It was funny how being so wired for Amy made all of my normal anxiety seem like a joke. When your body’s on fire, and every nerve ending pulses with its own score, who gives a shit about the minority and majority rights? The resolution was important, it was everything, in fact, as my coaches and my dad kept pounding into me. But it paled when I caught a glimpse of that long, brown hair, her sweet skin, the way she was so animated talking to her friends.
I walked into the cafeteria and halted at the threshold. My stomach was churning. The room felt like it would spin if I gave it a long enough stare, and everything in my mind was pure, unadulterated chaos.
Boom, boom, boom.
Amy, Amy, Amy.
We had about fifteen minutes before they’d announce the pairings, and if Talia won, which was pretty much a given, then it was all about the power of opponent, and how many debates we’d lost. I didn’t know how Amy had done in this last round. The pairing sheets were pulled down already, so I had to ask her. Thank God I had to ask her, that meant breaking through what we’d just gone through. That meant reaching out, touching her, kissing her. My fingers itched to play. She would be the best instrument of my life if she would let me. My mind wandered as I stood there, and then suddenly she appeared, as if conjured by some sort of magic that lust taps into. Except, it wasn’t just lust – if it were that, I could have handled it. This was a chord that ran so deep inside me, I couldn’t find the beginning of the sound.
Amy. Her name triggered a flash of emotion that slid through my body from toe to head, but settled in between. Thank God for suit jackets.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked softly. Her voice was like a caress, like a stroke, as if her hand had reached down into me and taken me.
Something in her half-lidded eyes told me that for as sweet, and gentle, and smart as she was, something was waiting to be unleashed. I wanted to be the one to open that door. Maybe we could open each other’s doors and find the treasures inside. She reached over and took my hand, not palm to palm, the way you hold a friend’s hand, or a little kid’s, but interlacing the fingers like a promise of bodies entwined, all in the form of a simple hand. She didn’t have to drag me, I went willingly, and we went into a classroom. She was a little shaky in those high heels, but damn, the lines of her calves, the way it made her hips sway, made me feel like a man. They made me feel a lot of things that were new and old all at once.
“I meant what I said,” she said, bold now, her eyes blazing, “will you go to prom with me?”
We didn’t go to the same school, and at my school I wasn’t planning to go to prom. It seemed like a stupid ritual that a bunch of us had decided to forgo in favor of just hanging out, getting drunk, and then going to after-prom parties. But for Amy? “Yes,” I said, so quickly the word came out of me a grunt, “yes, of course.”
The tux, the limo, the flowers, the dinner, the ritual and the silliness, all started to make sense as I stared into her eyes, and then something inside me just rose up and I leaned down to take her mouth, which she gave freely. The resolution, the question of majority rights versus minority rights, the pairings, the tournament itself, all melted away as her hands, the same fingers that had intertwined with mine, wrapped around my back and my own embraced her, our lips hungry, our mouths making invitations that I hoped to God would be extended till the end of time.
“Hey,” a voice barked.Ross. We pulled apart. He shot us a what the fuck? look.
“How can you make out at a time like this? The pairings were just announced.”
“What do you mean?”
“Talia took number one, she was the only one undefeated, but there are four people, two debates, to square off for spots two and three. I’m not one of ‘em, obviously,” he said, bitter, “but you two are.”
Amy looked at me, eyes wide. “Oh! Sam, Sam, Sam!” She started jumping up and down in those spiked high heels, boobs bouncing hypnotically. I could stare at those all day. “We did it, we did it.”
Ross cut us off. “Don’t get too excited,” he said, “you two are squaring off.”
Her face went slack and based on the way my muscles felt, mine must have, too. We both came to a dead halt, her hands frozen on my forearms. I just stared at him, horrified, unable to look at her eyes. “What?” we both said in unison.
“It’s you two against each other. Only one of you is going to Nationals.”
Now I turned, a magnet pulling me to her face. Ross disappeared, probably off to feed the gossip mill and tell them about what he’d found. I didn’t give a shit. My mouth went dry, my body froze.
“Oh, Sam,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
I could handle anything but this. Not Amy crying. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” I said, my voice feeling like it came from an echo chamber. All I could do was reach for her and pull her into my arms. She smelled so sweet, and her body was so lush.
She said something muffled into my chest, and I felt her face wiggling against my shoulder. She pulled back. “I don’t know what to do.”
My Dad’s voice echoed inside my head. ‘You come home a winner. You come home a winner.’ What if that meant something other than what my dad thought? I could mind fuck her right now, and it would be easy. She wanted me, she invited me to prom, I wanted her back and I wanted all of this just as much as she did. I could string her along, I could make an allusion to not dating her if I lost, – she was that ripe. I had that much power. It was sickening.
The only way someone has that kind of power is if you give it to them. Maybe Amy was giving it to me out of a totally different sense than I gave it to my father. I just had too much chaos in my mind to know. Some core of decency sprang up and then, with a clarity I didn’t know I possessed, I knew exactly what I needed to do.
I pulled her back from me, hands on her shoulders. Everything turned into a pinpoint. My hands on her, the soft swell of her body, my tight legs, my stomach in knots, the air between us was like its own little atmosphere of excitement, and confusion, and wanting.“You’re going in there, and I’m going in there, and we’re going to do our best. Nobody’s pulling any punches, nobody’s holding back. Do you hear me?”
Relief. That’s what showed in her eyes. Relief. “Yes,” she whispered.
I pulled back and got on my neutral debate face, which wasn’t all that different from my regular face. I extended my hand, she took it, smiling, wiping her tears away with the other.
“May the best man win.”
“Woman!” she interjected.
“May the best debater win.”
Amy
We walked like we were part of a funeral procession, out of that classroom, our hands clasped, Sam taking the lead. The pairing sheet was taped in front of the cafeteria, and I felt people clapping me on the back, heard my name said a thousand times, saw my coach’s face as he spoke to me, animated and joyful, and then concerned and intense. The cacophony around me was like a cloud or a pillow full of voices, and faces, and people. What grounded me was the feel of Sam’s hand in mine, and then he slowly, finger by finger, inch of skin by inch, let go, leaving me floating in a soup of overwhelm. He faded off into the crowd, one last look at me with a sad smile.
The voices went from being muffled sounds to specific words. My name, the resolution, ‘oh my God’ over and over. I heard girls saying “oh my God” and “what if?” But I had to beat Sam. Sam. What did this mean? What would this do? Would he hate me if I won? Would I hate him if he won?
He was so laid back and mellow in some ways, but I’d faced him before in a debate. He was sharp. Not in that weaselly way that Joe Ross could be, but sharp like a hunter, who could sit for days fully camouflaged and utterly silent, waiting for that one perfect moment to pounce and win. That was Sam’s style. I’d seen it over the years and learned to adapt. My own strategy against him was to match it, stay calm and cool, not aggressive, and absolutely use no sarcasm. Smile, fake as much confidence as I could, and meet him, mature mind to mature mind, with analysis, facts and the superior argument.
Different voices told me that I was on the affirmative, and that was my stronger case. I knew that Sam was weaker in the negative. It made me sick to my stomach that I was thinking about him this way.
Two weeks ago, I would have reveled in it. I’d have been torn, but I’d have known that this was about the superior mind and who, under controlled conditions, could come out the victor. Now? Who won in this scenario? It felt Pyrrhic; it felt impossible. For the first time in all my years of debating, in all my years of speech, even, I thought about throwing a debate.
Sam’s words echoed in my head. It would be dishonorable to do that. Even worse, it would cheapen him in addition to cheapening me. Throwing the debate would say that I didn’t have the confidence that he was my equal or my better, and that’s what I wanted. That true confidence, right?
A keening rose up inside me as my coach opened up his portfolio and went over some key salient points in my case. All I heard was the voice of the teacher in those Charlie Brown specials that my mom made us watch in her nostalgia for her own childhood. Mwah mwah, mwah mwah mwah mwah. that’s what I heard. What I felt, though, was a whole other universe. Sam’s fingers, his mouth, his lips, his tongue, his everything. That heart and that desire. I could feel it pounding into me like his drumsticks on my heart.
Something in me would have to shut down in order to look him in the eye, to read my case, to cross examine this man I had just kissed, who had just kissed me. How was I going to do this? That thought, how was I going to do this? made my throat ache, made me blink furiously trying to control the tears and focus, or at least pretend to look like I was focusing on what my coach was saying. He closed the portfolio, clapped me on the back and I took that as a sign that whatever he had been saying was over.
Debaters filed out and I knew what they were doing. These final runoffs were open to anyone who could get a seat, as long as they were quiet during the debate. Half the girls from my team were going to come in and watch, I knew. A few of them had an inkling that I was interested in Sam, and some of them simply wanted to watch him. He wasn’t exactly unpopular, and for a hot guy who was quiet and shy, he had a little bit of a following of girls crushing on him, me included, except none of them had just gotten a kiss.
When I got to the door he was already in there, his head down, reading over his papers. He looked up and gave me a closed mouth, tight smile and a nod. I returned it. Here we were, everything in my life coalescing in one point. I had to debate the one guy in the whole wide world who made my soul sing, and if I didn’t give it my all, I’d let myself down. Even if it meant I had to lose Sam, being true to me would, ironically, have to be the ultimate sacrifice.
Sam
From the minute her opening words were out of her mouth, “Resolved: when in conflict, the rights of the majority ought to supersede those of the minority,” I knew it was over.
Over.
Her opening case was brilliant, my cross examination was perfect, my opening case was outstanding, and it was like volleying a ball back and forth, to and fro, as if we were performers in a play, unscripted like an improv. Something sparkled between us. I could feel it. There was a high to it, the way you get when you’re on a sports team, like you’re playing basketball, and everyone’s smooth, and the passes are perfect, and the dribble, and the motion, and the jump, and the release – it all just flows.
