Submissive Desires

One

"Classy..." (my name is Clarissa, and she always calls me Classy. I get Clary from everyone else.) "I shouldn't have d-drunk. Drank. D-damn it. I'm ssso sorry! I'm n-not a b-bad girl, ok-k? I'm nooot, except... I juss... s-shit, I jusst like m-m-making people happy. I hate dispen-disp-disappoint-ting Andrei, I s-sso much hate it!" (For the rest I'm going to leave out the drunken, sobbing stuttering. I understand drunken cryspeak as well as any girl but she was pretty incoherent for a lot of this, and you don't want to put up with it.)

"No, Sy, you're not bad. Andrei was being unreasonable." I'd met him enough times to know that this was pretty typical for him. He was gorgeous and had royal manners when he wanted them and could be impeccably polite, but right behind it all was a my-way-or-the-highway attitude that clearly didn't have an off switch. It's the kind of thing that can make a girl crazy, because it's both hot and infuriating. In his case a little closer to infuriating, but it obviously worked with Sy.

She retched, and then sobbed. "No he wasn't. He has expectations and I am understanding that. Not- I mean yes he's very firm, he's... demanding. Of course he is. But I mean... Classy, you're such a good girl. A class act, you know? I'm... not. I'm kind of jealous."

She threw up again – we were having this heartwarming tete-a-tete in the bathroom, and don't tell me you never have – and I stared at her in disbelief. Her, jealous of me. And how good could I be, having murdered her a dozen times this month in my daydreams?

"Sy, you're the best behaved girl I know. Not hooking up on campus because of someone back home, I mean who does that? You're an angel."

She was wailing now. "I'm not! Not an angel, not the girl people think me to be!... Classy, you don't know. I'm... I mean how do you think I met Andrei? It was a party... but nothing you could ever imagine or would ever want to imagine. They don't have them here. Or they're secrets. Even in Romania no one talks about it and we're... oh fuck I'm so bad! I stood up to Andrei and he's furious now; I've been bad but oh, oh, you have no idea how he can bend me... you don't understand!"

I didn't. She was babbling, slurring, and switching topics faster than I could follow. "Hush, Sy, you've never done anything bad in your life. You've never even been to our raves here, I don't think you know what a wild party is. You don't even do our tame little Halloween parties."

"Raves," she said, and she actually half-giggled, while still crying. "Guys feeling up girls and doing drugs. You think that's bad? Oh Classy. So little you understand of the rest of the world. Women are so coddled in this country. Protected by laws, you can go out dressed however you like and the boys won't do anything you don't want..."

I wanted to give her some statistics on assault in America – my classes involve preparing for social work and I know the numbers – but she was in no condition for that kind of talk. And I realized, with a sudden chill, that she might have a point. Eastern Europe (her home), the middle east, rural Russia and China, some parts of Africa and South America... I'd read about a lot of places where women's rights and freedoms were only a badly told joke.

She heaved again, and I made her sip water. She clutched her stomach, and I tried to get her to tell me how fast she'd drunk all that vodka. She didn't know; so I knew she'd made no attempt to pace herself at all. And that was just like her; most people get to college already knowing all about drinking, but she'd never had any experience. Innocent, pure Sy.

She sobbed again, clinging weakly to the toilet. It annoyed me that she looked pretty doing that; it's not a look most women can pull off.

She grabbed my wrist with a clammy, shaking hand. "Do you know what I am? Trash! I'm part gypsy. Romani father, Spanish mother. There's still prejudice – we were always poor. My father was spit on in the streets sometimes, and it was hard for him to find work... there's so much poverty everywhere. I'm so lucky to even be here. Women do not have it so easy at home as they do here. My mother was moIested once – and the police wouldn't hear her. She is only a woman and her husband was only an animal, she should be thankful she had it with a real man – I'm not making it up, this is how some people still think. So many people are poor, and so many women turn to prostitution..."