"Look," said Sarah, also taking a reasonable tack, "When are you going to accept that I'm not coming out? I don't want to play, I just want peace and quiet." She knew her voice was wavering now, and she threw me an exasperated look.
"Sarah," said the righteously perturbed Terrorist, "you're being very childish about this. You know we don't want that much. It doesn't hurt. You just have one more chance to be reasonable, and then it's ad-dition-al pun-ish-ment."
"Swirlie! Swirlie! Swirlie!" chanted the Terrorists. "Fuck yourselves!" she yelled. Realizing what was about to happen, she yanked my pliers out of my toolbox and clamped their serrated jaws down on the lock handle just as Mitzi's master key was slid into the keyhole outside.
She held it firm. The Terrorists found the lock frozen. The key-turner called for help, but only one hand can grip a key at a time. The handle did rotate a few degrees in the tussle, and the Terrorists then found they could not pull the key from the lock. Sarah continued to hold it at a slight twist as the Terrorists mumbled outside.
"Listen, Sarah, you got a good point. We'll just leave you alone from now on."
"Yeah," said the others, "Sorry, Sarah."
Looking at me, Sarah snorted with contempt and held on to the pliers. A minute or so after the Terrorists noisily walked away, an unsuccessful yank came on the key.
"Shit! Fuck you!" The Terrorist kicked and pounded viciously on the door, raging.
After a few minutes I got on my belly and pried up the rubber strip and verified that the Terrorists were no longer waiting outside. Sarah opened her door, pulled out the master key, and pocketed it. She smiled a lot, but she was also shaking, and wanted no comfort from me. I was about to say she could sleep on my Sofa for a few days. Sometimes, though, I can actually be sensitive about these things. Sarah was obviously tired of needing my help. I felt she needed my protection, but that was my problem. Suddenly feeling that dealing with me might have been as difficult for her as dealing with the Terrorists, I made the usual obligatory offers of further assistance, and went home. Fortunately for what Sarah would call my macho side, I was on an intramural football team. So were all of the Terrorists. We met three times. I am big, they were average; they suffered; I had a good time and did not feel so proud of myself afterward. The Terrorists did not even understand that I didn't like them. Like a lot of whites, they didn't care much for blacks unless they were athletic blacks, in which case we could do whatever we wanted. To knock Terrorist heads for two hours, then have them pat me on the butt in admiration, was frustrating. As for Sarah, she had no such outlets for her feelings.
She lay on her bed for the rest of the afternoon, unable to think about anything else, desperate for the company of Hyacinth, who was out of town for the weekend. Ultra-raunch rock-'n'-roll pounded through from the room above. The Terrorists figured out her number and she had to take her phone off the hook. She ignored the Airheads knocking on her door. Finally, late in the evening, when things had been quiet for a couple of hours, she slipped out to take a showera right-side-up, hot shower.
This was not very relaxing. She had to keep her eyes and ears open as much as she could. As she rinsed her hair, though, a klunk sounded from the showerhead and the water wavered, then turned bitterly cold. She yelped and swung the hot-water handle around, to no effect, and then she couldn't stand it and had to yank open the door and get out of there.
They were all waiting for hernot the Terrorists, but the Airheads in their bathrobes. One stood at every sink, smiling, hot water on full blast, and one stood by every shower stall, smiling, steam pouring out of the door. With huge smiles and squeals of joy, they actually grabbed her by the arms, shouting Swirlie!, Swirlie!, took her to one of the toilets, stuck her head in, and flushed.
She was standing there naked, toilet water running in thin cold ribbons down her body, and they were in their bathrobes, smiling sympathetically and applauding. Apologies came from all directions. Somehow she didn't scream, she didn't hit anyone; she grabbed her bathrobetearing her hand on the corner of the shower door in her spastic fury wrapped it around herself and tied it so tightly she could hardly breathe. Her pulse fluttered like a bird in an iron box and tingles of hyperventilation ran down her arms and into her fingertips.
"What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you crazy?"
They mostly tittered nervously and tried to ignore the way she had flown off the handle. They were leaving her a social escape route; she could still smooth it over. But she was not interested. "Listen to me good, you dumb fucks!" She had let herself go, it was the only thing she could do. In a way it felt great to bellow and cry and rage and scare the hell out of them; this was the first contact with reality these women had had in years. "This is rape! And I'm entitled to protect myself from it! And I will!"
She had stepped over the line. It was now okay to hate Sarah, and several took the opportunity, laughing out loud to each other. Mari did not. "Sarah! Jeez, you don't have to take it so serious! You'll feel better later on. We've got some punch for you in the Lounge. We were just letting you in to the wing. We didn't think you were going to get so upset."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm real sorry, excuse me, but I am going to take it seriously because anyone who can't see why it's serious has bad, bad problems and needs to get straightened out. If you think you're doing this because it's natural and fun, you aren't thinking too fucking hard."
"But, Jeez, Sarah," said Mari, hardly believing anyone could be so weird, "it's for the better. We've all been through it together now and we're all sisters. We're all an equal family together. We were just welcoming you in."
"The whole purpose of a fucking university is not so that you can come and be just like everyone else. I'm not equal to you people, never will be, don't want to be, I don't want to be anyone's sister, I don't want your activities, all I want is a decent place to live where I can be Sarah Jane Johnson, and not be equalized by a mob.. . of little powderpuff terrorists who just can't stand differentness because they're too stupid to understand it! What goes on in your heads? Haven't you ever seen the diversity of of nature? Stop laughing. Look, you think this is funny? The next time you do this, someone is going to get hurt very badly." She looked down at the little drops of blood on the floor, dripping from her hand, and suddenly felt cleansed. She clenched the fist and held it up. "Understand?"
They had been smug at her wild anger. Now they were scared and disgusted and their makeup lay on their appalled skin like blood on snow. Most fled, hysterically grossed out.
"Gag me green!"
"Barf me blue!"
Mari averted her gaze from this gore. "Well, that's okay if you want to give all of this up. But I don't think it's like rape. I mean, we all scream a lot and stuff, and we don't really want them to do it, if you know what I mean, but when they do it's fun after all. So for us it's just sort of wild and exciting, and for the guys, it helps them work off steam. You know what I mean?"
"No! Get out! Don't fuck with my life!" That was a lieshe did know exactly what Mari meant. But she had just realized she could never let herself think that way again. Mari sadly floated out, sniffling. Sarah, alone now, washed her hair again (though it had not been a "dirty swirlie") and retreated to her room, a little ill in a gag-me-green sort of way, yet filled with a tingling sense of sureness and power. She was not harassed anymore. Word had gone out. Sarah had gotten additional punishment and was not to be bothered.