diary entry: Halloween 2011 On Halloween you put on your c..

diary entry: Halloween 2011

On Halloween you put on your cowboy hat and guide on red lipstick and H puts your hair in french braids and draws freckles on your cheeks. You have drinks with your friends and take dozens of pictures of all of the costumes, J wearing only gym shorts and marker on his bare chest as a Scrabble tile, H as a pirate, L as a rather forlorn looking dog. It is cold outside, threatening snow, but you feel sexy, feel ready, want to dance at a loud party with flashing lights and get in trouble and maybe there is something to that point about costumes, how you get to be someone else, someone bolder, someone braver than yourself when you are not yourself.

You go to Psi U and you look at all of the guys, study their faces and their eyes and think about what you want from this evening, someone pretty, someone rugged, someone considerate, someone rude. The dance floor is empty and then it is so packed, music raging, sound cutting out every so often, and you make eyes at the DJ and smirk and he grins back, some frat bro who looks sweet, unpolished. You watch your friends dance with guys, but none good enough because you want ~something~ tonight, you just aren’t sure what.

The music stops, everyone yells. People shift, rearrange in the gaps, and you catch the eyes of a stranger a few feet away, smile, and he smiles back. He is all dimples and warmth, wearing all black with an Apple logo taped to his shirt, and his brown hair is rumpled and soft. It’s just a flicker of a moment and you assume that’ll be it. He cuts past you, keeps walking, and you let him go because it’s Psi U and it’s fleeting. But he moves past you to talk to J, and you think ‘friends’ and ‘nice’ and ‘why not?’ and you follow him closer to the stage and step slightly past him to punch J in the chest a few times, big smile, innocent happiness.

‘Is she hurting you?’ the beautiful stranger asks J, and you laugh, ‘I can’t do any damage, I’m too small!’ And then you’re talking and he did band with J and is on Kirk’s team and he lived in the Nics last year with H and he explains his punny costume to you ('iRock, get it?') and when the music kicks back in, it’s only natural that you dance together. He kisses you softly. The wire of your cowboy hat gets warped and bent as you try to hold onto it behind his back, and later outside the frat he laughs, tries to fold it back in shape.

He tells you in the bright light of his bedroom that he is the nice guy, friend-zoned as soon as he walks into a room, monogamous, and his bedroom is hopelessly boy messy and he offers you the choice of four flavors of Chapstick and he is just so wholesome and genuine and earnest that you find yourself wondering why you only get one night with guys like this. Why can’t you encounter them in line for waffles at the student center and strike up a conversation instead of collecting evenings here and there? There is a Williams NESCAC banner hanging upside-down on the wall in the living room and an X-Box stuffed under the tv and you could see yourself here in some alternate universe where you are capable of relationships and a boy like him would want to date a girl like you.

You have sex with him and it is the best you’ve had so far, not that the bar is very high. He asks you to trust him, to try a different position, and it is a relief to learn that sex doesn’t have to hurt, that nice guys can fuck you just like the jerks. He is tired and a lightweight and eventually you both stop, not finished but content. Then he tells you about the poli-sci major and you recommend that he listen to a podcast you love and he walks you to the door. You kiss him goodbye. You don’t ask for his number and later you will wish you had as you make the two thirty am walk of shame back to your dorm in your cowboy hat and boots. His name is S and he is a junior and he is your first real one night stand.

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