Chapter Six #2
Bingo. I was sure Laura would jump at the chance to help a fellow whatever-Greenwich-Friends’-mascot-was.
Of course, I’d need to keep all interactions strictly over email, as I doubted I could make myself sound like a sixteen-year-old over the phone.
Laura would offer to help (which meant I would have to pay her, but I was planning to just have her look at one essay, so hopefully not too much).
I would flatter her, sing her praises, ask her questions about law school admissions, before making the final, big ask: “Do you mind sending me any of your law school essays? I know it’s still super early for me, but I’m super curious how they’re different from the undergraduate stuff, and I just want to be aware ahead of time.
” Not only that, once I built her trust, I could start to gather more information about why Laura thought she got in.
Specifically, “Why do you think you were an interesting applicant in the eyes of Harvard Law?”
—
Over the next forty-eight hours, I constantly refreshed the inbox.
It was the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did at night.
Laura hadn’t responded yet but I wasn’t worried.
I needed to be patient, thoughtful. For now, my plan was on hold.
Once she saw it, the plan would commence.
I was supposed to go on a date later that night with a guy I met on a dating app. Truthfully, I’d rather have just sat in my room and refreshed Suzie Ehrlich’s email inbox, but I knew going was the healthy thing to do. Better than spiraling down a Laura-themed internet rabbit hole all night.
His name was David. From his pictures I saw that he was handsome but not too handsome, like the love interest in an early- 2000s romantic comedy, the one the female protagonist isn’t interested in at first but falls for by the end.
Before our date I had of course already done my usual extensive research on him.
For one, I needed to check he was a real person, not a serial killer.
And two, I needed to check I wasn’t wasting my time.
The information I found on David was quite favorable.
After college he had founded a startup that was sold for an undisclosed amount last year.
His current job on LinkedIn was just listed as “advisor.” He was twenty-six years old.
We met at a speakeasy in the East Village.
When he walked in, I thought he looked even better than in the photos.
He was a bit out of my league, maybe by 5 to 10 percentile points.
There were only two possibilities for why he was into me: either he only recently became more attractive or he had a thing for Asians.
After I got over the initial surprise of his attractiveness, I actually quite enjoyed our date.
Unlike most men, he asked me questions about myself.
When I told him that I grew up in South Dakota, he asked me if I had a favorite spot in my hometown.
I told him about an open field near our house that I’d drive to in high school, where cows roamed with authority and, if I was lucky, would greet me with their complacent moos.
It was where I went whenever I’d endured a minor humiliation in school—when a teacher called me by the name of the Korean exchange student who came for a semester, when the group of boys harassed me in the hallway about whether my relatives ate dogs.
But it was also where I went to celebrate the wins.
It was where I went to watch the sunset after getting my letter of acceptance to Columbia.
It was where I drove straight to after winning the state championships in debate, with the trophy still buckled in the back seat of the Toyota Camry.
It was one of the few parts of South Dakota that I wasn’t ashamed of calling home.
I didn’t reveal all of this to David. I already felt embarrassed talking so much about myself, not because the details I revealed were too intimate, but because I didn’t think my life was interesting enough to warrant this much attention.
But then I thought about the dates that I had gone on in the past—didn’t I ask the same number of questions, show the same amount of interest?
David wasn’t doing anything novel; perhaps he was just one of the first men I had met who didn’t want to only talk about himself.
After our second drink he asked if I wanted to go to his apartment for a nightcap.
I said yes. I usually didn’t have sex on the first date.
Not that I thought there was anything inherently wrong with it; it just wasn’t my style.
This time was different. For one, I felt bad for dismissing him earlier, for assuming he was playing some kind of game when he was actually just being nice.
For two, I wanted to feel something other than the stress about law school and the whole Laura thing, and it was either this or drugs.
After David paid the check, we called a car to his apartment.
He lived in a one-bedroom in Williamsburg with floor-to-ceiling windows and furniture in shades of gray and white.
I made a mental note of how I’d describe his apartment to my friends later.
“Cringey millennial minimalism.” He asked if I wanted a drink and I said no, so he just poured a glass for himself.
He sat next to me on the couch in the living room and leaned forward to kiss me.
Not even ten seconds into the kiss he asked if I wanted to move to the bedroom.
“Sure,” I said, and pretty soon he was on top of me.
The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, but I felt a little crushed by his body weight.
Plus, he had gotten sweaty quite quickly, and some of it rubbed off on me.
I asked to be on top instead, which helped, but I still felt quite stiff.
“You’re so sexy,” he said, and this helped me loosen up.
The problem was I didn’t believe him. If he wanted to, he could sleep with far sexier people than me.
I couldn’t help but suspect that this compliment must come from ulterior motives.
Maybe he could tell I wasn’t feeling too enthusiastic, that I was too distracted by other things.
But I told myself that I was just overthinking it, and imagined that I was sexy.
I imagined that I was a little skinnier, a little taller, with a better face and better hair. Kind of like Laura.
I wondered how Laura would act in this situation.
She’d probably accept the compliment in stride.
She wouldn’t doubt for a second that he was telling the truth.
I tried to channel this energy, but it didn’t work when I imagined myself in my own body.
My ass and breasts were too small to make up for the little bit of extra fat on my arms and thighs.
I found it weird to think of myself as sexy.
Pretty or cute maybe, but sexy was reserved for 80th percentile attractiveness and higher, in my opinion.
Or if someone did think I was sexy, it must be because they really loved my face or personality and their brains tricked them into projecting that onto their view of my body.
So instead, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was having sex in a body that was more similar to Laura’s rather than my own.
I imagined myself with less body fat in the areas where you wanted less body fat and more body fat in the areas where you wanted more.
Suddenly, I no longer felt stiff, no longer felt like I was only pretending to have a good time.
It seemed David could tell. He picked up the pace and, shortly afterward, finished.
“Sorry,” he said, and gave me a little sheepish smile. “That was just so amazing.”
No one had ever reacted this way to me. I was quite flattered. Apparently, I didn’t actually need to be hotter. I could just pretend to be hotter, and that would make up some of the difference.
—
David fell asleep immediately after we finished having sex, giving me the perfect opportunity to sneak out without needing to say an awkward goodbye.
The glass of wine he had poured for himself was still sitting on the coffee table, untouched.
I took a sip from it, out of curiosity, and so not all of it would go to waste.
Getting back to campus from Williamsburg required I take three different trains, and it was 1:00 a.m. by the time I set foot back in the lobby of my dorm building.
Are you up? I texted Eunjin while waiting for the elevator. Have some juicy news
She responded right away. YES!!!!!!! Always here for the hot goss
I couldn’t lie; half the reason I even went to David’s in the first place was so I’d have a story to share with my friends.
I bounced on my heels in the elevator, thinking about what part I should talk to her about first. When the elevator door opened to our floor, I speed-walked straight to Eunjin’s room and plopped down on her bed.
I told her everything that had happened, including details about the sweatiness, the untouched wine, and the cringey millennial minimalism.
“You slut,” she said. “Good for you.” I giggled and buried my head in the pillows. “Can I see a pic?”
I pulled up his dating app profile. Objectively, he looked better in person, but I didn’t say that because it’d sound too cliché.
“He looks like a generic tech bro founder.”
“You are correct.”
“Interesting that you’ve gone the tech bro route rather than the finance bro route.”
I shrugged. “What I’ve learned from my dating experience in the city—which you know is still very limited—is that both finance bros and tech bros are not the greatest people, but tech bros are just annoying, whereas finance bros are actually evil.”
“Fair enough. And this one is actually cute.”
“Why do you sound surprised that I’d be seeing someone cute?”
“I’m not! Stop projecting.” Eunjin threw a pillow at me, which stopped just short of hitting me and fell onto my lap.
“Okay, so you think he’s out of my league?”
“No! He’s cute, you’re cute. Same league.”
I rolled my eyes. “You wouldn’t tell me even if he was.”