Face (Sex, Power, Love)

Gina: College

After completing high school early Gina left her Midwestern home eager to remake herself. She imagined the eastern liberal arts school she had chosen would be the perfect place to be reborn. It would be an intellectual environment where she would be appreciated, a place to fit in, and a culture where she would no longer be considered odd, rather, exceptional like all of the other elite students. She would leave the philistines and the petty bourgeoisie of her dreary world behind in the rural dust. Gina’s superiority would at last be recognized. Gina would engage the world, connect, join, mix—hook up. There would be friends, even a boyfriend, and sex, adventurous sex, but something more appropriate than gang banging a bunch of motorcycle thugs. Maybe Gina could even learn to laugh.

She would find a boyfriend, someone smart, interesting, and good-looking. She would no longer be lonely and isolated, and she need not worry that she was too picky about friends because only brightest kids got into this school. At college, she would not have to look down on anyone, and no one would look down on her. Here at her new school the boys would be smart and interesting, and so they would like and appreciate her.

Gina would find a boy who was caring, hip, and funny. He’d be cultured, daring, athletic, and well read. Her new boyfriend would be world wise, cheerful, innocent, sensuous, experienced, and fresh. He would be as handsome as Gina was pretty. He would her give space and be there when she needed him. He would be strong, but vulnerable; open, yet centered; creative and dependable; forgiving and principled; imaginative, steadfast; spontaneous, reliable; audacious and affectionate, but most of all appreciative. Gina wouldn’t have to put up with those zit-picking cretins any longer.

When she arrived, Gina discovered that all girls were scrambling to get into the right sorority. Gina too wanted to escape the cramped, regimented dorm. She felt as if she had been stuffed into a cabinet drawer in a corporate file room so enormous it was invisible. However, Gina did not have clue which sorority was the way up to the brave new world where she belonged. Rush seemed to be no more than a daze of drunken banality, just children behaving badly. These should have been all the elite students. Why didn’t someone tell her where the smart kids were?

Gina went to all the parties, but she mostly sat by silently watching everyone else having a great time mixing and mating. Gina tried to fit in; she tried to be acceptable; she tried to be bright and cheerful; she tried to talk. She smiled a lot. That was hard. Gina was painfully aware that rush was a competitive test, and those who passed won entry to a better world. And those who didn’t? Well, they just sort of fell off the edge of the world. Gina tossed sleeplessly at night, shaken by anxiety and doubt.

Gina did not realize that she could have gotten into any of the sororities and that they were all pretty much the same. Even though the other girls thought Gina was a bit of a hick due to her Midwestern accent, her shyness was mistaken to be a sign of a studious intelligence, even superiority. And Gina had the one trait that really mattered; she was the prettiest of that year’s crop of freshmen girls. The selection committees judged the pledges by the attractiveness of their faces, the length of their legs, the slenderness of their waists, and the density of their hair. Of course, the committees did not use that vocabulary. Rather they told themselves they were looking for interesting, confidant, and popular girls, but in the jittery mania of rush week, no one could really judge these things, and so the superficial ruled. The pretty girls won. And as peculiar and private as Gina was, she was the prettiest.

Poor Gina did not know she had won the game just by walking into the room. She sat quietly by the side, and softly and politely deflecting conversations. Inside she was a storm of self-loathing.

On the fourth straight night of parties, Gina was so bored she gave up and left early. As she stepped out of the door, a slight, pretty girl with plain brown hair and no make up touched her arm. She wore a beat up motorcycle jacket and biker boots, and spoke a badly faked workingman’s dialect covering a refined upper crust accent. “This is a sad excuse for a party, ain’t it? Boring. But hang in a bit. Come back in with me and I’ll show you how to have fun even here. Stick with me; let me be your tour guide at this zoo. I’ll show you how funny it all is.”

Gina looked into the stranger’s soft brown eyes and thought, “Maybe this is the cool friend I have been looking for.” She liked the leather jacket; it reminded her of the happiest day of her life. Gina didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to, because the girl seemed to know exactly who and what Gina was. She slipped her arm under Gina elbow, mocked a dance to the excessively loud house-music, and escorted Gina back to the party.

“That one over there, the one with the big tits and all the cleavage hanging out; she’s the queen bee. Queeny is so proud of those boobs. Her Daddy bought them for her. She’s not an officer of the sorority, because that would be actual work, but she’s in charge. The skinny one over there with too much makeup, the giraffe, they call her President, but her actual title is Queen Bee Flunky. See the chubby wart hog over there with the porcine herd at the bar giggling and swilling down the beers. She’s the Social Director, which means she does all the work that the queen bee has told the giraffe to do. As you can see we have lots of herd animals at our zoo—elephants, wildebeests, and rhinos. The queen bee puts up with them because they pay the bills. See that prissy little thing at the punch bowl. You wouldn’t know it to look at her but she’s a baboon. I know she’s a baboon because last year at the end of rush she got down on her knees to show off her pink butt to a group fraternity baboons, and then she took on all of them. The queen bee didn’t like that one bit, and she stung the bad girl baboon.”

Gina was smiling for the first time in weeks. She might have laughed if she were able, but she had not learned that trick yet. Just as Gina was finally having fun at the zoo, the queen bee confronted the sightseers. “Ashley, didn’t we tell your never to step foot in here again. Didn’t the judge say the same thing, ‘Cease. Desist’. What part of ‘Stay Away’ isn’t clear? You were not invited, so you will have to leave. Sorry if you miss our parties, our company, our fun, but you had your chance and you blew it, so leave. Gina, I am so sorry about this; please stay. Ashley is just trying to get some sort of sick revenge for being kicked out of our sorority. Please come with me, there are some people you should meet.”

The girl in the motorcycle jacket smiled at the queen bee and said, “Queeny, you’re such a bore. I see you’re all getting good and drunk again. Remember last year? Remember how drunk you got and how you tried to stop the girls just as they were going to have some real fun sucking the cocks of the entire football team. ‘Ladies, please. This is highly improper.’ Then you puked your guts out. Now that was funny. But mostly you’re just a bore, no fun at all…Queeny.”

“Don’t call me that. Ashley that disaster was all your doing. You instigated the whole thing and then sat back and laughed at us, people who had befriended you. Gloria hasn’t been back to school since. Get out. We don’t want you here.”

“Good, cause I’m out of here. Boring party. And, as if you cared, your little sister Gloria is doing just fine. At least I still talk to her. Yeah, she is feeling so good, feeling all right. Gloria doesn’t need this school, this sorority, or you. Besides, I didn’t know her pretty head would explode just from giving the team a little head. And your little sister gives such good head. I like it. Are you sure you don’t want me to send the guys over to liven things up, say, just about midnight?” Ashley danced to an old tune.

“Get out you vicious whore. Get out.” Queeny’s decorum blew up into a loud screech.

The buzz in the hive suddenly stopped and everyone stared at Queeny, Ashley, and Gina. The exile in leather waved to everyone and turned to walk away. The queen bee grabbed Gina’s arm to prevent her from leaving with Ashley. Ashley said, “That’s ok. Go with Queeny and enjoy the zoo. If you belong here, you’ll know it. If not, I know how to find you. Go on; meet the menagerie. I’ll see you latter. Promise.” Gina watched forlornly as her strange new friend, the pariah in the motorcycle jacket, walked out the door and the queen bee led Gina back into the jungle.

Gina enjoyed secretly creating her own taxonomy throughout the rest of the evening. There were snakes and gazelles, tigers and titmice. However, none of the creatures would discuss Ashley, except to warn Gina that Ashley was a dangerous pervert who would have been kick out of the school, if not jailed, but for her family’s money. One girl complained that Ashley had tried to get her to watch lesbian prison movies, as if that were the lowest form of entertainment on earth. Gina had never heard of such a thing, but she was curious.

At the end of the night, the queen bee pulled Gina aside and confided, “I am not supposed to tell you this now Gina, but you will be accepted into our sorority. This has always been the most prestigious house on campus. Don’t let our probation status fool you; that was all Ashley’s fault. Stay away from that girl. She’s big time trouble.”

As Gina walked through the late evening coolness back to her dorm room, the clean moist fragrance of the summer’s last cut of grass filled the night air. Exhilaration charged the night and tingled on Gina’s skin. It was not the surprising acceptance Gina had stumbled upon at the sorority, but the mysterious outcast that lit her imagination. In the chill of the late summer night, laughing clusters of revelers milled about and pairs of young lovers slipped conspiratorially into the darkness. Gina knew the sorority would accept her, but she was hoping Ashley would find her first. As Gina step up to into the security lights at the dorm entrance, she heard Ashley’s voice in the shadows. “So Gina did you enjoy your trip to the zoo?”

“Hi. Where are you? It’s too dark; I can’t see you. They said your name is Ashley. I’m sorry you had to leave. God, I was so bored until you showed up. Could we get to know each other? Where are you? It’s so dark.”

“Come to me. Step away from the light and come to me. Come to my voice here in the darkness. The shade is soothing.”

Gina stepped toward Ashley’s voice, but the glaring security lighting had blinded her, and the shadows were a uniform blackness. Gina stumbled, Ashley caught her, and suddenly she was in Ashley’s arms. Gina’s heart leapt—free fall.

“Hi, Gina. Yeah, I am Ashley.” Darkness surrounded Gina, the fresh earthy smell of night enclosed her, and Ashley’s presence swaddled her. Gina began to make out forms in the shadows—a pretty face. Gina’s feet sunk into the cushion of freshly mowed grass. This was Ashley’s cool world. The leather jacket and jeans reminded Gina of the motorcycle guys. She shivered, either from the fresh night chill, or trembling anticipation of novel thrills. The girl stood too close, holding Gina’s arms and looking intently into her eyes.

Gina pushed back, expecting the girl to retreat to a more socially neutral distance. Instead, warm hands rose to enfold the shivering skin on back of Gina’s neck, and sparkling brown eyes fixed Gina firmly in their grasp. Ashley probed Gina’s mind, delving into depths Gina herself avoided, seeking, then tasting, a sweet secret buried within. All the while Ashley spun a distracting web of words at the pressured pitch of a carnival magician.

“We’ve been watching you since you got here. I like your style, your look, but you seem a little lost. That’s pretty much to be expected just starting college and all. I decided to check you out and see if you’d like to run with us. My friends are a different set, people into things more interesting than that kiddy sorority/fraternity bullshit. I’m guessing you need something more, something better than normal.

“What’d you think? Wanna be in on our secret? Wanna run with us out here in the shadows? It takes courage to be different. Can you do it?”

The girl stood too close. Gina’s neuroses sang to her, “Don’t stand; don’t stand; don’t stand so close to me.” Gina worried, “Do folks out east stand this close? They shouldn’t do that. Still, I like this one. It smells of peppermint.”

“Ashley…,” there, she could speak, even a name. That thing clenching her throat couldn’t stop her; the peppermint vapor helped. “I don’t know. Who are the others? What are you about; I hardly know you are and now you are telling me there are others? It sounds so cool, but I don’t know what you’re really talking about, or whether I can be the kind of girl you guys are looking for. What do you guys do?”

A weak panic fluttered through Gina whining that it was unfair of the girl to stand so close holding her like that. Make her back off. The girl’s glinting eyes were a flickering candle illuminating the closed space encircled by the couple huddled against the night. Gina bathed in the warmth of the girl’s body. Her peppermint breath steamed briefly in the cool night air. As Gina’s eyes adjusted to the dark, the dawning close up of the girl’s unadorned face revealed how pretty she really was. The inches between their faces seemed a mesmerizing, viscous brew at once repelling and attracting, disquieting and soothing. Gina wished she could still her breath. The girl smelled good—peppermint candy, seasoned leather, and freshly cut grass.

“We do lots of things, but what matters is not the doing but the feeling. We are secret because we mean to create mystery. We are mysterious even to each other; I have no idea how many of us there are. We want to be a mystery even to our own selves. To know all there is to know of one’s self would be to snuff out one’s own life with the soft pillow of boring certainty. We adore surprise. Walk with us into a world of always fresh becoming. This will tell if you can be one of us.”

The girl pulled Gina even closer and pressed her lips to Gina’s mouth. Gina stiffened in surprise, and then melted into the fervor of Ashley’s kiss. Suddenly an alien passion boiled, and Gina found herself eagerly returning Ashley’s ardor. The kiss was strange, sexy, and an unfamiliar breath of human intimacy. Gina had spent a lifetime not knowing, not missing, not wanting. When Ashley finally allowed air, Gina gasped a babe’s first breath.

Gina had never been attracted to girls, but the pure perversity of Ashley’s forbidden embrace thrilled her. Finally, as Gina’s pulsing heart delivered the novel oxygen of that strange kiss to her suffocating social self, Gina’s heart could at last speak. “I want you. I mean I want to be your friend. I mean I need…but I’m not the right kind of girl. I can’t; I like boys.”

“Gina, you have so much to learn. I like boys too. I like men even better. The point is to be everything, to be anything, to never be contained or restrained in a simple-minded definition of what you are, or what you could become. That would be like chiseling your own epitaph onto your tombstone. Let that go until after you are buried in that cold, cold ground.” Ashley suddenly pushed Gina away.

“Forget it. You’re scared. I didn’t think you’d be such a chicken shit. Maybe you belong in a cage in the zoo. What would the sign say? You choose…something timid, maybe chicken scardi-pantus. Such a shame. You don’t have a clue about how lovely you are, how enchanting the flow of your body, how rare your native grace, or of the luminous potential of your soul.

“But that kiss, that was not just me kissing. You were kissing back, kissing the hope for a life of authentic excitement. That kiss told me you could be one of us, if you let yourself be bold. You say you like boys. Great, there’re lots of them here. If you need help meeting them, we’ll help. But I think what you need is a man, someone to show you the ropes, so to speak. Do you like your English professor? I’ll bet you do. I know he likes you. He told me so. I’ll give him to you.”

Gina’s jittering heart jumped to dance to this unexpected new tune. How did the girl know this, how could she read her soul like that? Yes, her English professor, he was handsome, articulate, and oh so tweedy academic. Gina definitely had a crush on this guy, but she hadn’t dreamed he could be available to her. He was no boy. But she was just a freshman, wasn’t he forbidden fruit? He had spoken to the girl about her?

“Yeah, you seem to like the idea. The renowned Professor Fish of English Lit.; I’ll give him to you as your door prize. I have to warn you he is a bit of a pervert, but fun if you can take it. The professor is just what you need, and he’s yours if you join us.”

Ashley smirked, “Oh, no Gina, that simple, silent nod isn’t enough. It’s your turn to convince me. Convince me that you can run with us, that you have the courage we require. Convince me now because there will be no second chances. We will not countenance hesitation, regrets, or fear. Choose, and make me believe. Close your eyes and leap into the darkness now, or freeze into stone—freeze into your own tombstone.”

Gina was instantly decided. She sucked a short breath and leapt into the shadows, into mystery, into her future, and into Ashley, driving her into the cool, yielding turf. Gina sucked life’s sweet forbidden nectar from Ashley’s open, succulent mouth.