Stranger

by Anna Scarpone

There’s a room alive with the heat of bodies, and a booming bass its ever-pulsing heart. Limbs press against limbs, flushed skin is illuminated only by the opening and closing of the bathroom door. Now and then, some shrieking, drunken laugh rings out over the crowd like a descant. In this darkness, I’m no more than a body. No sun casts a shadow on my face, revealing its familiar imperfections. Hidden is the bump on my nose, the freckle on my upper lip. The telltale inflections in my voice become another part of that universal chorus, the beat blasting from the DJ stand. In this ocean of bodies, we are all grasping desperately for anything, anyone to ground us.

I used to spend hours in the ocean every summer. At night, my body could still feel the rock of the waves, the steady rhythm pulling the tides. I would close my eyes and breathe with it, in; out; in; out. I would fall asleep that way, lulled gently by the ocean lingering in my limbs.

I’ve never kissed a man. But bodies are bodies here, and bodies are pushing me. I’m slack. Without moving my feet, I surrender to this lethal tide.

It’s a fatal moment: eye contact. I take in what I can of this stranger. He has such long eyelashes, visible against all odds in a room without light. What illuminates them? Perhaps the high beams of some passing car have permeated the unforgiving darkness in this room, if just for a moment, flashing through the window to reveal to me this stranger and his beautiful, long eyelashes. Does the driver know what he’s done?

I’m not too inebriated to feel self-conscious. My hair is a mess by now, and my top is too short, chosen only as an effort to blend in with the girls I came here with. They know what to do in the presence of strange boys. They don’t muse over mysterious sources of light and eyelashes. If this haphazard assemblage of bodies is an ocean, my friends are sirens. Lithe, long-haired, graceful bodies that dance and sway without effort, that kiss strangers in crowded rooms. I’m a fraud in a loaned top that’s too short.

The lips I’ve kissed before have been soft, smoothed by some feminine imperative to be gentle and clean. Now, I’m met with something foreign. Desperately, I search for myself in this stranger, my hands grasping for some familiar curve, a lock of long hair like a lifeline. I’m met only with broad shoulder, strong muscle. A Grecian ideal – cold, hard stone. He doesn’t know me.

I’m briefly thrilled. I’ve never kissed someone who doesn’t know me. And then, the worst thought: I hope my friends see. Before I push away, I imagine them storing the image of me and this boy, hard evidence that we’re one in the same. My mind conjures an indulgent fantasy of my closeted youth: the morning after, my friends and I in sweatpants and matching pajama sets, our hair pulled up effortlessly. Over breakfast, I feign a blush. I describe his arms, his lips, in giggly detail, like I’ve heard them do countless times before. (Though, even in this fantasy, I think I’ll keep his lashes to myself.)

But I do push away, choking out an apology without sense. (How do you say, I’m sorry, you’re great, but kissing you makes me feel like I’m betraying the very atoms that make up my body?) And I’m back in the ocean, but now shame makes my face glow red-hot, so bright it lights the dark room, and my mind’s mantra of guilt and shame and fear is out of time with the rhythm I once felt a part of. I’m quite alone now with the stranger I’ve made of myself.

Anna Scarpone is a third-year student at Emerson College, where she studies English Literature with a concentration in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies. She works for multiple Emerson-affiliated magazines, including as an editor for INDEX Magazine, and was published in the 2024 edition of Seacoast Weddings Magazine. She is from Southern Maine.