The Feminist Agenda of Jemima Kincaid Read online

  We both laughed. The tension was cut. “I’d do him,” said Andy.

  “And Spider-Man.”

  “Ew!” I said. “In that suit?”

  “Presumably he’d be out of the suit for the main event.”

  “I can’t with this conversation,” I said. “You guys go on. I’ll be sorting jerseys, trying not to heave.” Joking about sex with Jiyoon was fun precisely because neither of us had the faintest clue what we were talking about. It was different with Andy and Gennifer. It made me think about how they’d had sex. I mean, probably. And that made me think about them doing it, which might have been gross if I’d been able to picture it, but I didn’t even know what sex was. Not really. I was a naive kid. I moved down the hallway.

  But I heard Gennifer ask Andy, “Have you submitted your picks yet?”

  “I have.”

  That eighties power ballad was running through my head, except with sex instead of love. I want to know what sex is….I want you to showwww me….

  “And? Tell me one of them.”

  “I can’t.”

  I imagined jumping to my feet in the hallway as I belted out the song. I want to feel what sex is….Then I’d do a slow twirl and dramatically point at Andy: I know you can showwwww me!

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” said Gennifer.

  “I only submitted one,” said Andy.

  WHATIFITSME

  That was my brain.

  “Now you really have to tell me.”

  COULDITBEME

  Andy laughed. My ears burned. “Never.”

  I felt a nervous cascade in my stomach. I was blushing in this really awesome way that makes me look like I have a bad case of hives. Of course it wasn’t me. He was the chairman and I was the Mildred.

  But he’d kissed me.

  What if—

  I couldn’t take it. I scooped up an armload of jerseys so I could escape to the locker room, but I knocked my elbow on the door handle, right in the funny bone. I barely suppressed my scream. “Kincaid?” said Andy, and I looked up. Blushing, blotchy, eyes watering in pain. “You need a ride home?”

  * * *

  —

  I hate it when movies fade out. Like, right when they collapse onto the bed, the camera pans to the nightstand, where the water in the carafe is getting all ripply. Significantly ripply.

  There was no bed (and who has a carafe, anyway?) and there was—spoiler!—no sex, but I’m not fading out. Because fade-outs make real life weird. They make you think you’ll feel different during the whatevering, like the light will get soft and your sensations will too, but you’re still a body, you know? You’re still yourself. So even as Andy Monroe’s hand is raking through your hair and it feels weirdly amazing, all the same you’re like, Oh God, dried Powderpuff sweat is probably coming off all gritty in his hands and he must think I’m so gross. And then his tongue is in your mouth and it’s super hot and you’re also very aware that if you don’t manage to unbuckle fast you may well experience strangulation by seat belt.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Andy had been quiet as he pulled out of the parking lot, and although I was dying to be cool, I have a dumb habit of compulsively chattering through awkwardness. “It’ll be interesting to see everyone’s reactions to the chairman candidates,” I said. We’d announce them at Monday’s Town Meeting. “I doubt anyone knows Jiyoon’s running.”

  “Probably not, if you didn’t know,” said Andy. “Aren’t you guys best friends?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s weird she didn’t tell you.”

  “Yep.”

  I’d texted her when I’d found out. Yay! You are my hero! She’d sent back a single smiley, and we hadn’t talked much since. I was pretty sure she was mad at me for assuming she wouldn’t run, and I was mad at her for being mad at me. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to explain myself. I’d assumed she wouldn’t run because she hated student government and Chawton spirit, because she’d never done anything to put herself out there, and maybe a tiny bit because she was a girl. It had nothing to do with her being Asian American and everything to do with her being her.

  “She’s a great candidate,” said Andy. “Should be a tight race.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  I didn’t totally believe him. Mack had it locked up. Jiyoon was a great candidate, and just like Jonah would have lost, she would lose, for all the same reasons and more.

  But tonight, I thought, was not about arguing.

  “Mack’s a great candidate too,” I said, keeping my voice light. “He’s got a lot going for him.”

  “Are you secretly a nice person?” said Andy. “Because this feels weird.”

  “I’m always nice!” It was one of those giggly protests girls are supposed to do when they’re teased, and Andy smiled. It must have made him feel at home.

  He swung into my driveway. “Well,” he said.

  “Well.”

  We lunged.

  We went at each other.

  It sounds so animalistic, but that’s the only way to describe it. The warmth of his mouth, the wetness, his bumpy tongue, his smooth lips, I needed it, all of it. I got it. But I wanted more. I wanted to touch more of his back, I wanted him to touch more of mine. I felt constrained by my hands’ surface area. I wanted to be all hands.

  So I slid my hands under his shirt, all over his back, because if you can’t grow giant hands, you at least want high-quality contact with what you can touch. Actually feeling skin rather than shirt…the difference was huge. Once, Crispin told me he always splurged on cheese, like he bought Parmesan actually made in Parma, because after you’d had the real thing, you knew the difference. That was shirt vs. skin. Shirts were reduced-fat mozzarella shreds, but skin, Andy’s skin, it was buffalo mozzarella, it was milky and tender and smooth. It was the real thing.

  Cheese. I let out a laugh. It went right into Andy’s mouth. He said, muffled, his words going right into my mouth, “Wasso fubby?” His hands didn’t stop.

  “Nuffin.”

  He had a hand on the back clasp of my sports bra, which—horrors—was slightly soggy from Powderpuff. And—double horrors—this was the bra whose hooks had rusted off, the one I safety-pinned and pulled on over my head. Andy fiddled with the clasp, clearly perturbed, used to working his unhooking magic in one suave pinch, and I was torn: Should I give him instructions? But wouldn’t that make me seem…forward?

  IS IT 1902, JEMIMA KINCAID?

  I wasn’t about to slut-shame myself. Even if Jiyoon did think I hated women or whatever. I’d prove her wrong. I opened my mouth to tell Andy how to take it off—

  But I didn’t want him undoing the safety pin. Because (a) who wears safety-pinned undergarments—like, if your degree of chestitude requires high-tech clasping sports bras, at least keep them in good shape—and (b) I had legitimate safety concerns for my back.

  “This thing is like a vault,” he muttered. He hopped out of the car. I felt a whooshing collapse of disappointment. It was over. But he opened up the back door and said, “Come on. A flat seat. Tinted windows.”

  It crossed my mind that getting in the back might make me look like a—

  STOP INTERNALLY MISOGYNIZING YOURSELF!

  I switched seats. He unceremoniously tugged off my T-shirt. His mouth went slack and his eyes went hungry as he stared at my breasts spilling out of that mangy old sports bra. I felt sort of like a hamburger. But in a good way.

  I took action before he could discover the safety pin and shimmied out of the bra the way I always did—i.e., gracelessly. “Whoa,” he said.

  “What?” I said, embarrassed by all my spilling flesh.

  He lifted my arms like I was a rag doll and glanced from armpit to armpit. “Whoa.”

&nbs
p; “Oh,” I said, “yeah. Yeah. It’s blue.”

  He dropped my arms. “Just keep them down here and I’ll try to forget I saw that.”

  I knew he was joking, but I drew in a breath to say, Screw shaving! Screw beauty standards! I had blue armpit hair, but Jiyoon thought I was sexist. It hurt. That was the truth. When I could drop my defensiveness, I knew she had a point. I had a lot to learn. But it hurt.

  But I didn’t start my rant, because Andy covered my mouth with his.

  I promised not to fade out, so here goes:

  I took off his shirt.

  We kissed.

  He squeezed my breasts, which was weird at first—visions of stress balls danced in my head—but suddenly turned the corner from weird to good. He ran a hand up and down my side, again and again, and I cupped his shoulders and buried my hands in his hair and flattened them against his back.

  He started teasing the waistband of my leggings. He slid two fingers under it and gave my whole body a shock of warm, fluid gold. I’d been self-conscious about the way my stomach flabbed out over the leggings—beauty standards, I know, I know—and those thoughts didn’t disappear when his fingers went underneath, but they didn’t seem so important. A moan started way back in my throat. The way our mouths were soldered together, he must have felt the vibrations. My body went limp and tense all at once. Man. It was something.

  He put his entire palm flat on my crotch, over my leggings. “You like this, huh?”

  I tried to act nonchalant. “Sure.”

  I could feel the ooze between my legs. My reproductive system seemed to be working just fine, lubing up to get something large stuck in it. Amazing. It was amazing. It’d be so easy to have sex, I realized. And it wouldn’t have to be a big deal. I guess how people talk about it, it’s a major turning point, like you’re one person and then you get a penis stuck in your vagina and you’re another person. But at that point, as he slowly rubbed me, as I forgot to kiss him, my back arching, these mewling noises coming from someone, someone who seemed to be me, the idea of one turning point seemed stupid, simplistic. Sex had to be a spectrum. What was this, if not sex? What was this, if not one turning point in a long series of them? It was new. It was incredible and strange and human and animal. Earlier I’d wanted to be all hands but now I was all crotch. It was my entire being. I wasn’t even aware that my foot was falling asleep, that my hair was all tangled in the seat belt holder. Not until he stopped.

  He did stop. Abruptly. He was squinting at his phone. “Listen, I have to get home. Mack needs the car.”

  “Oh.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah!”

  We yanked our T-shirts back on, not meeting each other’s eyes. I stuffed my bra in the waistband of my leggings. “See you, Kincaid,” said Andy.

  “Right.” My tongue was thick in my mouth, and my eyes felt like they wouldn’t open all the way. “Right. See you.” I stumbled into the house.

  * * *

  —

  I lay in bed, fingering my phone, and thought, I should text Jiyoon.

  I didn’t.

  I didn’t want to think about what had just happened. Or analyze it, or discuss it. I wanted to be all over Andy and have him all over me. Not thinking. Just doing.

  It’s funny how as an intellectual, or a wannabe intellectual, whatever I am, you’re supposed to have a passion for thought and analysis and discussion, but the best times are still when you’re just in your body, in yourself. When you remember your body is yourself. Sometimes I labored under the misconception that the true Jemima Kincaid was incorporeal, that I was a mind in a carrying case, but really, I was this soft stomach. I was these strong legs. I was these floppy wild boobs, and I was these fingers that didn’t text Jiyoon. I was the arm that drilled the football downfield. I was these lungs, these kidneys, these arteries and veins. These cells. This heart.

  When Crispin moved out, Mom had said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a family dinner once in a while?” That’s how she talks. She’ll want a roll and she’ll say, “Jemima, would you like a roll?” She’ll want to play Boggle and it’ll be “Remember how much fun we used to have playing Boggle?”

  This time, at least, we heard what she meant, and Crispin was coming over for dinner on Sunday. When I went down to the kitchen, Mom was dressed, with gold earrings and real shoes. She was sautéing kale. I peeked in the oven and saw a whole chicken, hunched over, ass up. It was vaguely sexual.

  Then again, these days I found everything vaguely sexual.

  “I’m home every night, and you never cook for me,” I said.

  “Jemima.”

  “I’m just saying.” Words of wisdom: when you hear yourself saying I’m just saying, you should really just stop saying. “Sorry. Forget I said that. Should I set the table?”

  “Please. And do you want to use the nice silver?”

  Do you want to? That’s more Momspeak. She also asked me if I wanted to put out a tablecloth and cut the baguette. I did want to. I wanted to very much.

  One night, when Crispin had first moved back home, I was reading on my bed, and he came in and sprawled across the foot and told me about college. I think he was missing it. He said, “Mainly what we did was hang out on people’s beds.” Fancying myself funny, I quirked an eyebrow. He said, “Well, sure, but mostly it’s just friends, hanging out and being annoying. You pile onto someone’s bed and talk about nonsense and real stuff all mixed together.”

  We chilled on my bed for forever. We decided whose toes were more agile and he gave me some terrible advice regarding my crush on Evan Ratzheimer (namely, that I should cry “I’ve had enough!” and crawl across the lunch table to bite the buttons off his shirt). We talked about real stuff too. “There are two rules in this household,” said Crispin. “One is ‘Don’t upset Mom.’ ”

  “What’s the other?”

  “You know. You grew up here.”

  “Oh. ‘Don’t upset Dad.’ ”

  It blew my mind that there was someone else who got it. Crispin had left when I was just a middle school twerp, and I hadn’t realized until he came back that the specific experience of growing up in this house was something we shared with each other and no one else. Crispin, adult Crispin, my pal, my brother: he was the best surprise of my life.

  Mom got all flushed and happy the second he came in. Her thin shoulders seemed to fill out her delicate cardigan. “Mother darling!” said Crispin, winking at me as he hugged her, and the thing about Crispin, he says that and it’s one hundred percent a joke and also one hundred percent serious. Meanwhile, holding the silver knives from the sideboard, I got teary. It was probably the general overwhelm—Andy school Jiyoon Andy Quiz Team Triumvirate Andy Andy AHHH—but wow, I was emotional.

  “Hi, Bip,” I said, and dove in for a hug.

  “Whoa—hi—watch it with those knives—good to see you too, Bump.”

  Mom appraised him like he’d been on a yearlong sea voyage. Like she was overjoyed to see him but also felt it necessary to do a quick once-over for scurvy or worms.

  After dinner, Dad returned to his home office and Mom said, “Kids, would you mind if I lie down? This was a lot.”

  “We’ll clean up,” said Crispin. “Thanks for dinner.”

  He hugged her again. When he hugged me, it was a party. He lifted my feet off the floor. But he hugged Mom like china, like a bird. Like something he could break.

  He took up position at the sink and I brought him dishes. “I wish you still lived here,” I said. “It’s great you moved and all, but…”

  “I know what you mean. This house.”

  It was too big. We were like burrowing rodents, Mom and Dad and me, each with our crannies, emerging only to forage for food.

  “But I do have to go soon,” he said apologetically. “I’m meeting Thomas.”

&nbs
p; “Who’s Thomas?”

  He flicked some dishwater at me. “Just a friend.”

  “Sure.”

  “A friend plus.”

  “I knew it. How’d you meet him?”

  “I beamed a signal for intelligent life out into the void.”

  “Like the Drake equation? Or like Tinder?”

  “I object to this interrogation.” He was trying to act annoyed, but I knew he was chuffed, probably because of that thing where you can handle any amount of vicious teasing about your crush as long as it means the two of you get mentioned in the same sentence. “Actually,” he said, “it’s kind of a problem. We didn’t know we worked at the same company until after…well. But we do.”

  Crispin’s consulting firm is huge, so I could see that happening. “Why’s that a problem?”

  “Because there’s a policy against dating internally. Needless to say, we’re ignoring that.” He set the last pan on the drying rack and checked his phone. “Excellent. I still have enough time to get some groceries.”

  “Oh. Well, bye, then.”

  “Not so fast,” he said, heading to the pantry.

  “I thought you were going grocery shopping.”

  “I am. Right here.” He unfurled a reusable bag and threw in a box of Triscuits and a carton of raisins. “What’s new at Chawton?”

  “A lot,” I said. “Jiyoon thinks I’m misogynistic.”

  “Are you?” he said, poking around in the pantry.

  “What? No. No!”

  “I mean,” he said, “I was pretty homophobic for a while there. It happens.”

  “You love gay people.”

  “You bet I do,” he said. “Now. But I used to be super judgy of other gay guys. I hated it when they acted, like, too gay. Like when they did that swishy walk, or wore tight pants, even. I took pride in being the gay guy everyone treated like a straight guy. That’s why I rushed. Just to prove I could get into a frat if I wanted.” He scanned the nutrition facts on a box of Rice Chex. “When the system’s telling you you’re not normal, of course you’re going to want to identify with the people who are.”