By Misti Velvet Rainwater
Date: 22 August 2000
Japhne Wonders What It's Like
Lorenza's side of the room is so...weird. This girl takes condoms and candy bar wrappers and magazine cut-outs and beer labels and superglues it all on gunmetal gray posterboard, which she hangs over her bed, which is never made. And this is art. Then there are the phone numbers and notes to herself she tacks above her desk. An example: "John from Tau Kappa Epsilon...683-2638."
Another example: "I love guys who think they're gonna get some just because they buy me Laffy Taffy and a Slurpee."
...Lorenza is a philosophy major. Last semester she was a theater arts major. The semester before that she was a Spanish major. And the semester before that she didn't even deign to pretend she knew what the hell she wanted to be when she grew up. That was her first semester at Southwest Texas State in San Marcos. She mostly just hung out and slept.
Japhne occupies the other side of the room, which is a tiny dorm in the Women's Residence Tower. WRT, as it is known around campus. Signs hang in the halls on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors that read,"Do NOT open windows! Bats will swoop in! Bats are EVIL! They will BITE you!" ...So the only time the windows are open is during the annual campus wide panty raid. Ah, panty raids...packs of horny guys going from dorm to dorm yelling,"Panties! Panties!" and then whooping like madmen when the silky lacy lingerie floats down upon their sweaty faces.
Japhne, she doesn't get out much. She's an eighteen year old virgin from Lubbock. She wants to have sex someday but she's no good at small talk or self-promotion. So while Lorenza is out getting drunk on Sixth Street in Austin or making out with frat guys at keggers or whatever, Japhne is in the dorm eating microwave popcorn as she reads Lorenza's journal.
Here's an entry that really boggled Japhne's Baptist brainwashed mind:
October 22...YAWNzzzzzzzzz
went over to jenny's...met a dude named lance in the hot tub. he wanted to have a threesome. jenny was all for it but i don't find either one of them attractive. plus...yuck...she's my best friend. that would be too weird, even for me. it would feel like incest or something. after lance finally slithered away i admitted to jenny that i sent another letter to nico. i had told her that i was through with him but we both know i never will be. even though he's with chelsie (BITCH!) and all we've ever had is PHONE sex. i know that sex with nico would be like velveeta fresh outta the microwave. damn it. time for my stupid remedial math class. math for retards. yay.
Japhne thinks about that entry while she takes a shower. She thinks about it while she's in her magic, witchcraft & religion class. At lunch one day she casually asks her friend Henrietta if she's ever heard of phone sex.
"Oh! Ha! Yeah. Who hasn't?"
Henrietta isn't attractive or interesting but she has had sex before.
"I, um, heard about it on that real world show the other day. I'm not sure what it is, exactly," Japhne says.
"It's phone sex! You know...two people talking on the phone, getting off!"
One night the phone rings when Lorenza isn't there. Japhne answers the phone. She's flipping through *Sassy* magazine wishing she were Juliette Lewis because Brad Pitt is crazy 'bout that girl.
"Hello," Japhne says.
"Hello?" a male voice says.
It's Nico. He calls maybe once a week. He always echoes "hello" for some reason.
"Hey, Nico. Um, Lorenza isn't here. She's at a sorority meeting. I'll tell her you called."
"Oh, that's cool. Yeah, tell her I'll call her back some other time. My grandmother is in the hospital."
"Sorry to hear that. Hope she gets to feeling better soon."
"Yeah, well, she's lived a full life."
When Lorenza gets in from the sorority meeting Japhne relays the short message.
"Son of a bowlegged BITCH! That asshole! I'm so SICK of his CRAP!"
Lorenza throws her makeup case across the room. Opens the window and tosses it out. Watches it crash to the sidewalk and bust open.
"I'm never wearing makeup again," she says.
Collapses on her bed. Her hands are clenched and she's breathing hard.
"Want to go out and get drunk and kiss someone strange?" Japhne suggests. She's casually flipping through her magazine.
Lorenza cracks up laughing.
"Damn, girl! You are full of surprises! I was wrong about you. Hell, yeah! Let's go!"
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