05 August 2017 nonfiction, "Sleeping at Ultra"

It’s late, I have to pee, and I’m smashed up against the steel interior of an old truck, cuddled hotly under a worn comforter, and no longer drunk enough to wake you up to ask you something.

We’ve only just met, but I’ve fallen in love with your accent, and the way our skin is the same shade of brown, and the fact that you only had to untie a flannel from your waist and grab my shoulders to kiss me in order to make me feel like the lucky girl that’s part of the hottest couple around. My friend saw your face and did a double take, giving his smile of approval and I’ve taken that for everything that it’s worth. I’ve taken the time to examine your hands, and the anklet you wear, and the way your body is always poised and smooth, ready for whatever it is that cricket players do when they play cricket.

I can’t believe how reckless I’ve been. But it’s in a situation perfectly appropriate for recklessness: my friends are doing drugs and drinking more than they’re eating, and everyone smiles and their clothes smell like stale sunshine and dirt. I wrote a paper for my friend and he bought me a VIP ticket—I don’t even like the music but that’s not the reason any of us are here anyway, right? A few hours ago I was listening to your voice, pretending I like the way the Dutch language sounds when it’s whispered, and trying to convince myself I am ready and not ready to have sex with you all at the same time.

But as the sun begins to rise, I wonder about the bag of chips that has been crinkling restlessly against my side all night, and I realize that the light is coming in so sharply because we are in fact piled together in the bed of a covered pickup truck. We’re surrounding by windows. I don’t ever want to leave, though I know I have to play this game a special way if I want to expect you ever to talk to me again. Hookups are sensitive material, and I haven’t yet mastered the emotional detachment I’ve so long striven for.

You finally make it obvious that you’re ready for me to leave, and though I’m afraid I won’t see you again, I’m immensely relieved that I will finally get the chance to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, on the outside of the concert grounds, the only bathroom is a single blue port-o-potty that has stood guard all night for everyone either lucky enough or unlucky enough to be banished to sleeping outside in the parking lot. It’s overflowing, and I pretend not to notice but the image is burned into my brain as I try my hardest not to touch anything with any part of my body. I can’t get out fast enough.

The rest of the morning I drink wine that has absorbed bugs and small pieces of grass, and convince myself that I don’t need anything else than the leftover scraps of one of my friends’ discarded breakfast sandwiches. Before we left, my roommate and I packed several granola bars and three ham and cheese sandwiches, but for some reason the only thing left is the sandwich bread and the granola wrappers, so I shade my eyes from the sun and wonder if I should at some point get some water into my body. All the boys who’ve stayed in my friends’ tents smile at me like I’ve let them in on some secret, and in a way I guess I have, after all it’s the first hookup I’ve had since being here, and I suppose it is always interesting to imagine the girl who plays hard to get as being plowed by some stranger from the Netherlands. I had just broken up with my boyfriend of two years a few weeks before, so I don’t make any motion to correct them.

You don’t text me back the rest of the day, and it doesn’t take me long to start wandering around to each of the stages and looking for you. I see you a few times, but have no intention of actually going up and talking to you, even as the chase gets old and it starts to become obvious that you have no intention of seeing me before we go our separate ways. As the evening starts descending I wander through the crowd and pretend I see you over in the middle somewhere, ebbing and flowing with the people and the pulse of the stage lights.

You did eventually text me back, but I didn’t see you again. Who knows why, I guess you had other things to do, other people to worry about. Not like it would have ever been plausible to get close to a stranger from the Netherlands vacationing at Ultra South Africa when I was only a lowly study abroad student myself. I forgot about you eventually. But thank you for adding to my Ultra experience, for giving me a night that was reckless and tinged with danger, and for letting me sleep next to you and against a bag of South African potato chips. At the time it was really nice that you shaved your whole torso. But I don’t know if I would look for that in a guy again.