chapter 1. chapter 2. chapter 3. chapter 4 part 1. part 2. chapter 5. chapter 6.
Packed Thursday night at the bar. Underclassmen don't take classes on Friday. They also do not tip, so I tip 5 dollars for a vodka soda and a rum and coke. The Barge is styled after an East Village no-wave dive, down to its smoke-stained walls and unseemly linoleum floor. It boasts lots of beers, no kitchen, Wi-Fi in the afternoons and underage patrons.
Paul and Jimmy are talking about Chapo by the water dispenser. The morning Hilary lost, every girl was stumbling around the dining hall, crying and calling her parents. And then this kid down the hall from me took a year off because his family had to fight his deportation. Jorge works in the bike shop in town now and I run into him sometimes. There's a kid sorta in the way and I wait a second before I just brush past her with a sorry. "Asshole," she says, but the din of the bar nearly drowns her out so I know it doesn't matter.
I sit back in a booth, across from Marnie Hathard, who wears a hooded chore jacket, large wireframes and an anguished smile. She's in my garment seminar. We've been talking about mostly nothing. I delivered a tirade about clothing, how fashion is marketing at its core, which is capitalism’s fourth or fifth worst development, and how the KHole PDFs were not seen as overt mockeries of trend forecasting but misunderstood as explicit guides to it. She said something, or she nodded, I don’t remember. I referred to Gap Inc. executives and London high street creative directors and "self-starter" establishment-backed designers in Europe as "lizard-brained thieves." I was getting to the destructive and useless hiking thing going on, and how it's built on the unimpressed backs of inventive graffiti writers and those people who die backpacking across the country when she asked me for a drink.
I slide her the vodka soda and ask if she's seen Carter. I only approached her to bother him, knowing she'd be too nice to do anything but writhe in her seat every time I got up, but I’m starting to feel bad about it. Sometimes that's all you can get when you want to hurt someone random and get away with it. Carter's on the other end of the bar, nursing a Genesse with Sheila from the music conservatory and a girl I don’t know. I am ticked at him because he got the last section in Bart's video. I do not mean to imply I had any chance of getting it; I have never been good at skateboarding. In high school, I actually had a camera before Bart did. I could only afford a Canon GL1 and a dinky fisheye, and he got a Century Optics MK1, ostensibly for me. Once he rolled up to a session with the Sony VX, I let him have it back.
Outside, snowflakes flutter quietly to the ground. Bart smokes a cigarette, chatting with Zack Marino. We exchange greetings, and I ask if Bart's seen Eve, as I am supposed to meet her here. Zack sucks his teeth.
"What's that, man," I want to say, but instead, I say, "Just for a drink or two."
"She's around--"
Eve taps me on the shoulder. "Joy?"
“Hey.”
“Sorry for keeping you waiting. I got sucked into a like, news spiral on Al Jazeer’. Y’know, that stuff in Yemen-”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. I watch snow fleck her stiff hair, woven through a wool scarf and splaying out onto her parka.
Eve fidgets, leaning back and forth between her leg on the curb and the one in the street. “You wanted to get a drink?”
“Yeah, it’s a little packed in there-”
“We could go back to yours if you want.”
“Well, Tracy’s out of town…” This is not much of a change of plans. There’s less time spent getting our jackets stepped on. I do want a polite out, in case I come to my senses and just go home alone. Without a bar and a table, what is there to say? A thing I already said.
I lead the way into my empty apartment, turning on a lamp and running off into my bedroom to take my shoes and coat off. I reemerge and see a polite Eve, still in her parka, looking about the living room. She comments on some piece of houseware and I reply that it’s Tracy’s; this happens three times as she gets settled in. I grab an opened bottle of shit wine from the fridge and two glasses. There's a Pavement record on the turntable - New York girls hate college rock - so I put it on and sit beside her on the couch.
“Oh, I love this record,” Eve says. “Wowee Zowee…”
“Yeah, it took some time," I say, feigning ignorance, "but it really grew on me.”
“I’d say it's their best, but no one ever agrees with me. There's a pop record in there.”
I stare at her. "You think?"
"Don't get me started. Malkmus is, of course, a genius, but… well."
There is a running checklist in my head - something I probably put to text once or twice as a 15-year-old - that is just getting checked over and over as the night goes on. Eve loses me a bit, talking about a photographer she likes, or dance classes, or her Clinton Hill high school ex-boyfriend who somehow died serving in Gaza, but I’m nodding along. I talk about skating, bullshit about catching a kickflip, how I can’t reproduce that feeling with anything. The first time I got pants tailored. Her summer backpacking. A car accident I witnessed. Her uncle’s suicide. Seeing my dad cry over divorce papers. Falling into a campfire at summer camp when she was 10. She shows me the scar on her hip, unbuckling her pants and leaning in. I notice her pubic hair is wavy. Camping out for a sweatshirt. Selling her sailboat on Craigslist by herself. The book I’ve read 8 times. The chapbook she’s read 12.
“I’ve never seen anyone, seriously, for longer than a semester,” I say, confident and finally drunk.
Eve gasps. “3 months? But look at you.”
“That’s a red flag, right?”
She laughs. “Yes!”
“I never took you as a traditional, as traditional at all.”
“That’s just FuckHaus,” she says. “And guys here are shitheads.”
“Case in point,” I say, gesturing to myself.
We kiss and there’s nothing awry about it. I don’t want to leave, and I’m not worried that I’m gonna hurt her, or get hurt, or fuck just to fuck. When Eve leads me to bed, I follow wholeheartedly, and when she asks what I want and says what she wants, I am honest.
Jane, Beth, Carter and I watch Bart roll up and down the Wall for the third time. The Wall is the parking lot side of the Film building. The eponymous wall is banked at a slight angle, and its bottom is concave with the sidewalk that lines the parking lot. Springer skateboarders, in say, 1982, found that one could rush along the blacktop, pop up the curb and carve up the wall. (Later, a DIY Club proposal got the area sanctioned as a space to skate, though, given the Wall’s difficulty to use, it didn’t matter much.) I’ve got Bart in a 3sixteen chore coat, a pair of oversized pleated woolen pants in a green and black tartan pattern and an indigo-dyed ballcap for part of my garment final. I will take a photo of him up on the wall, doing a footplant or something. Once I mentioned the idea, offhand, Bart offered himself, citing some favor he owed me. We flipped through some old mags and figured something out pretty quickly.
Bart raises a thumb. I drag over a flash and a tripod. Using a micro-four-thirds camera I borrowed from photo and a fisheye I borrowed from Carter, we take a test photo. Bart does an early grab indy, tweaking the tail towards me as he turns. He rolls back to Beth and Jane, where they applaud him. I give the thumbs-up, and he runs and leaps onto his board. This time, he ollies, scraping the tail, and rotates 360 degrees, his legs quick and his arms relaxed. Carter hollers.
“When the fuck did you get so consistent,” I say, yelling across the parking lot.
“I didn’t want to get your clothes dirty,” he says. He turns to Beth. “Now, let’s get you back to the city.”
I’m showing Carter the photos and he’s showing me the video footage. He’s also telling me about seeing Marnie. Lesbians, he says, as we pack up our gear, don’t ever lift the toilet seat. The third time he went over to her house, Carter found himself scrubbing off mold in her half-bath with bleach. He wasn’t asked, and she probably hasn’t noticed. “Who’s it hurt,” he says. Lesbians also always have a ton of nearly expired condoms from when they still thought they were straight. I laughed at that. I reminisce about this senior I knew when I was a freshman, who worked at the Condom Run on campus and had one of those Elisabeth Moss haircuts and took Yura home after Spring Fling that year. Carter remembered this girl he knew from DIY club who he thought was cute. At the club fair his freshman year, he got DIY’s table set up early, so he helped her with hers. The banner, once unfurled, read “Springer Dykes” or something. She was a Texan 18-year-old with a mullet, anyway. “Lotta respect to that girl,” he says.
“What’s her name?”
“Oh, fucking… Monica. Moni. Lucy. Something.”
The girl working the photo gear desk is someone I had a class with, Jen something. She asks how my thesis is going. I throw my hands up and say it's happening. Jen laughs and says, "Mine, too." She is listening to Everything But The Girl or Spandau Ballet or something. She mentions her shift's ending soon and asks if I need a ride to town. I don't, and say so, thanking her. Once I saw her rolling her SUV through the campus center parking lot with both hands on her phone. I walk by the room Bart edits in sometimes, but some sophomore is in there. Outside, I greet Jimmy, Todd and Zack Marino and begin the walk across campus to the library.
“I’m still drunk,” I overhear in front of the dining hall. I nod at a few smokers as I enter. Yura asks, “Do you want a receipt,” and I take it and flash it at the front of the buffet. Bart or Tracy would chat up Laney, but she doesn’t remember me from my sophomore year. I get a coffee, hash browns and some powdered eggs. There’s kale at the salad bar and I put some in a bowl. Connor from the DIY club says hello by the utensils and I ask if he’ll be home for break.
Back at the table, Paul is saying he doesn’t drink much anymore. Yura’s absently gazing at him as he talks. “Are you going to Midnight Breakfast,” Bart says.
“I’ll be at home working on the thesis,” I say. Maybe I’ll pop in for some hash browns. Get a ride from Tracy.
“Sounds sick. Think I’m gonna get sloshed. I’m done with my finals.”
“Already?” Yura says, pulled from her trance. The Eritrean girl at the table behind her and Paul that I took a scriptwriting class with is not wearing a bra, and that girl from Connecticut with the rainbow gradient Hydroflask is laughing with her about something. “I mean, when was the last time you had sex,” the Eritrean girl says, jovially.
“Are you and Eve dating now,” Bart says, “or just kicking it around?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You never do,” he says, laughing. My eyebrows furrow.
"I thought Eve was a lesbian," Paul says.
“One time,” Yura says, “I had a dream where we were married.”
Back in New York, Donnie’s got me doing orders for the spring. The office is in the back and I felt bad so I helped Rachel close the store.
“I don’t envy you,” she says at one point. My stomach drops. I don’t think she meant it to be mean. I’m just obsessed with myself.
“Yeah, college, in the 21st, right? Majoring in art history.”
“Well, I have a union job and a 401k and health insurance. You’re-”
“An administrative assistant,” I say.
“Yeah, sure.”
Eve’s meeting me in the evening. I watch Rachel walk off to a letter train and I think of those crazy guys who slash white women or people walking out of Supreme, all on security cameras with no masks or anything. My mind jumps to those downtrodden members of Queen’s immigrant middle class who think it’s 1980 and are still afraid of the train. I’m waiting awhile, reading a couple of obituaries in the NY Times on my phone. I am deciding I have enough battery life to restart The Matrix when a yellow cab rolls to a stop across the street. The back window rolls down and I see the top of someone’s head. “Hello, boy,” they say. “Boy, boy. Hey! Joy!” I swivel my head to check traffic and lean off the scaffolding I’ve been hiding under. We kiss quickly when I enter.
Eve grips my hand as she details her day. It’s beginning to drizzle, and I watch the window. She describes her ‘idiot’ boss and her Long Island co-workers. I turn to nod occasionally. It should be utterly meaningless, I think, to be the only one in an office in Doc Martens, but I know it is not. I know at least one of those girls wears Dunks or at least Jordan 1s because they’ve trickled back so hard. I am remembering the Supreme Foamposite riot when Eve tucks a bit of hair behind her ear; I feast at the sight.
“How’s your thing,” she says.
“It’s alright.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Donnie’s an alright boss. Anybody ever tell you that you have an accent?”
Eve puts a hand to her breastbone in mock awe. “You know what? You’re the first,” she scoffs.
“‘Ya’re the first?’ Who’s ‘Ya?’”
“Joy!” She laughs. “You talk… you sound like Mark Hoppus. Like Tony Hawk. And you're black.”
“I had his skate lesson DVDs when I was 5. I’m from the Bronx, but you have the accent. You tell people you’re from Brooklyn Heights, and they’re like, yeah, we know.”
The cab driver chuckles.
We arrive at a pretty brownstone in Turtle Bay, and Eve leads me through the door below the stairs into her studio.
“Don’t judge me,” she says, flicking lights on. The succession of three rooms with doorless thresholds makes the place seem larger on the inside. The walls are adorned with unframed art and magazine pages; occasionally, a girlish hand spells out ‘Janie is the new iCarly’ or ‘I love you Eve’ in indelible black ink. A bookshelf holds what looks like anthropology coursework and old issues of magazines like Architectural Digest and Interior Design. The room furthest from the front holds a bed and an armchair; beside them, frosted glass marks off a toilet and a shower. The room closest holds a small table, more of a desk, a couch with an army-green canvas slipcover, a few chairs from different sets, a turntable and a stereo. Between them is the kitchenette.
I am still looking about Eve’s apartment when she regains my attention. “Drink!” she is saying.
“Sorry-”
“Do you want a beer or a soda?”
“Sorry,” I say, “Just taking your room in.”
Eve bends down, back into her fridge after I choose beer. We sit on her couch together.
“Well, do you like it?,” she says, already picking at the label on her bottle.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. I feel like you’re mad at me. Are you mad at me?” Eve looks down at the floor.
“No, I’m not… Why would you think that?”
Eve squints, finally looking up at me from where she’s slouched in her seat. “I thought maybe I said something…”
I shake my head. “Eve, there’s not much you could say-”
“Yes, there is.”
“I really dig you. Don’t get so worried.”
“Do you dig Jane, too?” Eve is smiling half-heartedly.
I grunt. “Look, uh-”
“Don’t answer that. Not tonight.”
"Alright," I say.
The party is three blocks south, in a depreciated chain pharmacy storefront. An absolute zoning impossibility, Mena would probably describe it as. We’re with Beth, I stutter to the door lady, but she’s uninterested. The coat check team is similar. I am nonplussed, my eyes darting from Eve to different people’s faces as I find some footing. Eve asks what Beth looks like. I explain that she is in the Apple TV+ teen comedy Midsummer Night’s Dream thing. Eve asks, well, didn’t Apple TV+ come out last month. It’s early still, and bundles of people stand about in this half-carpeted, mostly-gutted space. A wall-lining fridge is on, lined with White Claws and canned cocktails instead of dairy and White Claws. I recognize Bart first, by this fridge, a drink in each hand, speaking with Sasha Ngo and a guy I saw in an indie, I think.
“He’s got an air of superiority,” she’s explaining to a nodding Bart and company when we get over there. “Like, we have the same barber.” Sasha’s got her hair tied up in a black bandana, a white rayon button-up, bell-bottom jeans and Li-Ning hiking shoes. She gesticulates intensely every few phrases, her palm raised as she whips her wrist around in tight circles.
“I don’t like his movies,” the guy says. Bart laughs.
“Hey, guys,” I say.
“Joy - Sasha, Trent,” Bart says. “This is Joy and Eve. They go to Springer. Joy is probably my best friend.”
Eve shakes hands with the two filmmakers. I smile at Bart.
“We know each other,” Sasha says, smirking a bit at me. “We took a class together…”
“Awful class,” I say. Eve is intrigued. “I almost transferred the semester after.”
“Really,” Eve says.
“To Bard,” I say, feeling anxiety melt out of my body as Sasha laughs. “How do drinks work here, is there a bar-”
Bart perks up. “House party format. Just take a beer.”
“That’s a generous house party,” Trent says. He is olive-skinned, his brown center-part framing a chiseled chin and a little button nose. His wide-wale corduroys billow a bit as he adjusts his stance - he’s fidgeting.
Sasha’s noticed. “He’s not coming tonight, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Trent says, an arm now bent behind his back, gripping his elbow. I notice he may literally be wearing those Donnie’s Merrells we did.
“You are bugging out.” She turns to Eve and I. “Trent knocked a guy out last week.”
“He was saying shit that wasn’t even true-”
“Trent, you-Trent thinks the guy is going to bring friends here, to kick his ass.”
“That’s what I would do,” he says.
“At Beth’s party?” Eve says. “He must not respect her much.”
“Why do you say that,” Sasha says.
“It’d be rude!”
“You’re right,” Sasha says, “you’re absolutely right.” She smiles quickly, a bit chuffed. “I like this girl.”
“Thank you,” Eve says. “You seem swell, yourself.”
I browse the fridge. I grab three 16-ounce Claws, sliding one in the side pocket of my Rothco cargos. I keep my head down, conflicted on whether I should scan the room or not. I am in the therapist's office, back in high school, waiting for the Brearley girl who comes in before me to emerge. I remember her chafed, over-pronated legs and her pleated skirt, her natural rubber plimsolls.
Eve is whispering into Sasha's ear. Sasha is looking at me. Bart is covering his mouth.
"Why won't you make an honest woman out of me," Eve says, laughing as I hand her her drink.
"I'm gonna take that thing back from you," I say, smiling as my face burns a bit. Bart and Sasha laugh. Trent gives a demure smile. Is this Eve’s new act? A put-on naivete? She clearly knows Sasha! She lives at FuckHaus! At a school of 2000 pupils, including graduate students! What is going on?
As if on cue, the lights turn down and the Orbital song murmuring underneath everything drops in volume. A spotlight shines at the top of the former store’s escalator. Into emerges Beth Winkler. I tap Bart on the shoulder.
“She won an award. For a short,” Bart says unprompted.
“Ah.”
“With Chloe Wise,” Trent says, “from Crashing.”
“Madeline Wise,” Sasha says. "Trent, you know Madeline."
“Oh. They’re both babes, anyway.”
“White Claw paid for it,” Bart says.
“The short? Or the party?”
“Yeah.”
We clap after her speech, and the spotlight follows her down the stationary escalator, all the way over to us. Beth and Bart hug and kiss underneath it. Sasha, Eve and Trent give congratulatory handshakes, also under it. Beth extends her arms and hugs me, the spotlight shining so hard that I close my eyes as I hug her back.
She extends a thumb into the air and the light dies.
The DJ plays breaks all night. Eve begins to grind on me under a Mariah Carey vocal, but Sasha grips my face with two hands and puts her tongue down my throat to a Slipmatt song. I remember it from an old compilation my dad had. Sasha then kisses Eve in the same way.
Frantically, I look around for Bart or even Beth. Then, to the fridge, where hard seltzer still lines every rack. They must be replacing them. I see Myra, or a woman who looks exactly like Myra in one corner of the dance floor. She’s blowing too-big-to-be-real clouds from a Juul. I notice a cocktail bar across the space that escaped me before.
I turn back to the women; Sasha’s grabbed me by the waist. “HI!” she says, her face settling into a devilish smile. She blinks. “Don’t you want to do us?”
Eve is here. “Sorry, she’s rolling.”
“I am going to get a drink,” I say. I kiss Sasha on her forehead, feeling her wispy black bangs under my lips. “Do you want anything?” I say to Eve.
“G and T.” She gives a sheepish smile.
I make my way to the cocktail bar, sliding that pocket seltzer out. I crack it and gulp it down. I place it down on the bar, maneuvering between two mullets. I leave my hand by it on the counter. The bartender by me is about my height. He is wearing a
I wake up to sunlight streaming through Eve’s curtains. Lifting my head back from a pillow, I am met with a wave of nausea. Eve is standing over the stove.
“Wow,” I moan.
She looks over. “Morning.”
I sit up. “Did I do this to myself?”
Eve steps over with a steaming coffee mug. “What do you mean? Do you want some instant?”
“Sure,” I say, gripping the cup.
“It’s a bit hot. I’ve got some espressos coming-”
“Did I get dosed?”
Eve laughs. “I don’t think so.” She cups my chin. “You drank seltzers all night.”
“Was… was I mad or something like that?”
She looks across the apartment, at the bundle of sheets on the couch. “You didn’t want Sasha to crash.”
“Ah.”
Eve scrunches her face. “She was being weird all night.”
“So horny. Did you… fuck her?”
“What! No, Joy.”
Sasha arrives with three small coffee cups, wearing gas station sunglasses and a Thinsulate beanie pulled nearly over them. A tag dangles from her hat. “Mocha, mocha,” she says, handing Eve one in the doorway. “And a cappuccino for you, because I didn’t know what you wanted.”
“That’s alright,” I say, stumbling off a stool in the kitchenette towards them. “What do I owe ya?”
“Come on, Joy, it’s my treat.”
“Sit down,” Eve says. “You’re incredibly hungover.”
Both Sasha and I find a stool in the kitchenette. She removes her sunglasses to reveal the eyes of someone defeated by their own body.
"I bet I look a lot worse than you do," Sasha says. I'm hit with a wave of sympathy.
"We're still young," I say, hugging her with one arm.
I leave Eve’s apartment in the early afternoon, bored of watching her write emails to the quiet Sun Kil Moon songs soaking through her sound system. I walk into the brisk East River winds, which bite my face as the heat of the sun warms it. I begin to head towards a west side train when I think to ask Jane what they’re doing.
Jane’s dog stops to sniff melting patches of snow as we trod along Allen Street. “So I’d say that Springer’s been really good to me,” Jane says. "Academically."
“That’s great to hear.”
“But that’s why I’ve been so scarce, I guess. That, and rugby.”
“Senior year is a hard year to transfer, I imagine.”
They smile at me. “Wow, that’s an incredible insight, Joy.”
My face warms. “I…”
“What?” Jane stops walking.
“I missed your snark.”
“Oh yeah? I missed… your dick!”
“Nothing else?”
“No, nothing else.” Jane laughs.
We sit in the park on Rutgers and Jane rolls a joint as I point out pro skaters who bike by. Their chin-length bob, which they periodically push back, flops down as they square their shoulders to light the weed.
“Here,” I say, pulling my toque off. I delicately push their hair back, placing the beanie over it. “Now it’s out of your eyes.”
Jane looks at me intently. They exhale smoke and blink a bit, gazing down at the ground before they grip my chin and kiss my cheek. Their breath is warm and the smell of weed is homely. I forget where I am at the moment and lean in to kiss their lips.
“Where’d you go, Joy Davies? What was I doing all semester?”
I chuckle and put my hand back on their head, running a thumb through a tuft of hair by their ear.
Mena invites me over to watch 13 Going On 30 on a Saturday afternoon. I would not have agreed to any other movie, but it's one of my favorites. It taught me early that love is the only tangible intangible in life.
"Check this out," she's saying, as soon as I walk into her parents' apartment. Mena brandishes a thin, glossy LoveQuake magazine, a finger in it. We walk to the counter of her kitchenette and she flips it open to show a full-page, black and white portrait of Beth Winkler. Stepping past Beth, blurred and unsmiling, is Mena herself; the pair stand in front of a subway platform tile wall. Text in a Rudnick-aping font reads "THE PRINCESS AND THE (SOCIAL) PAUPER," and in a sans-serif one, "Text by Mena Braithwaite, Photos Francois Marquant."
"What is this?"
"Beth and I have been hanging out a bit."
"A full feature? Mena, this is really cool!"
She shrugs. "Just networking. Beth doesn't like interviews just about her so I figured I'd throw some drama into her movie press cycle."
"And get a byline with it."
"Shucks."
I start skimming the interview.
Beth Winkler is turning 25 this year. Her CV includes Nickelodeon, direct-to-streaming family dramas, a constantly growing podcast, and a small part in a Coen Brothers movie. At the moment, she is my mortal enemy…
"Looks fun."
"Sure."
I met the actor through awful circumstances: the boy I loved's reddit account.
Mena describes what a "podcast" subreddit entails and Beth's presence on it, relaying an anecdote from the summer the bipolar Cum Town host posted on his show's sub. It's pedantic, but it works alongside the "Hottie and Nottie“ theme of the article. Beth is described with an envious gaze, a view that functions in context. Usually it doesn't make sense why the writer cares about Zach Bia or whatever. Or worse, it's clear they care, but for stupid, industry reasons.
"I bet they are loving this, on the sub."
"Oh," Mena says, “you know they aren't."
A murky, lamp-lit photo of Bart and Beth, lounging on the couch in his family's apartment, captures the two in rictus. The image is reminiscent of meme images where young girls in stock photos look at the viewer in disbelief and confusion.
The portrait is paired with an inset paragraph that barely discusses Beth at all. Instead, Mena notes the course of her relationship with Bart, starting at a middle school arts camp they attended through their synagogue and ending in the dawn after that Merrells party, where she confessed her feelings. They are now "alright friends."
"Do you want a beer?" she says.
13 Going On 30 is not a deliberately sexy movie, aside from Andy Serkis, unless one is titillated by a full-figured, strong jaw woman speaking with the candor of a pre-teen. I don't mind that, I suppose, but I do not watch it with some sort of stiffy.
Mena is a different person than I am; I came to understand that as soon as we met, but it is abundantly clear tonight, on the small couch in her room, in front of her laptop when she begins to paw at my crotch.
When I look over, Mena is giving me a drowsy, sultry look. "Hey," she says.
"Mena," I say, "Mena…“
"What?" She grips my cock. It's getting hard, so it's a cock now. Penis is medical.
Mena grips my chin with her other hand.
"Just head," I stammer.
"Huh?"
"Just head."
"That's alright, Joy." She slides off the couch and begins to fumble with my zipper.
"I am going to come," I say, breathy. Mena, stroking me, groans an affirmation around my balls.
"When you do it," she says, her face slick with spit, "pull my hair, and uh, push me down on it. So I know."
That's a lot, but I nod. After a moment, I grip her hair and put some weight on her head. Not too much. My cock stiffens and I shoot come into Mena's throat.
She sits back on her knees, looking up at me, dramatically wipes a hand across her face, and then gets up. Absently motioning to her throat, Mena walks to her ensuite bathroom without a word.
"Christ," I mumble to myself, reaching down for my boxer briefs. The fluid that coats my testicles makes them stick to me a bit after I slide them on. I hear the water running. Tom-Tom has sent Jenna and Matt's new campaign to the other magazine. I pull on my pants, looking down at the couch. There is a wet spot in the shape of my buttocks.
Mena steps out of the bathroom, still not speaking. She sits on her bed and stares at the end of it. I walk by her to the bathroom and pee.
When I come out, she's crying.
"Sorry, I just really don't like myself right now."
"It's alright. Do you want to talk about it?" I sit by her, slowly inching an arm to her back. I rub her and she leans into it.
"I mean, was that okay? I didn't mean to-"
"It was okay. I liked it."
"No, you didn't. You don't even come here for me."
"Mena," I start.
"Joy, I don't know what I'm doing."
I put a finger under her chin, guiding her gaze to mine. "It was good," I say, like a mantra. "I liked it. I like hanging out with you. I think you have… different things hinging on this than I do."
"Hinge. Haha." She sniffles. "I like hanging out with you, too."
"Is there something else?"
Mena reaches for a box of tissues by her bed. "Of course there is," she says, punctuated with a blown nose.
"As long as you know," I say.
"You're a nice guy," she sniffles.