Hamlet's I was in Hamlet's, a little place off University that served beer and pizza to college kids. There are a lot of places like that, but I liked this one because it was usually quieter than most. I had to get out of my room sometimes, you know? I'd go crazy if I didn't. My course load was obnoxious though and crazy was relative. Like growing up, you really couldn't tell when it was happening to yourself, but other people could. "You look like shit, Rache." Jennifer was sitting across from me in the small booth, sipping some white wine and shaking her head. "Thanks." I looked up long enough to roll my eyes sarcastically, although I'm not sure if it wasn't meant more for myself. "I mean it. Get your nose out of that book for a minute, Jesus!" She swiped it before I could react and it disappeared as she lifted her hips, obviously sitting on it. "Hey!" I blinked at her. "That's better...Mmmm...comfy!" She laughed. "Now...what should we talk about?" Jennifer has been my best friend since I was 16 and she never let me forget it. Being my best friend is apparently a full time job and she's good at it, but most especially while we were in college. She saved my life I'm sure, several times, and all I ever did for her was bitch a lot. "Jen, I need to finish that." My voice was flat, as if bored with her, bored with Jennifer's silly games. I sounded dead. "Christ, you even sound like shit." "Don't swear." "When's the last time you got laid?" Jen took another drink of her wine and I reached for my diet coke, just frowning. "Yeah, I thought." "It's none of your business." I sucked an ice cube in my mouth, talking around it. "Sex isn't everything." "Still pining for what's his name?" Jen knew his name, she was needling me. My boyfriend went to a different college, across the state. I could have attended his, but I thought it would be better, easier on my studies, if I didn't. Oh, silly silly me. "No." I lied. "I bet he's getting laid." Jen's hands floated around like butterflies. "I bet he's fucking like 3 girls every night. Putting that huge cock of his inside their little cunts. Kissing them...whispering while he does it..." "Shut-up." I'd heard this fantasy before; it was one of Jen's favorites. I didn't know why she hated him so much. "You're disgusting." "The truth is always disgusting." Jen laughed. "He's not doing anything and you know it." "Noooo..." Jen said slowly, with a little humorous edge. "I don't know. And neither do you. Paul's a good looking guy and he likes to fuck, Rache. He's done it before and..." "Just shut-up, will ya?" I crossed my arms over my smallish breasts. "I don't need this, alright?" "What ever." She said it like that. Two words and sat back folding her arms across her chest. I swirled my straw in my soda, not wanting to look at her. Jennifer was just waiting for that. I stirred and stirred and stirred until I couldn't take it anymore. "He's not doing anything." I looked at her and she smiled, just a little one, and nodded. "He doesn't do that anymore." "I know, I know…" She sighed. "He's just sitting in his room, reading his books…Thinking about you…" "Yeah." I licked my lips. "Let's call him!" Jennifer giggled, I swear she did, and leaned across the little table. "What? No!" I gave her an incredulous look, like I couldn't believe she'd even suggest such a thing. "Why not? Jesus, Rache, he's your boyfriend for crying out loud, you should be calling him every night!" "He doesn't need that." I shook my head. At first we'd called each other almost every day; he'd call, or I would, but now it was more like once a week. Or once every two weeks sometimes. "Let's see if he does or not…" Jenny reached over the table, grabbing my purse before I could stop her. I put my hand out but she just smiled and pulled away far enough so I couldn't get it. "Don't do it, please…" I shook my head. "Ummm-hmmm…still number one?" Jen giggled and played with my celphone, hitting the speed dial. "Jen." I warned her. "I'll call him later, when I'm alone." "I just wanna say hi." She gave me a smart-ass smile. "It's ringing." I rolled my eyes and sat back. It was pointless arguing with Jen and I wasn't going to wrestle with her for my phone in the middle of Hamlet's. Besides, maybe part of me did want to talk to my boyfriend right about then. Jen was smiling and then her greenish blue eyes got wide and she just handed the phone to me without a word. "What?" I looked at her, narrowing my eyes and feeling suddenly suspicious. I took the phone just in time to hear someone's voice. A girl's voice on my boyfriend's phone. "Hello? I don't think anyo…stop that!" She was giggling and breathless. "Hello?…oh mmmm…God…" She hung up. I just looked at my phone for a minute and I felt numb really. Not really angry, but just…numb. I coughed and my face was turning red and I licked my lips and then, for no good reason at all, I just dropped my phone. It bounced a little before falling off the table, but I didn't notice, I was looking at Jennifer and she was sucking her lips. "I'm sorry, Rachael…" She was soft and sad and her hand reached out to touch mine, giving me a little squeeze. "Maybe uh, maybe he was…uh…" I tried to think of an excuse, a reason for a giggling out of breath girl to moan into my boyfriend's phone, but I couldn't. "I'm so sorry." Jen shook her head slowly. "He's such a prick." "Yeah." I hurt now. The numbness going away a little, at least inside, and my stomach was tight like a cramp. "Excuse me." Someone said gently. "I think you dropped this?" I looked up, blinking at the little tears forming. It was a guy, just a guy, standing there with my phone in his hand. "Thanks." I said, taking it back reluctantly. I wanted to smash it against the wall. "Are you okay?" He asked. "She's fine." Jen said, her voice cold. "I'm Cal, uh Calvin…but that name sucks." He was smiling at me, ignoring Jen. "It's okay." I shrugged, thinking I'd heard worse names than Calvin before. Like Paul, that name really sucked. "You're in my psych class, I think." He wasn't leaving. "I don't have psych class." I actually smiled. "Thanks again…" Jen stared at him. "Byeee…" "Oh, um…I guess I can't borrow your notes then." He shrugged. "Can I get you a drink instead?" "Is this guy deaf?" Jen looked at me. "What's that?" He looked at Jen and then I almost laughed. "Do you want to go for a walk?" I asked him. "Rachael…." Jen was trying to protect me, I think. "Yeah, sure." The guy nodded. I left Jen, ignoring the look on her face and leaving her to carry my books back to our room. She was still sitting on one of them anyway, and besides, she was the one who'd called, not me. It was her fault, I didn't want to see her for awhile. Not that I was really pissed at her, I just didn't want to be reminded. He wasn't a bad looking guy, maybe 6 feet tall with brown hair and brown eyes. A clean face, pleasant enough to look at, especially when he smiled, which seemed to be most of the time. He had a sort of innocence, a self-deprecating sense of humor that wasn't totally abusive, he just liked to poke fun at himself. Like his name or whatever. He was comfortable, actually, falling into that rather uninspired category of 'harmless' and I'd never gone for those guys too much. I'm all of 5'2" but I had 3" heels on that day, so I was cheating and I almost looked tall. Long black hair, not silky fine, but thick and tangled usually. Brushing it out just makes my hair angry. I have dark brown eyes and light brown skin, and I'm small all around, gifts from my Asian mother. My dad gave me what brains I have, which could be considerable in a classroom, but out in the real world I was usually dumb as a stick. I was harmless too. Mostly. Cal liked to talk, I'll say that much for him, and I was in a mood for listening. Or pretending too anyway. I was really in a mood for trying to figure out why I ever stayed with my boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend now. He'd been my ex a couple times, but I always went crawling back. Even when he apologized to me, I felt like I was the one begging. I hated that. "You ever cheat on your girlfriend, Cal?" I asked him, interrupting his little story about something funny that had happened to his third cousin at the state fair some ten years ago. "I don't have a girlfriend." He shrugged. We were walking around Hollis Hill, which wasn't a hill at all, just a lot of trees planted in a circle. "But you've had one, right?" I looked at him. "Well, yeah…sorta, I guess…" He smiled. "We were fourteen." "Nevermind." I sighed. "What happened?" He asked and he sounded so sincere suddenly, like he really cared, that I told him. "He's a jerk." Cal decided. "Yeah. All guys are jerks." I nodded. "Oh." "Present company excluded, of course." I smiled. "For the moment anyway." "I'd never cheat on you." Cal said. "How do you know?" "Because I wouldn't." He smiled, like it was obvious. "But how do you know?" I persisted. "Because I love you." He said. I laughed at him. "Don't even start, Cal. I'm not in the mood, okay?" "What? You need a mood to be loved?" He smiled. "I didn't say you had to love me back or anything." "Good, because I don't." I shook my head. "I don't even know you." "Yeah, I know, but that's why were here, right?" "I don't know why I'm here." I sighed. "I can prove it." Cal told me. "Prove what?" I kicked at a twig on the sidewalk, not really caring if I broke a heel or not. "That I love you." He smiled. "Nobody can prove that. Not in a moment, it takes time…demonstration." "Yeah, I know." He nodded. "Then what are you talking about?" I couldn't tell if I liked talking with this guy or not, but he was sort of keeping my mind distracted now. "Demonstration." He stopped and a few feet further on I stopped, turning around to look at him. It was dark, but there were a lot of street lamps, the yellow kind and it gave him a warm glow. "Okay." I made a little face. "You're going to pull a rabbit out of a hat?" "No, I'm serious." He licked his lips. "I'll uh, I'll let you hurt me…if you want." "Hurt you?" I narrowed my eyes. "Why would I hurt you?" "So you know I love you." He said and I was lost. "You need to call my boyfriend, he's the one who hurts the ones he loves." I shook my head. "I don't love your boyfriend." He smiled. "I'm serious, I want to show you that I love you, that I'll do anything to prove it." "So hurting you is going to prove that you love me?" I laughed. "You're crazy, Cal." "My balls." He said quickly as I was turning away from him. "What?" "My balls, my nuts, the gonads, my jolly wobblies…" He wasn't even smiling. "I want to give them to you….figuratively speaking, or uh…literally if that's what you want, but I'm kind of attached to them." "You want to give me your balls?" I didn't know if I should laugh or run. "You can kick them, if you want." He nodded. "As many times as you want." "Cal, that's…crazy." I understood why he hadn't had a girlfriend since he was 14 years old. "Yeah, maybe…but I love you and I want to give you something." He shrugged. "Ever heard of flowers? Candy?" I held up my hands, offering him the obvious. "Yeah, but everyone does that and it just proves I got 5 bucks to spare." "True." I laughed. "But I don't see how…" "You never wanted to kick a guy in the balls?" He asked. "Not even what's-his-name on the phone?" "Um…not really." I said. "Well, I never wanted to get kicked either." He nodded. "It hurts." "You've been kicked before?" "I was the only boy in a house with four sisters, Rachael." He laughed. "You do the math." "I don't want to hurt you though." I protested. "I'm not into all that weird pain stuff." "Me neither." He smiled, stepping closer. "I just want to show you that I love you so much I'll give you anything, I'll do anything to prove it." "But why love me?" I started walking again, knowing he'd follow. "What did I do?" "I don't know, didn't you ever just fall in love?" He asked. "No." I lied. "People do it all the time, I bet." He told me. "But probably they don't say anything about it, you know?" "You think?" I was walking slowly from one pool of yellow light to the next, going around the trees in a big circle. "Yeah." He looked at me. "You sure you never just fell in love for no good reason?" "I think you have to know somebody before you can fall in love." "I think you have to know somebody before you can fall out of love." "But I don't love you." I said. "Maybe if you kick me, you will." He shrugged. "What if I kick you and I don't?" I asked, wondering how I could be talking seriously about this. "Well…" he paused, thinking about it, "…then we'll always have Paris." I laughed at that. "God, you're crazy." "Love does that. Kick me and we'll go watch Casablanca." "What?" "At my place, come on, if you kick me you can't just leave me, even if you're not in love with me." Calvin said. "So, I kick you and we go to your place, make some popcorn and watch the most romantic movie ever made while your balls turn black and blue?" I laughed. "That's your plan to seduce me?" "Uh…" He licked his lips and lifted his eyebrows, although I could barely see it. "Yeah." "Here?" I looked around. "You mean you'll do it?" I sighed. "I guess so, I mean if nothing else I guess it'll be funny when I tell my friends." "Yeah, mmm…just don't tell them it was me, okay?" he asked. "I mean if you don't fall in love with me." "I'm not going to." I shook my head. "But they're your balls." "No." He smiled. "They're your balls now." "Uh…" I let it go because I really didn't understand why I was doing it. "So, right here? Right now?" "How about we get a little closer to my place, you know…just in case." He chuckled. I didn't want to hurt the man. I might have been pissed at Paul for fucking around on me again, but it hadn't turned me into a man-hating bitch or anything. He was one guy who screwed up and I didn't like him very much, that was all. I probably wouldn't even have kicked Paul in the balls if I had the opportunity, at least not after I'd had 5 or 10 minutes to cool down. Catching him in the act might have been a little too much for a moment or two, but I just wasn't violent by nature. And what was up with Calvin? He loved me? That might have been true, I don't know. I'd seen guys that I loved at first sight, or probably thought I could love, if given the chance. But I'd never done anything about it. I'd never even walked up to them, any of them, and said hello or introduced myself. I'd felt shy with those guys, intimidated maybe, I don't know. Whatever the reason was it was clear at least that Cal had more determination than I had. More guts…more balls. Unless he was bullshitting me. Guys did that sometimes, even the harmless ones. But he couldn't be bullshitting me if he was offering me his balls, could he? That didn't make any sense. And where had he gotten this weird idea about being hurt, like that was going to make me fall in love because he was willing to suffer? I guess it almost made sense in some strange abstract concept, but in the practical real world all that was going to get him was a lot of pain, in my opinion. But maybe he just liked pain. I'd heard of those people, but I didn't think I'd ever meet one. He seemed so normal in every other way. It was confusing. I guess that's why I was going along. I was curious now, just to see how it would all turn out. If he wanted to get kicked, it wasn't going to hurt me. And I'd probably feel bad for it, but not too guilty. I'd spent an hour trying to talk him out of it. Cal getting hurt wasn't going to be my fault. And what if I fell in love? What if he was right? But that seemed so impossible it was laughable. "What's so funny?" Cal was smiling at me. "Nothing." I promised him. "I was just thinking how weird all this is." "Yeah, life is weird." He agreed. "Well, there's my apartment." He gestured to a little split level just off campus. "I'm in the upstairs." "Are you gonna be able to make the stairs if I, uh…you know…" "Um…" Cal looked up. "Maybe we should go inside." I giggled. "Yeah, good idea." I wasn't usually one for going into a guy's apartment on a first date, but the truth was I hadn't been on a first date in a long time. And this didn't feel like a date anyway. I liked Cal, even if he was strange. "Wow." I stood in his little living room looking around. "Post-Modern Minimalist." "Yeah, I went for the hermit look." Cal laughed. "Make yourself at home, do you want something to drink?" "No, uh-uh." It was a small apartment and the living room doubled as his bedroom with no furniture at all, just a futon on the floor, but at least it was made up neatly with a plain blue comforter spread over it. Big pillows propped up against the wall to lean back on. There were books everywhere and a small television on a plastic milk box. Some prints of Escher and some ink blots were framed on the walls. "Psych major, huh?" I smiled at him and he shrugged. "Cool." "So uh, are you ready?" he was looking at me expectantly. "Should I take my pants off or…" "No, no…" I held up my hands, laughing at him. "Let's stay dressed for a while." "Oh sure, I didn't mean to rush or anything." He laughed nervously. "Um, okay, well…" I bit my bottom lip a little. "You're sure about this?" "Yeah, oh yeah." He nodded. "I love you, Rachael." "We'll see." I said. "If you get really mad…" "I won't, I swear." "I know, but if you do…Don't blame me okay? I mean we can just watch the movie, I'm here already so…" "No, I mean yeah…We can watch it after, right?" Cal's eyes were soft, like a puppy's. "Yeah." I nodded. "I guess I'll just…kick you, huh?" "Yeah." Cal spread his legs a little, adjusting his pants even. "I'm ready." I took a deep breath, wondering if I was ready. I was wearing a pleated cotton skirt, not too short, and loose enough so I wouldn't be restrained at all. My blouse was loose, not that that was going to matter, but I sort of stretched a little anyway. Mostly I was just procrastinating though. I didn't really want to kick him and I started thinking I could just sorta kick him, hard enough so he'd feel it, but not hard enough to hurt him, you know? But then, as I stood there in front of him, I started thinking maybe a good hard kick was just what Cal needed. I mean he couldn't go through life asking every girl he met if she would kick him in the balls, that could get him killed some day. So if I really laid into him it might be a valuable lesson for the guy. I'd actually be doing him a favor if I kicked him pretty hard. But not too hard, I told myself, not really, really hard. Just pretty hard. "Okay, Cal…You want a blindfold?" I joked, but I could have been serious too. "No, uh-uh, I want to see your eyes when you do it." He told me, staring into my eyes. I'll tell you my heart fluttered a little at that. Maybe because I hadn't really thought we'd go through with it. Like one of us would chicken out at the last second, and there was still time for that, but I didn't think either of us would. And he wanted to see my eyes when I kicked him in the most sensitive personally sacred place on his body. The center of his manliness. He really was giving himself to me completely and was that love in his eyes? I couldn't ever remember seeing anyone look at me like that. It gave me a little chill and I blinked at it. "I love you, Rachael." Calvin whispered and then I kicked him. WHAM!!! I hadn't meant to do it so hard. I'd been trying to tell myself not too hard, but he was looking into my eyes and I'd been holding my breath and thinking about doing it. Left foot forward and then right leg up, but not too hard and…I think I did it as hard as I could. But I didn't mean to. My toe connected with his balls right where it was supposed to. And it was hard sharply pointed piece of leather too. Black and shiny and dangerous. I drove it into his balls without any reservation whatsoever. Like all my previous thoughts were lost in that single moment. I felt the little jolt as my leg suddenly stopped in it's motion, unable to go any higher because I'd connected solidly with Cal's pelvis. He went white as a sheet, white as a ghost in a snowstorm, and dropped down to the floor trying to curl up, but only bending his body a little. His hands were between his legs and his knees came up a little. Cal was trying to breath, but it just sounded like retching and weak coughs. He was gasping and shaking a little. I stared in shock at what I'd done, I was perhaps even horrified, but I was thrilled as well and that sensation filled me with guilt. I was excited, physically and emotionally, staring down at the man who was writhing in pain. My nipples were suddenly hard, almost painfully so, and my sex throbbed between my thighs. Feathers floated around inside my stomach, tickling me as my heart rushed adrenaline through my veins. I felt strong suddenly, powerful almost, like I was expanding, getting bigger somehow. But I didn't feel superior or anything, I didn't look down on Cal like I'd beaten an enemy, or vanquished a foe, or served justice to Paul's surrogate victim. I didn't see him as a victim at all. He was a hero, he was strong and brave, he was suddenly everything I'd ever wanted to find in a man. Someone I could respect and I didn't understand it all, but I knew it was true. There was nothing in me but love and gratitude. I knelt down by him, reaching out to touch Cal, to turn him gently so I could see his ashen face wet with tears. His eyes were closed and I bent low, kissing him, touching my soft lips to his cheeks and eyes and lips. I didn't say anything, I just held him carefully, lying down on that thin rough carpet and pressing my body to his. He was in pain, in agony just for me. Because he loved him, because he was willing to go through that to prove it. I put my lips to his ear, cradling his chin to the tops of my breasts, and whispered, "I love you, Cal."