BAIT

you’re going to play your part, a part you didn’t even know until now that you knew how to play. He will ask you to blow him, because of course he will. You won’t know how. But you’re not going to want him to know that, because if he knew, he might be so freaked out and disgusted he will leave you in a puddle of shame on the floor, or else quietly judge you the rest of the night. So you will bend down and try to summon some deep primal intuition and you will want to cry as you do so. Cry because you hate it and cry because you hate yourself for not saying no even though it’s been hammered into you since birth that it’s your right to. And you know because he’s young and liberal, it’s been hammered into him as well. But your pride and your deep seated fear and your people pleasing tendencies will overrule all that. You will have sex with him under the fluorescent light and you will only realize later that you should have set mood lighting and that you should not have been on top your first time. But he doesn’t know that it was your first time because you were being cool, so there wasn’t really anything you could have done about that. You will be surprised about how mechanical it feels, how unintimate. You might feel a little gross and a little sad, and even though you were never precious about it, you might feel a little precious about it. After, he will say something pretentious, such as, “You look like a Renaissance painting.” You will think of Botticelli’s paintings and wonder if that just means fat. He will ask you how old you are, which if he had had

doubts, he should have asked you about earlier. You will tell him you’re eighteen and say, Yeah, I know I look young. He will indicate for you to lay next to him and you will realize that, although he still has his shirt on, you’re completely naked because he pulled everything off of you. You can’t figure out a way to get to your dress so you lay next to him, exposed and raw. You will awkwardly lay your head on his chest and make more small talk before he says he should get going and so you will get dressed and take him downstairs and make eye contact with the lady at the front desk again. Before he leaves, he will give you his Snapchat. Not his number, obviously. That would hint at a level of intimacy he won’t give, and now, you know not to expect. You will offer to walk him downstairs, for some reason you can’t put your finger on, perhaps one last stab at intimacy. He will awkwardly side hug you at the subway entrance. He won’t kiss you goodnight. You’ll suppose that kissing you, in his eyes, is reserved only as a means to an end. And you already served your purpose for him. You will probably never see him again, or you will see him one more time, after you impulsively message him during Spanish and ask him to come over because you want to see if this time it will feel different, or better, or like anything at all. You might want to prove to yourself that he could still be what you’d wanted him to be. But it won’t be, and he won’t be.

Ava Ferry