Jäger

Alternately: The Version in Which I Kissed Her

I’m not sure I like going out but this is the third time this week I've found myself in a dingy college town club after midnight, and I tell myself it’s because Haley likes to dance and I like to dance with Haley, but mostly I’m on a mission to kiss a girl. It seems ridiculous to me that a person who prefers women to men has only kissed men, but that’s me, that’s where I am, and I’m so desperate for some sort of queer validation that I’m willing to make out with a drunk sorority girl in front of her boyfriend if that’s what it takes. Because that’s the sort of stuff that girls do in places like this after midnight, I think.

There was an unfairly small handful of out lesbians at my high school and a lot of them were overweight and full of bitter self-hatred so that was a no-go for me. But for a while there was Lily-Anne who would sit on my lap every other day and wouldn't leave until I’d promised her that she was my favorite, out of everyone in the entire world I guess, which might as well been true, but she insisted she was hetero and if I’d kissed her one of the ten thousand times I felt like I ~~needed~~ wanted to, I think she would've caused me hell. She broke my heart every time she opened her mouth, and in the middle of class I would whisper harsh jokes against the shell of her ear just to watch her throw her head back, broken bell sounds bubbling out of her, and it didn't even bother me that she’d repeat them loud enough for everyone else to hear and steal my comedic thunder because she could have it. She could have all of me.

We had a disagreement once and I guess I really ruined her because we were a couple of nerds in marching band together and at the football game that night she looked dimmed, became this unrecognizably small thing, and I still think about the weakness it took not to seal my lips against hers and lick light back into her mouth, reach inside with my forgiving tongue and draw her vivacious flames back to the surface, you’re my favorite, you are, come back to me. We hugged in mutual apology the next Monday with a chair between us and I think I reeled for hours because her body was so soft the way men’s bodies never are.

…Though Darren is a man and I guess his body isn't hard the way it might be after he starts testosterone. It wouldn't be fair to count him because he’s trans, but he ended up on top of me on a couch at a New Year’s house party the way he always seems to, and I was so drunk I couldn't feel my own face but I could feel something when his teeth closed around my bottom lip and what was I supposed to do but devour him. I would never ever tell him how high I was made from the pouty swell of his lips under my tongue, the feminine jut of his hips under my hands, how gently soft he was all over.

In high school I was under the impression that college is supposed to be some sort of lesbian hub where queer people congregate and there’s at least three curious hetero-flexible whatever’s living on every residence hall floor, but I've been to the GSA here and there were maybe fifteen people and most of them identified as “allies” with an air of smug self-righteousness I wasn't crazy for. I haven’t been back.

So I’m out again and I have Haley’s helpful friend Omar to thank for the deceptive blue 21+ band on my wrist, and he tells us to look like we've been here before, so when we get snug with the crowd in the doorway and Haley unthinkingly tries to follow it past the bouncer checking wrists for the yellow wristband that says we've paid to see the bands here, which we definitely haven’t, I grab her hand and drag her in some semblance of a shimmy around the opposite side of the entrance, putting bodies between us and him until we’re safely inside and making a b-line for the bar.

Something like 30 minutes later the dregs of cash in my purse plus most of Haley’s has drained down our throats in the form of three shots of Jäger each and I know that “jäger” is German for hunter but as I scope the throng of dancing bodies and booths for girls who look like they might be into other girls, whatever those types of girls look like, I don’t feel stealthy or confident or anything at all like what hunters are probably supposed to feel like.

There had been one girl in the bathroom who’d pinned Haley and me for 15 minutes to talk at us about tattoos and how apparently fundamental it is to life that you trip on acid at least once. Then she’d seen the small batman Band-Aid on my arm that I told her was for a yucky bug bite but was actually covering up an unfortunate breakout, and then that had spurred talk of favorite superheroes and when Haley gushed off topic about how hard she would bang Andrew Garfield and this girl said, “Yeah, he and Emma Stone are both sooooo f*****g attractive,” I knew that maybe I could get somewhere with her. By the end of it she was standing all of two inches from me, and she was pretty in a crazy person way but then someone she’d apparently roomed with before waltzed in and that was the end of that, her attention swerving away, hurtling fast at this other, more familiar girl.

I get a lot of attention from girls when I’m out, always a compliment about my hair or my skirt or my boots or my makeup and always from the type who would never look at me otherwise, and they all seem to stand too close and they all want to touch some part of me like they’re checking to see if I’m real, weaving fingers through my hair and brushing curious hands along my hips and I want to touch their lips to see if they’re real too but girls are the most complicated people on the earth and I never know what their intentions are, if they’d kiss me back or spit me out, and how do you even ask that sort of thing.

So I am definitely not yet feeling like a hunter, but I grab Haley’s hand and pull her to the dance floor because the alcohol is just beginning to hit me and I’m a good dancer and I look hot tonight regardless, in heavy black boots that make me feel like I could kill any man who dares to sneak a hand under my blue velvet miniskirt, it’s hem floating dangerously around my thighs. The band performing in the corner is nothing special and there’s a mass of bodies in the front, jittering on their toes to the too-fast-for-dancing beat, and while Haley begins to do her awkward hip-twist/arm-swing unencumbered by the tempo, I can’t decide if I need to join in on this overly rapid concert-throng bounce or sway lazily in cut time. I try both and neither feels much like dancing.

I end up sort of standing there, hardly moving but for a slow pulse, and the song has to end soon anyway. It’s when I look back in the direction of the bar, thinking Haley might have just enough for two more shots and if I have more in me I might not care about things like tempo, when I see her. And look away. And then back at her again. And she’s still looking at me and I think that was something like a smile but I don’t know. She looks like she’s going to say something and then I find myself twisting on my heels to face Haley, grabbing her wrist and fleeing with her to the other side of the room.

“I found a girl.”

“You what!?”

“A girl. She’s in one of my classes, I worked with her on a group thing the other day.”

“WHAT? WoooOOOOH! Where!?”

Ever-supportive Haley whips her head around so fast in her search of this hopefully maybe gay girl that her drunken body begins to follow but I catch it before things go sour and then grip her by the shoulders, maneuvering her to face the direction of the bar, where pretty girl is no longer standing, and then in a wide searching swing until I spot her.

“There in the corner booth. Black shirt, white shorts. Across from white shirt guy.”

She is more than black shirt white shorts, she is so achingly pretty in this dark room the same way she was in our psych class last Wednesday, when we’d been randomly paired up in a group of three with some other forgettable boy for some forgettable assignment. I hadn't noticed her before then. But she has gentle chestnut hair, and tonight it’s pinned up in a bun like a sloppy rose, wisps falling around chipmunk cheekbones, and I think I like her nose the best, pointy and small and a just a smidge off-center below two campfire eyes. Her lips are peaches and I remember making her laugh during class and the way she wouldn't throw her head back but instead leaned in to me a little, revealing white teeth and playfully prominent canines.

I want to kiss her so hard I accidentally cut my tongue.

I don’t know why I think she’d kiss me but I do, something about that gleeful recognition when she’d seen me, and I hope. I am a hopeful huntress as I drag Haley back to the center of the room. The band with its ‘you should know better than to play those songs in this atmosphere’ music has left thank god, and I’m hopeful that the group currently tuning and sound checking and whatever bands do has something I can dance to because people notice me when I dance, I am bold and lean and incredible. I am Jäger. I am hunting.

I take Haley’s hands in mine and spin her twice to pass the time until the music starts and somehow she is steady enough afterward to spin me as well, and mid twirl I catch mystery girl watching us (me?), black shirt, white shorts, curvy sweet perfection. I grin at her. I don’t know if she catches it. The band begins their first song and it is fast without being jittery, exactly perfect, so I let go of Haley’s hands and she does her thing and I do mine, losing myself for a while. The only dancing I did before college was naked in front of my bathroom mirror, letting the shower get hot until the room was all steam and my song of the week was bleeding into my brain through my earbuds, the volume dangerously loud but I didn't care. I would watch myself sometimes, and I didn't think I was very good.

But I feel good now, with my floating skirt and a pale belt of skin visible below my cropped shirt, and if I am so heavy with my buzz that I occasionally lose my balance I'll just throw my head back and grin because what does it matter, my body is music.

A few songs later and I still catch her watching, so I get closer to Haley for cover and do a crazy thing. I look at her and hold her burning ember eyes and I waggle my fingers at her, crook one suggestively and mouth “come.” I feel wild and hot, like she’s burning my abdomen up and my skin is frail cigarette paper. But she slides out of her both and joins, smiling something honest and sweet, and I think I could spend an afternoon baking cupcakes with her, pushing those wisps behind her ears and accidentally smudging that pointy nose with flour.

I step back a bit from Haley so that when mystery girl joins us we form a throbbing, jiving people ring, and she looks at me and yells, because the music is loud, “You two are great!”

I bump Haley’s hip with mine and shout, “We know!” and panic briefly because it’s entirely possible that this girl is just another fun straight girl and thinks that Haley and I are The Cutest lesbo couple she’s ever seen. And I wouldn't blame her because I love Haley with my entire heart and we are absolutely The Cutest when we twirl together. But as Haley loves to repeat, because she thinks it’s the wittiest, most insightful thing she’s ever come up with, she has an “unsexy straight-ness about her”. And even if she didn't, I live with Haley and am intimate with all of her unfortunate hygiene habits and I could never kiss a person who used to only brush her teeth at night and only upped to twice a day because someone lovingly bullied her into it.

I stop panicking when beauty leans in close to me and half-yells, “Can I buy you a drink?”

Yes. I nod. “Jäger!”

She smiles and flounces away.

She is gone for too long. Haley and I stop dancing and I look around toward the bar for her and I find her leaning against the same white shirt she’d been sitting with earlier. They’re very close together and it hits me that I've been abandoned and maybe this girl is bisexual or something but I have still been abandoned for a boy. But maybe if she sees me, she’ll remember. I grip Haley’s hand for the fiftieth time tonight, incredible wonderful Haley who is always so obliviously having a good time, and we go and stand near a booth adjacent to the bar. I try not to stare at this girl or get her attention in any obvious way, and fish my phone from my purse to distract myself. Haley does the same and gets that smile on her face that means she’s texting her boyfriend, and the sharp envy that threatens to flood me is dammed when I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn.

This girl is so close and smiling at me so big, holding a dark caramel colored shot for each of us, and in my periphery I can see that Haley is clanking one with White Shirt, and I realize that this girl has been up there moseying four shots out of his pocket, kind of all for me. I take one and tap it against hers, and I don’t even hold my nose when it goes down, which is something embarrassing I've started doing but you would too if you accidentally snorted vodka into your nose once.

We set our glasses on the table and I want to dance with her some more because I didn't get to watch her dance for more than a few seconds and she’s been watching me dance all night which seems unfair. But the percentage of me that is hunter has just increased a little bit and I feel slippery and brave, so I take her hands in mine and she is already leaned in close from the intimate cheers we made over Jäger, and all I have to do is breath an eager “Thank you,” near her mouth and then we’re kissing. And those are her lips, her lips, sweet and soft like peaches, and she is so real, she is all languid flame the way that eager high school boys were tap water, and this is it. I feel a canine poke my inner bottom lip. This is it.

With a sputtering giggle against my mouth she breaks away laughing, but not at me, because it’s an excited, incredulous sound that I am making too, and maybe she is straight but what the f**k does that matter. I am not so drunk and deluded to think that there will be anything other than heavy embarrassment in the room between us during psych on Wednesdays. But she still has my hands and tonight I am a tipsy huntress full of licorice bravado and I have been so, so caught.