Mirrors of Narcissus (14 page)

3

The air in the room was filled with hazy smoke and Christine and I were lying side by side on my bed. It was near sundown, and in my mirror I could see the reflection of the skies above the women’s dorm.

“Have you ever noticed,” I said languidly, “that if, instead of looking directly at the sunset, you look at its reflection in the mirror, for example, it looks so much more beautiful?”

“Oh?” Christine blinked at me with heavy-lidded gravity. She accepted the joint I handed her.

“It’s true,” I continued. “In the reflection it looks like some marvelous, magical landscape with a fairy-tale castle and a golden forest. Like an illustration in a children’s book I used to read as a kid. Maybe something philosophical can be read into that: how much more potent illusions are than the real thing.”

“Pot profundity,” she said, taking another hit of her joint and passing it back to me. “All those lovely thoughts of yours are like so much smoke.” She blew out the smoke she’d been holding in. “It only seems deep now. Wait till tomorrow morning.”

“You’re probably right,” I laughed.

Just then we heard a door down the hallway open, then close. We knew Scott was still in the library studying, and wouldn’t be coming back for a while. Recently he spent most of his evenings there working on his term paper. Christine had just finished hers—that was what we were celebrating now. We’d invited Scott to celebrate with us but he had declined. He had a strong aversion to drugs of any kind, though he didn’t oppose our using it.

“Do you think he’ll join us when he’s done?” asked Christine.

“No, I don’t think so. He knows you’re here, and he wants to give us our privacy so we can, you know…. Being the gentleman he is.”

“I feel badly about that. It’s the one thing he can’t join us in. I mean, besides smoking marijuana.”

“Yeah.”

“If only he had a girlfriend….”

“Not that again. He told me he isn’t interested in looking for a girlfriend right now.”

She shook her head. “Jill was definitely a mistake. She probably scared him off women. Scott wasn’t as drunk as he said he was that night. I know.”

“He’s shy around girls.”

“Not around me.”

“Well, you’re different. How many other girls are there around here who can discuss Dostoevski with him? How many girls actually enjoy watching the movies of Bergman and Kurosawa?” She and Scott sometimes went out to the movies together at my request, though Christine had been a little reluctant at first. I’d told her she didn’t need my “permission” to go out with a mutual friend.

“If he weren’t so shy, he might find plenty of girls who share his interests. In his creative writing classes, for instance.”

“Those literary girls can be really neurotic. I’ve met a few of them.”

She seemed to be musing on something before she replied. “But you say he’s not looking for a girlfriend right now. Do you think he might be gay?”

“Of course not!” I was almost offended. “There’s nothing wrong with Scott. He’s as straight as they come.”

“Then you would think he’d like to find someone to have sex with—if he’s anywhere near as horny as you.”

I snorted, then turned serious. “Christine, I know the reason why Scott is so shy around girls.”

“Why?”

“Believe it or not, he’s a virgin. That’s why he got cold feet that night.”

“Really?” Her look of incredulity gave way to wonder as she said softly, “In a way I guess I knew it all along. He’s a real rarity in this day and age. It somehow makes him seem pure. Not many boys are these days.”

“But I don’t think he’s happy about it, either. I’m sure if he had a choice, he’d be screwing away like the rest of us. Who wants to be celibate?”

“There’s a lot worse things than being pure.”

“Not for a guy. You don’t know how important it is for a guy to sleep with a girl—to know he can handle it. Until he does, he lives with the fear of possible failure.”

“Masculine ego.”

“I know. But that’s the way we’re made. Our sense of self-esteem is directly linked to our sexual performance. With girls it’s probably different, but I’m speaking from a guy’s point of view.”

“If sex is all he wants, there’s plenty of girls who are looking for the same thing. Check out Erewhon on any Saturday night. If he’s not too picky, he can easily substantiate his precious masculine identity.”

I paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this—”

“Come on, he’s my friend just as much as yours.”

“Well, he told me with a serious look on his face that he had this terrible secret.”

“Yes?”

“And when I asked him what it was, he said he’s uncircumcised, and he has a terrible complex about it.”

“Is that all? That seems to be a silly thing to be bothered about.”

“I know. That’s what I told him. But that’s how he is.”

“Hmm. If only he knew how little it means to a girl.”

“Yeah.” A bold thought had entered my head; I debated whether or not I should say it, then went ahead and did so: “I guess the best way for him to find out would be for you to sleep with him, right?”

“Idiot.”

“If only you weren’t going with me, you’d be the perfect one for him,” I said. “He really likes you, you know.”

“Hm.” She turned onto her side, facing away from me and I slipped up against her. I knew this talk was getting her aroused. I’d switched the direction of our talk onto familiar ground—she knew of the excitement we both felt at the way other guys were attracted to her, and of my so-called jealousy of them. At the root of this shared fantasy was the ever-present possibility that she would someday “betray” me with one of them. Now she probably thought my fantasy had been triggered by my jealousy. I stroked her hips, my mind lazy and unfocused. The thought that she was thinking about Scott had aroused me, and I let her know of it by pushing my groin up against her buttocks. By now it had gotten dark, but I wondered if my two watchers across the way could see us now, if they were straining their eyes to see….

“You know,” I said, “many guys have this sexual fantasy…about their girlfriends sleeping with other guys.”

“Don’t I know it.” I could tell by her reply that she was also quite high. “But Scott isn’t the type to do anything with his best friend’s girl. He’s too much of an old-fashioned gentleman to ever betray you, even if he didn’t have his silly inhibitions about being uncircumcised.”

“Too bad. What if we broke up? I mean faked a break-up? Then you would be ‘free.’ You could go crying to him for consolation, and in the process of consoling you, the two of you would almost naturally end up in bed.”

“True. That often happens. But in Scott’s case, I don’t think he would. I mean, even if it was a real break-up. He would still feel loyal to you. He’s that kind of guy.”

“Then we’ll never have him sleeping with you.”

“If he didn’t think it was me, it might be a different story,” she said seductively, in the tone she used whenever we spun out our sexual fantasies.

“What do you mean?”

“What if he thought I was my own identical twin?”

“What? But you don’t have one.”

“We make one up, silly.”

“What’s her name?” I asked, eagerly joining in her game.

“Justine. Ever since reading that book by the Marquis de Sade, I’ve had these delicious fantasies about a depraved alter ego of mine named Justine. The name even sounds like my own.”

“Maybe there is a part of you deep down which really is depraved.” I knew now she was just as aroused as I was by our talk. I felt an excitement in her like an electric charge. The absurdity of her idea, or its illicitness, had captivated her. There were feelings involved here which I had no way of gauging. I knew somewhere at the core of her being was a desire to betray me, or to be “shared” between two boys. We’d talked about such topics, in a casual manner, admittedly, but I had sensed that Christine was intrigued by the idea. She wasn’t a prude. Not by a long shot.

She was stretching her chin upward, like a cat begging to be stroked.

“I love it when you’re like this,” I said. “So, we trick him into thinking you have a twin. What next?”

“If he believed I was Justine, he would do it. Or even if he only believed I was supposed to be Justine. That way he won’t be going against any of his principles.”

“You would pretend you’re Justine? But how can you actually get him to believe it?”

She got up off the bed and whisked the curtains shut, then turned on the reading light. Picking up her suede tote bag from the floor, she went over to my mirror and began cleaning the make-up off her face with some cold cream. When I’d first met her, she’d used very little make-up, but acquiescing to my desire to make her more attractive in the eyes of other boys, she’d learned the art and magic of cosmetics.

Now she began doing things to her face to subtly alter it. Re-applying the eye-liner in a slightly different way, and using less blusher and a new shade of lipstick, she engineered the creation of a new, more vampy look. She brushed her hair straight back from her forehead, parted it to one side and put some bobby pins into place.

“If only I had a wig.”

When she was finished, she turned around to gauge my reaction. Her hair looked even shorter than it was, and her make-up gave her a very different look, more confident somehow. She’d changed in some way and become Justine, her nonexistent alter-ego.

She broke into a smile at my reaction. “I’m not Christine anymore. I’m Justine.”

And I would have believed it if I hadn’t known better. The change seemed to go deeper than mere physical alteration, as if she’d changed her true personality. Just by taking off her usual make-up and redoing her hair, she’d become reborn as another being. It made me realize just how much of a woman was created by her make-up, hairstyle, and clothes. I envied such versatility, such flexibility. I’d never seen Christine like this, the archetypical vamp: a creature of illusion, born to illusion, and master of it.

I was a little afraid of this new woman.

“You even speak a little differently,” I said. “You
are
Justine, for all practical purposes. And what happens now?”

She thought for a moment. “I call up your dorm when you’re out. Scott answers the phone, and I tell him I’m Justine. I’ve dropped into town to look up my sister.”

“That sounds good,” I laughed.

“But ‘Christine’ is out, of course. We’ll have worked that out well in advance. You and I could be on a weekend trip. So I ask him to show me around. Or knowing Scott, he will offer to take me to wherever Guy and Christine are supposed to be—say, a ski lodge up in the mountains. We meet at the cafeteria….”

“How does he react to you?”

“He remarks on the amazing resemblance, and on the little differences. But in my personality, there is much that is similar to Christine’s. The Justine I’ve become is so much like Christine that he feels no shyness at all. In fact, he feels as if he’s known me from way back.”

“Which he does, of course. But is he completely fooled? Doesn’t he suspect anything? Or does he think it’s a prank and goes along—collaborating in your play-acting?”

“Let’s say he falls for it. Or pretends to. But for whatever reason, he says nothing. At any rate, we get along so well and become so friendly with each other during the course of the evening, that on our way to the mountain lodge, he puts up very little protest when I suggest we go to a motel. I say the hell with meeting Chrissie. I can drop into town some other time.”

“Justine is a little bit more forward than Christine. But how about you? The strain of keeping up the pretense, the deception?”

“It would be hard. But once we’re in bed, it wouldn’t matter. Identities don’t matter, illusions don’t matter, only the reality of our two bodies against each other. I get him over his inhibitions really quick.”

I felt a strange welter of emotions in me which I couldn’t put a name to. I strongly suspected that Scott was in love with Christine, and here we were, spinning out fantasies about seducing him. I wished I could turn into Justine as easily as Christine could.

“Do you confess to him in the morning?” I ask.

“No, why should I? The next morning, I have to take an early flight back to New York, a little sad that I couldn’t see Christine, but happy at my little escapade. We part at the campus plaza, but not before I confess that I have a boyfriend back home, and he must never attempt to contact me in any way. He reluctantly agrees.”

“And?”

“And at lunchtime I’m Christine again, and run into him at the cafeteria. He doesn’t suspect a thing. But I know what’s behind that naughty little smile of his.”

Her excitement had been transmitted to me, and I momentarily lived with her triumphant betrayal of me. If in fact it could happen—if Christine ever slept with Scott—I would be linked psychically with him, making love to him in the only way possible for me now.

I fondled Christine’s breasts and she curled her body up in response. She purred like a cat, her signal for initiating sex. It was always she who did the initiating nowadays, she who decided whether or not we would have sex.