She Poured Out Her Heart Read Online Free Page A

step better than no date at all. But so far Jane’s new life at college was turning out to be too much like her old life at home, narrow and unremarkable. She told her roommate sure, she’d go. She fluffed her hair out and put on mascara and presented herself for inspection. Her roommate scrutinized her. “Why don’t you wear my red sweater?” she suggested.
    She’d been having trouble with her contacts, and without her glasses, the world was an agreeable soft-edged blur. It was November and pleasantly chill. They walked to the party through pools of light from the old-fashioned streetlamps, and underfoot were heaps of red and yellow maple leaves, and around them all the houses and apartments were busywith people coming and going on their way to their own amusements. And for once she was a part of it.
    â€œSo who is this guy, my date?” Jane asked, trying not to think foolish, hopeful thoughts. Her roommate, who was still no more friendly than she ever was, said only that he was this guy from Valpo who was in town for the weekend, a friend of Candy’s boyfriend Josh. Jane did not find this helpful information. She didn’t know Candy or Josh. She wasn’t even sure where, or what, Valpo was. She had to wonder why it was so important for the weekend guest to have an escort, why he couldn’t tough it out alone. She walked on in silence. For her paper on Walt Whitman, she had been reading certain titillating lines about a lover who “settled your head athwart my hips” or “plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart.” There was some argument that Whitman was gay, but what did it matter? There had to be other people who felt that kind of thing. It couldn’t just be poets.
    At the frat house, a DJ was playing a mix of rap songs, boom boom boom and fuckety fuckety fuck. Red Christmas lights were strung along the walls. The noise was terrific. They wandered around in the crowd until the roommate found Candy and Candy’s boyfriend, and then Jane was introduced to her date. The roommate vanished, borne away by her overexcited girlfriends. The date’s name was Tim. He brought her a red plastic cup of beer, which she drank down fast, though it tasted sour, like something she had already vomited back up.
    The music kept playing at terrific volume and it was impossible to hear anything else, so she and Tim mostly grinned at each other. “Where are you from?” she shouted at him, but he just kept saying “Huh? What?” He had buzzed hair, like he might have been in ROTC or a punk band. He was tall, which she liked, and after she drank two more beers she kissed him, standing up against a wall while the music thumped and brayed. He was a better kisser than Allen. He put both his hands on her backside and pulled her up so that she was riding him, a slow grindingdance, which felt sort of good, in a hopeful way. Other couples around them were also entwined and grappling, and she understood why she, or some other female creature, was necessary, for who could be alone in this paired-off frenzy of mating? It was like the nature program she’d seen on an education channel, a lake full of copulating fish, their tails beating and thrashing the water.
    â€œWant to go upstairs?” Tim asked, and she did, mostly.
I know what I’m doing,
she told herself, although it was not possible to know what was beyond your experience. Should she tell him she was a virgin? Would he be more or less likely to regard her with contempt? Would he change his mind? It would probably be worse to tell him she was a freshman.
    Jane tripped and fell against him on the stairs, which set them both to giggling, and gave them an opportunity for another friendly hands-on interlude. At the top of the stairs they felt their way along the walls, Tim trying the doorknobs of different rooms. They were all locked. “Well crud,” he said, perplexed. Finally one door opened. It was