It was late May of senior year, and we'd just wrapped the final performance of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." I was lounging on a couch in the dressing room with the Vins - aka Kevin and Calvin - passing a jug of Carlo Rossi back and forth. It was close to two AM. The show had ended hours ago, but we couldn't bring ourselves to leave.
"What a damned Epicurean rascal is this!" Calvin declared as he took a swig and passed the jug to Kevin. It was his favorite line from the show. I felt my cheeks glowing with a blend of nostalgia, wine, and glee. "I'm gonna miss you, Vins," I sighed, reaching out for the jug.
Kevin tilted his head back and took a long drink. "Here will be an old abusing of God's patience!" he cried. He grinned and handed me the jug. "We're gonna miss you too, Didi."
Didi. I'd never understood their nickname for me - it made so much less sense than the one I used for them.
"You know, one of these days you're going to have to tell me why you call me that," I said. Calvin shot Kevin a look of feigned exasperation. Kevin leaned back in his chair. "Nothing is so oppressive as a secret; women find it difficult to keep one long; and I know a goodly number of men who are women in this regard," he said, waving his arm airily in my direction.
Calvin arched an eyebrow. "Wait - is that Shakespeare?"
"Nay good sir - these are the humble words of the great poet Gilles LaFontaine!" Kevin proclaimed.
I rolled my eyes and took a swig. "You guys are absolute nerds, and it's my favorite."
I felt a twinkle of moisture at the corner of my eye. I glanced around the dressing room at the show posters and shelves lined with props. This place had been our clubhouse for the last four years. Somehow we always ended up here, just the three of us and a bottle, whether it was after a grueling rehearsal or a night of party-hopping. We'd laugh and tell stories until late at night, then skip along the lamp-lit campus pathways, singing our favorite show tunes. We'd hug goodnight outside the dining hall, and stumble home to our respective dorms.
I met the Vins my very first day of college. We were grouped together randomly by our acting teacher. The assignment was to improvise a scene without words. We played three drunken roommates who were trying to move a sofa but kept dropping it on each others' toes. The scene lasted five minutes, and we couldn't stop cracking up the whole time. We flubbed the assignment, but the chemistry was undeniable - we left the classroom arm in arm, and had been inseparable ever since.
Being theater kids, we were also chronic over-sharers. We told each other everything: our family dramas, our insecurities, our dreams for the future. But there was one thing I'd never told the Vins. The secret I always spent a few minutes feverishly scribbling in my journal, in sloppy half-drunk cursive, after those long nights in the dressing room: I had a giant crush on both of them.
Growing up, I'd been warned to expect the worst from college guys. But the Vins were diamonds in the rough - good listeners, deep thinkers, unfailingly gentle, empathetic, and sincere. It made them good actors, and even better friends. I'd been navigating a long-distance relationship with my high school boyfriend Geoff all through college, and the Vins had talked me through countless petty dramas and betrayals. Not long into my sophomore year, I knew my connection with Geoff had gone stale. In one of my most vulnerable moments with the Vins, I told them Geoff hadn't given me an orgasm in a year. They were (rightly) appalled, and recommended I send Geoff a break-up text on the spot. But I refused. If nothing else, my relationship with Geoff was a useful excuse to avoid the feelings I harbored for the Vins. I loved them so deeply that the idea of anything disrupting our goofball confederacy terrified me.
So I confined my attractions to the pages of my journal, where I indulged fantasies that made me blush. For a while, that was enough. In fact, I sort of liked having a secret, since they knew pretty much everything else about me. But as the years went by, and Geoff and I finally split up, the feeling had grown - from a gentle, pulsing knot in my stomach into a throbbing ache.
I swung my legs off the arm of the couch and sat up, setting the jug on the floor. "No, for real, you scoundrels. What's with the name?"
I felt the energy in the room flicker. They both looked abruptly at the floor.
"Oh come on," I chided them. "After all this time, you're really not going to tell me?"
Calvin's eyes darted towards Kevin, but they still wouldn't look at me.
"Uh, Didi," Calvin stammered. "What's the female equivalent of XYZ?"
