Evergreen Apartments, so named as a joke or a nod to eco-trendiness despite all evidence to the contrary.
The area around the apartments featured no trees, evergreen or otherwise, and nor was the building particularly green, in color or environmental ethos.
The building had little to distinguish itself. Mid-rise and middling. It seemed to have been inspired by a Lego block. The one with eight pips, half as wide as it was long. Five stories. Boasting a bland color of no Lego block ever produced.
Evergreen Apartments. Unremarkable. Boring. Like any such apartment in any town anywhere.
That is, until you looked beyond the walls, into the individual apartments and the lives lived therein.
***
She leaned against the doorjamb, one clunky black boot crossed in front of the other. Her hands held a large fishbowl of what looked like condoms. Held it all casual, as though she were handling a bowl of M&Ms. Their wrappers were of different colors. Blue, red, green, yellow. As with M&Ms, I instinctively didn't like the yellow ones.
"Girlfriend?" she asked. I still wasn't used to her shorthand way of talking.
"As in -- do I have one?"
She nodded.
"No."
"Boyfriend?"
"No," I said, a bit more emphatically.
Helin nodded absently. "That's good, Matthew. Very good." She entered my room, put the bowl on my desk, and closed the door behind her.
I'd often wondered whether she was on the spectrum. Or on a spectrum, since there were several you had to consider these days. I couldn't quite get a handle on her. In the few weeks I'd known her, she'd kept me consistently off balance -- smiling or frowning in situations where the exact opposite might have been more appropriate. Asking questions of breathtaking intimacy while remaining steadfastly inscrutable. Making observations of questionable tact. There'd never been the slightest sign of interest, no personal inquiries at all. Until now.
My outward indifference to her was simply an expression of self-preservation. In my more susceptible moments, I had to confess that she had a certain charm and attractiveness that I could easily succumb to despite her weirdness. I would find myself staring at her when she wasn't watching, only to be told by her not to stare. At the same time, she reminded me of that last drink of the night, the one that was so appealing in the moment but guaranteed a screaming hangover that could have been avoided if only common sense had prevailed. I had a history of succumbing to temptation, often with dismal results.
She looked around my room. It was a mess. I wasn't expecting guests. Her expression revealed nothing -- no disgust, no judgement, no nothing. I watched her as she poked around my stuff, investigating this and that. Her clothes leaned retro. She had a beauty mark above her lip that reminded me of Marilyn Monroe's. And though she had the movie star's generous proportions, her hair and style was decidedly black, gothic, and aloof. She wore a black choker for reasons that I couldn't hope to grasp. Maybe there were no reasons. Maybe she was submissive. More likely she just liked chokers.
All three of us in the apartment were students. Alice, the leaseholder of unit 3E, was a standoffish, bookish PhD candidate who spent most of her time on campus, appearing only seldom at the apartment to eat or sleep. Helin, the gothic Marilyn who now stood before me with a fishbowl of rubbers, was a Fine Arts undergrad whose room boasted decidedly vaginal or phallic sculptures fashioned by her own hand or other body parts for all I knew. As for me, I was enrolled as a mature student whose first attempt at higher education had been derailed years ago by baser impulses. With the benefit of experience and a desire not to piss away my student loans this time, I was committed. Less boozing, more thinking.
Given our living arrangement, I might have fancied myself a fox in a henhouse if such idioms were not frowned upon by the enlightened. Hens, I had learned after suggesting as much to roomies, were egg-laying domesticated fowl and foxes were predators. No more. No less. After the correction, it was safer to consider myself a neutered Ken doll who cohabitated with two sexless Barbies. Everyone would be groinless and I would become ascetic in the service of knowledge.
It worked.
Until Helin's next words.
"Let's fuck," she said.
I paused a beat. "You bored?" I asked, because I was older now. Wiser and jaded. I would have jumped at the opportunity during my first foray into higher education, a nanosecond after the last syllable had left her lovely, plump crimson lips. Now I recognized the wisdom of waiting, of considering the angles. Seeing what strings might entangle me.
Her brows drew together, apparently nonplussed that I wasn't yet naked. "Yes," she said. "I need to relieve some stress too."
I considered the offer. Of course I recognized this as a potential hazard that might ruin a good living arrangement. Of course I realized that accepting the offer might add stress and woe to the uncomplicated serenity I needed to complete my studies without distraction. Not accepting it might too. I was, in truth, torn.
"Casual," she said, as if reading my thoughts, a little irritated that she had to make her case. "Something mutually rewarding to pass the time."
I didn't think casual was possible outside of fiction and maybe not even there.
It seemed that there was a time limit to her proposal. As I dithered, the doors of opportunity were clearly closing. She was losing interest, glancing to the door, reaching for the bowl of colorful prophylactics, considering other ways of passing the time that didn't include me.
"Okay," I said. There were limits to wisdom.
Casual hookups had never factored hugely in my life. Sex had always a stretch goal of any relationship, sometimes reached after weeks or months of pursuit, careful negotiation, and varying levels of expenditure. Half the time, I abandoned the chase before the finish line. Hardly ever due to impatience. More ennui. The dance, the posing, the smiling and feigned interest were things I didn't have the energy or aptitude for.
And that was why I found Helin's suggestion so welcome, so unusually direct. Sex for the sake of sex. Because it was fun. Because it felt good. Because it was an agreeable way of passing the time. Why freight it with anything more than that?
"Top or bottom?"
Alright. There might be some freight and I had no idea what she meant. "It's your party," I said. "You pick."
"Top," she said.
"No strings?"
"Some," she said. "Very thin. Just a sec. I'll be right back. Be sure you're naked."
Needless to say, things like this never happened to me. I'm sure they happened to others, people who took miracles of casual sex in stride and eased into wanton carnality with barely a second thought, but for me there was a definite Twilight Zone vibe happening.
I undressed in a hurry, but left my underwear on in the unlikely event I'd misread something. With Helin, it was entirely possible. I was just positioning myself on the bed -- hands behind my head, ankles crossed, all casual -- when she returned with a spool of black thread held between a thumb and forefinger. At that moment, I gave my head a shake. What was I doing? I was almost naked and vulnerable and she wasn't. All on a promise of sex. Was I nothing more than a groin, with legs down below for locomotion and a brain up above for no discernible purpose? Was I that much of a stereotype? That needy? Willing to drop everything to bury that middle appendage of mine in some slippery, anonymous embrace? Yes. Yes, evidently I was that stereotype, but I was also a student of life and was desperately curious to see how this would end.
I gathered my wits and with all the confidence of someone who wasn't almost naked in bed with a fully dressed gothic stranger, asked, "Really? Thread?"
"Really? Underwear? I thought I said naked." As I reluctantly shed the last bit of clothing and the final vestige of self-respect, she continued. "I save the heavier stuff for those with whom I have a relationship of trust. We can't trust each other yet. We hardly know each other. Anyway, the rule is pretty simple. You break a thread and you suffer the consequences."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you have more control than I would have thought. If you don't break the thread, you call the shots the next time. If there is a next time. That would be up to you in any case as you will have won the challenge."
"I'll be very still."
"We'll see."
"What are the consequences of breaking the thread? Specifically," I asked, even if it did dilute my bravado.
"You'll see."
So much for specificity. And yet I lay there as still as a corpse while Helin deftly tied loops of thread around my wrists, knotting the ends to the outside of my headboard. She then spread my legs and repeated the procedure with my ankles, attaching the thread ends to the footboard. It was unnerving, knowing that I was restrained but not feeling it, rendered immobile and vulnerable by something so insignificant.
"I wouldn't move too much," she said.
"What if you make me break the thread?"
"Don't be a sissy. I can't make you do anything."
She undressed then, very slowly. That part was reassuring. She was making me hard, giving lie to what she'd just said -- she could make me do things. All the while, she kept her eyes on me. If she harbored any self-consciousness, she didn't show it. She pulled her summer dress over her head. She wore a black lace bra and matching thong which somehow went well with the clunky black boots she still wore. I wondered how she pulled it off -- dark undergarments beneath the light, flimsy fabric of her dress. Maybe it didn't show through. Maybe she didn't care.
