january 5th 2024

we’d play this game where we’d test how far we could go with each other without acting out anything sexual, and whoever called mercy was the bitch of the day. you’d come onto me and close in with your face, suggesting a kiss, but i would meet your eyes, triumphant, and never flinch. typically it ended when i tried to unzip your pants. i wouldn’t have done it, but you’d recoil and dramatically cringe and say, fuck you, stop, you win, like a bitch. we would do this in front of all of our friends, who were uncomfortable with the display on each occasion, and it continued until you had a girlfriend, and then you initiated it after, until march or so when it was explicitly forbidden. at the beginning of freshman year when we first devised it, your ex would throw a fit to you in private. you’d find me and outline your gripes with her—something like, god, she’s such a cunt—as if she wasn’t our roommate and you weren’t fucking her at 10am while i was in art history. you never could keep your hands to yourself. 

i went on a date last december that wasn’t really a date because she was more femme than i was—tough to achieve—and i hung out with her in the dining hall for two hours or so. you arrived separately with our ensemble and the three of you took a downstairs booth. i wasn’t an insider to this story until a few months ago when i was crying to petra. apparently you knew i was there, and why i was there, maybe caught a glimpse of the back of my head while you paused by the grill (your dinner was classically a plate of fries and mayo, nothing else), and when you returned to your table you threw a tantrum. this was not something new. my very first date at emerson left you so despondent that you retreated to the room of the theater & performance bear on our floor, downed straight vodka, and cried until i came back. to distract yourself from the next one you slept with our roommate about it, either the second or first time but in any case, a deed kept secret—until you implicated yourself a week later in the frenzy of my panic episode. within some corner of your conscious, now faithfully repressed, is an urge to own me. to make me the bitch.