The Wal-Mart parking lot looked busy.
“Now for the last touches,” Frankie said. She pulled a leather dog collar and a chain leash from her purse. I looked at the collar and then at the baby in the backseat. Frankie fastened the heavy collar around me, the cold metal slicking along my skin.
Frankie pushed the cart with baby Jett in it, holding the leash in her right hand. I walked in front of them. It felt like a parade.
“I need milk,” she said. “Get me milk.”
I walked in front of her, the weight of the leash swinging behind me, heading for the milk. I picked it up, put it in the cart, and then looked to her for her next command.
People stared. Some shook their heads in disbelief. No one approached us or said anything. A part of me was aroused by the excitement, but my face burned every time I made eye contact with someone. It was easy to do what she said, but I was praying that my mother, or Sam, or someone from high school would not be here to see me. My mind was fighting it. You just have to do this, I told myself. Her approval was more seductive than my shame.
Frankie seemed oblivious to the people watching us. Once her shopping list was finished, she walked me to the lingerie section and told me to get on my hands and knees. I looked at her pleadingly.
“Don’t you like me?” she said.
“Of course, but I—”
“No one is watching,” she said. “If you really like me, you’ll do this.”
But people were watching. A feeling pressed up into my chest from my stomach. I didn’t want to disappoint her.
I got on my hands and knees between towers of socks and hosiery, the industrial-grade carpet flat and hard beneath my palms. She left Jett in the cart and stood behind me with the leash. I could see both of our reflections in a garment mirror. The low thud in my chest seemed to grow louder as pressure built in my head, as if my body was trying to suffocate itself. I struggled to catch my breath. A few people turned their heads toward us. She looked down at me, grinning from ear to ear.
“Now, walk!” she said.
I started to crawl forward like an animal. The tough carpet scraped my knees. I watched the faces of other people. I didn’t look like them. They all looked the same—clean, happy. I felt vulnerable and sad and empty, even as I was satisfied that I was brave enough to do what Frankie wanted. All I could think about was how I was not like these people, and how that was bad. I wanted to feel part of something. I wanted Frankie to like me so badly. I was ready to mold myself into what she wanted. The glee with which she enjoyed my humiliation was frightening and felt cruel, but it was hard to discern whether it was truly meant to be cruel or just playful. She was not afraid to demand what she wanted, and I envied that. I spent so much of my life doing what everybody asked me that I wasn’t even sure what I wanted anymore, if I wanted anything, if I had needs at all.
Later that night, I brought a duffel bag of different outfits with me to Jenny’s house, as well as makeup and a curling iron. Jenny poured me a glass of vodka and Cherry Coke and we drank as we tried on different outfits. I felt almost bored with playing dress-up after what had happened earlier that day.
She wore a bra and panty set I recognized from the lingerie section at Wal-Mart. The lace appliqué on the cups had worn down and was coming off a little. She tried on three different skirts, throwing each of them onto the mess of her floor. We were listening to a CD I made for the summer, a mix of late ’90s and early 2000s hip hop in between some top forty songs. I listened to that mix on repeat for so long that even now listening to those songs brings back the smell of Cherry Coke and the feeling of standing in Jenny’s room, trying on our clothes.
Her body was wide and sleek like a satin ribbon. Pelvic bones thrust out from her hips, which were the same width as her shoulders. As she twisted, admiring herself in the mirror, the ribbon of her body bent one way and then the other. She bit her bottom lip like she were about to say the word fuck, like she was thinking about how good she looked, or maybe how bad. She got on her hands and knees and rummaged through piles of clean and dirty laundry before picking up a pair of tight black jeans and a white T-shirt.
“Maybe simple is better?” she asked. “Jeans or skirt?”
She brought the jeans to her nose and sniffed them before putting them on, one leg at a time, and then threw the T-shirt on, which messed up the plop of dusty blond hair that sat in a bun on her head.
Since we had slept together, I felt more comfortable around her, and less like I had to perform for a stranger who had certain expectations of me. I posed in front of the mirror and shook my hips to the rhythm of the music. She made kissy faces at me, and then at herself, at our reflections dancing in the mirror.
This was the kind of relationship I thought I’d have with Frankie. Jenny was not examining the parts of me, either in whole, seeing me naked, or in pieces with her hands inside of me. Jenny simply experienced me and allowed me to be experienced. Spending time with her was a release from the pressure that had built up with Matt and Frankie. I wondered why I wanted to spend time with them so
