Story 4: The Contest

“For the next week,” Dr. Porreco said, his discolored, crowded teeth showing, “we will be conducting an experiment, a contest in your ability to change. For one week I want you …” He stopped for a moment to enjoy the hilarious giggles at the phrase “I want you” and then continued, “to act completely out of character. Not every minute of every day, mind you, but at least five times a day, for seven days, you must do something that is difficult for you, frightens you, even.”

The class shuffled around me. I whispered to Natalie, “Maybe you could try being honest.”

“And maybe you could try being my friend!” she shot back.

“Enough explanation,” Porreco said. “Now it’s your turn.”

I checked my watch: only five minutes into the lecture. Porreco usually talked for an hour and answered his own questions. All this on a Monday too. Jeff sighed, which instantly got the teacher’s intention.

“You, Jeff, tell us your plans. What’s out of character for a CU running back?”

Jeff appeared stunned. He hadn’t spoken in class all spring, and now he had to show self-awareness too. He leaned on his left elbow, hoping the appearance of indecision would rescue him. Porreco assumed an intrigued expression, folded his arms, and waited. Then from the back of the room a clear female voice called, “Communication!” I laughed out loud when Porreco compelled the woman-in-the-back to admit to a bad habit of finishing people’s sentences, and he glanced my way for a second. “Your assignment,” he told her, “is not only to listen until every woman you are speaking with finishes a statement, but also to nod for a few seconds afterward to encourage her to continue speaking. Because God knows men don’t need encouragement. They love to hear the sound of their own voices.”

And so it went around the room. Most students admitted something. We all knew the psychology majors in the front row would dig down for the behavior they most wanted to change. As usual, Porreco avoided calling on them.

Ending his classes by quizzing me and Natalie always amused him. Natalie usually had an answer ready, but by the time he asked her what assignment she planned, it had fled from her mind, as my grandmother used to say. She sat there, trying to get it back. The class began to mutter, and finally I shouted: “Say the first thing that comes into your mind!”

“Well, Natalie,” Porreco said, “I think Debbie has chosen for you. Now you may choose for her.” He grinned at us. I knew he had planned it.

Natalie found it much easier to devise a regime for me than for herself. How typical. She said, “You can’t plan anything. As soon as something occurs to you, you have to do it.”

The class laughed, but I was pissed off. Natalie pretended to respect the way I planned ahead, but really she thought I was nothing but utilitarian, no romance about me. When I recently pointed out that my unromantic nature had kept me from getting pregnant and having an abortion, as she had, she abruptly reminded me that she was on the pill. I told her that was a step in the right direction, but not nearly enough.

“So what would be enough?” she asked me. I didn’t answer. It seemed so obvious.

Porreco was finishing up over the din. “Begin tomorrow by doing five things out of character. Be prepared to report in class on Wednesday. I’ll try to get at least one verbal report from everyone by Monday. Also on Monday, turn in a written report of your week’s experiences. This will affect your grade.”

“Thanks a lot,” I told her as we left class. She just smiled. Natalie was always saying I tried too hard, but she did have certain attitudes about herself. Oh yes, she did.



Tuesday

We sat up in our twin dorm beds and looked at each other. “Tuesdays suck,” Natalie said, and I lay back down. “I can’t plan anything,” I said, feeling small. Maybe it was the green cement-block walls.

“You can’t even talk about planning,” Natalie told me.

“Well, saying ‘Tuesdays suck’ doesn’t count.”

“Sure it does. Normally I would just grin and bear it. Now go take a shower without doing inventory of every toiletry you have.”

I obeyed, which is just easier sometimes with Natalie. Once the shower water was hot enough, I closed my eyes and grabbed a bottle from my basket. I squeezed some into my palm and applied it to my hair. From the smell and feel of it, I realized I was washing my hair with body lotion. Trying hard not to calculate which bottle was closest, I grabbed another bottle and repeated the process. Five bottles later, my hair was clean, I smelled like everything in my basket, and I had wrapped my robe around myself to dry because I kept taking stock of which body part to towel off first.

As I approached our room, I could hear Natalie shouting, but I couldn’t make out the words.

“You’re not allowed to practice!” I said as spontaneously as possible, just as soon as both feet were in the room. “That’s not saying whatever comes into your mind!”

She shrugged and then laughed. “I know!” she said. “I’ll call my father. I can tell him anything, and he won’t get offended. I’ll call him every day.” She stretched languidly under her bright floral comforter.

“And tell him about your abortion?” I asked.

She glared at me and said, “You have to give me your To Do list and your address book and your calendar.” She held out her hand. “Now!”

“No!” I rubbed my robe around my ankles to dry them. “I have all sorts of important meetings this week. I have to have my calendar!”

“Give it to me so that you won’t be telling me what to do for a week!” Natalie said, sitting up. First she tried to take everything I needed to get through the day, and then she acted like a bitch. Then Natalie added, “And I think I should only have to be honest with each person once a day.”

“I’ll agree to that.” I opened my closet to look for my favorite sweater.

“Just pull out pants and a shirt and shoes and put them on.”

“OK, OK! But I’m going to follow you around as much as possible and make sure you’re really honest with people.” I didn’t believe she’d really open up.

“You can’t plan like that,” Natalie said, laughing.

“Well, then, I’ll just drag you around campus until we find someone!”

I saw Natalie looking suspiciously at my outfit and gave her a reproachful look. So everything in my closet was color-coordinated! She could do the same. I handed Natalie my To Do list but said I had to check my calendar once in the morning and once at night. She could have it during the day. Maybe I could take it to bed with me and memorize it.

After allowing her a little bit of a lead, I shadowed Natalie on the way to her Chaucer class, remembering how both of us once got lost among these pink stone and red-tile-roofed buildings that gave the CU-Boulder campus its characteristic look. Every so often, she muttered to herself about the shapes made by cracks in the sidewalk, desperate to keep her mind blank and avoid seeing anyone she knew. But Josh outmaneuvered her. Just as she veered right to cut through the Mary Rippon theater, he touched her arm. I came as close as I could, and she sighed and looked at the snow on the red stone seats encircling the stage.

“I’m doing an experiment for psychology class,” she told him.

“What’s that?”

“I have to say the first thing that comes into my mind.”

He grinned at her. He still hadn’t seen me. “You’re stalling.”

Natalie took a deep breath and asked, “Have you had sex with everyone in our group but me?”

He didn’t even look embarrassed, just nodded. Why did she have to ask that question?

“You slept with Debbie and neither of you told me?” She looked in my direction, but I ducked behind a really tall man who was just standing there, reading his notebook. I knew I was in trouble now.

“It was just last weekend. When you were too tired to go out. Debbie was telling me how she’d decided not to get involved with anyone for a while but she still wanted to have sex occasionally.”

“Oh. So you offered yourself.”

“I’m here to serve.”

“Slut,” Natalie said viciously. Josh stiffened. I backed away from the two of them, but I still heard the end of the conversation. “You slept with Jodi and Deirdre?”

They were quiet until Natalie said, “But they’re best friends.” Josh’s face was a little sad. Then Natalie stomped off to class. I could hear the April slush fly in every direction.



Wednesday

A buzz ran through psychology class on Wednesday as people filed in, smiling slyly at each other or furtively sliding into their chairs. Porreco commented that everyone appeared to be in attendance and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer a story. I had nothing to say. Since Monday, I’d bumbled around trying not to think about what I was doing, which as yet hadn’t been disastrous. But I wondered if I was planning how not to plan. And I worried when Natalie would confront me. Why hadn’t I been honest about my sex life?

While I was distracted, Natalie raised her hand. With the other hand she was pushing her reddish-brown hair behind her ears, which she did when she was nervous. Oh no, I thought, and then she was telling a college professor and everyone in the class about the conversation she had with Josh. Porreco looked at me, amused or a little shocked, I couldn’t tell, and I felt my face go bright red. I slumped down in my seat, noticing how pleased with herself Natalie looked.

Then Jeff stood up, silencing the women in the class by standing with his hands on his perfect hips, while the men muttered. It was hard for me to admit about a football player, but I would always be grateful to him for his self-absorption at that particular moment. He proudly told all of us about his “communication” with his roommates: “I told them they had to clean out the tub after hairing it up and that they should stop leaving my CD player open all the time because the dust will break it. That was all I had time for before my workout, but I’ll try to make it up by the end of the week.”

“We wouldn’t want you to neglect your health for this, Jeff,” Porreco said seriously. Jeff appeared pleased.

For the rest of class, Natalie faced straight ahead, not looking at me. She had never given me the silent treatment before. When class ended, she stood up and pushed past me. I stayed in my seat, arranging and rearranging books in my backpack, until everyone had left. Porreco studiously flipped through his papers, ignoring me, but I could hear his thoughts circling from across the room. I walked out as if nothing had happened. I had no idea what I would say to Natalie when I saw her next, so I avoided her for the rest of the day.



Thursday

After informing me that she’d already made four out of five honest statements for the day, Natalie stood in line for a taco salad. I followed her, quiet. The Food Court was packed full of chattering students. People constantly sidled through the lines, reaching for a bagel or a drink.

Then Natalie turned around and spat this question at me. “Wasn’t it just Monday that you were telling me to be more honest?”

I stood there, holding my tray. People surrounded me. There was no room to move.

She continued. “When are you going to be honest about screwing Josh?”

“Not right now!” I said, getting more and more furious.

Natalie spoke even more loudly this time. “Don’t you know he’s been with everyone? He probably has five different diseases.”

Several people in front of us turned their heads, the better to hear our conversation. “We used a condom,” I said in a low voice.

“And that makes you responsible?”

“More responsible than you,” I said.

“Sometimes birth control doesn’t work,” Natalie pointed out.

“But that’s only if you use it!” I snapped. “Besides, this conversation isn’t about me not telling you. You’re just angry because he hasn’t slept with you.”

“For your information,” Natalie replied, “my love life has always been better than yours. I think anyone would say so.”

Natalie moved closer to the counter and ordered a salad with “halapee-nos” but no olives. I followed her to the counter and spoke to the woman taking her order. “She means jalapeños. She just forgets how to pronounce it.”

Natalie didn’t bother to lower her voice. “It’s in the dictionary both ways!”

“I don’t see why you can’t learn one common Spanish word!” We were shouting at each other, and people began to sidle away from us.

“Hey, people don’t even say my name right sometimes! I don’t yell at them in front of the entire Food Court!”

The manager came out of the back and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder, thinking we were yelling at her. To Natalie he said, “Don’t yell at my employees. Here’s your salad.”

Natalie pointed at me. “I was talking to her.”

I left to get my soup and sandwich. When I got to the cashier, Natalie was waiting for me. I wished, for the first time ever, that she would just leave me alone. She said, “I can’t believe you yelled at me for mispronouncing a word.”

The cashier, an older woman, laughed and asked her, “You’re here to learn, aren’t you?” Natalie stood there glaring until I pulled her over to a table.

“I think you’re taking this assignment a little too seriously,” I told her.

She shouted, “You’re always criticizing me!”

I banged my tray down on the table. “You should know how to say it. You’re always saying Spanish words incorrectly. I’m surprised somebody hasn’t corrected you before now.”

“Well, I think my best friend could have waited until we were alone.”

We didn’t say anything else during lunch. Natalie threw her tray into the dirty dishes rack and stomped off to government class. She was doing a lot of stomping this week. And then she came back early. When she opened the door to our room and saw papers and books and clothes covering every available surface, she pushed some off her bed, lay down, and cried. I continued what I was doing, saying only, “I’m not organizing. I’m working on a portfolio for writing class, and I have to spread things out.”

But then I began to feel guilty. Maybe because of Josh, but is it because I slept with him or because I didn’t tell her? Why can’t I have some things to myself? Or had I been too hard on her for keeping secrets from her boyfriend and her family? I cleaned up the room, pulled the comforter over Natalie, and wheedled a piece of chocolate cake out of the girl down the hall. She got a care package every week, so she could certainly spare some. I even poured Natalie a glass of milk from our tiny refrigerator and left the snack by her bed. I am her best friend. I always have been.



Friday

It was wild in class. Following Natalie’s example from Wednesday, the other students competed to tell the best story and mocked each other’s failures. Even Porreco could hardly control them. I admitted that I hadn’t actually done anything spontaneous, but I had refrained from planning anything that hadn’t already been planned. Porreco yawned. Natalie huddled in her seat, gloomy. When class ended, she joined the crowd around Porreco, everyone eager to get at least one anecdote in, and told him, “I hate this assignment. It’s exhausting.” Then she escaped before he could respond.



**

Friday night I dragged Natalie to the party at Josh’s Mom’s house. We had been invited, and I wasn’t about to miss one of his parties to satisfy Natalie’s pique. Armed with bottles of beer from the refrigerator—I didn’t want a man slipping me something—we squeezed into the large red chair, the only empty space left besides the floor. I talked about my writing portfolio, and we sang along to the new ’Til Tuesday album. We were pretending to be friends, and it hurt me. Josh and Deirdre wandered through the living room and chatted. Luckily, not too long, because Natalie was starting to glare at them after two minutes.

Then I noticed Jeff, standing in the arched doorway to the kitchen, hoisting a bottle to his lips and talking to someone in the kitchen with the mock-seriousness of college men. The skin along his profile glowed. I walked up behind him and shouted over the music, “Have your roommates cleaned the bathroom yet?”

He was talking to Josh. Both of them swung around to me, startled, and then eyed each other.

“Debbie,” Jeff said, “we were just discussing psychology class.”

Josh grinned. I blushed and pointed to Natalie, who had fallen asleep in the red chair, which was faded enough to match her hair. “You’ll have to talk to her about that. She was the one who announced it in class.”

“Wouldn’t want to interrupt her beauty sleep,” Josh said. He turned away to fetch his mother a drink and then left the kitchen.

Perhaps I was seeing with beer eyes, but up close, Jeff had long, dark blond eyelashes and green irises. Josh’s secret was his Elizabeth Taylor eyes. They had worked on me and, from what I heard, just about everyone else. Usually I avoided men who went through women the way he did, but his honesty saved him from any resentment—at least on my part.

Jeff said, “It’s hot in here. Want to go outside?”

In general, at parties, I don’t accept invitations from men to leave the main room, but the terms of the contest forbade me from thinking about anything too much—that would have been tantamount to planning. I let Jeff lead me outside. Josh’s house, like the others in his neighborhood, had a big yard. We walked to the end to escape party noise. Jeff took a big drink from his beer and said, pointing, “Do you know which constellation that is?”

“Which one?”

He tried to show me the stars under Orion’s belt, explaining that I’d have to look at them sideways, but when I turned my head, he kissed me gently.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he told me.

I felt sleepy and a little bit drunk. Last week, Josh and I had started out on the bench in the corner of the yard. Josh had built it from scraps of wood when he was a teenager. Jeff backed up to it and sat down, beckoning to me.

“Did you bring me out here because of what Natalie said in class?” I asked, still standing.

“Well,” he said, “I thought that if you could like Josh, you might like me.”

“I might,” I confessed. I sat sideways on his lap, noticing the way the light in the yard behind us turned his hair dark and shiny but hid his face. He could be anyone: Jeff-the-football-player, Jeff-the-astronomer, surprisingly-nice-guy-Jeff.

We stayed outside on the bench, kissing and speculating about constellations, until the moon set behind the mountains. I woke Natalie and dragged her home, thanking Josh on the way out. He didn’t look angry about anything; obviously he didn’t mind sharing, unlike some people I could name.



Saturday

By the weekend, I had decided enough was enough. I took Natalie to Tra Ling’s for lo mein.

“There is no lo mein as greasy as this,” Natalie said. Our table was right by the big window. Cars and people streamed up and down and across Broadway. “I can’t ever move away.”

I didn’t want to think right then about graduation or Natalie moving away. We ate in silence until Natalie laid down her chopsticks with a sharp click and raised her chin to me, which I just hated. I knew she was about to make a speech. I poked her face with my chopsticks, but gently.

Startled, she frowned and then said: “When I found out about Josh, I was so angry, but I don’t want to sleep with him, Debbie.”

I was still holding my chopsticks, poised to strike again. For a moment we glared at each other.

“Just admit it,” she said. “You’re a hypocrite. You did the same thing I did.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head in exasperation that she didn’t get it. “It wasn’t the same. I was just having fun with Josh. You were lying to Michael when you were with him over Thanksgiving.”

“And you lied to me,” she said.

“I didn’t lie!”

“You’ve always told me about your guys, but not this one,” she pointed out.

I went on the attack. “I can’t take it anymore, Natalie. The way you just won’t tell people things.”

“I tell you everything! Obviously you don’t.”

“Well, now I think you should tell everyone everything.”

She shook her head. “When are you going to stop being mad at me?”

“I don’t know,” I told her.

“I need you to stop. I need someone to talk to about the abortion who isn’t always judging me.”

I did judge her for it. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t promise just then to be more accepting, so I got up and ordered beef with broccoli and some cream cheese wontons. When I sat down again, I told her, “My week was better than yours.” But not in a triumphant way. It was just a fact.

“You got to be on Josh’s bench two weekends in a row,” Natalie said, too sweetly.

“You do want to sleep with him, don’t you?”

“I don’t want your backwash,” she said through a mouthful of noodles.

“Bitch.” One minute she was asking for support, the next minute, a remark like that. The food arrived. I tipped the waitress $5.

Natalie didn’t waste any time helping herself to half the wontons. “You’re feeling generous.”

“It has been a good week,” I repeated, trying to stay positive. “I think it’s even been good for you.”

“I don’t know. I’m beginning to see the value of my mother’s approach to conversation.”

I didn’t tell her she was already an expert at concealing her feelings. I simply said, “No way. You just need to practice more.”

“You do too,” Natalie said, suddenly all bristly. “Have you put Josh in your report?”

I stared at her. “I don’t need to. You announced it in class, remember?”

“I did, didn’t I,” she said, lowering her eyes and chin.



After lunch, I obeyed my sudden urge to sit by the fountain in the sun and read a romance novel. On Monday I planned to ask Porreco something that had puzzled me: if I had an urge to do something fun and followed it and then had a compulsion to do something responsible like study, did I then have to give up the first for the second? Did acceding to a desire to be responsible fulfill the requirement of acting on impulse? Or did it fit the letter but not the spirit of the contest?

I was pondering such things between medieval bedroom scenes when Jeff plunked down next to me, holding two pieces of carrot cake. My slice boasted the largest, orangest carrot I had ever seen, and I was tempted to lick it. Then I noticed his expression: serious, even a little nervous.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he told me. I had just read a passage in which a yeoman said that to a milkmaid. Maybe there was some truth in romance novels after all. Jeff lowered his eyes.

“Last night was really nice,” he told me. “Romantic, even.”

I’ve heard this tone before, I thought.

But he didn’t blow me off. Instead, he said firmly, “I think we should have a real date.”

Suddenly the orange carrot seemed terribly suggestive. “Jeff,” I admitted, “I do like kissing you.”

“That’s a start,” he said.

He fed me a bit of cake before I could ask what he meant. It was everything I had expected at one glance: rich, filling, and sweet. Then he kissed me.

“Friday?” he asked me. I nodded.

“We’ll talk about it in class,” he said, and got up.

“Thanks for the cake,” I said, thinking, This is going in my report to Porreco. I’d better get an A in this class. And wait until Natalie hears I have a date with a football player!

I stayed at the fountain until I finished the novel. I even sang a few lines from “Wild Thing” under my breath. The yeoman and the milkmaid went their separate ways, so the novel wasn’t entirely predictable. It had some good sex and some bad sex and interminable discussions about what women and men deserved in that area. Maybe that was a romance novelist’s idea of feminism.



Sunday

Natalie was still in bed when I went to shower. She said she had too much to think about to get clean just yet, especially before eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. When I got back, it was too quiet. “What happened?” I asked, sitting down after I’d dressed.

“Michael called. I told him about the baby.”

“Oh my God,” I said, a little shocked. “I thought you had decided to leave him out of that loop.” Part of me was pleased. Maybe my pressure had worked.

Natalie continued. “He told me that I had seemed distant for the past couple of months, and I said, ‘Well, that’s because I got pregnant and didn’t tell you.’”

I imagined those words coming out of my mouth. They sounded so harsh. “Did you tell him about the abortion?” I asked.

She gave me a sideways look and fiddled with the comforter. “He said that we should get married. And then, Debbie, I couldn’t stop. This whole week, it’s been so hard to tell people what I really felt as soon as I felt it. But with Michael, I guess I’ve been wanting to say something for a long time.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him exactly how I’ve been feeling since the fall and how I was hoping things would be better when we were together, but they weren’t. I told him what the abortion was like.”

“So you’ve broken up?”

“I guess so.” Natalie started to cry.

I asked the contest gods: Is that enough for us both? Can we stop being honest and impulsive now? I put my arms around her.

After a while, she said, “It’s finally in the open.”

“Do you feel better?”

“No, relieved,” she said. “But I’m dreading the next phone call.”

“The last time he was mad at you, he wrote letters,” I reminded her.

I realized how alike Natalie and Michael were. He hid behind letters; she hid behind silence.



Monday

The moment we held out our reports to Porreco, I wanted to snatch them back. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be teasing us as much afterward. He might not want to speak to us at all. Last night, after Natalie and I had proofread our reports for the second time, I pretended I was typing something for another class, but really it was an epilogue for my report. This is what I wrote:

“Natalie is pretty hard on herself in her report, but really she’s very romantic. I’m not. I thought relationships were something I could approach like any other goal, and I tried to get Natalie to see things that way, but I’ve decided that in love, what you plan for doesn’t always come to you. The person who appears to be the best choice for a lover often isn’t what you need at all.”

We got our reports back the following Monday, and I got a B. Porreco answered my question about impulse versus duty by saying, “This may sound strange, but acting on your feelings as you have them will protect you.” I was puzzling over that remark while Natalie paged through her report, and I peered over her shoulder. I was so relieved to see that Porreco hadn’t included my little confession in her report that I didn’t even notice her grade. But I kept wondering about his response. I had tried to be honest with Natalie about her treatment of Michael. She had tried to be honest with me. But if all that had protected us, I guess I didn’t know what the word meant.