"Well, do you think you could fuck on stage?"
His name was Brian. He was a tall man, with long but sparse black whiskers beneath too-long sideburns and ragged, unwashed-looking but somehow not greasy hair. He wore thick glasses, those kind seemingly meant to prohibit interactions with anyone cool of either sex. He was lean, but he moved with an athletes grace, not unlike a dancer, but nothing so effeminate and beautiful. His was the agility of a hunting cat, the natural strength of a wild creature of nature, not the precision dance I knew so well.
I stammered. "Uh." Actually, there was more, but you get the point. His question caught me completely off guard.
We sat in his office, in a plush high-rise not terribly far from the school. It was a place of fine wooden desks, cherry finish on the shelves on the wall, matching finish on the desk, of ancient Chinese vases, or at least tasteful modern replicas. He wore a suit, but without a tie. It was after hours, so perhaps he had taken it off.
When he noticed my reticence, he held up one finger, then moved over to a flat-screen TV and inserted a DVD. After a moment, the picture came up, shaky and chaotic in that hand-held camcorder way that usually gives me a headache. The picture focused, and I found myself looking into the backyard of a sorority house. I was the focus. I was dancing, not like at a club, but the ballet I had been rehearsing since I was almost too small to remember. I was lithe, graceful, like a swan atop still waters. Even drunk and sexed up, I was graceful. And being naked only made it better.
Slowly, it came back to me. Man, I really fucked up. Fucked up bad. Or, depending on how you looked at it, good.
"I recently purchased this video from a trio of cheerleaders I'm - somewhat - acquainted with. I happened to catch the tail end of your performance. I loved it. You're a natural, Amber, and I want you to come dance for us. On stage. Nude. There'll be sex. It's a restricted audience. Elites. People with - ah, eccentric - tastes. People who pay well for someone like you. Outside of the club and the customers, who are by nature the most discreet, no one needs to know about it. This isn't going to end up posted online somewhere in three weeks."
I didn't say anything. I was busy watching the camera, tuning out Brian to recall the previous Thursday, when it all really started.
***
I woke up in bed alone in my dormitory. Now, that's not so strange, really, except that I usually woke with Sara, my roommate, in my arms or right beside me. We'd become lovers early in the semester, though neither of us had told the men in our lives yet. It seems wrong, in a way, because I believe people should be honest with each other, especially if they're sleeping together. Yet, keeping Sara and I a secret brought a thrill I didn't want to end.
I sat up on the bed. Sara was in her bed, stripped, lying on her side facing away from me. The telltale stream of dried white curling away from her vagina to trail down to the sheet told me her boyfriend, Jeff, had been there in the night. I smiled for her, and yet at the same time suppressed a pang of jealousy. I liked that he treated her well and made her happy, but I also wanted her for myself. I suck in this whole honest and upright relationship thing, I know, and I know my jealousy was somewhat hypocritical, but knowing it and stopping it were two different things. I fought it that morning by wrapping myself in a towel, traipsing off to the shower, and wondering just how much of my naked body Jeff had seen last night. He never commented, and neither did Sara, but I was sure he'd seen more of me that was strictly proper.
And I liked it. I liked being naked, especially when there was a possibility someone might see. Sara was turning me from a straight girl into a bisexual exhibitionist. And I was convinced I was in love with her for it.
When I returned, Sara was waiting on the edge of her bed. She looked serious, far too serious, so I sat on my bed and waited.
"Jeff proposed to me last night," she said.
I felt my jaws tighten. I fought a surge of jealous anger the way you might fight off a rabid dog. Suddenly I hated Jeff, but somehow, I managed to grin. I don't know how. As mad as I was, it shouldn't have worked. Or maybe it didn't work, and Sara understood. She's creepy-smart like that sometimes.
"That's awesome. Have you set a date?"
She shook her head.
I waited. There was more. She had that look.
"What do you want to do, Amber?"
"Well, I was thinking I'd go catch my cursed Sociology class, and after that find something to eat."
"No, I mean about us."
I shrugged. "What can we do?"
"Well, there's option A, we can confess everything. Only, I think that'd hurt Jeff. I mean, he likes the girl on girl thing when we sneak a porno, just like any guy, but he's extremely hesitant around you, about you. If we were other people, or I didn't know both of you as well as I do, I'd think he'd cheated on me with you, but I just can't see it."
I got up, sat beside her. "Listen, Sara. Jeff's hot, and I'd be lying if I said there weren't days I wished it was my bed he was crawling into. But he's never touched me, and I'm not planning on trying anything with him."
She put her hand on my knee. Even as mad as I was, her touch was electric. Oh, I so wanted her to slide those fingers on up. Of course, that was about the time I remembered Sociology coming up.
"Thank you, and I trust you, Amber. Let's see. We could do the opposite, and just not tell anyone, but that kind of feels wrong, like a betrayal, even more than not telling anyone so far."
I nodded. She was right.
"Or, we could sort of bring them into it slowly, you know, sort of hint around and tease around until one day, while he's here, we just start making out."
She blinked. "It'd have to stop there, of course. I know you don't want to share Tom, and I'm not ready to share Jeff either. I'm sorry, I want you to myself, and I want him to myself. I know that's selfish and wicked of me, but..."
"I know what you mean, Sara. I understand. But if we make out, by accident as it were, and Jeff sees us, then he'll know something's up, and we can kind of see what he thinks."
I sighed. "I hate to lose 'us' just because some guys don't like that we're together, or they don't like it because we didn't invite them along."
Sara leaned back. She took my towel, wrapped it around herself. She did that sometimes. Said she liked it because it smelled so much like me, all wet and used.
"Well, these aren't just any guys, they're our men."
"Yes, I know. Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. It's just..."
"Well, we've got a little time. Let's think about it, and maybe we'll think of a better answer."
I went to the closet as she moved to the door. "Sure," I said. "Let's see what we can come up with."
Sara smiled and opened the door. Just as she did, a guy and two chicks from down the hall walked past. All three of them got a good look at me just standing there, buck-naked, reaching into the closet for my clothes. All three of them hesitated. Sara gasped, closed the door. I laughed, pulled out a skirt and a light shirt. I wasn't offended. In spite of everything, I wasn't offended. I rather kind of liked it.
The rest of my day passed fitfully. I aced a calculus test, blew the hell out of the bell-curve, and pissed off the trendy gaggle of girls that sit in the front row with their designer hair, designer clothes, and designer accessories. I didn't even take a calculator to class, and for some reason, that pissed them off. Most days. That day, after class, they came up to me, three of them, Mandy, Brandi, and Jean. Three blondes. Three so-called perfect women.
"You're the smartest girl we know," Jean said. "We'd like to study with you sometime."
I heard warning klaxons. You know, the kind that say the world is about to end? Jean blinked her designer lashes at me. I shrugged. "I'll give you my number. Call me Monday, after lunch. We'll talk about it."
"Oh," Brandi said, blinking the exact same lashes. I wondered if their underwear matched. "We're having a party at our sorority house tomorrow night. You're invited, if you want to come. Eight o'clock."
"I'm afraid you girls are going to be out past my bedtime. I've got more tests to study for."
I could have said ace. Or bell-curves to blow.
Well, I could have.
"No," Mandy said, kind and soft, with slightly different lashes. At least one of them varied. A little. "It's cool. We'll call you Monday, okay. We could definitely use a little extra help on that last section."
Right. They were up to something, and it wasn't studying with me.
"Great." I jotted my number down, smiled once at the three of them, and left.
After that, I went back to the dorm and waited for Sara. I'd struggled enough with the whole admitting my relationship with my bi-sexual roommate thing long enough to know that I wasn't going to come up with an answer that didn't mess up something I'd rather keep. I shook my head more than once, at myself, and my lack of a good answer to a problem that just seemed to develop on its own.
