sing the body electric

i: countless embodiments and enjoyments

In hindsight, coming to the woman who had single-handedly orchestrated his vow of abstinence had been a mistake.

"There's something wrong with me," Brett blurts out with the tone of a man who has never had anything go wrong with his life before and now feels betrayed that something finally has. It's an agonized call for help, the dying plea of a parched man cast adrift in a sea of sand, and yet all Stella gives him is a look of faint disinterest before her gaze flits back to her reflection again. "Hey. I said something's wrong with me."

"There's always something wrong with you, Yang." She leans forward, a steady hand painting a thick, glittered stroke across her eyelid. With the walls of her dorm awash in sunset-warm colors, her green wig sticks out like a discordant chord. "But I digress. What's wrong?"

"Everything, actually," he complains. It doesn't even feel like a lie.

"Everything?" To her credit as his friend, Stella pauses in her ministrations, bats her perfectly-curled lashes at him as they make eye contact through the mirror. "Jesus, now you're just proving my point."

"Fuck off." He has to pause for a moment, caught in the ache of his stomach churning the way it always does when he's actively trying to make himself vulnerable, like baring his soul or some shit. Though it's not exactly baring, what he's doing right now, but it's close.

"Now, don't be like that—c'mon, tell Mama Stella what's wrong. Promise I won't make fun of you." She smiles. It shouldn't look as shard-sharp as it does. "Much."

There's a moment there, staring blankly at her pigtails, where Brett almost falters. A moment where he wants to turn around and run for the hills and never try to bring this up ever again. But somehow, he finds the wherewithal not to back down, because here's the thing: Brett prides himself on the appeal of his physicality. Immerses himself—in the give and take of skinship, the heated slide of bodies twined together—often and with great enthusiasm. Touch comes easy to him, and he enjoys it.

Well. Of course he enjoys it, or he wouldn't have deserved all those colorful tales that accompany his name around campus. When they started calling him a walking phonebook, he hadn't stopped grinning for a week, carrying around the thickest Yellow Pages he could find and waving it in people's faces. His girlfriend at the time had eventually dumped him over the fiasco, but it had all been worth it, kinda, if only for the laughs and Zoe Freisberg's Disappointment Face.

So the thing is that Brett enjoys touching and being touched. Can even say he's really rather good at it.

But then. Oh, but then.

Enter stage right: the fucking vow of abstinence.

"You're a bitch," he concludes, falling down spreadeagled on her kawaii-bear-themed bedsheets. The party's in an hour, and by now, normally, he'd be foaming at the mouth to find someone exciting to do exciting things with, but none of his usual options are viable anymore. "This is all your fault, you know."

"My fault? How so?"

"Are you two fighting again?" Zoe pokes her head through the bedroom door, frowning back and forth at them. "Can we finish this before Lloyd comes by?"

"We're not fighting. Your roommate just sucks ass."

"Sometimes, baby, but that's just my nature. You would know, hey?" Stella turns to the mirror again, picking up the bottle of eyeshadow. For one desperate, despicable moment, Brett wishes it'd explode in her hand so she could look like shit for once in her perfectly put-together life. But then he remembers—Stella Chang is one of the few people he could stand to hang out with amidst a crowd of frankly soulless musicians—and the thought dissipates. "Now tell me why I'm somehow the root of all your problems."