Born Confused (7 page)

It was Gwyn all right—and in the exact same outfit I was in! She caught sight of me just then and shook the beeper like a maraca. She looked phenomenal, the dream girl straight out of a boy band video. There was no way my coat was coming off this century.

—Hey, birthday girl! she yelped, wiggling up and flinging her arms around me, spilling in the process.

—Hi, Gwynnie, I said, hugging her back as Julian and Dylan high-fived each other. They seemed to be laughing at their own private joke.

—Here, let’s get you two a drink, cried Gwyn breaking into their bandedness.—I’m having a Virgin Mary—gotta start slow.

She turned to Dylan.

—But by the end of the night I’ll be on to something else, she smiled.

Dylan looked very pleased, and for some reason high-fived Julian again. They were reminding me of something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.

—Actually, why don’t
you
go for it, Dimple? she now suggested.—You can try out your new toy.

I was nervous, and to be honest the card had been in my fist since we’d entered the outskirts of illegal that was the parking lot. But
I was also relieved at the idea of getting away from the boys for a mo. I knew it was only the beginning of the date, but I was already spent.

—Come with me? I said.

Gwyn gave Dylan a kiss that would have lasted a sailor out to sea for a year, then joined me at the end of the bar, where I took a breath and then ordered a round from a redhead who looked like she’d heard it all and even done some of it. Much to my chagrin, she didn’t ask for ID. I was about to flash the flimflam anyways but Gwyn slapped my hand down.

—Don’t make a point of showing it! she whispered.—That’d be proof it’s a fake.

I was wondering how I was in fact going to use this piece of plastic, but Gwyn was off the topic.

—So how’s it going? she asked excitedly as our drinks magically appeared one by one.

—All right, I said.

—Don’t worry, it’s going to be just fine, I promise you.

Like she’d promised she wouldn’t be late?

—Why didn’t you meet us at the mall, Gwyn?

—I figured you and Julian could use some time together, she smiled.—And Dilly and I, I thought we were gonna be late but we…wrapped up sooner than I’d thought. I’m getting good!

—At what?

—Oh, Dimple, she sighed, and she sounded tipsy, which seemed strange if she was on the virgins.—You stick with Julian, and maybe one of these days you’ll get it.

—That’s encouraging, I said.—So you’re in the same, um, outfit as me.

—Isn’t it excellent? she grinned, twirling like a machine ballerina.—Now we can be real supertwins!

She began to coax me back towards Julian and Dylan.

—Take off that coat, Dimple, and strut your stuff!

But I wasn’t going to be parting with it so easily now.

When we were all equally daiquiried she beamed at the boys.

—So, she said.—What have you two been talking about?

—Well, the film, of course, said Julian.—That’s number one prio at the moment.

—Yeah, well, you and Dimple have a lot in common then, said Gwyn.

His film was my priority?

—What, Dimple goes to movies? he smirked.

—No, silly! Dimple is an artist—she takes
pictures,
said Gwyn. She put a finger to the top of her straw then pulled it up, sucking out the drink from the other end.—They’re really good. She just took a bunch of me at school, in the halls—tell him, Dimps!

—I just took a bunch of her at school, I said dully. The drink was sweet, and had to be virgin, too, since I could taste nothing but strawberries on ice.

—Well, they must be good if you’re in them, babe, said Dylan, his hand gripping the small of Gwyn’s waist like a possessive goatherd.

—Who are your influences? asked Julian suspiciously.

—I don’t know, I said, even though I did.

—There must be someone.

—Ansel Adams, I blurted, almost to get it over with. It sounded funny saying it outside my head.

—Ansel Adams is your influence? said Julian.—Wow. But, uh, how do you apply that to shots of Gwyn in a Lenne Lenape High hallway?

I couldn’t figure out what was up with this pop quiz. I felt like I
was being held up to a meter I could never measure up to and the result was my coming up with a total blank even though I knew I had my reasons usually, at least somewhere inside me.

—They’re black and white, I said.—And Ansel Adams’s photos are…well. Black and white.

A pause hunched before us then sprang into trolling laughter.

—Good one, dude! Julian sniggered. Why was I dude and Gwyn babe?

—And both have breathtaking natural scenery as their focus, said Dylan, running his hand through Gwyn’s hair. She never let people touch her hair (too many hidden bobby pins, which she was now rearranging); all her exes had been denied this right.—That’s why I’m going to make Gwyneth Sexton a star one day.

Her name was Gwyndolyne, but no one objected, including the lady in question. Was this a parallel universe?

An alarm bell went off in my head, and so did the beeper.

As Dylan and Julian jawed on about
films—
which were, apparently, not to be confused with
movies—
Gwyn watched attentively from our side of the table, a fixed smile on her face. And I drank and stuffed my face, and drank some more, till tipping time

Life upright was revelatory, and walking was more like swimming. Everything seemed louder as we left Chimichanga’s, as if the sounds were all emanating from within my ears instead of coming into them from the outside. I was beginning to wonder what exactly had been in those strawberries. But it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, in fact it was a tingly wingy feeling, and when we got out to the lot something about the bright blue sunshine made it all seem quite normal. We piled into Dylan’s Mustang, Julian and me in back and Gwyn up front. The wind blew in, gusting hair across my face, and Julian smiled at me, his chestnut eyes gone Nutella now.

—You look sexy like that, he said.—Windblown, wild. Like a wild animal.

I didn’t know what to say. I think I mostly liked what he’d said but it didn’t seem to match the curtains in the usual (tiny) room where I stored compliments in my head for future emergencies. Still, it felt soft and fuzzy, so I folded it and put it in a corner for the winter.

—Grrr,
I said—did I?—and burst out laughing. He smiled at me, nodding to a slow beat as if a metronome, or bomb, were ticking somewhere in the car.

By the time we walked into the cinema they were on the last preview and the only seats left were the ones front and side, where you had to crane your neck and the actors stretched out on the edges like in a close shot accidentally set to panoramic.

As soon as we were seated, Dylan took back the duffel he’d given Gwyn to carry in. Unzipping it, he now produced several bottles, cups, and cans—and even an aluminum-foiled lemon! In the light of the screen I saw a rum label in the mix. The bottle belonging to which he now unscrewed and, in the darkness of the night scene unfolding above us, tipped generously into the cups.

—To putting the sin into cinema! whispered Dylan, initiating a knee-level toast. He gave us the nod and we all took a sip. Gwyn leaned around him and winked at me. Julian took a slurp then held out his cup, which seemed unnecessary since I had my own. But I drank. It tasted pretty much like Coke, which I normally don’t like but which felt good on top of all those nachos and margaritas and that one clincher tequila shot.

And then the movie began. Or at least it began for us. But it was tough concentrating. I was all too aware of Dylan bumping rhythmically against my right shoulder as he made out with Gwyn; he was turned all the way in her direction and she’d disappeared save for an occasional flash of gold hair in his grasp. And on my left, at regular intervals, the plastic cup materialized and Julian nodded, abundantly pleased as I abundantly gulped. And I don’t know why, but I wanted to please him.

I took deeper and longer swills so he could love me more and more. And actually, the more that went in the more I in fact began to feel beautiful. Maybe it was because it was dark, which is where I felt best, like in my darkening room, but also, I suddenly realized, I was a seventeen-year-old budding photographer influenced by Ansel Adams and I was at a movie that might even be a film, and all this with a college boy no less, a college
man,
and an executive film producer to top it off! Little matter that this was for, as far as I could see, a so far nonexistent film; invisible things were life’s most precious. Wasn’t there a saying like that? Or money can’t buy invisible things? What did love look like? Inspiration? Elucidation? It was the thought that was counting, as my father said. And the thought of my parents counted, made me smile in spite of myself. They were so
on:
How could I think they didn’t understand me? They so
did.
Now I couldn’t remember why we were so often shifty and edgy around each other. I was going soft and the corners whittled gone and so much love was filling my heart I felt it was too small to hold it.

And that love Slinky was springing out in every direction and I had an epiphany. I knew what the secret to world peace was (father, hallway, prayer): It resided in a plastic red cup with a swirly-whirly strip in the front row of a theaterful of pixilated people and a boy everyone wanted watching you—of all people, of all things—swallow. And Gwyn, maybe she’d just arrived at that epiphany a little ear
lier than me, but I could catch up, it was still a relay, and that’s what part of growing up was—having too much emotion and not knowing what to do with it and pouring it on everyone and everything, the way the night liquid drenched the ice in my cup, almost spilling over it was, and everything was just a moment away from good things, you just needed that right balance of…of Bacardi to Coke, if you will.

I would definitely keep drinking. I must always drink.

—Why are you rocking back and forth like that? whispered Julian.

I was?

His arm was around me now and it felt nice, having a college film producer boy’s arm around me in a movie-maybe-film.

We were one and we were all, I thought, happily crunching on my ice.

—You know what
that
means, said Julian.
—Frustrated.

—Oh, I’m not frustrated, I said.—I’m just having an epiphany.

—You are?

—You’re not?

—Well, maybe I’m about to, said Julian, and his face was coming closer like the actors’ faces and my neck was craning back like he was the image, unpeeling off the screen, and a split second before his lips were on mine, I knew we were about to kiss and a thrill frilled my neck—I felt like I was in the movie, in the picture—and then a split second after his lips were in use, his tongue was, too, checking out the place where my wisdom teeth used to be.

Actually, it was kind of slimy. After a little while my neck started to hurt, rather impertinently piercing a leak into my floatingly numb reverie. And I couldn’t breathe; even my nose was squashed, nostrils flattened to buttonhole slits. So I pulled away to take a gulp of air. But for some reason I think that stricken gasp convinced Julian that
whatever he was doing was working and he dug farther, archaeologically, into my mouth. I tried to remember that I was in fact enjoying this, but the convivial buzzy feeling I’d been having was fast evaporating off me.

I came up for oxygen again, and there was a name that could have been a (distant) uncle’s on the final credits.

—Look—it’s an Indian director! I cried.

—Yeah, he said squeezing my shoulder.—Yeah, I think he is. Or Jewish. M. Night Shamalyan. What does it matter?

—Well, you know, I’m Indian, I said. I vaguely recalled the Cherokee jokes I’d been subjected to in middle school and added:
—Indian
Indian.
Bindian
Indian.

—Kama Sutra Indian.

—What’s Kama Sutra Indian?

Julian was giving me this knowing look. I tried to smile back knowingly, too, even though I was growing more and more convinced that what I really knew was very little if anything about what he was talking about.

It did ring a tinkerbell; I mean, I had seen the pocket version the big chain bookstores sold, but they were always chockful of sweatless pretzeling blondes. What did that have to do with me?

—Oh come on, don’t play all innocent with me, he said, his hand beginning to dangle off my shoulder and fiddle with the fabric where pit met chest.—Kama Sutra, you know—it’s all about the ancient art of love in India.

He leaned in closer.

—Art of sex, he gnatted in my ear.

Sex! I wanted to laugh out loud. Indian people didn’t have sex. I was still convinced I was the second Immaculate Conception, not the Son-of-God part but in terms of my parents, who, of course,
didn’t do It. They were like brother and sister, an affable duo; they even called each other Mummy and Daddy and they never even kissed or held hands, lived, in fact, PDA-free—which used to make me wonder if that meant they might divorce, but Indians don’t do that either. It was amazing how many stereotypes he had about the place!

—Indians don’t have sex, I whispered back.

—Oh, I know that, said Julian.—They don’t have mere
sex:
They have a kamasutronic experience—which is like God or…or ODing and surviving! And you want to know what I think?

I shook my head side to side and then back and forth, unsure.

—I think you’re just born with it in India.

—I was born in the USA, I said.

—It doesn’t matter. It’s genetic. It’s coded in your DNA: You know how to please a man.

He gazed into my eyes.

—Now you can show me some moves, my little Indian love goddess, he whispered.

The lights went on.

And I showed him some moves all right. No sooner had I stood than all that sin-in-cine-magic went to my head in a rush I can only compare to the wave at football games—when first one part of the crowd rises with their hands in the air, then the next, then the next, till the very bleachers seem to be undulating—except what was undulating was my inside. I tripped over my own pumps and landed in the aisle, my view shifting like the world through a camera falling off a tripod. The room tilted at a precarious angle, and I was on the floor in broken geometry, in the middle of an array of pretty puffy white and yellow clouds.