to my father, and he arranged an emergency meeting with the school psychologist. The psychologist told my father he was concerned that I might have obsessive-compulsive disorder. I had to see him for four weeks in a row. But somehow, I started forgetting to think about sneezing during my sneezes, and the problem disappeared as quickly as it had come on.
David smiled. “If you think a lot about anything, it can ruin it,” he said. “If you think about kissing, about the fact that two people press their lips together and move into all sorts of configurations, it seems completely bizarre.”
“I’ll bet it’s worse if you think about it while you’re doing it,” I said.
“Let’s see,” he said. And he pulled off the road.
After about a month of my sleeping over regularly, David began telling me a few new things he wanted me to do.
They were only slight variations on the norm, and I considered them a small sacrifice to make. Whatever kept his attention. As long as they didn’t go too far.
But soon, he began to tell me some of the things he wanted me to say.
They bothered me. They weren’t the kind of things I’d ever said before, and I’d probably never say them again, if I could help it. It wasn’t just that they were dirty—the words were harsh. I didn’t feel I could utter some of what he wanted. But I didn’t want to disobey.
“We’ll start slowly,” he said kindly, one night in his room. “Just like with everything else. I just want you to say this one thing.”
I was silent.
“Carrie?”
What’s wrong with you, I thought to myself. It’s just words. You know that intellectually. So what?
But I knew that even if I could say it, it would come out unnatural. And thus, it wouldn’t have the effect he was hoping for. I was sure of it.
“Come on,” he said, sweat on his brow. “Say it.”
“It won’t…it won’t sound like me.”
“Just say it,” he whispered. “Say it once.” He kissed my lips, then my neck. He ran his hand down my chest and rested it in my crotch, then took his index finger and began circling. “Say it. What do you want me to do to you?”
“‘I want… I want you to…’”
“Go ahead.”
“I can’t.”
He sat up. He didn’t look so kind anymore. “What’s the matter?”
“It won’t sound like me. It won’t sound right.”
“Say it any way you want.” He leaned over me and kissed me again. “Come on.”
I just looked up at him.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s not…I can’t.”
He sat up and looked into the distance.
“David?”
He ignored me.
“Come on. I’m…”
He rolled over on his side and pulled his blanket up. “Forget it. What’s the use?”
“Are you mad at me?”
He ignored me again.
I turned over, too, but I couldn’t sleep.
I lay there, my back to him, quietly waiting for him to change his mind. I wanted to get up and put on some bedclothes, but I thought that the more silence there was, the more he’d need to break it. I was scared even to breathe. I watched the red numbers on his clock radio change.
Eventually I fell asleep. At some point in the night, I woke up and pulled on a T-shirt. Then I went back to sleep.
In the morning, when I awoke, David was already in the kitchen, heating up coffee. I padded in there, and he gave me a silent nod and went back to the coffee. He also was quiet in the car going back to campus.
I went through my classes upset but trying to concentrate. When I came home, the light on my answering machine wasn’t blinking.
I collected my introductory philosophy books and read in bed. An hour passed without a call. I was scared. Why had I been so stupid?
But he would have to give me another chance, right?
I read Meditations on First Philosophy, but my eyes just kept rolling over the same words again and again, as if I were highlighting the book in varnish. Nothing stuck. Every few minutes, I looked at my clock. Dinnertime was approaching. I’d have to hike down to the dining hall and sit at the end of a table alone. Doing that always gave me an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to do it if he was going to call.
I felt hungry. I ignored my stomach and tried again to concentrate on Meditations, but I decided maybe I needed something light to read. So I picked up Thus Spake Zarathustra.
The phone rang.
I reminded myself, even as I dashed to it, to make my voice sound uninterested.
“Hello.”
I wouldn’t have admitted it, and it sounds very clichéd, but clichés become clichés because they happen: when I heard his voice, my stomach jumped.
“I went out and got wood for the fireplace,” David said. “I could use a little help initiating it.”
I wanted to tell him how happy I was that it was him, how scared I’d been, how much I’d missed him and how I would say whatever he wanted. But I didn’t. I told him I would meet him outside in ten minutes.
That night, we ate heaping bowls of linguine at an Italian place, then went to David’s apartment. Once in the living room, we lay down on the rug in front of the fireplace, a bottle of wine between us. David put his glass down on the brown tiles and lay on his side in an S shape, his knees bent. I rested my head on his jeans and stared into his chest. Thank God everything’s okay, I thought. It felt so good just to lie there, listening to him breathe. I closed my eyes, and we both lay quietly for a while. Then, I felt his fingers move over my wine-ripened lips. “Come here,” he whispered, and he brought my chin to his face. “Let’s stay here for a change,” he said, and I nodded. Soon he said, “Say it. What I wanted you to say yesterday. Please.”
Before he’d called, I had told myself I would, and on the way over, I had told myself I would, but now I couldn’t. It didn’t seem like the right words. It didn’t seem to fit with either me or with us. And why did he want me to say it, when he knew how much it bothered me?
“Say it!”
I started. “‘I… I…’”
“Yes?” His eyes were closed.
I couldn’t
