Hairy on the Prairie

This is a story of when I was eighteen, a freshman, and a virgin.

A few months passed since I moved into the student housing and started my new life as a freshman, as a part-time employee of the university Residence Services, and as a boy, who, according to many girls, now carried an interesting accent. Plus, I had quit my job at Wendy’s, so now I no longer smelled like fast food all the time.

The only thing that kept me awake at night was the thought that I was still a virgin. Some days I justified that I didn’t have a car and that’s what kept me a virgin, other days I blamed it on my living condition, but when I realized that everyone else on my floor also didn’t have their own pad, yet they were busy doing it, not just on the weekends, but also during the daylight hours, I got sad. I knew that soon the day would arrive when I would no longer have to keep track of all those moments when I almost did the in and out, in and out, and it would be an interesting story.

At the end of the first week, I heard that a group from Montreal was coming to stay at Rundle Hall (one of the student housing buildings) for a month and would arrive in the middle of the night. I offered to take the shift because I needed the money.

All the Montrealers were given rooms on the third floor of the Rundle Hall, except Lorraine Dupont, because she planned to stay till the end of summer.

“My friend used to live in that room,” I gave her the rental agreement to sign.

“What appened to er?” Lorraine said.

“She went back home, to Winnipeg,” I thought all Canadians sounded the same, but she was different, and I liked that.

“Nice goom?”

“Oh yes, well, all the rooms are same,” I laughed.

I couldn’t figure out if it was her accent, the skipping of the h, the use of the back of the throat for the letter r, or her lustrous brunette tresses, her round nose and her fuller lips that made me look twice. She inquired about the pool, so I offered to take her to the Olympic Oval building in the morning, and to show her around.

“Where are you from?” She said.

“Um, Vancouver,” I didn’t want her to think of me in the same way people did whenever I mentioned that my dad was born in India and my mom in Burma.

After I closed the Residence Services office and went up to my room, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lorraine Dupont. I kept practicing saying her name the way she said it. I thought that her name was just like Lauren I met in my anthropology class, but Lorraine clarified that the r in her name was more like a g that came from the back of the throat.

Loo-gain, I repeated the sound in my mind like it was a mantra I got from a Sadhu for my meditative practice. As I called her name, my eyelids got heavy, and I fell asleep. Her brown eyes turned colors, from deep blue to black to purple, but when they turned hazel and I noticed her irises were encased with thin lines of black, I realized I was dreaming. I shook her and told her that we were in a lucid dream and that we could do anything, but before she could respond, I woke up.

It was my day off, the day I planned to go swimming with Lorraine. I wondered if she would be awake, and if I should ask her to accompany me to the Dining Centre for breakfast, but I decided not to rush, I might come off as a stalker or worse, a psycho. After having my usual chocolate chip muffin with a tall glass of two percent milk, I came back to my room and planned the rest of the day. I emptied my backpack and put a fresh towel in it, and a pair of black flip-flops. Shit, I pulled everything off the shelves behind my bed to see if there was a pair of shorts that would work. I found a black Adidas, but they were mesh, and I pictured myself in them, in water, and I saw everything through them. I looked at my alarm clock, I couldn’t go downtown and be back on time. So, I went to Market Mall and asked around. The person at the Telus cell phone booth thought I was looking for a Halloween shop, but when the salesperson at Telus realized that the “swimming costume” I was looking for was not a costume but trunks for swimming, he directed him to go to the men’s swimwear section of The Bay. I liked the most expensive pair of swim shorts in the store: navy blue, featuring feathers and leaves in yellow and turquoise colors, with a drawstring waist with silver tips on the strings. “You see these two eyelets at the back?” The salesperson had said, “they allow water to drain and reduce the balloon effect when you emerge from the water.” I didn’t understand what that meant. Must be something good, I thought, and bought the trunks.

When I approached Lorraine’s room, I found the door wide open. It was brighter than I remembered when my friend lived in that dorm room. It could have been the light coming in through the window because my friend kept her curtains drawn. My eyes went to the walls, which reflected light off the white paint. My friend covered her wall with dark posters of musicians I never heard of and films I never watched. There was a vase with fresh flowers on the ledge. White sheets on the bed, which was moved to the left of the room, her pillow with a flowery case was fluffier than my friend’s. I wondered how she set her room like a luxurious hotel in such a short time. Did she even sleep? I thought.

There was a white stepping stool in the corner with eight pairs of shoes for all sorts of occasions, from ballroom dancing to rock climbing to a night out clubbing, there were even purple rain boots and a pair that looked like they were hand sewed in Peru. I thought about peeking into her closet, but I heard the flip-flops coming through the corridor.

“Ai, what are you doing here?” Lorraine said.

“Don’t you remember? We’re supposed to go swimming,” I said.

“Oh, I was with my friends and forgot,” she slapped her forehead, “I ate half an hour ago, I don’t want to throw up,” she said.

Maybe I should ask her if she wants to go tomorrow, I thought. But before I could, she grabbed her purse, locked the door, and said, “Sorry, running late for a meeting.”

As I watched her walk away, I felt guilty for spending $53.50 on my swimming trunks that I didn’t get to wear, an amount I made the day before at the Residence Services for working six and a half hours. Fuck it, I should just go to the pool by myself, I thought.

Over the next few days on campus, I stood by the window, watching pretty girls with their fit bodies dive into the pool, though my favorite part was when they came out and ran across to get their towels. I thought that it would be a great idea to try out the pool so that I could be better prepared for when Lorraine Dupont would accompany me, and we would swim like two dolphins in love.

I wrapped the towel around my waist, dropped my white briefs, and put on my new trunks. I saw the sign that asked everyone to rinse before entering the pool area but when I turned the shower on, the water was cold. I stood away to muster the courage, which refused to come until I witnessed three guys and one little boy jump in and out.

How bad could it be? I thought.

After the shower area got vacant, I stepped in and shrieked loud enough for all the swimmers to hear. I jumped up and down for a few seconds and turned the water off. I felt too cold to go back to my locker to get my flip-flops, so I walked straight to the doors that led into the pool area.

They all looked like they were prepping for the Olympics. I was used to people flapping their hands hard on water, people taking 15-minute breaks during laps to celebrate their accomplishment, but the students at the Recreation Centre were going back and forth, no breaks in between. None. I counted their laps. Unlike Karachi, where pools were dedicated to either men or women and were located one hundred kilometers away from each other on purpose, the pool at my university took anyone who brought the courage to dive in, it didn’t discriminate as long as the person showered before getting in and controlled their bladder. My cousin once told me that the pool at her high school used a chemical that made the water turn color if someone peed in it and many students were embarrassed to the point that they refused to swim for the rest of the semester. The thought made me turn around and head back to the changing room to pee.

When I returned, I looked for the shallow part of the pool, stepped in and stood in a corner. I should buy goggles, I searched my memory to recall if I came across any at The Bay that afternoon. I lowered myself under the water and felt warmer than before. This is fun, I thought.

I pictured myself being looked at by everyone, but no one noticed that I was there, no one appreciated my brand-new swimming “costume.”

I grew up in a town where people liked to wing everything, learning was a concept my ancestors left behind after the last Mughal Emperor lost everything. My uncle told him once that he learned swimming by watching others, my father followed by saying that he went to the beach one day and found himself swimming like a fish, he was born that way, but I never saw my father swim, so I believed that story since my childhood. I thought that if my father could be such a proficient swimmer, I could at least finish one lap without any lessons.

I waited for the second guy to swim away, pushed my legs against the wall and floated, when I tried stepping on my feet to stand, I realized I floated farther than I wanted to. I panicked for a second, but my hand hit the bar on the side of the pool. I grabbed it hard and called the names of God.

I stood in a corner and watched others swim, I floated occasionally, and tried going to the other end, holding the side bar along the way. For the next seven days, I did just that, but most of those days I felt like drowning, because Lorraine stood me up every single time, she found better things to do and better-looking boys than me to do it with.

On the following Sunday morning, we ran into each other, at the pool. She was with a guy, and I thought he must be one of her friends from Montreal, but when she did the introductions, it turned out that the tattooed guy was born and raised in Calgary. She told him they went out the night before and continued partying in Lorraine’s room. That explained why she giggled non-stop and when she came closer to me, I smelled the booze on her breath. I couldn’t tell what she drank, but it was alcohol for sure. She hugged me and told me that she missed me, but I knew quite well that it was the vodka or the gin or the rum that was talking. When she kissed me on my cheek and told me that I was cute, the tattooed guy grabbed her from the back and jumped into the pool. For the next five minutes they made out in the deep end, while I wondered how they could stay afloat for so long.

I came out of the pool and walked up to Lorraine who was busy examining the guy’s tattoos while he did things to her under water that I couldn’t see. “I’m gonna take off,” I said. She didn’t look up, but the guy nodded. “Nice meeting you,” I waved at the guy and turned to leave. “You are going ome?” Lorraine said. I nodded. She brought her eyes down to my trunks, pointed at them, and then lowered her eyes further down.

“Whoa! You’re airry!” she said.

The tattooed guy burst out laughing and she joined him.

I stood there shaken, like I didn’t have legs, to me it felt like I was in one of those movies when they have an explosion, but instead of the sound of the explosion, you hear silence, like my eardrums were all been pierced.

I went back to the men’s changing room, looked at myself in the mirror, and I knew what I needed to do. I took my backpack and went to London Drugs, the 100% Canadian owned pharmacy/retail store, to buy hair-removal wax.

A remix of Shvets Production’s image

The pharmacist at London Drugs told me that the hair-removal wax would need to be heated. That could have been an issue for me, but I remembered that I was closing the Residence Services that night and could stay after work and use the microwave there. This was all because of Lorraine and her mean comment—whoa, you’re airry, her voice echoed in my head. I locked the door from the inside, checked the window shutters one more time and walked back to the kitchen area. I took out the “all in one” value pack from the paper bag and read the instructions. I unbuckled my belt, dropped the cargo pants, and kicked it to the side.

I heated the wax, applied a layer on my right thigh, and pressed the white cloth strip on top, as the box instructed. I felt a burning sensation for a few seconds and then it felt like I was under a hot shower. I took a deep breath, held one corner of the strip with my index and middle fingers on one side and the thumb on the other and ripped it off my skin. I winced and tensed up my muscles.

That’s just one, I thought. There were 19 more patches to go. I looked at the first empty patch and wondered if I liked what I saw or was ashamed of such an act that would have gotten me disowned by his father. My eyes went to the clock, it took 20 minutes for me to finish my right leg, including the shins and the calves, and my left thigh. I liked what emerged from underneath. This is how Leonardo di Vinci must have felt when he saw David come out of the block of white marble, I thought.

The next morning, I came out of Rundle Hall. The area outside appeared like a desolate prairie to me, except there was Lorraine Dupont under the shade, her back against the cherry tree and a thick book in her lap. I noticed her full lips, they must taste like honey, I thought. My eyes went to her breasts that came out of her scooped neck of her dress. I circled the area twice but couldn’t think of the right thing to say. She looked up once but not in my direction. I pictured myself on the grass with my hairless legs stretched, her head rested in my lap and my cowboy hat providing shade to her face. I thought about asking her what kind of music she liked listening to and that I could go up to my room and bring my new Sony CD Walkman and we could spend the rest of the day in each other’s arms grooving to Michael Jackson or the Backstreet Boys. Before I could muster the courage, the tattooed guy from the other day walked out of the Kananaskis Hall in cargo shorts and a t-shirt that looked like it belonged to his younger brother, it wasn’t the pattern or the color but his humongous muscles that bulged out.

Lorraine Dupont looked up, the tattooed guy took his t-shirt off, and I cringed.

The guys placed the t-shirt on the grass and laid down in the sun. She smiled, and I cringed.

I couldn’t understand why God made everyone so different. I thought that it wasn’t fair I was born into the race that was gifted with a hairy body, and then there was this guy who was bestowed with not only a muscular body but a hairless one.

She turned a page in her novel, he turned to tan his back. She asked him about something, and he got up and arched his back, to prove that there was nothing that he lacked. That is when I saw the tattoo of a phoenix raising from the ashes, in black ink that covered his whole chest. This is what I should get, I thought. The muscular guy climbed the tree and brought back cherries, she rinsed them with water, he threw the pits to the farthest corner of the garden, and she clapped and touched his triceps.

I cringed, flinched, and blanched all the way to the sixth floor of Rundle Hall where couples made out at every corner. It seemed I was the only person in the entire world that was destined to be alone, companionless, and a virgin.

I went to my room and drew the curtains. She didn’t even look at my legs, I cried, put Quit Playing Games with My Heart on repeat, and applied Johnson & Johnson’s baby lotion all over my pinkish red legs.