By K E Garland
IG: K E Garland
Used with permission of the author
“Alphas are having a house party. Let’s go,” Keisha said.
She and I met our first year of undergrad. Partying with her and our friends, Kenya and
Ami was commonplace. We poured cup after cup of pink Boonesfarm in between choosing
outfits, doing hair, and applying make-up.
“You wearing those black Girbauds again?” Kenya asked.
“You know she is,” Keisha answered for me.
I was. They were my favorite. A colorful rayon blouse and a pair of black booties made it
look like I’d tried, but not too hard.
As usual, we piled into Ami’s Saturn and bounced along with “Hot Sex on a Platter’s”
hard baseline. We arrived to find people lounging on couches and sipping from red cups, while
rap music blared.
Within ten minutes, a guy approached me. We swooned over being from the same
hometown—Chicago. Instead of shouting over lyrics, we agreed to go where we could hear one
another. A quiet place was the apartment owner’s bedroom. Our conversation was immemorable.
One of us turned off the lights. As we sat on the bed and continued talking, I reached to unbutton
his pants, confident we were ready for the same thing. He pushed my hands away.
Drunkenness and ego formed my confusion. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing. Let’s just talk.”
“You don’t wanna…?”
“No. Let’s just talk,” he insisted.
We talked. We drank. We kissed. I undressed. Surely, my naked body would shift his
stance. But it didn’t. He sat on the bed fully clothed, telling me how beautiful I was, while I
begged for intercourse.
A commotion on the other side of the door disrupted my pleas. “In here?” Keisha said as
she flung the door open and flipped on the lights. Five people trailed behind her. “Kathy! You,
okay?”
“Yes,” I answered, the room’s brightness spotlighting my nudity.
“You wanna be here?” she confirmed.
“Yes. Can you turn off the lights and leave?”
“I just wanna make sure you wanna be here.”
“Yes,” I assured. “I want to be here.”
She and everyone else pivoted. The room darkened, and I re-dressed. I took a deep breath
and stared straight ahead in preparation to walk down the hall, which seemed longer than I
remembered.
“Are we leaving soon?” I asked Ami as I held the doorknob.
“In a minute.”
I sat at the top of the stairs outside of the apartment door. Five minutes passed. Then,
fifteen. Thirty minutes later, I assumed we weren’t leaving, so I began walking.
My toes tingled in the Michigan snow. A white outline of salt damage formed on the
edges of my booties. It would be the last time I’d wear them.
I contemplated the previous four years. What was I doing wrong?
The next morning, I listened through the wall as Keisha recounted the night’s events to
Riki, my suitemate.
“Hey, girl!” Keisha hollered when I opened the bathroom door connecting our rooms.
“Where’d you go?”
“I walked back.”
“From the apartment to the Valley?” she asked, then she shrugged. “Me and Kenya are
going to a party on campus tonight. You going?”
“Yep,” I replied with confidence.
“I didn’t think you’d wanna go…after last night.”
I’d already suppressed the previous night’s events and was ready to follow our weekend
ritual and walk to the next party.
House music vibrated throughout the empty gymnasium’s walls. A group of people
danced in a small circle. I found a random guy to sway in rhythm with and watched Keisha out
of the corner of my eye, laughing and talking with the DJ. The music lowered, and I heard her
voice over the microphone.
“I’d like to dedicate this song to my girl!” she shouted. “You know who you are!”
Then, one of the most popular house songs at the time played.
There’s some whores in this house.
There’s some whores in this house.
My insides burned as the refrain repeated. But I refused for her or anyone else to bear
witness to my raw emotion. I’d been through worse. I raised my arms high and flailed them
about, signaling that her attempt at humiliating me was a failure.
“Heeeey!” I shouted as natural as I could, hoping my words were loud enough to hear.
“Thanks, girl!”
Avoidance.
My dance partner cocked his head at my overreaction. “Oh. That’s my girl,” I explained.
“She just dedicated this song to me.”
That night, I returned to the dorm with a new moniker—ho. I was wearing red shoes and
people were pointing. But I refused to call myself that. It seemed crass. Instead, I began
proclaiming I liked sex. Doesn’t everyone?
The winter semester wore on. Ami faded into the background of campus life. Keisha,
Kenya, and I didn’t speak much, except when I asked if they knew who put dog shit on my
doorknob. They assured me they did not.
Parts of this piece were first published on PULP, a sex/uality and reproductive rights
publication celebrating this human coil.
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