Sophia Carroll

Taboo

The downside of hooking up with your housemate is that when he brings someone else home you hear it. I’m all for compersion but earlier that night he’d said he would be in my bed. What happened: I was having a shitty night and texted him about it while he was at the club with the boys. 

“Be home at 2:12,” he said, the precision inspiring confidence, “and then I’ll give you all the snuggles you deserve.” 

At 2:20 he called me. “Hey roomie,” he said. “There’s a girl outside, do you mind letting her in?” 

I did, but I did. 

“Hiii,” she says, there on my stoop, shifting her weight from one foot to the other like she has to use the bathroom. 

She is gangly, I think, and then I think I’m a bitch for thinking it. 

In college hooking up with a housemate was taboo. We had an expression, “House booty is bad booty.” People would call it incestuous, and I hate that because that’s not what incest fucking is. 

The downside of being good at sex is that the guys who don’t want to commit to you text you out of the blue at one in the morning and you think it’s because they actually care enough to check how you’re doing but it’s actually because they just want to put together a threesome with you and the person they got serious with. It feels shitty, and I tell my housemate about this and that’s why he said he’d comfort me before he blew me off. Then, because I have no filter at three in the morning, I tell him that feels shitty, too. He knocks on my door in the middle of the night but I don’t answer, just turn my music up louder, like he’s my fucking father. 

Long ago I got it into my head that when it comes to sex, all experience is good experience. I had to believe that to survive some of those experiences (closet, basement). When I was eight a girl sat next to me on the school bus and told me I was ugly and I did feel it with my thick thighs and braces but I didn’t want to cry in front of her so I laughed instead, wild and without mirth, head thrown back then doubled over, insane laughter, and I didn’t stop until she looked scared and moved away. Long ago I started fucking like that. Like anything is cool and nothing hurts. The other person always taps out first. 

As I lay there listening to my housemate’s squeaky bedframe and gangly girl’s chatter I look up at the ceiling. I own this device that projects stars as little green lights, swirling. Looking at this artificial cosmos I think of how growing up I learned to pray, and how I still talk to God, even though I’m not sure He’s real, in full paragraphs—but some nights, like tonight, all I say is please. Eventually I can’t hear them anymore and I turn off the star projector. One star, one winking light remains. Envy’s green eye: my smoke detector. Heat rises, I think as I take the batteries out. Come to the thought of setting a fire.