Just One of the Guys(28)

Likewise, it was harder than I’d imagined to make friends with girls. Elaina and I had been best friends for eons already, that kind of tight-knit, unbreachable bond that kept other friends at a distance. Who needed friends when you had a best friend forever, four brothers, their wives and girlfriends, and Trevor? These girly-girls in their capri pants and tiny canvas shoes, their hair-tossing and flirting, were exotic and mysterious to me. On some level, I wanted to be like them; on the other hand, I knew it was impossible for me, five foot eleven and three-quarters, one hundred and fifty-seven pounds with the legendary O’Neill shoulders, to fit in with the cashmere sweater-set clique.

It was lonely.

At least until crew tryouts, that is. Thanks to Lucky’s tutelage, I aced the first round. Coach put me on the exclusive four, which meant I had three instant best friends, all of whom happened to be upperclassmen and who quite admired those O’Neill shoulders. Suddenly, I belonged somewhere based on my own accomplishments. I was judged only for myself, not what my brothers had or had not done. It felt fantastic. I had finally come into my own.

I was meant to row. No tiny little shiny-haired girls on crew, no sir. Every day, we prided ourselves on being tireless, strong, ruthless, relentless. Burning muscles and sweat-drenched T-shirts were our status symbols. We ate together, studied together, hung out in each other’s rooms.

At the Head of the Charles Regatta in October, the Binghamton women’s four creamed the competition, gliding four lengths in front of the second-place crew, soundly beating everyone who mattered: Harvard and Yale and Penn. Even freakin’ Oxford! We were euphoric. Each of us had been perfect, in sync, our every molecule focused on the row—a study in strength, concentration and unity. Such a victory! Binghamton had never placed so high at such a prestigious event, and we found ourselves local celebrities and campus heroes upon return.

To honor the occasion, the entire women’s crew team was invited for dinner at the dean’s home. It was a posh evening—I even wore a skirt and eye shadow, my teammates assuring me that I did not look like I was a drag queen. Dinner at the dean’s! It was a huge honor. We were all nervous, especially me. I was the only underclassman on the winning crew, the only first-year on varsity, and yes, a lot of fuss had been made about me. So when Becca, a senior, offered me a vodka and tonic before the big dinner, I accepted. Then I asked for another. Never having had vodka before, not having eaten anything all day due to said nerves, well, let’s just say I relaxed quite a bit.

And then it happened. It was one of those stupid and fairly common moves many college students make. Drinking, I was just now learning, seemed to lower my inhibitions and loosen the old tongue, but I was doing okay, being rather charming, in fact, or so I thought. When the dean herself asked me—me!—how it felt to have captured first place, beating some of the best crews in the world, what I imagined was a charming and droll answer fell out of my mouth.

“Well, Dean, those candyass Ivy Leaguers should have been drowned at birth by their parents, seeing that they row like spaghetti-armed third graders! I mean, come on! Did you see those weakling rich kid Harvard anorexics?”

I waited for the roar of laughter from my teammates. None came. Glancing around the dean’s posh living room, I noted that my classmates were…uh-oh…frozen in horror.

I had forgotten—oh, so briefly and so critically—that not only had Dean Strothers attended Harvard, but she had rowed while at school. Furthermore, she had a daughter, at Harvard incidentally, who also rowed. Who happened to be on the very crew we so soundly defeated.

I spent the rest of the evening burning in Dean Strothers’s hate-filled glare, trying not to move, trying to melt into the background, which is rather hard to do, since no one wanted to stand closer than four feet. Our celebratory dinner was ruined, the dean was pissed, Coach horrified and my teammates embarrassed. I wanted to crawl into the river and drown.

When dinner finally ended, some four years after it had begun, I slunk across campus to my dorm. It was Thursday night, and tomorrow there were no classes as part of the Columbus Day break. My crewmates and I had planned to storm the campus center and continue our celebration, but there was no way I was going to do that now. Chances were that I’d be the main topic of discussion, and all I wanted was to be alone.

My roommate had gone home for the long weekend, thank God, and I flopped on my bed and cried, torn up that I’d been so thoughtless, so tactless, so stupid, stupid, stupid. I couldn’t get anything right. I was a bull in a china shop. I had no social graces. I would never ever drink again. I’d finally found friends and now they hated me. I was a blight on the sport. I didn’t deserve to row ever again. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

When a knock came on the door an hour later, I didn’t bother getting up, still sniveling in self-disgust.

“Chastity, honey, it’s me,” said a voice. Trevor.

I hadn’t seen much of him since I’d started six weeks earlier, and when I did, he was always surrounded by friends, usually of the female variety, though he was popular with both sexes. He’d wave, come over for a quick chat, pat me on the shoulder and off he’d go, back to the cool kids, to the fabulous upperclassmen, to the throngs of women who seemed to orbit around him.

I’d hoped that we would hang out at college, walk across the beautiful campus, have dinner as he’d promised. In my eighteen-year-old mind, our longtime friendship would blossom into something more—a deep and abiding love—and we would soon marry and live happily ever after.