 

Ben stuck out his hand, palm up. Jeremy turned it over. “You won’t sweat it off on this side,” he said, taking out a pen. He wrote his number down.  It occurred to Ben too late that he could have just used a piece of notebook paper, but it was nice to have Jeremy holding his arm.  The pen tickled.

“I’ll write it down as soon as I get back to the dorm,” Ben said. “Thanks.”

“You should go.  A lot of us will be there, and it’s easy to get to.”

“But the buses?” Ben asked.  The idea of going to a party alone made him uneasy. 

“What about the buses?” Jeremy asked.

“I can barely afford a can of soda at the snack store, how much does it cost?”

“You are new.  Dummy, during the school year, all the buses are free,” Jeremy started walking backwards, still talking. “Call me tonight.”

Ben nodded.  He looked down at the number on his hand.  Jeremy had nice handwriting.  

Sex and the Single Undergrad

“I think I ought to be paid extra just to put up with Sabra leering at my tits the entire time,” Julia said.

“You don’t have tits,” Maria said.

“That’s what makes it extra annoying.”

“Does she mentally undress you with her eyes?”

“She does everything. I must turn her on.  She’s always, always nervous when I talk to her, she looks away, she stammers …” Julia said.  She was exaggerating.  Sabra had barely glanced her way most of the time but she needed to keep Maria amused.  They didn’t have much to say unless they tried to outdo one another. 

Working at the Center was proving to be as fun as a dirt nap.   Macon Brigham was ineffective.   He’d developed a nervous tic that made him blink and wince as though somebody invisible was constantly throwing a punch at him.  He had also been claiming to have the highest IQ recorded.  Carlos, the lone grad student employee, was convinced that Macon had lied about his car accident to make people feel sorry for him but Carlos was another story.

When Sabra was in the office, Carlos made a show of huddling over the file cabinet.  When Sabra was out, Carlos sat on the couch reading old issues of The Advocate that would be missing the pull-out personal ads by the time they went back on the shelf.

Julia had only worked with Ben that first day he was there; she had no idea of his work ethic. 

“The newsletter comes out once a month, so I barely ever have to be there, but I still get keys to the office so I can use the office whenever I want, to use the computer or whatever after hours.”  Not that she planned one spending too much time in a University office that had been converted from a resident director’s apartment. 

Maria snubbed her cigarette out on the steps. “Cedrick fucked me in the ass the other night,” she said. 

Julia wasn’t sure how she was supposed to respond to that. “And how is Cedrick?”

“He’s great,” Maria said. “You should definitely meet him, maybe Jonah could come too.”

“Jonah’s so busy DJing that I barely see him,” Julia said. “So you’ve been dating Cedrick nearly three weeks?  A new record.”

“Almost.”

“Going to some fancy restaurant in Hampstead to celebrate that you can’t afford?”

“There’s no such thing as a fancy restaurant in Hampstead,” Maria reached for her cigarette case and opened it. “Empty.”  She threw the back in her bag, then continued to stare into it frowning. “Oh wait, wait, I have something to show you, did you read this one today …” Maria pulled a copy of The Patriot out.

“Why do you read that shit?” Julia asked. 

“I don’t, but I bumped into Terri in the Student Union and she was on the warpath,” Maria said. “It’s here in their editorials.”

“The entire paper is an editorial, it’s a lame paper run by stupid white men,” Julia said. “The Young Conservatives suck.”

“It’s still more amusing than The Daily Centaur, and it only comes out once a month.” Maria unfolded the paper, and read the headline. “’Gays begin annual recruiting drive’ and look, there’s a photo of Ryan and Macon at the table.” 

Julia took the paper from her.

“Oh damn, I just missed having my picture taken that day and I was looking so pretty.  I can pretty much figure out what the article says.”

“You should respond to it in that newsletter you’re working on,” Maria said.

“Maybe. I have some pretty definite ideas of what I’ll do, but I don’t want the newsletter to give these idiots any more publicity.”  Which was somewhat untrue; Julia would have loved to respond, but Sabra was making it clear that she had the ultimate veto power and had said she didn’t want to be caught in the “petty battles” between student groups. 

Julia was sick of thinking about Sabra. Time to change the subject. “So, how well did Cedrick fit inside your butt?”

Chapter 17: Egg Toss

Egg Toss

Sabra Gould didn’t notice that the Diversity Center had been egged until she got up to the front steps.  She looked around as though the perpetrators were hiding somewhere, but that was ridiculous.  This was definitely a middle of the night prank.

“Fucking assholes,” she muttered. Not  9 a.m. and I’m already pissed off.

She put down the two heavy boxes containing the October newsletter she’d been carrying and fumbled in her jeans pocket for her keys.  College students or not,  Dickinson residents or not, ignorance was no excuse for this happening again.  Since the Center had been established in this residential area, there had been broken windows, nasty phone calls, most of it originating from drunken frat boys but there were never any witnesses.  The attacks were often on weekends, and were never discovered until much later, usually by Sabra. 

“There’s nothing we can do except report it,” the campus cop had said the day the overhead window above the couch in the main room had been kicked in. The cop appeared uncomfortable and once he looked around, he went back and stood in the doorway. “We’ll never be able to find whoever did it.”

“But this isn’t the first time,” Sabra said.

“That’s not a homophobic incident, most likely,” the cop had said. “The sidewalk is up the slope from here. That just looks like a basement window from where they walk by, they most likely kicked it in because it was there. Drunken antics.”  It may not have been a homophobic incident, but the problem was that the cops downplayed everything.  They may as well have been on the side of the aggressors.  What the fuck, it’s a state school, Sabra thought, it's not like any rich parents were withholding endowments in lieu of things being swept under the rug.

A report was completed, the glass was replaced, the University “looked into it” and that was it. 

Sabra wouldn’t call the cops about the egging; they didn’t respond kindly to calls about events of this small magnitude.   Sandy the grouchy maintenance woman could clean up the egg when she came to empty the wastebaskets at noon. Sandy wouldn’t be happy but unlike the cops, Sandy on occasion showed a little bit of sympathy.  

Sabra opened the front door to the office slowly.  There was no draft of air; nothing was open or broken but the sliding patio doors had all been egged as well, every last one.   If somebody had been at the office when it happened, they could have recorded it in the incident book.  Sabra had created the book herself and encouraged any students to report homophobic encounters in it.  The incidents recorded were one more thing for the end of year report Sabra would submit to prove the campus was a hostile environment, and that it was necessary to give the Center more funding in the next go-round.

Two minutes past nine.  Another day.  Turn on the coffeemaker, turn on the lights, put lunch in the fridge, and get it together without losing your mind. 

Shit, I left the boxes on the steps.

She walked out of the small kitchenette and jumped. Somebody was standing outside on the patio.  It was Julia Wood. 

Sabra pushed the eggy glass door open. “Why are you standing out here?”

Julia slid in past Sabra. “I forgot my key and nobody ever hears me when I knock on the door,” she said, throwing her bag in the nearest chair.  Julia walked into the kitchen and opened the top cabinet looking for teabags. “That’s a nice present they left for us out there.”

“You didn’t lose your key did you?”

Julia pulled out a box and put in on the counter. “No, I just misplaced it.  I’ll find it.  Do you think we’ll have time to talk about the newsletter today?” 

Julia had been hired last week; admitting in the interview that it was only the third time she’d ever come over to the Center, but she wanted to use her work study money for the undergraduate PR job.  Basically, PR for the Center amounted to working on the newsletter.  Carlos, a grad student getting his MFA, handled most of the press releases when he wasn’t hung over.

 “I don’t know, maybe this afternoon,” Sabra said. “There’s a new work study student named Ben starting later this morning that I need to train. Do you know him?”

 “Tall guy?”

“Yeah, he’s pretty tall.  If you’re here when he arrives, welcome him, don’t scare him off…”

Julia looked mock offended. “Never!” she said. “And then will you have time to sit down with me?”

“Maybe,” Sabra said.  “I have a lot of things to get together.”

“How many undergrads are you going to hire?”

Sabra shrugged. “You, Macon Brigham and Ben.  I think that’s it. I don’t have to pay you, so it doesn’t matter to me.”   And thank god. Undergrads were just a waste of time anyway, but it was good to pass the shit-work off on them.

Sabra went out to get the boxes. When she came back in, Julia was on the phone at the front desk.  Sabra deposited the boxes on the desk. “Thanks for the help.” 

“Don’t mention it,” Julia picked up the newsletter and looked at it frowning.

“So, do you think you can do a better job on that this year?”

“Oh definitely,” Julia said. “It’ll be like going from a church bulletin to The New Yorker.”

Sabra, who had been producing the newsletter from the start, glared at her. 

Cocky bitch.

Encounter at The Blue Book

“Todd, right?”  Ben something-or-other stood by the table holding a cup of coffee and his bright red backpack. 

“Yes,” Todd said, not thrilled at being interrupted. “And you’re Ben?”

“Yeah.  I’ve been seeing you everywhere,” Ben said. “So I wanted to introduce myself.”  Ben stood there smiling, waiting for the invite to sit down. 

Todd sighed inwardly.   So much for being alone.  “Sit down if you want,” Todd said. “I’m just studying.  I have a big test.”  Which was a lie. 

Ben threw his backpack in an empty chair.  The table wiggled and the coffee splashed out of Ben’s cup onto the table. “Damn,” Ben said. “Do you have an extra napkin?”

Todd handed him one.

“Hot chocolate,” Ben explained. “I’m too much of a wimp for coffee.”

 “Keeps you up?” Todd asked.

“That and I just never acquired a taste for it,” Ben said. “If I’m bothering you I’ll leave. I just wanted to say hi.”

Todd looked at him again.  Ben seemed normal enough.  Plus, Darin was the only person he’d gotten to know so far, and that was already going to shit.  Time to meet new people.

“No, go ahead, stay,” Todd said. “I’ll be here for a while anyway.”  He pushed his book to the side.  He’d been trying to write a sentence for the last ten minutes and he still couldn’t make it sound right. “You’re new here too, right?  It’s big, huh?”

“It’s not as big as I’d expected it to be,” Ben said. “Just different. I transferred here from another school. I’ve been coming here to the Blue Book at night to be around people.  The dorm room is suffocating.”

“Oh god, you don’t know suffocation until you’ve been in my room,” Todd said.

“How so?”

“It’s a long story.”

 “You’re roommates with Darin?” Ben asked. “You don’t get along?”

“It’s not a good sign when it’s not yet October and I’m ready to kill him.  I’ve tried to do something about the situation but nothing’s helped.”  

“What’s he done?”

“Do you want a list?”

Ben sat back with a puzzled expression. “I thought you guys were boyfriends.”

Todd sighed. “No, we fooled around but we weren’t boyfriends.  I’m beginning to regret I ever did anything with him.  Does everybody think that?”  That would make the next coffee social uncomfortable.

“I haven’t taken a survey, but people know you hooked up.”

“Great.” Word had traveled. “No, we’re definitely not boyfriends.  I don’t think we’re even friends.”

Ben shook his head. “How they can expect people to get along in a room the size of a postage stamp is something only they know.”

 “I’m glad I’m not going out with him anyway,” Todd said. “There are too many cute guys here.”

“At school or here at the Blue Book?”

“Both, don’t you think so?”

“Yeah … yeah,” Ben said. “And I can’t believe I’m talking about it so openly with somebody.  I’m still new at all this stuff.  I got a job at the Center as the staff librarian.  It sounds better than it is.”

“They have a library there?”

“Small one,” Ben said. “But it’s good.  You should check it out.”

 “Maybe.  I’m new to all of this too,” Todd said. “For the most part.”  Do family members count?

Ben glanced over at what Todd was working on; it didn’t look like an assignment, but a letter.  There was an addressed envelope half-hidden under a notebook but Ben made out the city.

It was addressed to Buffalo.