1

Lust (1984) isn’t he?” or “Johnny’s perfectly nice but a drink of water.”
My father was too shy to talk to them at all unless they
by Susan Minot played sports and he’d ask them about that.

Leo was from a long time ago, the first one I ever The sand was almost cold underneath because the
saw nude. In the spring before the Hellmans filled their sun was long gone. Eben piled a mound over my feet,
pool, we’d go down there in the deep end, with baby oil, patting around my ankles, the ghostly surf rumbling
and like that. I met him the first month away at boarding behind him in the dark. He was the first person I ever
school. He had a halo from the campus light behind him. I knew who died, later that summer, in a car crash. I thought
flipped. about it for a long time.

Roger was fast. In his illegal car, we drove to the “Come here,” he says on the porch. I go over to the
reservoir, the radio blaring, talking fast, fast, fast. He was hammock and he takes my wrist with two fingers.
always going for my zipper. He got kicked out sophomore “What?”
year. He kisses my palm then directs my hand to his fly.

By the time the band got around to playing “Wild Songs went with whichever boy it was. “Sugar
Horses,” I had tasted Bruce’s tongue. We were clicking in Magnolia” was Tim, with the line, “Rolling in the
the shadows on the other side of the amplifier, out of Mrs. rushes/down by the riverside.” With “Darkness Darkness,”
Donovan’s line of vision. It tasted like salt, with my neck I’d picture Philip with his long hair. Hearing “Under My
bent back, because we had been dancing so hard before. Thumb” there’d be the smell of Jamie’s suede jacket.

Tim’s line: “I’d like to see you in a bathing suit.” I We hid in the listening rooms during study hall.
knew it was his line when he said the exact same thing to With a record cover over the door’s window, the teacher
Annie Hines. on duty couldn’t look in. I came out flushed and heady and
back at the dorm was surprised how red my lips were in
You’d go on walks to get off campus. It was raining the mirror.
like hell, my sweater as sopped as a wet sheep. Tim pinned
me to a tree, the woods light brown and dark brown, a One weekend at Simon’s brother’s, we stayed
white house half hidden with the lights already on. The inside all day with the shades down, in bed, then went out
water was as loud as a crowd hissing. He made certain to Store 24 to get some ice cream. He stood at the
comments about my forehead, about my cheeks. magazine rack and read through MAD while I got
butterscotch sauce, craving something sweet.
We started off sitting at one end of the couch and
then our feet were squished against the armrest and then I could do some things well. Some things I was
he went over to turn off the TV and came back after he had good at, like math or painting or even sports, but the
taken off his shirt and then we slid onto the floor and he second a boy put his arm around me, I forgot about
got up again to close the door, then came back to me, a wanting to do anything else, which felt like a relief at first
body waiting on the rug. until it became like sinking into a muck.

You’d try to wipe off the table or to do the dishes It was different for a girl.
and Willie would untuck your shirt and get his hands up
under in front, standing behind you, making puffy noises in When we were little, the brothers next door tied
your ear. up our ankles. They held the door of the goat house and
wouldn’t let us out till we showed them our underpants.
He likes it when I wash my hair. He covers his face Then they’d forget about being after us and when we
with it and if I start to say something, he goes, “Shush.” played whiffle ball, I’d be just as good as them.

For a long time, I had Philip on the brain. The less Then it got to be different. Just because you have
they noticed you, the more you got them on the brain. on a short skirt, they tell from the cars, slowing down for a
while, and if you don’t look, they screech off and call you a
My parents had no idea. Parents never really bitch.
know what’s going on, especially when you’re away at
school most of the time. If she met them, my mother might “What’s the matter with me?” they say, point-
say, “Oliver seems nice” or “I like that one” without much blank.
of an opinion. If she didn’t like them, “He’s a funny fellow, Or else, “Why won’t you go out with me? I’m not
asking you to get married,” about to get mad.
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Or it’d be, trying to be reasonable, in a regular “What are you complaining about?” says Jill to me
voice, “Listen, I just want to have a good time.” when we talk about problems.
So I’d go because I couldn’t think of something to “Yeah,” says Giddy. “You always have a boyfriend.”
say back that wouldn’t be obvious, and if you go out with I look at them and think, As if.
them, you sort of have to do something.
I thought the worst thing anyone could call you
I sat between Mac and Eddie in the front seat of was a cock-teaser. So, if you flirted, you had to be prepared
the pickup. They were having a fight about something. I’ve to go through with it. Sleeping with someone was perfectly
a feeling about me. normal once you had done it. You didn’t really worry about
it. But there were other problems. The problems had to do
Certain nights you’d feel a certain surrender, with something else entirely.
maybe if you’d had wine. The surrender would be
forgetting yourself and you’d put your nose to his neck and Mack was during the hottest summer ever
feel like a squirrel, safe, at rest, in a restful dream. But then recorded. We were renting a house on an island with all
you’d start to slip from that and the dark would come in sorts of other people. No one slept during the heat wave,
and there’d be a cave. You make out the dim shape of the walking around the house with nothing on which we were
windows and feel yourself become a cave, filled absolutely used to because of the nude beach. In the living room,
with air, or with a sadness that wouldn’t stop. Eddie lay on top of a coffee table to cool off. Mack and I,
with the bedroom door open for air, sweated and sweated
Teenage years. You know just what you’re doing all night.
and don’t see the things that start to get in the way. “I can’t take this,” he said at 3 A.M. “I’m going for a
swim.” He and some guys down the hall went to the beach.
Lots of boys, but never two at the same time. One The heat put me on edge. I sat on a cracked chest by the
was plenty to keep you in a state. You’d start to see a boy open window and smoked and smoked till I felt even
and something would rush over you like a fast storm cloud worse, waiting for something – I guess for him to get back.
and you couldn’t possibly possibly think of anyone else.
Boys took it differently. Their eyes perked up at any little One was on a camping trip in Colorado. We zipped
number that walked by. You’d act like you weren’t our sleeping bags together, the coyotes’ hysterical chatter
noticing. far away. Other couples murmured in other tents. Paul was
up before sunrise, starting a fire for breakfast. He wasn’t
The joke was that the school doctor gave out the much of a talker in the daytime. At night, his hand leafed
pill like aspirin. He didn’t ask you anything. I was fifteen. about in the hair at my neck.
We had a picture of him in assembly, holding up an IUD
shaped like a T. Most girls were on the pill, if anything, There’d be times when you overdid it. You’d get
because they couldn’t handle a diaphragm. I kept the dial carried away. All the next day, you’d be in a total fog,
in my top drawer like my mother and thought of her each delirious, absent-minded, crossing the street and nearly
time I tipped out the yellow tablets in the morning before getting run over.
chapel.
The more girls a boy has, the better. He has a
If they were too shy, I’d be more so. Andrew was bright look, having reaped fruits, blooming. He stalks
nervous. We stayed up with his family album, sharing a around, sure-shouldered, and you have the feeling he’s got
pack of Old Golds. Before it got light, we turned on the TV. more in him, a fatter heart, more stories to tell. For a girl,
A man was explaining how to plant seedlings. His mouth with each boy it’s as though a petal gets plucked each time.
jerked to the side in a tic. Andrew thought it was a riot and
kept imitating him. I laughed to be polite. When we finally Then you start to get tired. You begin to feel
dozed off, he dared to put his arm around me, but that was diluted, like watered-down stew.
it.
Oliver came skiing with us. We lolled by the fire
You wait till they come to you. With half fright, after everyone had gone to bed. Each creak you’d think
half swagger, they stand one step down. They dare to was someone coming downstairs. The silver loop bracelet
touch the button on your coat then lose their nerve and he gave me had been a present from his girlfriend before.
quickly drop their hand so you – you’d do anything for
them. You touch their cheek. On vacations, we went skiing, or you’d go south if
someone invited you. Some people had apartments in New
The girls sit around in the common room and talk York that their families hardly ever used. Or summer
about boys, smoking their heads off. houses, or older sisters. We always managed to find
someplace to go.
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We made the plan at coffee hour. Simon snuck out I put my arms around his freckled shoulders and he held
and met me at Main Gate after lights out. We crept to the me up, buoyed by the water, and rocked me like a sea shell.
chapel and spent the night in the balcony. He tasted like
onions from a submarine sandwich. I had no idea whose party it was, the apartment
jam-packed, stepping over people in the hallway. The room
The boys are one of two ways: either they can’t sit with the music was practically empty, the bare floor, me in
still or they don’t move. In front of the TV, they won’t red shoes. This fellow slides one knee and takes me around
budge. On weekends they play touch football while we sit the waist and we rock to jazzy tunes, with my toes pointing
on the sidelines, picking blades of grass to chew on and heavenward, and waltz and spin and drip to “Smoke Gets
watch. We’re always watching them run around. We shiver In Your Eyes” or “I’ll Love You Just For Now.” He puts his
in the stands, knocking our boots together to keep our toes head to my chest, runs a sweeping hand down my inside
warm, and they whizz across the ice, chopping their sticks thigh and we go loose-limbed and sultry and smooth as
around the puck. When they’re in the rink, they refuse to silk and I stamp my red heels and he takes me in a swoon. I
look at you, only eyeing each other beneath low helmets. never saw him again after that but I thought, I could have
You cheer for them but they don’t look up, even if it’s a loved that one.
face-off when nothing’s happening, even if they’re doing
drills before any game has started at all. You wonder how long you can keep it up. You
begin to feel as if you’re showing through, like a bathroom
Dancing under the pink tent, he bent down and window that only lets in grey light, the kind you can’t see
whispered in my ear. We slipped away to the lawn on the out of.
other side of the hedge. Much later, as he was leaving the
buffet with two plates of eggs and sausage, I saw the grass They keep coming around. Johnny drives up at
stains on the knees of his white pants. Easter vacation from Baltimore and I let him in the kitchen
with everyone sound asleep. He has friends waiting in the
Tim’s was shaped like a banana, with a graceful car.
curve to it. They’re all different. Willie’s like a bunch of “What are you, crazy? It’s pouring out there,” I say.
walnuts when nothing was happening, another’s as thin as “It’s okay,” he says. “They understand.” So he gets
a thin hot dog. But it’s like faces; you’re never really some long kisses from me, against the refrigerator, before
surprised. he goes home because I hate those girls who push away a
boy’s face as if she were made out of Ivory soap, as if she’s
Still, you’re not sure what to expect. that much greater than he is.

I look into his face and he looks back. I look into The note on my cubby told me to see the
his eyes and they look back at mine. Then they look down headmaster. I had no idea for what. He had received
at my mouth so I look up at his mouth, then back to his complaints about my amorous displays on the town green.
eyes then, backing up, at his whole face. I think, Who? Who It was Willie that spring. The headmaster told me he didn’t
are you? His head tilts to one side. care what I did but that Casey Academy had a reputation to
I say, “Who are you?” uphold in the town. He lowered his glasses on his nose.
“What do you mean?” “We’ve got twenty acres of wood on this campus,” he said.
“Nothing.” “Smooch with your boyfriend there.”
I look at his eyes again, deeper. Can’t tell who he
is, what he thinks. Everybody’d get weekend permissions for
“What?” he says. I look at his mouth. different places, then we’d all go to someone’s house
“I’m just wondering,” I say and go wandering whose parents were away. Usually there’d be more boys
across his face. Study the chin line. It’s shaped like a than girls. We raided the liquor closet and smoked pot at
persimmon. the kitchen table and you’d never know who would end up
“Who are you? What are you thinking?” where, or with whom. There were always disasters. Ceci
He says, “What the hell are you talking about?” got bombed and cracked her head open on the banister
and needed stitches. Then there was the time when
Then they get mad after, when you say enough is Wendel Blair walked through the picture window at the
enough. After, when it’s easier to explain you don’t want to. Lowes’ and got slashed to ribbons.
You wouldn’t dream of saying that maybe you weren’t
really ready to in the first place. He scared me. In bed, I didn’t dare look at him. I
lay back with my eyes closed, luxuriating because he knew
Gentle Eddie. We waded into the sea, the waves all sorts of expert angles, his hands never fumbling, going
round and plowing in, buffalo-headed, slapping our thighs. over my whole body, pressing the hair up and off the back
of my head, giving an extra hip shove, as if to say There. I
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parted my eyes slightly, keeping the screen of my lashes

low because it was too much to look at him, his mouth
loose and pink and parted, his eyes looking through my
forehead, or kneeling up, looking through my throat. I was
ashamed but couldn’t look him in the eye.

At boarding school, everyone gets depressed. We

go in and see the housemother, Mrs. Gunther. She got
married when she was eighteen. Mr. Gunther was her high
school sweetheart, the only boyfriend she ever had.
“And you knew you wanted to marry him right
off?” we ask her.
She smiles and says, “Yes.”
“They always want something from you,” says Jill,
complaining about her boyfriend.
“Yeah,” says Giddy. “You always feel like you have
to deliver something.”
“You do,” says Mrs. Gunther. “Babies.”

You wonder about things feeling a little off-kilter.

You begin to feel like a piece of pounded veal.

After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something

deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at
slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming
sadness, an elusive gaping worry. You don’t try to explain
it, filled with the knowledge that it’s nothing after all,
everything filling up finally and absolutely with death.
After the briskness of loving, loving stops. And you roll
over with death stretched out alongside you like a feather
boa, or a snake, light as air, and you . . . you don’t even ask
for anything or try to say something to him because it’s
obviously your own damn fault. You haven’t been able to—
to what? To open your heart. You open your legs but can’t,
or don’t dare anymore, to open your heart. It starts this
way:

It starts this way:

You stare into their eyes. They flash like all the
stars are out. They look at you seriously, their eyes at a low
bum and their hands no matter what starting off shy and
with such a gentle touch that the only thing you can do is
take that tenderness and let yourself be swept away.
When, with one attentive finger they tuck the hair behind
your ear, you—
You do everything they want.

Then comes after. After when they don’t look at

you. They scratch their balls, stare at the ceiling. Or if they
do turn, their gaze is altogether changed. They are
surprised. They turn casually to look at you, distracted,
and get a mild distracted surprise. You’re gone. Their black
look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there
anymore. You seem to have disappeared.