It was 9 a.m. Awakened, as I often am, by sunlight, I opened my door to go to the bathroom downstairs. Supine, to the side of my door, was a male form, blonde and muscular and naked. His hands were cupped over his genitals, his underwear crumpled by his head. His eyes were closed. I froze in surprise, but I had to pee, and out of some ingrained politeness didn’t want to disturb him. I stepped over him quietly and went downstairs.
“I could really go for a good burger right now,” my friend says in a tone that conveys that a burger would fill not only her stomach, but her soul. She leans against the wall expectantly. All night, she’s been flirting with another friend, a certain kind of guy who likes a certain kind of girl: thin, glossy-haired, and intelligent enough to be a sparkling conversationalist, quick with a comeback, but not necessarily intellectually aggressive enough to call him on any of his bullshit.
As I stood outside the door to Frist 212 on the first day of my freshman year, waiting for my Arabic 101 class to start, a bright-eyed boy in a polo shirt bounced up to the door. I smiled at … Read More
For a class called “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Lives,” that I took last semester, we were tasked with many activities meant to make us aware of what it meant to be a woman, and a woman in a body, and a woman in a body in a society alternatingly fascinated and disgusted with that body.
The Ivy membership has gathered in the library. One by one, they choose who will fill the positions on the club’s officer board: they elect a male president, a male vice-president, a female bicker chair, and a male social chair. One more position remains: house manager.
Damien* is a frat bro, infamous on the Princeton campus for his trust fund and sexual aggression, and he has something to say. “Write this down,” he says to me. “Damien does not like women.” I ask why not. “Because they’re not cool.” Why not? “Because I can’t relate to them.”
Metta, you don’t know me, but I know you. And I’ve known you. You were an Indiana Pacer from the time I was 10 to 14 and children in Indiana grow up knowing the names of Pacers the way they know the Pledge of Allegiance. But then when I was in sixth grade you almost strangled a fan at a Detroit Pistons’ game and got yourself traded.
We are a little hung-over, a little loud, a little late. As my friend Giri drives the car up a dusty, unpaved road, my friend Louise and I comment on how rustic the rough wooden fence separating from the field from Princeton Friends Meeting is.
