This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people or events is unintentional. If you are underage, or do not want to read about explicit sex between women, please leave. Constructive comments are encouraged, and all reasonable emails will receive replies.
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To say it was all about her would be overstating just a bit. My life, that is. Even now.
Masha and I met in college my sophomore year. We were both acting students and had been cast as sisters in a play about a family trying to rebuild in the U.S. after the Holocaust. Though the drama department was fairly small, I had never met Masha until the audition. She'd been abroad my entire freshman year, fall semester in London and spring in Moscow. Josh, the graduate student director, had been impressed with her and asked her to stay through the evening. She was in the room when my time slot came up, and since Josh liked my audition, he asked us to read a scene together.
What impressed me initially was not (though it should have been) her astonishing grasp of dialect. In fact, until she introduced herself after our reading of the scene, I thought she was actually Polish. What struck me was her voice itself, without the Polish accent. Had I not already known that my sexuality at 19 was open to anyone, hearing her voice would have helped me out. I was instantly turned on when she told me her name. This surge of eroticism, the surprise of her not being Polish and the knowledge that she was now speaking to me after we had finished a fairly intimate scene together stupefied me. I stood there, not shaking her hand, until finally she smiled and said, "Kind of intense, yeah?"
I nodded.
"It's a rough scene for a cold read," she continued. "You did well, though." She touched my arm and asked if this was my first audition. Freshmen were not permitted to audition, so it was. She said that she would enjoy working with me if I got the part. She moved and spoke with a kind of sleepy, casual confidence. I looked at her for a moment before thanking Josh and his stage manager and leaving. She watched me look, grinning as my eyes slid down her face, across her shoulders and along the lines of her body. When I left, I almost ran home to call all my friends and ask about her.
Even though she'd been abroad, I had heard her name before. She was almost legendarily good, and her performance in The Seagull her sophomore year still had most of our professors salivating. Anytime Chekov came up in class, we were guaranteed a free period during which the instructor would ramble on about Masha. Now I kicked myself for not listening better. My rampage of phone calls produced. The potential for being cast alongside her allowed me to ask a lot of questions without seeming like a stalker. I quickly found out she was a senior, was suited to classical roles, and was, like most of us in the drama department, sexually ambiguous. It also became clear that everyone, not just me, thought she was hot.
That week I had several more auditions. All of the auditions took place at the beginning of the semester, since the directors wanted to get into rehearsals right away. I was offered the part in Josh's production and one other. I could not take them both because the rehearsal schedules overlapped, but since the part in Josh's play was the lead and the other was a much smaller role it was not a difficult decision. It is easy to think that Masha had nothing to do with it, but I know that she could have, if that's what it had taken.
I ran into her shortly after being offered the part, in the hallway outside my scene study class. She had seen my signature accepting the role on the cast list, which was posted on one of the hallway bulletin boards. She congratulated me and started to hug me, then stopped. "What?" I said.
"I just realized I don't know you at all," she said.
"Well, this is the drama department," I pointed out, laughing. "Virtual strangers hug me every day."
She looked at me, smiled slowly, and said, "But I don't want to be a stranger, Kelsey. Not to you." I tripped, though I was standing still, mumbled something about us surely becoming friends during rehearsals and walked away. The next time I saw her she did hug me. I was at the bus stop outside the drama building late on a Friday night. I had just finished rehearsing a scene for one of my classes. At that hour the campus buses only came every 30 minutes. My scene partner was staying in the building to study, and no one else was around. It was raining and cold. There was a shelter at the bus stop, but I had gotten wet running to it and was shivering. Across the street, above a deli where we all bought coffee and bagels, were six apartments that some students rented. Masha came out the door while I was waiting there. She trudged across the street, then saw me and came to stand under the shelter.
"Hi, beautiful," she said, brightening. "What are you doing here so late?"
I told her and asked her the same. She told me that she had been at Peter Marrin's party. Peter lived across the street. He was a sophomore, and I knew him. He was a big time lady's man, great looking and smart, but never very clean. He also had a drinking problem, which is why I never went to his parties. He inevitably got maudlin at the end of them, and it depressed me.
I asked her why she had left the party so early. She told me Peter had hit on her.
"Oh, so you ran away?" I asked.
"No," she said. "We did it. But it was over very quickly." She laughed and then told me they'd had an intense conversation for the first two hours of the party.
"He's smart, you know," she told me.
I nodded. He was. Eventually he took her into somebody's bedroom, and they talked some more.
"He told me he just wanted to kiss me," she said. "And I don't know . . . we kissed, and of course I slept with him." She sighed.
"But where was Shelly?" I said. Shelly was Peter's girlfriend, though everyone knew he cheated on her.
"Out of town," said Masha. "That's the thing. I knew that he had a girlfriend, and I was just so into him I did it anyway. I've never done that before."
We talked for a while about Shelly and Peter's relationship. I thought they were currently broken up so Masha shouldn't worry. Masha thought this did not matter because they were always breaking up, but everyone knew Peter was with Shelly for the long haul. I reminded her that Shelly had a small role in our play. She groaned and said that she was wearing Peter's shirt since hers had gotten something spilled on it. She needed to get it back to him right away. She seemed quite sober, though I am sure that she'd had one or two drinks. She denied alcohol as a contributing factor.
"Though maybe it was for him," she said, sounding further disgusted. I attempted to reassure her by saying I knew at least two other women who'd slept with Peter while he was with Shelly and that Shelly, very appropriately, blamed him alone.
"She knows who these people are, and she says hello to them as if nothing happened," I said. "She's forgiven them almost entirely. She understands it's Peter's problem. He can't be faithful."
"Well, it takes two to tango," said Masha. "Thanks for trying, though. Sweet." That was when she hugged me. It wasn't the most intimate thing. We were both dressed in many layers, and I was soggy. It was nice, though, to get some measure of her size. Even with all of the clothes I could tell she was bony. She was maybe three inches taller than me, thin and angular feeling, like a young boy, but more delicate. She let go when the bus came, a few minutes later. "You made me all wet," she said as we got on, gesturing to Peter's water-splotched shirt.
That Sunday morning Masha called me. My roommate Lindsay, who'd heard all about her, answered the phone. She asked who was calling, then shot me a smile.
"Just a sec," she told Masha, "she's getting out of the shower."
I was fully dressed and dry as a bone. "What are you doing?" I mouthed, grabbing for the phone.
