It’s actually three parties. Starting right after dinner, there’s a pre-party in Rawlins lounge that’s just for the team. At nine, the whole-campus party kicks off in the Minnehan Center, which is always packed with bodies, because the rugby team throws the first big party after winter break, plays the best music, and never runs out of beer.
In between the two parties—well, that’s why it’s legendary. The blow-job contest.
Last year I missed it. I guess I was studying. But this time there’s no question I’m going. I helped Quinn with the planning, showed up to decorate Minnehan with paper cutouts of fierce rugby-playing women and this sort of oversize mural thing on the wall, which I think was supposed to be a life-size representation of a scrum but ended up looking like a giant lesbian orgy, all tongues and hands. Really we’re just lucky nobody from the college is paying attention to the decorations, because wow.
Wow.
Quinn says she’s going to save it and put it up in her dorm room after the party.
I made cheese-and-salsa dip and cookies, but nobody’s hungry. They’re thirsty. Quinn brought three gallons of fruit punch and three bottles of vodka. We mix the drinks right in the red plastic cups. Mine makes my stomach hurt—vodka always does—but I sip it, standing on the fringes, watching the others dance.
I don’t want to drink too much. I’m afraid I’ll do something stupid, like show up at West’s door and yell at him.
Like tell him that even though I know he doesn’t do parties, and he wants to back off this thing, I wish he were with me tonight.
So I could kick him.
And then probably kiss him.
I’d like to drink six drinks in a row, but that would be kind of dumb. So. Here I am, sipping my Solo cup of punch slowly and carefully like a good little girl, and when Quinn tries to get me to join her in an interpretive dance-off, I just smile and say, “No, thanks, I’ll watch.”
I’ll watch Bridget and Krishna laughing together on the other side of the room, my friends who aren’t officially supposed to be here, except they helped Quinn and me set up, and nobody cares, really.
I’ll watch Quinn undulate, pretending to be a jellyfish, because that’s her assigned interpretive-dance theme.
I’ll watch the door, even though he’s not coming, wasn’t invited to this party, would’ve said no if I invited him.
I’ll stand here and watch my life pass me by, because I’m a good daughter, a party planner, a brownnosing rule-following coward. And the way things are going, that’s all I’ll ever be.
We leave the lounge wrecked, put on jackets and hats, twine on scarves, stumble out into the overcast night. The temperature is in the high twenties, the snow thick and slushy. We slog toward the rugby field along the train tracks to a spot behind the Minnehan Center that Quinn and I diligently cleared off earlier. Forty feet of snow-free track gleaming in parallel lines.
Already, some people are milling around—mostly players’ friends, girlfriends, boyfriends. As we take bottles out of backpacks and unwrap disposable shot glasses to line them up along the tracks, the crowd grows. I’ve got a cloth envelope full of money. I’m supposed to be the cashier, but when Quinn sinks to her knees beside the tracks and says, “Let’s go, girls. Line ’em up!” I don’t want to anymore.
I don’t want to be on the outside, looking in.
I find Krishna’s head in the crowd and beckon him over. “You’re the cashier,” I tell him, pressing the envelope into his hand.
“Only if you do me for free.”
“Fine. You can be my first.” I catch Quinn’s eye. “I want in on this.”
“Sweet! We’ve got another virrrrgin!”
The idea that I’m a blow-job virgin is patently hilarious, but no one is mocking me here.
She makes some room beside her, gets me a shot, sets it up on the tracks in front of me. “All right!” she shouts, and the crowd starts to gather in around us. “You all know how this works! Ten bucks gets you two blow jobs—one for you, one for the awesome, amazing, ass-kicking rugger across the tracks. You pay your girl, she lets you stick your tenner down her shirt, it’s all very kinky. We all go on the same whistle. The drink goes on the tracks, and you have to drink it with your hands free in one try. If you choke or spit it all over your face like a loser, go to the back of the line. If your rugger chokes or gets it on herself, you can have your money back. If you both swallow like big kids, you can pay another ten and go again if you want. You all know Krishna?”
Eyes turn toward Krishna. Heads nod.
“Right. Everybody knows Krish. You need change, talk to Krish. I’m also appointing him the asshole referee. This is supposed to be fun to raise money for rugby. Yes, the shots are called blow jobs. Yes, it’s ever so naughty. But if you step over the line from fun and games to junk-grabbing or name-calling or any other form of small-minded assholery, Krish is going to give you the boot, and a dozen pissed-off ruggers are going to back him up. This is a safe space. For ev-ery-one. Got it?”
More nodding and some cheers. The crowd’s happy, we’re happy. We aren’t the only ones who threw a pre-party. “All right! Let’s do it! Where’s my whistle girl?”
Somehow, Bridget has the whistle. The first row of takers pays their money and gets down on their knees.
“Hands behind your backs!” Bridget yells.
I tuck my fingers into my back pockets, just so I won’t be tempted.
Krishna winks at me.
“Suck them down, girls!” Bridget cries, and blows the whistle.
I dip my head. It’s awkward just getting my head down to the level of the tracks, and I have to open my jaw wide to fit my mouth around the shot glass. Wide enough to make it ache. As I sit up, something flashes in my peripheral vision, a camera or a flashlight or just light gleaming off the tracks.
I see myself from the outside. Head thrown back. Eyes closed. A parody of exploitation.
The shot slides down my throat—Baileys, Kahlúa, whipped cream. Burning and cold at once, foreign and alarming. I stifle my gag reflex. My eyes tear up. It’s impossible not to remember hands in my hair, pulling too hard. Nate’s dick shoved farther down my throat than I wanted it, and this same sensation right at the borderline of gagging.
It’s not funny. It’s not.
But when I swallow and lift my head, nobody’s got their hands on me. I have Quinn on my right. Bridget with her whistle, smiling. Krishna across from me with whipped cream all over the front of his black jacket, wheezing with laughter. “That is fucking gross,” he says.
“You lose!” Quinn taunts. “Back of the line.”
It’s the strangest thing, because I’m not drunk, and I’m not traumatized, and I’m not crazy.
I’m not a dumb cunt.
I’m not a slut, I’m not frigid, I’m not a disappointment.
I’m just a girl who did a shot off the train tracks, high-fiving her friends, savoring the warmth spreading down her throat and into her stomach.
It’s stupid. But I’m okay. I’m actually kind of happy.
The next couple of shots are guys I don’t know. I get the second one down but choke on the third, and that guy waves off the money when I try to give it back. I let him buy another round even though he’s not supposed to. He chokes and dribbles whitish-yellow fluid all over his chin, which is sufficiently disgusting that we both bust up laughing. “I’m Aaron,” he says, offering me his hand.
I take it. It’s sticky. “Caroline.”
He smiles. “I know.”
I decide what he means is exactly what he said. He knows my name. Nothing worse than that.
“Maybe I’ll see you at the party later,” he tells me when he gets up, damp patches on the knees of his jeans.
Maybe he will.
There’s another guy. After him, the thighs that plunk down in front of me belong to Scott.
Rugby Scott.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“Fancy seeing you here.”
I laugh at that. Actually, I kind of snort. I’ve had … uh-oh. Some drinks. Five. Or six? They’re not very big. Quinn taught us to make them with a lot of whipped cream and not so much of the hard stuff, because a few years ago one of the ruggers had to go to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. We’re supposed to get rotated out every so often, but I’m still fine. I’m better than fine.
“Did you think you wouldn’t see me?”
“Um …” His eyes flick to mine. “Does that question have a right answer?”
“Pay up, people!” Bridget shouts. Scott extends his hand, a ten-dollar bill sticking out between his fingers.
“Where am I supposed to put this?”
I’ve got money sticking out of my pocket, and the twenty plastered to my neck is poking me in my ear. I look heavenward, feigning exasperation. “Anywhere you want, big boy.”
That cracks us both up.
He puts it in my pocket.
I wonder if he’s been drinking, too.
I wonder why he’s here. If he came thinking he’d see me. If he was looking forward to it.
One of the players sets a shot in front of me and plunks another down in front of Scott.
Bridget blows the whistle. “DRINK!”
I open my jaw wide. Put my head down, suck up my shot, knock it back. My eyes don’t sting anymore. My lips are sticky and sweet, my hands cold from being out of my pockets so long. Scott gets his shot down, too, and pulls another ten from his wallet.
“I’m supposed to do this again now?” he asks.
“You’re allowed.”
“Oh, it’s a privilege.”
I beam at him. “It’s definitely a privilege. And it’s for a good cause.”
This time, he tucks the money in my coat. It’s zipped up to my scarf, so when he wraps his fingers around the collar, just for a second, he’s touching a perfectly innocent bit of chest real estate about five inches north of my boobs. And even that through a couple of layers of clothing.
But our eyes meet, and I know what he did, and so does he.
Whistle. “DRINK!”
This one goes down funny. I start to choke, and I have to grip the train track for a second, cold iron through brown leather, sucking air into my nose. In my peripheral vision, I notice a disturbance. Movement. A ripple of aggression.
“Not your turn, dude,” I hear Krishna say.
“I get to go again.” Scott.
“I don’t care.”
I know that voice.
I look up and see West, down on one knee across from me.
He must have shoved to the front of the line. Barged right in and removed Scott, which is totally not allowed. If anyone else had done it, Krishna would have had them kicked out, but West is West, and they’re friends.
West is West, and he’s got some kind of point he wants to make. God knows what it is.
His jaw is tight. There’s a line between his eyebrows, a hardness to his mouth. I wonder how long he’s been watching and what kind of right he thinks he has here, anyway.
The muscle in his jaw flexes, his teeth grinding together.
“You’re here for a blow job?”
“No.”
I cross my arms, pouting. “Well, blow jobs are what’s on offer. Are you in or are you out?”
Someone slides a shot down the tracks to the space in front of him. Bridget shouts, “Pay up!”
West frowns, opens his wallet, takes out a bill.
He extends it to me.
“You’re supposed to put it on me.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Everybody’s doing that.”
He hesitates, and I think he won’t. He seems troubled by all this, not sure if I’m being exploited, exploiting myself.
I’m not sure, either, but I want to tell him that sometimes you just have to trust the way it feels. You have to believe that happy things can make you happy and wrong things feel wrong.