He touched my thigh while he drove; I felt a wave of disgust that made me think, Oh, so this is what normal guys feel when another dude touches them.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?” he said.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Sorry I wasn’t ready to party. You seemed like you were having fun with Avani.”
“Yeah, we spent the day together. It was actually really cool.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t really like her.”
“She’s good. It’s just that she can be a little . . . self-absorbed.”
“But that’s the beauty of her. I don’t know. I can’t describe it.” My gaze went distant, remembering us all in the booth that morning, laughing and joking. I wanted to say it was friendship, but there was something more to it, something physical. I kept remembering the sheen of Avani’s hair as it caught the light. Agh, fuck, I was so messed up. I didn’t deserve to live.
My mom was home, so Dave parked in the corner of an empty parking lot and lunged for me. Kissing him was completely unpleasurable. If anything, it was confusing and upsetting, as if I was being tested in some way. While beforehand our kissing had been in sync, and we’d known how long to kiss and how to progress through the various stages and types of kissing, here his lips were intruders that my own mouth acted instinctively to fight off. I kept needing to override my own defense procedures and force myself to open up and allow him to continue.
And when we moved to other things, I couldn’t have been more bored. I just wanted it to be over, so I went down on him in the back seat, quick and hard, trying to get him off. Afterward I expected him to feel as disgusted as me, but he snuggled close, and I felt the fumes from his face—his breath wasn’t particularly bad, it’s just that his mouth stank with this human smell, the way mouths do—drifting toward me, and I saw his flabby lips smacking together, asking to be kissed.
He was talking now, but I had fallen into the hole of my own self-hatred. Dave was a good guy, and he liked me so much. Why had I forced him to play this stupid game of mine? He was a human being, not a fashion accessory.
“Relationships are so weird,” I said. “It’s all about loving another person, but it’s also incredibly selfish.”
I looked at him as if I expected an enthusiastic response: Yes, Nandan, I am totally selfish.
But he shook his head. “Uhh, okay?”
“Well I mean you’re supposed to want the best for another person, but you’re basically using them.”
“I don’t . . .” His forehead was creased. “Hmm, I guess what you’re saying is that the way we show how much we love a person is by letting ourselves need them.”
“Uhh, what? No. You’re not getting it.”
“So tell me.”
“It’s stupid. People are supposed to pretend like they’re in love, like they really see the other person, but it’s all—it’s all doomed in the end. And in the meantime it’s about—it’s about sex—or about looking good at school, or—or—”
I was getting so close to the truth, and I thought at any moment he might leap up and say: You’re breaking up with me. Instead, he tried to give me a kiss.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I, ummmm . . .”
Now his eyes got big, and the air was heavy with the smell of his sweat. Raindrops thudded against the windshield, and I couldn’t look away from the single stripe of light that fell across his chest.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said. “It’s kind of stupid, but I don’t think I’m actually into guys.”
He took a shallow breath.
We both sat up. He rubbed his eyes, then tried to crawl between the seats to get behind the wheel.
“Dude, use the door.”
He turned to me, shocked, and I wanted to touch the loose ends of his bow tie, but instead he opened the door and slipped around to the front. I didn’t have time to move forward before he started driving, but maybe that was good. I saw him wipe his eyes a few times but didn’t spot any actual tears.
By the time we got to my place, he was more composed. “Umm, okay,” he said.
I didn’t want to get out, afraid he’d drive off, so now it was my turn to slither between the seats.
“We can still be friends, right?” he said.
“Dude, it’s not you. I’m just not really into guys.”
“It’s all right.