Heartbreak and sodomy in a freshman dorm.
By AnonymousSpring 2009
Ah, Diego — the beautiful Chilean boy who took my virginity the year before I transferred to Cornell. He was straight out of the Andes — think Brokeback Mountain, but Latin — and from the first time I saw him, I was into him. After a few nights of drunken flirtation we started seeing each other and soon I became what my mother would call “a real woman.”
It felt like a fire was set off inside of me, and from that point forward I wanted to do it everywhere, and I do mean everywhere: in the woods, in the library late at night, ev-er-y-where. The only thing was that, and maybe it was a language barrier, or maybe it was some sort of cultural incompatibility, he never seemed to want to open up to me. I tried again and again, talking about my crappy childhood, or the dream where I’m being choked by Mr. Rogers, or the first time I masturbated and my older brother accidentally walked in. Regardless of my mortifying intimate stories, he hadn’t disclosed anything to me.…yet.
One morning after a particularly passionate session of what I called “making love,” I’d had enough. I wanted to know more about him, and I decided to do it by asking him a question, one which I realized afterwards is something you should never, I repeat, NEVER, ask someone you’re seeing: “What’s something you’ve never told anyone else before?”
He paused, and started to speak, and then stopped.
“No,” he said. “No, you will think I’m weird.”
I was offended, so I said, “No, of course I won’t. I promise, whatever you say, I won’t judge you.”
“Ok.” He licked his lips and continued slowly, “Back in Chile, when I helped my father in the farm, I would sometimes go weeks without seeing a woman other than my mother and my sisters...”
“Uh-huh….” This was gonna be good. I sat up a bit.
“And I, you know, would get very lonely…”
“Okay….” Intimacy, heeeere we come!
“And every now and then, every now and then, I would, um, make love to a cheep.”
(art by Andrew Schwartz)
Time out. What? I started thinking, A cheep. A cheep. (I all of a sudden pictured him at a party last week, singing along to “Twist and Chout.”)
“Please tell me you’re kidding,” I blurted out. “Please, Diego. No.”
“It wasn’t a big deal or anything.” He was getting defensive. “Lots of men where I’m from will, you know, do it. They really don’t seem to mind.”
“Who? The men or the livestock?” As culturally sensitive as I was trying to be, I started picturing Little Bo Peep, and other intimate childhood memories. I was getting upset. This was too much.
“To an animal, Diego? To a defenseless little animal?” My mind got ahead of me. Something that had been inside of me had also entered Lamb Chop. I pictured indeterminate “Baaaaah”s, either signaling pleasure or pain (maybe both?) and my heart started racing. Oh my god. Isn’t something like this how Ebola supposedly spread?
“I’m sorry. I, um, actually have to go.” I started putting my clothes on.
“Oh, come on, don’t go!” He reached for my arm. “Hey, listen, I was kidding, okay?”
“Right, right, uh-huh. Hey, um, I’ll call you, okay?”
It was never the same after that. I saw him around the dorm and we avoided eye contact. Everything started to take on a new significance. His homemade wool hat which I had adored before now seemed oddly suspicious. And before I used to love it when he would pet my neck as he made love to me; but now I couldn’t help but question who, or what he was picturing was there instead of me.
Later on, in a Cultural Anthro course I took, I was embarrassed to learn that in many rural areas across the world (even here!) sodomizing sheep is indeed quite common. Did that somehow made it okay? To this day, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. All I really learned, though, was that I will never again ask a boy I’m seeing for his darkest secret. Some skeletons need to stay in the closet, next to a fleece jacket conjuring up warm memories of home.