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For Phil Holmes

The facts even when beaded on a chain, still did not have real order Events did not flow The facts were separate and haphazard and random even as they happened, episodic, broken, no s from prior events—

Tim O’Brien

Going After Cacciato

FALL 1985

and it’s a story that ht bore you but you don’t have to listen, she toldto be like that, and it was, she thinks, her first year, or, actually weekend, really a Friday, in Septeo, and she got so drunk that she ended up in bed, lost her virginity (late, she was eighteen) in Lorna Slavin’s room, because she was a Freshman and had a roommate and Lorna was, she remembers, a Senior or a Junior and usually soht was a Sophouy from NYU, a film student, and up in New Hampshire just for The Dressed To Get Screwed party, or a townie

She actually had her eye on soht: Daniel Miller, a Senior, a Drareat body and these airl froot mono and went to Europe and never finished his Senior year So this guy (she doesn’t even remember his na under, she rean that solasses on, and he was talking about all thesehih she hadn’t, and she kept agreeing with hi that he uy had spiky blueblack hair, paisley tie, and, unfortunately, the beginnings of a goatee) but was still cute enough, and she was sure she wasthe wrong actors, naraphers, but she wanted hi over at Kathy Kotcheff, and she was looking back at hi and he went over to the keg to get the a black bra and black panties coetting desperate She was going to go over and drop soo, but felt it would be too pretentious, so she walked up behind him and sih she didn’t but hoped that Lorna did and so he sood idea On the way up the stairs she bu to smoke from someone and they went to Lorna’s rooht on He turned it off She thinks she said she didn’t have any pot He said that was okay and brought out a silver flask that he’d filled with the grain alcohol punch before it had run out downstairs and she was already so drunk on that plus beer that she drank more of it anyway and before she knew it they were on Lorna’s bedout and she was too drunk to be nervous

Dire Straits ordownstairs and she was blind drunk and even though she knew this was like sheerelse She passed out and when she came to, she tried to take off her bra but was still too drunk and he had already started fking her but he didn’t know she was a virgin and it hurt (not that badly, only a little bit of a sharp pain, but not as bad as she had been taught to expect, but not exactly pleasant either) and that’s when she heard another voice in the roo and realizing that this person on top of her was not the NYU filuy but someone else It was pitch dark in the room and she could feel two pairs of knees on either side of her and she didn’t even want to knoas going on above her All she knew, all that seeing against the wall The door she thought he locked flew open and shadows ca soainst the bed and the door closed And she was thinking that this wouldn’t have happened with Daniel Miller, that he would have taken her gently in his big strong Drama major arms and undressed her quietly, expertly, taken the bra off with grace and ease, kissed her deeply, tenderly, and it probably wouldn’t have hurt, but she wasn’t with Daniel Miller She was there with souy from New York whose name she didn’t know and God only knoho else, and the two bodies above her continued h she was too drunk to stay on top, there was another person holding her up, propping her up, while another touched her brsts through the bra and kept fking her and she could hear the couple next door arguing loudly and then she passed out again, then woke up when one of the guys hit his head against the wall, slipping off the bed taking her with hi