I press my lips tightly together, ashamed. I can’t even determine who gave me the warts. According to my mother, incubation for HPV is three months, so it could have been Francois or Amos in New Mexico. Or it could have been one of the guys I slept with before Taos. I don’t need anyone to tell me how bad that is, I can’t even isolate where I got them. I don’t need anyone else to tell me what a slut I really am.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Well,” she says, “we’ll just have to do our best.”
She does a Pap smear and then takes a small bottle out of a cabinet. She explains she’ll need to use some type of acid to burn off the warts, and I’ll need to come back for a few more treatments until they are gone. She also explains the Pap will reveal whether I’m in danger of cervical cancer, which some forms of HPV threaten to cause.
I close my eyes, scared, as she applies something to my labia. The acid stings like crazy, but I hold myself still, not wanting to further disappoint the nurse. When I sit up, she looks me in the eye. Her face is stern. “You shouldn’t have sex again until these are gone. Otherwise you risk infecting your partner.”
I lower my eyes, sick with shame.
I find Leif waiting for me, and we go out to my car. He’s happy because he didn’t get infected, and I’m relieved. If he had, I would have felt even worse than I already do. I lower myself slowly into the driver’s seat like an old person, my rear still sore. But I don’t complain. I got what I deserve. Mom calls later that day.
“How are you doing?” she asks. “I’ve been thinking about you. I know today’s the day you went to the clinic.”
“I’m OK.” I lie in bed, cradling the phone with my head. She can be caring like this sometimes, like the mother I’ve always wanted her to be. I think of what Eli’s mother told me about the Alzheimer’s releasing her mother’s more loving self. It helps me to know there is this part to my mother. There is a possibility that somewhere inside, if it weren’t for all her own hurts and insecurities, she might really love me. I close my eyes, wishing as I do at times she were here with me, smoothing my hair.
“Be sure to take care of yourself,” she says. “Is Leif there? Is someone tending to you?”
“I’m really OK,” I say again. “Leif is in his studio, getting a composition done before class. But I’m fine. Only a little sore.”
“All right. Don’t stay there all alone. Call a friend.”
“I will.”
We hang up and I force myself to rise. I turn on the CD player, which plays a Tom Waits song. I think about going somewhere. A coffee shop. The student center. Calling Bevin, maybe, like Mom said. But ultimately I just get back into bed. Some days nothing sounds good.
When summer comes, Leif goes home to New Hampshire to perform with his band, and I stay in my apartment at school. I have nowhere else to go, no friends left in New Jersey, no internship or job like some of my friends. I’ve allowed Eli, and then Leif, to occupy my entire life, enough that I have not begun to focus on anything meaningful in my life. In high school, Jennifer A once told me she aspired to be a housewife. She wanted to live the cliche, watching soap operas and eating all day. She didn’t want to have to perform out in the world. But I don’t feel like that. I love vibrant discussions about literature. I love to write. I sit in the front row of most classes with my hand raised. There are things I know I’m good at, if I’d only keep my focus there.
Seeing this discrepancy in my life begins to nag at me, like a child tugging on my sleeve. What am I doing? Why can’t I ever just focus on me? My therapist and I discuss this, and she encourages me to create something in my life that will hold my interest. So I apply for an August writing workshop and am accepted. As often as possible, I drive up to Leif’s to see him. His family lives in a big, sterile house in the country. The front yard is a long, lovely stretch of wildflowers, and at the end of the driveway, behind the house, woods encase a pristine lawn. Leif is so perfect to me, so surreal, it is hard for me to grasp the idea of him growing up here, with parents, in a small town, like any other kid. Leif’s father is friendly, also a musician. He works with computers, but in his spare time he sits with Leif and they work out phrases or play jazz. He watches Leif play with admiration and pride, and he admits he wishes he could play music rather than work in his field. Leif’s mother is different. She admires Leif’s talent and drive like his father, but she holds herself at a distance, cold and detached. I try to engage her in conversations, but she rarely wants to talk. We don’t think the same, like Susan and I did. I can tell she thinks I’m flighty with my interest in psychology. Or, who knows, maybe she’s worried I’m analyzing her. Either way, I can feel her disapproval of me. She thinks I’m not good enough for her son.
As soon as we are out of his parents’ house, Leif gets high. We meet his bandmates, he smokes some more with them, and I watch them rehearse or play gigs in town. We regularly get back to his house in the early morning hours, and then Leif sleeps until two or three the next day. He keeps his room dark to ward off daylight, and when I stay there I find I’m always groggy and often bored. I wake long before him and sneak down to the kitchen to find something to eat, thankful his parents are at work. When I grow bored enough, I crawl back into bed and nudge him to have sex, just for something to do.
When he does wake, he moves slowly. He gets himself something to eat, goes to the piano room, and plays with a composition he’s been working on. I follow him from room to room.
“Let’s do something,” I say, sitting on the piano bench next to him.
“Like what?” He leans forward and erases a note, writes a new one in. His handwriting is chicken scratch, but his musical notes are always neat and perfectly shaped.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Anything. Let’s go out for lunch.”
“Isn’t it too late for lunch?” He begins to play again. He really is very good.
“Then dinner.”
He grimaces. “I just got up. I don’t really want to go anywhere.”
I sigh, resigning myself. After a few more minutes of sitting I walk around the house, looking at art and photos on the wall. There is a traditional painting of a man on a horse, another of a bouquet of roses. I think about how different Leif is from this art, which is safe and straightforward, nothing beneath the surface. Leif is intensely creative. His music takes risks. I wonder how he fits in amid this family, if he shoulders the burden of being the family risk-taker, so they don’t have to. I can’t help but notice how he acts around them, always happy and even, but then as soon as he’s away he gets high or he sleeps.
I also don’t find any pictures of Leif as a child. When I ask him, he goes into his closet and takes down a shoebox of photos.
“I was fat as a kid,” he explains as I sift through the pictures of Leif and his friends. It’s true he was chubby, but he wasn’t so big as to be called fat.
“There are no baby pictures?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I suppose there are somewhere.”
I examine each picture, wanting more. “How could your parents have no baby pictures of you?”
He shrugs again, and I notice I’m annoyed. Annoyed he doesn’t demand more from his parents. Annoyed by the hazy film that seems to cover everything in this house, including him. I nod and put the photos back in the box, not wanting him to see my frustration. I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him to me. He hugs back, which makes me feel better. Connected to him again.
After the HPV scare, a small panic remains in my stomach. What if there’s something more going on? What if I have HIV?
Most of my friends have gotten tested. It’s the reasonable thing to do if you’ve had sex with more than one person, especially unprotected sex, of which I’ve had lots. One friend even gets tested every six months as a precaution. I nod along with them, but I’m a terrible hypocrite. I’ve slept with many more strangers than they have, and I’ve yet to get tested. I’m too scared. In the eighties, AIDS plagued gay men, IV drug users, and people receiving blood transfusions. It felt unrelated to me. Now HIV is showing up in the blood of more and more heterosexual women. We’re getting it at the fastest rate in the country.
On a Monday morning, I drive back to the same Planned Parenthood. I tell the receptionist why I’m there, and a young woman takes me into the back. As we walk, my heart beats so fast I feel like I might pass out. This woman is kinder than the last one. She’s young, not much older than me. Perhaps it’s more acceptable to get a voluntary test than to show up with an STD. She puts a warm hand on my arm as she guides me into a small, white room that has only a desk and two chairs. She sits across from me and sets a clipboard on the desk.
