My Last Innocent Year(3)
Zev and I stayed friends after that, although friends might not have been the right word. Whenever we saw each other, in the dining hall or library, he would seek me out and we would talk, not about little things like what his parents did for a living or if he had a pet, but big things like politics, economics, God, the Middle East. Zev challenged me to articulate my beliefs, to explain why I was a feminist or a Democrat. I wasn’t a debater by nature and somewhere along the way had come to believe that what I felt, if it couldn’t be articulated or defended, was invalid. Maybe that’s why I thought I had to listen to Zev, who was clear in his beliefs and never wavered. When we talked, I could feel my mind stretching to take in this new worldview—his worldview—but mostly I was trying to figure out if he liked me, if he thought I was pretty, if he ever thought about kissing me. It only occurred to me later that Zev didn’t have any friends besides me, that whenever I saw him at a party or lecture, he was always alone. He sought me out because he had no one else to talk to, because no one else could stand him.
Debra, for one, hated him. “You don’t have to be friends with him just because he’s Jewish,” she said, but that wasn’t the reason. There was something dangerous about Zev that felt exciting to me, a cold, bitter exterior I was determined to crack. He was exactly the sort of man I would avoid when I was older and knew better, but we usually learn that the hard way.
“He just wants to fuck you,” Debra said, but I wasn’t sure. Other than grabbing my wrist that night at Hillel House, Zev never touched me. Sometimes, after we’d been arguing for a while, I found myself waiting for the feel of his hand, unfamiliar, uninvited.
* * *
THE HEATER IN the corner rattled loudly, like something or someone was trapped inside. Zev’s hands were rough and chapped and everywhere—under my shirt, pawing at the space between my legs. A line from a poem ran through my head—Then all night you rummaged my flesh for some body else. I felt as though I’d been dropped into the middle of a sexual encounter that had been going on for a while. I placed a hand on the wall behind me, tried to catch my breath. I thought about asking him to slow down when he pulled me toward the bed.
Zev was strong, his body taut like a drum. He lay down on top of me and pulled up my shirt. I heard a couple of buttons pop off, which, for some reason, made me laugh. Zev didn’t laugh though, and for the first time that night, maybe in my whole life, I felt scared.
“Whoa there, soldier,” I said as he started to unzip his pants. From this close up, his skin looked oily, his eyes too close together. “Could you maybe slow down a little?” Despite all the kissing and touching, I was barely aroused.
Zev was breathing hard, as if he’d run up a flight of stairs. “I don’t think I can,” he said, slipping my hand into the opening of his boxer shorts. It was damp and humid in there. “Come on,” he breathed into my neck. “Why’d you come up here anyway?”
Why had I come, I thought as Zev threaded a hand up the back of my shirt and unhooked my bra. He pushed me down on the extralong twin mattress, and I thought about telling him I had my period. I heard voices in the hallway, people walking by, enjoying their night. I wondered if I should call out to them, but there was nothing remarkable happening. I’d been here before—not in Zev’s room per se, but under boys who smelled like sweat and dirty hair. Zev reached for a condom, and I thought about my mother on a long-ago first day of school, the slap of her Dr. Scholl’s sandals against the sidewalk. “Be a good girl, Isabel,” she’d said, bending down to kiss me on the nose. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
I was still dry, so Zev licked a finger and placed it inside me before easing himself in. Then he moved his dick back and forth slowly, trying to find a comfortable rhythm. I tried to pull my shirt closed because I didn’t like being shirtless in front of a man, but he grabbed my wrists and held them above my head.
My eyes were open but Zev’s were closed, his eyelids fluttering as if he was watching something play out inside them. Maybe a scene from a Western, and I was the stallion he was riding across the dusty plains. Or maybe we were riding across the voluptuous deserts of Israel. Did Israel have deserts? All I could picture from that part of the world were scenes from Operation Desert Storm. With each thrust, my head pressed against the metal headboard. I tried to think about something else, anything else, like the paper I’d just turned in about Russian Jewry in the nineteenth century. I watched the shadows move across the popcorn ceiling, listened to the buzz of the fluorescent lights out in the hallway, as Zev moved faster, ramping up to the big finish. And then, finally, after several shuddering thrusts, he sputtered and came, quietly, like every boy I’d slept with who’d only ever had sex in places where he had to be quiet. Part of me was disappointed he didn’t scream or cry out so I would know if he liked it, if anyone liked it.
“What are you doing for break?” Zev asked after he peeled off the condom and tossed it into the trash, where it landed among old copies of the Wall Street Journal and strings of dental floss.
“Not too much,” I said, buttoning my shirt as best as I could. “Working in my dad’s store mostly. How about you?”
“I’m going to Washington with a couple international students. There isn’t enough time to go home.”
We talked for a minute or two about Washington and what he should do while he was there. He should definitely visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I said, since I knew he was interested in monuments to mass tragedies. I told him about the time I went to DC in high school and a group of kids got sent home for doing Whip Its.