As the drills come to an end, we begin practicing and running through our strategic plays in preparation for a season full of wins. Being in the northeast Division II, we don’t have the strong competition like they do at Yale, Boston College and Penn State. Last year we won our conference championship – by the skin of our teeth – and are touted to win this year, as well. If we can get our shit together.
Practice concludes with a rousing speech from Coach Hensley and we hit the showers. As I’m soaping down, I overhear Blake Conrad in the stall over talking to TJ about some sorority event.
“Dude, it’s the prime opportunity to get a half-clothed, drunk-ass chick into a dark secluded room and make her howl like a ghost.”
The obnoxious asshole cackles and makes an impression of a howling ghost. I can’t help but jump in.
“Hey Conrad, you’re a prick. Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
I throw this in because I know for certain he’s been dating some chick from Princeton for the last six months.
He peers over the tiled wall of the shower, flipping me his middle finger.
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Plus, sorority chicks love a hockey player and don’t care if we’re single or not.”
“Jesus, Conrad, shut the fuck up already.” That was from Roman across the bank of showers from us. “Not only are you a douche nozzle, but you’re a cheating one at that.”
A few of the guys chuckle and chortle at this, but they know it’s true. Blake Conrad is the worst and biggest sleaze I’ve ever known. It makes me nervous that some of the under-classman sorority girls will so easily buy into his swarmy shit.
Some guys just don’t know how to treat women. I may have never had a girlfriend, per se, so I can’t be all that judgmental, but I do know that cheating and sleeping around is disrespectful as fuck. And I do know how ladies should be treated, even if I’m not able to commit to any serious relationship.
I just found early on in college that it wasn’t fair to a girl when I had so many other priorities. Plus, I know once I graduate I’m moving back to Pittsburgh to be close to my family. They mean everything to me and I literally wouldn’t be here in this world without them.
That is, if I end up graduating. The nagging dreaded feeling washes over me just like the soapy suds down my back. My anxiety level is at an all-time high right now, which reminds me of two things I have to do this week. One is to go to the campus counselor and get a new script for Xanax. I’d never admit it to any of my teammates, but I struggle with anxiety. I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it makes me feel inferior when it seems all my other friends and players have no problem juggling school, hockey and life.
The other thing I need to do as soon as I get back to my apartment is to contact my new English tutor and set up our first session.
Having to lean on crutches like anxiety meds and tutors to get by isn’t what I would call winning. But it sure beats hanging up my skates and failing my classes.
Choose your battles, my dad would say. And these are mine to conquer.
Brinly
This has beenthe day from hell and has been a battle every step of the way.
It started off with my alarm failing to go off. I can’t even blame my alarm when it was my own fault for turning off my phone last night. I was begged into going to movie night with my friend, Chantel, afterwards stopping at Dickey’s Drive-In for burgers and shakes, even though when I got back home I had to pull an all-nighter for my Chemistry exam.
I was literally working on two-hours of sleep and overslept by forty-five minutes, completely missing my Women’s Studies lecture.
Then my mother called. She grilled me yet again about my choice of studies and major and something about “wasted potential,” none of which I really listened to. I’d heard it all before and it was a never-ending battle of wills. Sometimes she drove me insane and I was glad to be far enough away from New York City that she couldn’t just pop by anytime she felt like it.
Then it started to rain – thanks to the crazy-ass fall weather in the northeast – and it went from drizzle to complete downpour in ten minutes flat. I could’ve handled the rain had I not run out of gas and had to hoof it over to the library to meet my six-o’clock tutoring student.
Preston Dahl.
The name alone sounds like a Class-A Ivy League Asshat.
Shaking my wet hair out before stepping over the threshold of the arched doorway into the pristine hallway of the library, I look down at my clothes to find that I’m soaked through. Great. My blouse is practically see-through and clinging to my breasts. My heavy, round and embarrassingly large boobs that have attracted unwanted attention from men of every age since I was fourteen-years-old.
I sigh and manage to pull the sweater I brought with me out of my bag and wrap it around my shoulders, hoping to hide the telltale signs of the cold that’s swept into my body – i.e., headlights. My nipples are so hard right now and the draft from the library air conditioning isn’t doing me any favors.
I adjust the strap of my book bag and walk up the bank of stairs in the middle of the building, up to the third-floor study carrels where we tutors set up shop. Preston and I had messaged the day before and I’d given him the location of our study session, as well as gotten some information on what he was studying and needed help with.
I was thrilled to know that he was taking a class that I’d already taken last year, English Lit and Sexuality in Literature. It was the most divine course I’d ever taken and the professor, Char Feldman, was a hoot. Studying the works of writers such as Tennyson, Woolf, Nabokov and Tennessee Williams can sometimes cause your eyeballs to roll back in your head, but she drew out comparisons to the world we live in today and how their words shaped our thoughts on sexuality.
Honestly, it was also very hot stuff to read. Studying sex in literature was an erotic feast for my imagination and I didn’t know what to do with my body’s reactions to all the steaminess. It just continued to ratchet up my desire to finally experience what all the fuss was about. But it still hasn’t happened.
I set my bag down with a sigh, picking an open table and scanning the room for anyone that looks like they might be Preston. I’m picturing this stuck-up, polo-shirt-wearing douche with slicked back hair and daddy’s Porsche parked outside.
