I wanted to say yes because I knew that was what he wanted, but my distaste for alcohol trumped my desire to please him, because men in the Philippines like my father sat around getting drunk all the time and I refused to be like them. I wanted to explain why I didn’t like beer, but this would have meant telling him I wasn’t white, so I didn’t. Instead I settled into a cobalt blue beanbag chair as he opened his mini-fridge and took out a Budweiser. When I heard him pop the can open, my senses felt suddenly alert, as I noticed the swishing sounds his jeans made while he walked back and sat on a chair. We talked about mundane things like the political philosophy class I was taking, how he was a senior government major but planned to go to med school. I decided I would sleep with him if he asked me to, that I didn’t really have enough experience to know what my type was. Maybe I would actually enjoy being with a large hairy guy, and D. A. Miller kept telling us we needed to figure out how to dissociate romance from sex, to fuck and have fun, rebel against prudes and people who wanted to make villains out of promiscuous men because of AIDS.

“Do you wanna see my room?” he asked. After I walked through the door and saw the part of his single bed that the light from the common room could catch, I wasn’t prepared for the moment when his hand reached from behind to touch me on the opposite shoulder, then turned me around to kiss me. Or maybe there would never be a moment when I would be adequately prepared to kiss a man for the first time. Or for him to push me just enough that it was easier for me to lie in his bed than to stand up. Or for him to follow and lie on top of me, our lips still fastened together.

My eyes adjusted to the new darkness as he stood up to wiggle out of his sneakers, then take off his clothes. He pulled my legs so they dangled down the side of the bed, then undid my jeans and pulled them down along with my underwear. I heard two soft thuds, the sound of my sneakers falling to the floor.