He’d never expected to be pursued by an American woman. Walking to his room he wondered if he had been, might have been, would be again, or should he forget it?
Two days later, she invited him into her room. It was littered with books like The Woman Warrior, Sexuality and American Literature, and Intercourse.
While she talked, he kept wondering if this was a date. If so, what should he be doing? All his previous encounters with women had been hasty squeezes in Karachi, inside jammed cars while a designated watchman kept an eye out for the police, who had a radar for unmarried couples. So his interactions with women were feverish and clumsy. He’d never talked to a single one he’d kissed and barely even seen what he’d touched.
Becky abruptly ended her chatter and said, ‘You know, you dream too much. You’ve got to take hold of your life, grab it by the neck and let it know who’s boss. They haven’t learned that in Mexico.’
He didn’t doubt that she’d grabbed her life by the neck. And he did concede that back at home, daydreaming was a favorite pastime. ‘It can be soothing. Life takes its course, and you become a spectator. Sometimes you really have no other choice.’
‘You always have a choice.’ She began stomping noisily about the room, doing he wasn’t sure what. Today she wore a pink T-shirt that said Take Action. Her hair was wet again, from swimming. It dripped on to her shirt so the top halves of the letters were darker, as if taking action. She started drying her hair. ‘You have a choice about every step you take, and if you’re ever doubtful, you should choose to do something about it.’ The hair dryer droned as she waved it about.
‘Sometimes,’ he shouted over the dryer, ‘you’re faced with obstacles that are bigger than you. When there’s no electricity and you can’t turn on the water pump, and it’s a hundred and ten degrees, what choice have you but to sit and let the sweat pour off?’
Grrr, went the dryer, woosh, wap, ee. She appeared not to have heard. In an instant, she was done with drying and shining a mirror.
In their ensuing encounters, Daanish never saw Becky idle. Even while peeing, she crammed her senses with the numerous glossy hair and make-up magazines stacked under her toilet sink. He found the collection odd for a Women’s Studies major, remarking also that it was not displayed with the books on feminism. But he thought it wise to keep these observations to himself. In general, he let her talk, waiting eagerly for the day their kisses would culminate in more. He was nineteen. These days especially, his virginity was making him feel ninety.
Perhaps it would happen today.
He knocked on her door. He could hear furniture screech. She shouted, ‘Who’s it?’
Daanish tried hard to infuse desirability into one small word: ‘Me!’
Nothing for several seconds. Then at last: ‘Can you come back?’
Back meant more than two months later, for the New Year’s party where she wanted to appear with someone ethnic. But when college resumed, Becky never opened the door again. So two weeks into Winter Term, he crawled into another.
It was 4.30 in the afternoon, twilight, when he trudged up the hill again, this time to Penny’s dorm. Temperatures had plummeted to sub-zero. Daanish had never known such cold. His winter boots had cost him nearly all his savings from the first term, and he grew anxious. Would the glue dry? The stitching tear? Leather thin? Shoes were notoriously short-lived in Karachi. Here they seemed to wear well. This cheered him, even though he couldn’t stop shivering, despite the thermal vest and leggings, the doctor’s black turtleneck from his London years, two wool sweaters and a down jacket. The jacket he’d purchased only yesterday with the birthday check his parents had sent. He pulled it closer to his chin and felt their presence.
He stepped where the snow was solid, not merely to save his shoes from leather-munching slush-demons, but also for the sound of snow crunching under his boots. Good, sturdy boots. Around him, icicles hung off branches, changing to russet gold in the setting sun. Two crystals suddenly rose upward and grew in size. One sported a handsome cap. They flew into a large dogwood that slouched over the gym where he and Becky had first met, and began to whistle.
It was the high-pitched call that made him realize he’d been looking at a pair of cardinals, and not a flurry of possessed hail. The birds considered him, breasts forward, the male’s crest erect, the female singing again. Daanish paused. His father would have enjoyed this – the frost, the birdcall in the starkness. Back at home, he was probably in his study, smoking Dunhills. Daanish sank lower into the doctor’s woolens. Beneath all the layers, a string of seashells pressed into his flesh.
He’d skipped lunch again – it was hard for him to eat at Fully Food even on his days off. His stomach rumbled. If he’d had an extra five dollars, he’d have walked straight into town and ordered one of those delectable melts he’d seen his roommate eat.
Passing the house where Becky lived, he casually glanced in its direction, hoping she’d see him walking to another building. It was on one of his many hikes up to Becky’s that he’d bumped into Penny last fall. She was, in her own words, a poetess, dancer, and nurturer. Not as trim as Becky but in her own way, just as spry, and though she too favored authenticity, it was secondary to circularity. Actually, she clarified, authentic was the offspring of circular. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t really matter, since it all came back to The Beginning. She liked her own explanation so well it became a poem. In fact, it always had been a poem, she was just the medium. Like Becky, she too believed in taking action, but, she cautioned, always listen to your body first.
Fine advice, Daanish had mused several weeks ago, when she led him to a forest of birch and maple, stripped from the waist down, and jumped into a pile of golden leaves. At last! He undressed, nearly screamed when the chill hit him, and rushed in after her. They rolled on the thick mattress of fallen leaves, Daanish trembling and ecstatic. But why was it taking so long to find her?
‘You’re a virgin!’ she giggled as he plunged into her belly for the fifth time. He thrust up her Amazonian thighs, poked the crack of her buttocks, and went full circle (just as Penny knew one always went), back to her belly. She was both irritated and amused, and at last said, ‘We’ve got to stop. This is beginning to hurt.’
He was mortified. She sat up, fingered his penis till it grew stiff again, and encouraged him to listen to his body.
‘What does it say?’ she whispered.
His eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. What do you think it says? he wanted to shout, the color in his cheeks horribly like the sanguine leaves beneath them. He was harder than the trees smirking around him, and began to despair. He was going to climax in her hand.
‘Let it happen,’ she encouraged. ‘Don’t hold back.’ She prepared to lie down with him again but it was too late. His semen sprayed her knees. The forest shook with mirth, dropping yet more leaves.
The color rose again to his cheeks as he trudged up the hill, remembering that day. Disturbingly vivid about it all was the sound of their bodies on the mattress of leaves. It was not like crushing paper, nor like rubbing two starched shirts. Not quite like a voile dupatta trailing on grass, but maybe closer to a child’s rattle or iron shavings sliding at the bottom of a can. It was a sound that lowered Daanish to the sinking depths of shame. Every walk he took that fall brought the memory back stronger, and when a chipmunk bounced or bird hopped in the blanket of leaves that covered the campus, he heard the chorus of the laughing trees.
Fortunately, snow covered the campus now. And Penny had very kindly decided to downplay the event – thank God it hadn’t been Becky. He was successful at last in the early morning after their first night together. Perhaps he’d been too sleepy to panic, and had instead, as Penny advised, listened to his body.