In the final year of my PhD, housing options in my budget were few. My preference would have been to rent alone, or with another woman, but at the last moment I signed a lease with two men. They were undergraduate boys, on the university lifting team.
It was hard to tell them apart at first. In outline, both of them were upside-down triangles, a foot taller than me, with thick limbs and necks. And they were equally simple. They asked me to rephrase whenever I used a word I learned by reading.
But after we moved in, I realized something odd about their relationship. One afternoon, I'd come home early from the lab, and saw one of them, Ray, teaching the other, Chan, how to use the washing machine. On another occasion, Ray taught Chan how to ignite the gas stove. Through the thin walls, I overheard enough to piece together that Chan's parents, with their considerable wealth, had employed Ray as something like Chan's paid best friend, to ease his transition into the world outside their estate.
Judging by Chan's behavior, social life in the estate must have been small. Every week, Chan invited the same girl over for drinks in the living room, flattered her for a while, and once they were both buzzed, found some way to suggest a strip game--strip poker, strip charades, or other, more creative proposals. But the girl always took offense and left.
Both parties in this ritual perplexed me. She could stop coming over. Chan could invite a different girl. What compelled these people to repeat the same uncomfortable interaction every week?
I was invited too. Every time. Chan would knock on my door, wait five-hundred milliseconds, then open it to ask me if I'd care to join. I always said I had to work on my statistical models for my PhD. This happened to be true, but even if it weren't, I'd have just made up some other excuse. Had circumstances allowed, I would have kept declining every Friday for the rest of the lease.
The trouble was that I'd increased my spending. I didn't notice it happening. I would reach outside of my budget for some material comfort, like a massage, or a massage gun, or weed, to cope with the stress of my research. Every time, I promised myself I'd pay it back with extra frugality in the next month. But that extra-frugal month never came. I kept placing the late-night hotcake orders, kept visiting that massage parlor, and one day I logged in to find I didn't have enough for anything beyond necessities.
Suddenly, a closer relationship to Chan and his trust fund appealed to me, so I accepted his invitation. After dark, the four of us, Ray, Chan, myself, and the girl, were seated on the floor around the coffee table in warm lamplight. I and my housemates had had three beers, the girl four.
After matching her face to the voice I'd heard through the walls, I could understand Chan's obsession. She was unusually beautiful, in a pristine mall-mannequin type of way. When she smiled at me, there was something discriminatory about it, as if she were doing difficult work to find a trait in my low-class personhood worth smiling at. But really I think she thought my simple, unadorned beauty threatened her monopoly over Chan's attention.
"How about a game?" Ray said.
"We could do strip poker?" Chan said.
The girl sighed. "This is tiring for me." She had the same intonation I'd heard through the wall several times. "It's not appropriate at all. I should head home."
When she moved to stand, I grabbed her wrist. During the night's conversation, I had an insight. The reason this girl kept coming over week after week was that she wanted to say yes to them, and play the strip game, but could not bring herself to. It was a low-class thing to want. She needed Chan or Ray to press harder, to give her an easier way to say yes, but they were too polite.
I figured my best shot at getting on Chan's payroll was to demonstrate some kind of expertise. He was employing someone to show him how to do house chores and commute to campus, so perhaps he'd also employ a wingwoman?
I pulled the girls close by her wrist and whispered, "You're going to leave me alone with these horny animals?" My best move was to threaten the possibility that I, rather than her, would become Chan and Ray's toy.
My threat reached her. She sat back down. But her posture was noncommittal, like she might stand up again any second. "I'll stay for a while longer," she said. "But everyone will be keeping their clothes on."
Now I had to put her at ease with symbols, persuade her that strip games could be classy.
"Speaking of which, I love your cardigan," I said. "The palette of your outfit reminds me of those artist communities from early twentieth century Paris. Steinbeck, Picasso, the Fitzgeralds, all those big names in one place, trading ideas."
"I've read Steinbeck," she said. "And Fitzgerald too."
"Doesn't surprise me that you'd be cultured. But what's fascinating about that time isn't the published work. It's the depravity. These sophisticated people, who were defining what it meant to be high-class for the next century, with flawless etiquette and dress at formal occasions, fucked each other senseless in groups of five to six on stimulants once a week. It's as if the more refined someone is, the stronger their cravings for depravity."
"I had no idea about their dark side." She was relieved, settled in more comfortably.
Now was the time. I turned to Ray and Chan and said, "Underwear stays on?" The same game, but slightly lighter stakes.
Chan nodded rapidly. "We'll take it."
Even the girl, too, nodded in assent.
At first it shocked me that my improvised rhetoric had changed her mind, but then I remembered it hadn't really. Any argument, however weak, would probably have worked just as well, given her long-suppressed desire to play.
But without warning, before Chan could even deal the first hands, the girl panicked, excused herself, and abandoned me.
I hoped my housemates would interpret that as the end of the night. We would silently collect the beer bottles, rinse them, toss them in the blue bin, and retreat to our respective rooms.
My hopes were too high. Chan leaned in and said, "Do you still want to play?"
I realized then that if I wanted him to part with his trust fund money, I would have offer value to match, and while my head had been filled with fantasies of advising and consoling him in his dating endeavors, he was shrewder than that. Though he was dumb, he was more disciplined about his grocery budget and cooking every night than I was, in spite of his wealth.
All I really had to offer him was myself. I knew he wanted me. I had caught him peeking through the gap in the hinges of my bedroom door when I changed out of my dobok after taekwondo, and at least twice I'd seen, over his shoulder, swimsuit photos from my profile pulled up on his phone.
While waiting for me answer, the two of them were completely still, as if a timid "yes" inside me would tip toe out if only they could strike nonthreatening postures and hold them in silence.
Were they right? I pictured them shirtless. Their round muscles, the girth of their arms, the breadth of their shoulders. What would it feel like if they stripped me, held me, played with me? They would be considerate lovers, I could tell. Even if humiliating me turned them on, they wouldn't enjoy it unless they believed I did too. They would prioritize me. They would cooperate to pleasure me.
I looked down at the row of beer bottles in my corner of the table. It could take a consulting contract, and push back my defense date. There was no reason I had to debase myself for them, except to avoid a bit of inconvenience. But I realized it was what I preferred. What I wanted.
I proposed that I would back my chips with my clothes, but they had to back theirs with money.
"How much?" Chan said.
