Campus Crusade
Part One
Oh, if it hadn't been for that body. Tits like softballs, a waist you could circle with two hands, and an ass as round and sweet as a fresh half of cantaloupe. She wore turtleneck sweaters and spent most of her time wondering what Jesus would do. I wanted to bend her over so hard I kept my roommate up at night.
"Stop that yanking, Bernstein," Dave said. Which annoyed me, because it was Dave's idea we stack the beds into bunks. He wanted more floor space.
"I can't help it," I said, once I was done. "Natalie Beacham." Dave had seen Natalie too, of course, so I knew he understood.
Natalie lived down the hall from us in the freshman suites; hers was decorated with posters of Jesus Christ and LeBron James. Her roommate, Jessica, was from Long Island and fancied herself a real sportswoman, a real NBA fan. Jessica liked to prove how tough she was by kicking back Coronas and trading old school stats on the Knicks. She thought it impressed us. We grunted at her and played XBox.
One time, Jessica stopped by our room, took off her blouse in front of Dave, and asked him to feel her breasts. Just like that. She said that breast cancer ran in her family and she was nervous about getting it and since Dave was pre-med maybe he could ease her mind. Dave said, "Listen, Jess, breast cancer doesn't usually hit nineteen year olds. You should probably relax." Jessica squinted up her face and said she was nervous. Didn't he understand nervous? Didn't he want to cultivate a decent bedside manner?
Dave, trying to remain devoted to his high school sweetheart, did a cursory exam. He pronounced Jessica sound, and to his surprise she actually seemed relieved. "Thanks," she said, buttoning up her blouse. "I'll see you at Jay for dinner."
"That's it?" Dave asked. "That's all?"
"You know where to send the bill," Jessica laughed, and disappeared back into the hall, to her room. We never went into her room uninvited. We were all in awe of Natalie Beacham.
Natalie was from Kentucky and spoke in this soft drawl that was sexier than anything they came up with in those hijinks-at-the-trailer-park movies. She had gold hair, the kind that was probably white-blond when she was a child, and she seemed to have no idea what she did to us. I wasn't the only one, and I'm sure it was funny to see us follow her at Jay dining hall, stacking our trays with lasagna and shortcake and tiny plastic cups full of Coke. We'd sit at tables near her, but not too near, and watch her put salad in her mouth with the barest movements of soft, cherry-colored lips. She sat with Jessica, and Mallory Kennedy, the captain of Parliamentary Debate, and Elizabeth Wong, who was the vice-president of the Campus Crusade for Christ. They talked all through dinner, and even though we listened very hard it was tough to make out what they said. Rubin liked to imagine they were talking about him. "She wants me," he'd say. "She wants me so bad her panties are moist."
"Panties?" asked Dave. "Her panties are moist? You're such a fucking virgin, Rubin."
Rubin would get steamed. He was a virgin. So was Murphy, and Alex Ripkin, and Julius Welch. So was I. We sat together and talked about the things we lied about doing. Dave was the only one with any real experience, courtesy of the high school sweetheart. He liked to talk about banging chicks doggy-style, but in a general way. He rarely mentioned the sweetheart by name.
Natalie ate salad for lunch and for dinner, iceberg lettuce and sticky orange Thousand Island dressing. She drank little cardboard boxes of whole milk, and then dessert, lots of it, ice cream sundaes and chocolate cherry cheesecake and anything else she could scrounge from the day-old dessert cart stashed in the corner of Jay. She'd push the salad plates away and then devote herself to dessert with such intensity and pleasure it made us cross our legs. Once Natalie started in on dessert, we couldn't eat any more. We couldn't leave the table, either. We were helpless. Even Dave, Old Faithful.
"I bet she gives great head," Rubin said.
"Like you would know about great head," said Murphy.
The rest of us were concentrating too hard to say anything at all.
When Natalie got up to leave the table, we'd follow her ass with our eyes out the great oak doors that separated Jay Dining Hall from Jay Residence Hall, and then sit back in our chairs to digest. One Monday night there was a Jets game on, and Rubin, who lived in Jay Residence, invited us all back to his room to watch. Welch and Ripkin and Murphy went. But Natalie hadn't left yet, so I stayed behind. Dave sat next to me for a second. "Don't think too hard, Bernie," he said. "It's not even worth thinking about. She wouldn't fuck you in a million fucking years."
"Who's thinking?" I asked. Dave rolled his eyes and left me there, to push mashed potatoes around on my thick gray plate and try to look at Natalie Beacham through my peripheral vision.
Maybe I had a problem?
Part Two
The only dependable interaction Natalie and I shared came on Thursday afternoons, when we both took classes on the same floor of Hamilton Hall. Because we were acquaintances and because I made an effort to catch her, we would trudge up the four flights of stairs together on our way to our separate classrooms.
"So did you do your reading this week?" I'd ask her every time. And every time she would smile and say, almost abashedly, that yes, she had.
I found her dedication to schoolwork just another wondrous thing about her, beautiful and mysterious, as I myself almost never did my reading and hadn't been to the library since the first week of school.
Natalie would sometimes volley back: "And did you do your reading, Marc?"
"No," I would say, with a mixture of shame and hope -- yes, hope. Yell at me, Natalie! Punish me! Please! Call me a bad, lazy boy!
But all she'd say was: "You're gonna regret it some day."
"When, Natalie? What day?"
"Well, honestly, Marc, I don't know. But believe me, you're going to wish you'd studied harder."
However, at that particular point in my life I had no particular reasons to do more than I was doing, academics-wise. I had gained entry to our esteemed university by virtue of the fact that my father had gone there, and his father before him, and that the two had joined forces to open a small import-export business which eventually became the fifth largest in North America. With some of the import-export profits, they built a small wing off the business school library, thus ensuring admission to their progeny (me) and any progeny I myself could engender (Natalie? You listening?) My plan was to team up with them as soon as the esteemed university shat me out, as it had shat out so many other overprivileged underuseful young men, but until that day...
"Natalie, could you tell me what was in St. Augustine's Confessions? Please? We're having a quiz."
"Marc, you're impossible."
"I know, Natalie," I said, trudging up the stairs. She wore pink miniskirts and white knit tights, or white miniskirts and pink knit tights. She wore snowboots on the off chance that it might snow; she was utterly unsure of Northeastern weather.
"You will regret all this laziness one day, Marc. I just know it."
"I'm so pathetic, Natalie," I'd sigh. "I'm such a waste."
"Actually, so far you've been pretty lucky." Swish swish swish of the miniskirt, tap tap tap of the snowboot.
"Lucky?"
"So far. But one day, your work habits'll catch up with you. They just will."
And like most people with Jesus on their sides, Natalie turned out to be right. One Thursday I ended up staying late so that my professor could excoriate me: "You might have fooled teachers all your life, Mr. Bernstein, but you're not going to fool me! Are you saying you can't even separate Aeschylus from Euripides, Mr. Bernstein? Sophocles from Plato?" As soon as he was done, I ran out onto campus to find Natalie Beacham and tell her I had finally got mine.
It was mid-November, almost dark at five in the afternoon, but our esteemed campus was small and I found Natalie on the Low Library steps. "Can you tell me the difference between Aeschylus and Euripides?" I asked, panting slightly. She was taping posters for next week's meeting of the Campus Crusade for Christ on the Alma Mater statue in the middle of the steps. The poster said there would be free pizza and Chinese dumplings.
"Aeschylus," she said, "wrote The Eumenides. Euripides wrote Medea." She didn't stop postering as she spoke. Natalie Beacham was someone who could think about Euripides and Christ at the same time. "You got in trouble, huh?"
"Yes," I said, trying to keep my voice free of excitement. "Serious trouble."
She finished taping the last poster, turned, and wiped her hands on her cords. "I told you it would happen."
"You were so right."
"You should do your reading. That's what you're here for." Then she raised a single eyebrow at me, school-marmishly, adorably. The eyebrow raise and the Kentucky drawl and the mild scolding led to predictable results: My heartbeat quickened and my crotch stiffened and my armpits started to sweat. I had to hold on to the Alma Mater statue for support. "Are you okay?" she asked me.
"I'm fine," I said, thinking please God, don't let her look at my crotch. "I feel pretty good."
"Good."
"I mean, it sucks that I got yelled at, but I probably deserved it. I should have done my homework."
"That's right," Natalie said.
"But I'll be fine," I said. "In fact, I even think I've turned a corner. I'm going to rededicate myself to my studies, starting from right now, Natalie. From this very second. I've been a bad person, but I'm going to reform."
"Not a bad person, Marc. You shouldn't always be putting yourself down." She touched my hand for a moment, just the tiniest moment, and then looked away from me, turning her pretty eyes toward the campus. "Well, I should get going," she said. "I have a 5:30 class."
"Skip it," I blurted.
"Oh Marc," she said, shaking her head. Then she disappeared down the steps, across College Walk, and into the cool dark night.
"That's it?" I called out after her, but she didn't hear me. She didn't even turn back around to smile at me.
I collapsed down onto the steps and cursed the heavens and thanked the Lord.
Part Three
At nine that night I was back in my room and Dave was in one of his moods. He was studying biochemistry and had no patience at all for my problems. "Let it go, Bernie," he said. "If you don't shut up I'm taking my shit to the library."
"But I had her," I said. I was lying on my back on the top bunk, staring at notes from Race and Gender Ethics 101. "I fucking had her, man. She touched my hand! I had her!"
"Had her how?" Dave turned around on his chair and looked at me as I kicked at the ceiling. "Had her where? What, you were just going to do her on the steps? You were going to lift her up and carry her over your shoulder to our room, you horny asshole?"
"I guess not," I said.
"You guess not is right," Dave said. "Quit kicking the ceiling and do your work." Then he went back to his biochem. I closed my eyes and just lay there.
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door which turned out to be Jessica, Natalie's roommate with the thing about breast cancer. She was wearing a vintage Patrick Ewing t-shirt and a tiny pair of shorts. "Study break, cutie pie?" she asked Dave in this girly voice, practically batting her eyelashes. She didn't even notice I was there.
"Um," Dave said. He looked up at me and she followed his glance, reddening when she met my eyes.
"Hey, Old Faithful," I said. "Don't let me stop you." I jumped off the bed and grabbed my backpack off the floor. "Enjoy." Then I left the room and closed the door behind me. Jessica was in my room, which meant that if Natalie was in hers, she was alone. I sniffed my pits and then marched down to the end of the hall, to the door on which paper cut-out daisies advertised, "Nat" and "Jess."
I knocked, quietly at first, and then louder. "C'min," a voice said, hers, Kentucky soft and obliging. I took a breath and walked in to undo this afternoon's mistakes.
"Hi, Natalie," I said.
"Hi, Marc," she said, which was great. I loved it when Natalie Beacham said my name.
She was sitting prettily on her bed, notecards spread out around her, wearing sweatpants and a white t-shirt. Her hair was held back with a bandanna. "Jessica's in my room," I said.
"I know," she said. "I really don't know what she's doing in there." But then we looked at each other and exchanged a smile, to acknowledge that we both knew perfectly well what she was doing in there. Bolstered by this shared pretense, I said, "Thanks for telling me the difference between Aeschylus and Euripides."
"Marc," she said, gently. "You should do your reading. You could fail out."
"I know." I was taking in her room, the clothing and the basketball memorabilia and the girlie crap, perfume and pink deodorant on one of the dressers and a jewelry box on a desk. On the wall near the beds was a poster of footprints on a beach, bearing a legend that said, "When you thought you were alone, I CARRIED YOU."
"Nice poster," I said.
"Marc? I'm kind of studying. I have an art history quiz tomorrow."
"Yes," I stalled, "but I need your help."
"With what?"
"Um, you know..."
"No, I don't," she said. "What do you need help with?"
But for God's sake, I didn't know.
"Marc?"
"Help me find the Lord," I blurted, not even aware of what I was saying until it was out there in the room. "Help me find Jesus, Natalie, please. I need your help." I sank down to my knees in what my idiot brain thought was a worshipful pose. "Help me, Natalie, please. I'm suffering."
"Are you serious?" she asked. She put down her highlighter, looking genuinely concerned. "Marc, aren't you Jewish?"
"Does it matter?" I got up off my knees and sat down on the bed, disrupting her pile of notecards. Before she could shrink away I took her hands. "Natalie, I can't work, I can't think, I can't concentrate on anything. I need the Lord's guiding hand to get me back on track."
"I'm amazed," she said. She was letting me clutch her hands, looking a little nervous but not scared. Then she said, "You could come with me to the Campus Crusade meeting on Monday."
"No!" I exclaimed, and the passion with which I exclaimed it surprised us both. "I don't need a meeting, Natalie! I need a personal introduction to the Lord! Through someone who's already on speaking terms with Him, you know? I need your help!"
"Marc," she said, taking her hands out of mine, but kindly. "I appreciate what you're saying, and it's true that the Lord might help you on your way to a more fulfilling life. But I'm not sure that I can do anything for you in particular, except encourage you to keep your heart open. Do you have a copy of the Bible?"
"I do not," I confessed.
"Well, listen, get a copy of the Bible and start reading it, maybe just start with Genesis, and then come to the meeting on Monday."
I shook my head. "It's not enough. Dammit, Natalie, it's not enough. Don't you see I'm in pain here?"
"Well, I see that, Marc, but again I'm..." She trailed off. Without even realizing it, I was leaning in toward her, with all the inflamed passion of my wayward soul. She was leaning away. "I'm not really sure what else I can do," she finished, softly.
"Natalie," I said, picking up her hand again. It was as soft and white and clean as her conscience. "Don't just send me out there looking for a copy of the Bible. Please. I know you can do better than that."
"I don't think I can," she said.
And oh how I wanted to kiss her, wanted to grab her behind the neck and press my dirty sinful lips against her soft full pink ones, wanted to trail my hands down her neck and maybe to the back or, hell, the front of her t-shirt. I wanted to lick her collarbone. I wanted to lick her white feet.
Natalie sighed as though she were used to this kind of adoration. "Do your homework, Marc," she said. "I think that's the best advice I can offer."
Part Four
The next Monday night at the dining hall, Rubin noticed that I had cleaned up a little. "Going to the prom, Bernie?"
"Listen, schmuck," I said. "It doesn't hurt to take a shower once in a while. You should try it." But the truth: I was wearing a new black sweater I'd bought at Banana Republic that weekend and sharp new button-fly jeans. I'd shaved, gotten a haircut, put in my contacts. Tonight was Bible Study.
Natalie and her girls sat down as usual a few tables away, and, as usual, we couldn't make out a word they were saying. But at one point, I'm almost certain, Natalie glanced my way and smiled. My stomach fluttered. I put down my Coke. "Tonight," I whispered, confidential and proud, "I'm going to have sex with Natalie Beacham."
"To hell you are," said Julius Welch.
"Well, tonight I'm doing Britney Spears," said Rubin.
"And I've got Mia Hamm," said Ripkin.
"Who the fuck is Mia Hamm?"
"You know," Ripkin said, starting to blush. "A soccer player. She plays professional soccer."
"Whatever, you idiots," I said. I leaned forward on the table, careful not to get anything on the sleeves of my new black sweater. "I've got an in. She said she wanted to see me tonight."
"You're so full of shit they can smell you in New Jersey."
"Say what you will, Rubin," I said, letting my gaze drift knowingly in Natalie's direction. "I've got her," I said. "Tonight, gentlemen, Natalie Beacham is mine."
Well of course I had a plan.
I showed up at her room 45 minutes before the Campus Crusade for Christ meeting, with my brand new Bible under my arm and my backpack on my back. I knocked twice, and entered the room upon her gentle, "C'min."
"I thought it might be you," she said, but I couldn't tell if she was pleased or not.
"I'm going to the Campus Crusade tonight," I said. "You inspired me, Natalie. And you'll never guess what else."
"What else?"
"I finished my Aeschylus reading. This weekend. Prometheus Bound, the Oresteia, everything."
"Well, I'm sure your professor will be much relieved." She was wearing a thin blue sweater which reflected the azure in her eyes. I could see the outlines of her bra straps beneath her sweater. I sat down next to her on her bed, careful not to disturb her arrangement of notecards. It was all part of the plan. I grabbed her hand.
"Natalie, you've been such an inspiration to me," I said. I wondered if perhaps I was the first man to ever hold her hand in such a passionate way.
"Marc," Natalie said, worming out of my grip, "I have no idea what you're talking about. We've got to go now."
"But the meeting's not for--" I gave my watch a dramatic wave in the air -- "45 minutes!"
"Pizza delivery," Natalie said. "I like to make sure I'm there in case the delivery guys are early. One time I made them wait and I just couldn't forgive myself."
"But Natalie!"
"Come on," she said. "You can keep me company." Well, this wasn't part of the plan, but what could I do? If there was one thing I'd learned from watching generations of Bernsteins practice import and export, it was that flexibility was key. Currency up? Currency down? Port security need a little lubrication? An enterprise couldn't flourish without a willingness to bend. "All right, Natalie," I said, brandishing my new Bible. "Let's go."
The meeting was in the shiny glass-and-steel Campus Center, to which Bernstein Imports and Exports had contributed a coffee bar just least year. We crossed the campus, noting the twinkling Christmas lights, the unexpectedly cold weather.
"I hope you enjoy the meeting, Marc," Natalie said, as we flashed our ID cards at the Center's entryway. "We often start by singing some Christian hymns. I'm afraid you might not be familiar with them."
"Oh, Natalie," I said. "I want to learn."
Is it possible she gave me a funny look?
We took an elevator up to Room 203; during the ride, I maintained a dignified silence. But as soon as she turned the key to the meeting room, and flipped the switch to the fluorescent overheads, I once again grabbed her hand.
"Natalie, I'm scared."
"Marc?"
"Natalie, you are everything that is good and pure in the world, and I am everything that is lazy and evil." I looked at her balefully in the middle of that sterile, white-walled student meeting room. I sat her down on an aluminum folding chair, and sat myself down on the adjoining one. "I need your help to be better, Natalie. I might not make it without you."
"Make what?" She sounded confused. But she let me continue to hold her hand, even stroke it a little, and she let me keep my face near hers. And then, as I leaned in, she didn't really lean away, and then, when I placed my lips on hers, she let me do it, let me pry open her soft mouth with my own, let me touch my tongue to hers. My plan was all going even better than expected. Every molecule of air around us began to hum with its own particular tune. I was alive. I put my hand behind her neck and pushed my fingers into her thick blond hair. I put my other hand, gently, on her ribcage. She didn't protest. She smelled like I knew she would, like vanilla ice cream and Thousand Island dressing.
"Is this okay, Natalie?" I asked her, but I didn't wait for an answer. I put one hand on her knee and rubbed it, gently. I put my other hand on her back. I wanted her to feel safe, taken care of. I wanted her to know I wasn't just another asshole trying to take advantage of her good heart.
But what happened next was really a bit surprising.
Part Five
"Look," she said, after a few more minutes of French-kissing and knee-rubbing, "I won't have sex with you. I'm just telling you that now. I'm saving my virginity for marriage."
"Sex?" I said. "Natalie, who said anything about sex? This is just two souls joining together. I know it's a little bit earthly of us, Natalie, but--"
"Oh, come on," she said, and then she put a hand vigorously, almost roughly, on my swollen crotch. "The pizza guys won't be here for five minutes."
I was startled into silence. With that same hand, she deftly pulled apart the buttons on my fly and grabbed my dick out of my boxers.
"Natalie?"
"Yes?"
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" She seemed neither scandalized nor penitent. In fact, if anything, she seemed unsettlingly calm, there with my dick in her hand, sitting on an aluminum folding chair. She jerked me once, twice, three times, right there in the middle of Student Meeting Room 203. I came all over my jeans. She sighed and took a tissue from her purse and handed it to me. I held the tissue dumbly.
"Do you feel better now?" she asked me. "Marc?"
I wiped off my jeans and then buttoned my fly, all the time staring at her. I reached for my Bible and my bookbag.
"What did you just do that for?"
"Isn't it what you wanted?" she asked, her big blue eyes blinking sweetly. And oh, how I wish I hadn't noticed this, but there was a tiny drop of come on her pretty blue sweater. It was all so depraved! I backed up and out of the meeting room, clutching my Bible to my side.
"Marc?" she said again, but I could not answer. In a minute I was running across the campus, blindly, racing for the safety of my dorm. It was all so humiliating. My dick out in the middle of the campus center. Natalie Beacham's treacherous hands. I felt myself sliding on the cobblestoned paths. It had already started to snow. When I reached my room, I slammed the door and placed myself against it, as if to bar myself from future evil.
"You okay, Bernie?" Dave asked, bent over biochem at his desk.
"I'm not sure," I said, taking off my jeans and kicking them into a ball under the bunkbed. "I'm really not sure at all."
"You kind of look like shit," he observed, and then turned back to his texts.
I climbed upstairs, lay down on my stomach, and opened Genesis. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."
Tell me about it, I thought, as I put a pillow under my chin and continued to read.
