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9:30 – rooftop terrace

I’m treading an ocean of sweat and glittered flesh. Even for Texas, October has been balmy. Everyone took the opportunity to wear their finest mating plumage: sheer tights, bikini tops, and taped nipples. Catalina, too, with her impressive tube-top cleavage and Dollar Tree angel wings. This is my first ever “college rager,” and I wasn’t expecting the display. Ostensibly, this is the Halloween party for the Comics Club; I wasn’t prepared for hot strangers in fetish gear. I’m shrink-wrapped in a yellow Bruce Lee jumpsuit. I’m still sober, and I’ve been asked twice if I’m the lady from Kill Bill. I feel like the most naked person here. Thin yellow fabric exposes the fat on my thighs and the outline of my binder compacting my ribcage.

Catalina eyes me through heavy black bangs. “Just fucking talk to him,” she says, pawing my shoulder. I want to say that the plan has changed. I want to go home, hide myself, and wait for the next phase of my life and/or body. I want to tell her that I feel like a tadpole with legs.

Instead I say, “They’re bringing out the jell-o shots.”

We plunge into the depths of the crowd. The pressure is immense. Everyone is pressing towards a folding table stacked with disposable sauce cups. They’re bobbing their heads and clucking like chickens competing for dry corn. Just when I’m prepared to start kicking shins, Catalina presses two cups into my open palms. She waves me away and waits for her dose. She’s generous like that. I escape to a quiet corner, turn my back on everyone, and gaze at the muddy quartz skyline. I’m grateful to have someone who can elbow her way through a crowd. Someone who is shorter and softer and more solid than me. Here she comes now, stiletto boots screaming her praises against the concrete.

We do a toast and I mimic her expert motions, the way she swirls her finger to separate plastic from gelatin. It is still cold and firm, so I gag when it hits the back of my throat. I choke it down, though, my tongue coated in sugar burn.

“Oh, that’s foul,” I say before I swallow the next one. I haven’t eaten much, so the alcohol works its magic almost immediately. My limbs feel numb and expansive. The night is reanimated.

“Well, are you gonna do it?” she asks. I can see her eyes fluttering unabashed between me and Slim. He is standing under a pergola surrounded by his subjects. The beloved emperor of the Comics Club.

“I don’t know about this. What if he’s straight?”

“Nico. No one in the club is straight.” This is mostly true. It’s why we started going to the meetings. But she of all people should know that “straight” is shorthand for the many forms of failure that could take shape between hello and taking off my clothes.

“I don’t know why you’re so nervous,” she continues. “He’s a literal clown.”

It is true that he’s wearing a clown costume: his face is covered in black ICP inkblots, and his scalp stubble is rubbed over with powder blue. There’s also a rumor in the Lavender Dorms that he, quote, “used to be a carnie” before coming here. This is part of the appeal. He stands upright in his suspenders, completely unconcerned about sexiness. He laughs big and proud of the gap between his teeth. He is tall and firm and sharp in the right places. I don’t know him well, but I can tell he is unlike anyone else I’ve met.

“Well, I’m going,” she says. She walks off, hips swaying magnetically, so I roll after her like a dirty nickel. We both know I cannot stand alone at a party. She leads me to the Comics Club pantheon: smooth-skinned, well-dressed, well above our freshman bullshit. I don’t think I could start a conversation with any of them. Even Catalina appears momentarily out of her depth, hovering on the edge of three conversations.

In short order, though, she cuts in: “Hey, Slim, great party. Thanks for organizing.”

A statement so obvious, so elegant in its simplicity. I never could have devised it. He turns towards her – and myself, by extension – with bright eyes. He says he’s glad we came. This is our first CC Halloween function, isn’t it? Of course it is, so the pantheon regales us with stories from previous years: vomiting in planters, pissing in alleyways, waking up on a stranger’s floor with a busted lip. Mythical, half-remembered nights.

The conversation lulls. I have not spoken, and I probably should. On impulse I ask, “Is it true that you were in the circus?” Immediately I’m overwhelmed with nauseous regret. He turns to me, his face botox-tight: eyes cut into crescents, every crooked tooth exposed. Under that painted color-blocking, it’s as likely a grimace as a smile.

“Where’d you hear that?”

I shrug, neon sludge roiling in my stomach. “Someone in the club told me, I think. I dunno.”

“I was never in the circus. But I worked for it, a couple summers. You could say I had a lemonade stand.” His face softens to a legible smirk.

“Did you like it?” Catalina asks.

“Best job I ever had. Good atmosphere, great coworkers.”

“Plus you have enough stories for a lifetime of parties,” some guy says. He’s dressed like the eponymous blond from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That is, he’s wearing hot pants and nothing else. He’s got the abs for it. It’s like staring at the sun.

“Right. Actually, do y’all want to see a trick?”

“Oh Slim, not the fire thing again,” a gloss-lipped Poison Ivy groans.

He grins and produces a matchbook. “Learned this from one of the performers.” He strikes a match and holds it in the center of our circle. He lets the flame breathe and swell before bringing it close to his cinnabar nose. He inhales, and it nearly licks his face. Then he pops it in his mouth, lips puckering around wood. Yelps and moans pass over the crowd. He lets them simmer before removing the blackened matchstick, blowing a cloud of inky smoke. I am the only one who laughs. Out of shock and/or joy, I clasp both hands over my face and giggle like a schoolgirl. I resent the noises I’m making, but our eyes meet. I’m certain that he sees me now.

“See, Jannah? Some people like it.” And he rewards me with a wink.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“No, no.” He waves his tapered fingers. “Not if you do it right. You’re just smothering the flame, like putting a lid on a candle jar. But I did singe my tongue once. Now I never do it after three drinks.”

11:30 – sidewalk

The party is busted. Red and blue lights swarmed the building, and we were forced to march down the emergency stairs with the idiot parade. In the stairwell, the fluorescents and bodies and canned laughter had the effect of a bolt stunner. I’m as dumb as a half-dead cow by the time I get outside. A hand on my back leads me to the sidewalk, where Slim is sitting with legs splayed wide in the gutter. Catalina takes a seat, and I follow suit.

Slim is scowling, hunched over the light of his phone. Instinctively, I lean away from him and into her shoulder.

He sighs. “Sorry the party is ruined. Happens some years. I think we got too many people. And we left behind all those shots!” he hisses. “We spent two days making those.”

“Well, I have a little good news,” she says, holding her purse in between us. It is stuffed with candy-colored plastic.

“Crazy girl,” he grins. “How did you manage that?”

“I’m nimble,” she says, tossing her shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here then,” he says. “We’ve still got a party. Don’t want the pigs to catch on.”

We wander over to the main drag, the potholed boulevard that separates campus from apartment buildings. There are few cars. Marvel characters and leotard cats are hopping on and off the asphalt. Everyone is carrying Solo cups, so we join in. After the fourth shot, I’m content to float with the current. Out here the crowd is a gentle buzz. Insular groups rub shoulders just occasionally, and no one punctures our triad.

I ask more questions about the circus. He learned a lot of interesting things there, I’m discovering. For example, that there are over 400 types of dwarfism, three of which were represented in the company. He also learned how to give a tattoo with a sewing needle. (He has one such tattoo, which he can’t show us right now.) It’s the type of life I’d want, I think, if I could choose: colorful, strange, and slightly illegal.

“That, um, sounds very vaudeville,” Catalina says. She’s wearing her shit-smelling face, but puts it away when I elbow her.

“It was a little edgier than a Ringling Brothers production, if that’s what you mean. That’s what was so great about it. Way better acts. We had a giant who did a comedy routine. A guy with no legs who did a trapeze act. A pair of conjoined twins that sang.

“Were they actually good, or was it a schtick?” I ask.

“Yeah, no, they were impressive. They harmonized. Did a treatment of Moon River that could make you cry.” He looks off across the street. “Well, I used to, anyway.”

The admission makes me a little giddy. My fingers twitch, wanting to turn his face to mine, examine his soft-boiled expression. I settle for asking, “How were they conjoined?”

“Two heads, four arms, two legs,” he says, counting of on his fingers. “They walked with crutches. They’d give a rundown of their anatomy before the show, toe to tip, almost like a jingle. God, let’s see if I can remember. It was something like: two heads, two hearts, two—"

“Can we please change the subject?” Catalina asks. The look on her face is agony.

“Are you alright?” I ask.

She waves me off, turns into an alley, and begins vomiting playdough. I stoop down to pull back her hair, shampoo commercial silk. I don’t think to look away. I have a strong stomach, and it looks a bit magical: rainbow gem tones dripping down whitewash. When she stands back up, she’s wearing the expression of an exhausted toddler. It says her night is over.

We decide to walk her home. At her apartment door, she deposits the final pair of jell-o shots in my palm. She claps me on the shoulder and commands me to “get home safe.”

I turn to him. He is looking at me, the shots, me.

“What do you want to do now?”

1:30, park

We’re at Green Hill. That isn’t the park’s legal name; everyone calls it that because it’s where they go to smoke weed. They’re doing it now, while we walk through a meadow ringed with trees. Lights flicker between the branches like faeries. There is a soft murmur in the leaves, a vague fragrance of burning flowers.

Slim is leading the way. Apparently there’s something he wants to show me here, and it isn’t marijuana. I watch him amble through the grass, eyeing his boney knees and sinewy forearms. I’m jealous of them. Of the way he walks, his wide loose stride like he’s never stepped on glass or worn high heels. The coincidental grace of an airborne ragdoll.

We enter a scraggly path through the underbrush. It looks like it was made by deer. I hear running water – the sound of the river. The path descends sharply over rocks and fallen branches. Slim glides over them like a harebrained mountain lion. I get down on my ass, testing each boulder with one foot before I commit. I land on a thin strip of sand. The river flows in front of
us, inky and speckled with yellow light. The other side is high cliffs. Peeking over them, the blocky, modern rich people houses with their jaundiced eyes.

“It’s beautiful.”

“This is my swimmin’ hole.”

“Do you mean you actually...?”

“Yeah.” He nods, face taught with glee. “Wanna go for a swim?”

I want to know if it’s a trade: his nudity for mine. I wonder if I could hold up my end of the bargain. I have never been naked in front of a man. I have not been swimming since that blue summer three years ago. But I loved it then. I scan the shoreline strewn with bottle caps, cigarettes, and anonymous plastic.

“Is it safe?”

He shrugs, coy. “I’m still here.”

He turns his back to me and hoists his shirt off. His rib cage ripples the skin. His spine is decorated with black floral outlines. He slips off his jeans and says, “Wanna see the stick-n-poke?” He casts a crescent eye back at me, and I nod dumbly. He reveals his inner thigh and a delicate, imperfect star woven into thick hair. I am charmed, somehow, by the unsteady lines. I want them for myself. He faces the river and slips off his underwear. I am still clothed, stunned.

“You don’t have to swim,” he says softly, “if you don’t want to. I’ll be out and back.” He dips his feet in, shoulders rise and fall. I’m waiting for him to dive, but he takes slow, deliberate steps. It recalls an image I can’t place: like once the water covers his crown, he’ll dissolve.

“Wait,” I say. “I’ll come.”

He mimes applause, fists hitting the air. I reach between my shoulder blades, and my sweaty hands struggle against the zipper. I shrug cloth from my shoulders and let it fall to my hips. Slim is up to his waist, looking towards the houses. I’m grateful for his distance and far-flung eyes. I peel the fabric from my legs, twice. I stare at my binder, the thick plies of nylon over cotton. When it gets wet, it will fuse to my skin like melted plastic – so I’ve been told. I’ll
chance it.

When my toes touch the water, I imagine broken glass, blood, scales, venom –

“What are you waiting for?” Slim calls back to me. He’s on his back, gaze travelling between me and the stars.

It takes me a moment to admit, “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“Stepping on something.”

“Here,” he says, and he swims back to shore. He stands before me and wraps his hands around mine, brings our toes to touch. “Follow my footsteps.”

My pulse rings in my ears. My sight floats far away, to the bridge that joins the city’s two halves. In the sunshine its tall arches show graffiti, joyous rainbow bubble-letter slurs. I don’t think about the silt between my toes, the flesh pooling in my midsection. I think of crossing that bridge only three months ago, with a different hairstyle, a different name. I think about that doe-eyed girl, who never would have done this. I think that perhaps life, real life, is about being terrified.

When the water reaches my belly button, he pulls away, and we both sink in. I dunk my head, so soon I am almost warm, flying. The current feels so good it almost tickles. It smells delicious, like moss after fresh rain. Out here we are nearly invisible, only disembodied heads. We’re not talking, really, just chirping and drifting with the tide. I roll onto my back and look into Orion’s belt. He joins me. Our fingers interlace. My eyelids flutter. I want to fall asleep. I want to live here.

I don’t realize I’ve forgotten myself until myself begins protesting. Something in my solar plexus contracts. My chest – my lungs – compressed since I left for class this morning. I remember that now. I wobble onto my stomach, and in the process something boney beats my stomach. My lungs spasm. Mouth fills with acrid liquid. I am thinking of the last time I swam, of sun splotches on my eyelids. I am not really thinking of anything.

A force wrests me to the surface, pulls my arm almost out of its socket. My breath is a sob. My lungs refuse to inflate. They give a little once I’m deposited on the dirty sand.

Slim is above me. His makeup is running down his neck, and he’s chanting that he’s sorry, sorry, so fucking sorry. His hands are pressing pointlessly against my sternum.

“That hurts,” I say, and he removes them. He shuts up for a moment while I sit up, spit up something black back into the water. The pain in my ribcage is acidic. I realize that I must remove the binder. I try three times to hoist it over my head, but the rumors were true. The heavy, tacky fabric stalls at my shoulders. I sigh. “A little help?”

He mumbles frantically and pulls. I draw my knees to my chest, and I feel better immediately.

“I kicked you,” he says. “That was me.” His voice is thick, caught like snot in his throat.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I almost killed you.”

Even though it hurts, I laugh. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe because the adrenaline is wearing off, leaving a light-weight numbness. Maybe because I am here, breathing, living ridiculously.

The look on his face says confusion, bordering on hurt. By way of reassurance, I inch forward and place a hand on his shoulder. His taut muscles soften to putty. He leans into me. That’s when I know I could do anything: shove my tongue in his mouth, crush him like glass against gravel. It’s a little like power, more like the blind exhilaration of riding a bull.