One hot, humid and downright disgusting week into my first semester of college, and I was already hobbled by injury. I sat outside the Forum (student union) with my leg propped up, icing my knee.
“Jesus, your knee! It’s so swollen,” a Southern voice drawled.
I looked up from nursing my pre-patella bursitis and watched a barefoot girl in a sundress slide into the patio chair next to mine. She set her Big Cookie — a Forum Grill speciality — on her lap and snapped open a peach iced tea.
“What happened to it?”
I told her I’d hurt it playing soccer.
“Playing soccer?!” She exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock. “I haven’t played soccer since I was five years old!” She tilted her head, eyeing me. “How old are you, 18?”
“Yeah,” I said defensively.
“Me, too,” she sighed, unhappily. She looked all of twelve picking up that giant chocolate chip cookie, a dusting of freckles crossing her chubby cheeks and button nose. She broke off a generous chunk and passed it to me before breaking off her own piece.
“Thanks.” I decided to like her. “I can’t believe how hot it is here.”
She shrugged. “Well, I’m from Alabama, so.” She settled back in her chair, sipping her iced tea. I could easily picture her on the veranda of an antebellum mansion, languidly swaying on a porch swing.
I returned to sliding an ice cube over my inflamed flesh. She watched with interest, my knee’s tumescence seeming to stir something within her.
“The boys around here just don’t know how to fuck,” she said.
I immediately abandoned my ministrations and gave her my full attention. The way she said “fuck” was a revelation, drawn-out and rich, emanating from someplace deep within her throat. Until that moment, I’d only experienced “fuck” as short and hollow, mud slung against a wall.
“Now, Southern boys… they know how to fuck.” Fuuuuuccckkk. Like sliding into a warm, soft mud bath. She gazed into the distance with a faint smile.
As I awaited the sumptuous details, I envisioned this teenaged Blanche Devereaux rolling around in cotton fields with thick-necked farm boys, quivering under their callused, expert touch. Then I imagined her enduring the furtive fumblings of soft-handed nebbishes in the cornfields of Iowa. How many had she evaluated in the week since the semester began to have arrived at her appraisal? And where did she find the time?
For me, there was already too much to do — never-ending lectures, reading and paper-writing, science labs and soccer practices, territorial disputes with my three roommates in the smallest quad on campus, (Read Second, room 5213, which has since been declared a triple, damn you, Grinnell). And it was my hot, throbbing knee that kept me awake at night, not a raging, unsated libido.
But this woman, for she was clearly a woman while I was merely a soccer-playing child, appeared unencumbered by academia. With no book bag nor busted knee to weigh her down, she was free to pursue countless dalliances. And she had chosen me to confide in! Perhaps this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
But “I’m just sick of being horny” was all she had left to say to me. And with that, she stood and sauntered off toward North Campus where all the jocks lived. Maybe she’d try her luck with a second-string quarterback — a grateful type eager to learn and desperate to please. I’d never know, though, because I’d never see her again.
A week later, a town doctor drained my knee with a large needle. Skin that had been stretched taut hung flaccid from my kneecap. As my discomfort faded, my thoughts turned to the Southerner. Had she, too, found relief? Possibly on a campus better suited to her tastes?
I could only imagine that shortly after our encounter, a relative had been dispatched to restore her to her rightful side of the Mason-Dixon line, her transfer application already en route to Bama and perchance Ole Miss. Surely, she’d spent her last moments at Grinnell standing in the middle of Mac Field, shaking a fist at the dawn’s early light and hollering: “If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, as God is my witness, I’ll never be horny again!”