Finally, it was the first day of fall semester of my senior year in college. It was a bright, sunny morning in Detroit’s midtown, with traffic crossing Warren and pulsing down Woodward at a brisk pace. I had an early morning class at the Arbor State Extension by the museum, which meant I had to cross that busy intersection; I was nearly run over by a Mack truck running a red light. Later, on the way back, I had to dodge a city bus that apparently didn’t want to brake for a black girl to get to my late morning class on the campus of Warren Woodward University
I was a bit disappointed in the latter only because I was hoping to have at least one of my classes in Old Main, the romantic, Romanesque high school building that had long since been converted into college classrooms just a block from my house. Sitting and learning in its turn-of-the-century interior like the elite, white rich kids of Detroit’s yesteryear had appealed to me since childhood, since my daddy had taken me for a walk through its hallways. We used to walk all over the Warren Woodward campus after paying a visit to the fine arts museum and library, and those trips formed my notion of what it would be like to get an education even before I won a scholarship to Ann Arbor. No doubt, by returning to Detroit for my senior year—not to mention my plan to attend Warren Woodward for grad school—was subconsciously motivated by those childhood impressions. But while Avie had several of her classes in Old Main—it now housed the theater department offices and rehearsal spaces, which didn’t seem fair since there were at least three other theater spaces around campus and a building just for costumes, props, and set design—I would have to wait for some other semester to actually sit in one of Old Main’s general classrooms.
Instead, my class—in urban cultural theory—was held in a nondescript second-floor classroom in a much less romantic mid-century modern building, Science Hall, which my daddy and I had also walked through countless times. The sleek, horizontal brick and glass building was the lynchpin of the postwar campus master plan by Armenian-American architect Suren Pilafian, a fact our instructor dwelled upon in our first lesson. Like other industrial cities Detroit had lofty ambitions of bringing back the affluent whites who were already spilling outward toward the surrounding farmlands to its downtown Civic Center and its midtown University-Cultural Center. The rounded, almost streamlined post-Deco exterior of Science hall housed even more generic classroom and hallways equipped with lockers that gave the building more the feeling of a suburban high school than an inner city university. The effect was certainly less scholarly and a lot less grown up than the Victorian classical interior of Old Main, which ironically had been built for a much younger cohort of adolescent students half a century before.
I filed into the class room, took a seat near the front, received my copy of a stapled syllabus the teacher handed out, and began taking notes. I was back in the flow of school, an environment I knew only too well. Sure, I’d taken a class at the extension over the summer, but taking a summer class when you know everyone else is on vacation never feels as much like school as when a whole campus comes alive, throbbing with new and returning students. Something about and sitting in a Warren Woodward classroom instead of the lonely Arbor State Extension building, with the fall semester finally underway, was comforting.
It meant I really wasn’t going to school in Ann Arbor any more, except for a few advising meetings. I was starting a new chapter in my life.
At the end of class, I stowed the papers in my back pack. Heading toward the door, I spotted Nancy’s roommate Audrey Tomita sitting in the back of the room doing the same thing.
“Hey, Audrey, I didn’t know we were going to be in the same class,” I said, catching up to her before she was out in the hall. “Isn’t this exciting, to have the school year finally underway?”
Audrey had a Japanese last name but in fact was three-parts Taiwanese, which is to say, mostly Chinese or Chinese-American. I had always thought of her as shorter than me, but as we passed through the door together, I was became conscious of her roundish body—it was no taller than mine.
“I saw you down in front when I came in, but all the seats next to you were filled,” she said shyly. I realized this was the first time we’d been together apart from gatherings with the Kirby Street crowd; I wondered if I still made her uncomfortable, since she was straight and I had been intimate with her roommate, Nancy. “Uh…how’s the first day of your semester going?”
“So far, so good,” I said. “I have two classes at the extension—really only one since the other is independent study, writing my senior thesis—and two more over here. My other one is in the music building up on Cass, of all places.”
Before we could indulge in any more small talk, a white boy with brown hair approached us in the hallway. He had a knapsack slung over his shoulder casually, and he clutched a large wire-bound sketchbook in one arm. “Hey, Audrey, who’s your friend?” he said. “You know, in silhouette you two could be twins—you have almost identical body types.”
“Clarissa, I’d like you to meet Chuck,” said Audrey. “He’s one of Nancy’s friends from art school; he wants to be a comic book artist someday. He’s really good—show her your drawings, Chuck.” He folded back the pages in his sketchbook to reveal monsters, Ralph McQuarrie-styled space ships, muscular heroes, and shapely women.
“Pretty good,” I said. “You should show these to my sister Avie. She likes to draw.”
“I keep telling him he needs to draw the breasts on his women smaller,” said Audrey. “He’s going to alienate his female readers.”
Chuck turned a bright red at this. “It’s just a convention of the genre,” he said. “You sound like Peggy Weir, a girl that lives in my building; she goes to school here. I guess feminists just don’t understand art.”
I patted him on the arm. “Oh, I know some big-titted chicks,” I said. “They live and breathe and walk among us. You just need to vary your experiences, that’s all.” Chuck only blushed the more.
“Where’ve you been all summer?” asked Audrey. “We were looking for you. We had a cookout on Labor Day.”
“I was in Pittsburgh with my aunt and uncle,” said Chuck. “They’ve got great museums there—and in Cleveland too, believe it or not. Anyway, I’m living down on East Willis now, off of Woodward.”
“That’s by the Union Stripe restaurant,” I said. “One of my fellow waitresses, Marge, rents over there—I think she said her roommate’s named Peggy.”
“That’s them,” said Chuck. “Marge and Peggy. They live upstairs from me. You’ll have to come by.” He stared at my modest bustline with an expression of curiosity. “Maybe I can sketch you some time.”
“Nancy sketches me,” I said. “Naked, too. We’ll all get together and show you our little titties, and you’ll have no choice but to learn to draw realistic breasts or die trying.”
Chuck only blushed again. “Well, I gotta get back over to the art school,” he said, closing up his sketchbook. “Nice meeting you, Clarissa. See ya later, Audrey.”
After he disappeared, Audrey said, “Marge and Peggy? Roommates, both named Margaret. I’ll bet that confuses the mailman.”
“He’s not the first Chuck I’ve met, either,” I said, as we proceeded down the stairwell. “Unfortunate choice of name—Avie was nearly raped by a guy named Chuck.”
“That’s terrible,” said Audrey. “We better call him Charlie around her.”
Once we were out of the building and walking up Cass Avenue, I asked, “What’s a student from the art school doing over this way?”
“They Center for Artistic Investigation sends all its students to Warren Woodward for their academic requirements,” Audrey explained. “He’s probably taking history or somesuch. So, are you really going to model for him?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Nancy says the models they get for their classes are all old and saggy and boring. Where else is he going to learn to draw a compact body like mine, but from real life?”
Audrey laughed. “He asked me to pose for him.”
“Did you?” I asked.
“I’m with Wilton,” she said. “I could never do something like that, not with someone I wasn’t intimate with.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “Figure drawing isn’t a relationship. But it does take a certain personality. One of my friends Dana is looking into it. She’s pretty fierce; I think she might scare the students. So, was Chuck and Nancy boyfriend and girlfriend before I came along?”
“They were just platonic,” said Audrey. “I think Chuck’s still a virgin, and I guess Nancy only recently figured out what she wanted,” she said, meaning other girls like me. Although I wasn’t as sure of that. “The only time he’s been over to the house it’s to hang around with Nancy,” said Audrey, “but he couldn’t even look me in the eye, let alone Hadleigh. But he was really coming on to you. For artists like him, showing off his sketchbook is flirting.”
“Poor thing,” I said. “But I wouldn’t know what to do with a virgin. I’m used to older, more mature guys.”
“Oh,” said Audrey, giving me an odd look. “I thought you liked Nancy.”
“I do,” I said, matter-of-factly. “But I also like what I like. I don’t put a label on it.” Now it was Audrey that wasn’t making eye contact.
“Did I mention Chuck’s last name is Bradford?” she said, changing the uncomfortable subject. “His older brother is John Bradford—a reporter for The Detroit Day.”
“Really?” I said. “I have a whole clip-file of John Bradford’s columns on megaheroes and whatnot.”
From about a block away, I spotted Wilton walking toward us. A funny thing happened as he got about a hundred feet way from us: he suddenly crossed the street to the other side, walking along the modern entrance of the Detroit Public Library, then crossing back over Cass Avenue and disappearing into the Warren Woodward mall.
“That’s odd,” I said. “Are you and Wilton on the outs? Did you have a fight or something?”
“You hungry for lunch?” answered Audrey. “Let’s go in here…I love the Circa 1890 Saloon.”
We threw our stuff in a booth and went into the bathroom to wash our hands. It was tiny, and kind of comical, but as we both looked into the mirror, Audrey said, “Chuck was right, Clarissa. We do have the same body type.” I had thought of Audrey as short and stocky, but studying our figures in the mirror I could see we were about the same height. And, except for the fact that I was part African-American and Audrey was Asian-American, we had almost the identical body type: solidly-built frames, low centers of gravity, and rather light on top. Audrey wasn’t as light on top as I was; in fact, she had a pretty nice little set of boobs. But she could have worn my Ms. Megaton Man uniform without exactly bursting out of the plunging V-neck.
Back in the booth, I pressed her on what had taken place on the street. “What’s up with Wilton?” I demanded. “He walked right by you, like he didn’t know you. You just said you wouldn’t model…”
“Shh,” she said, looking around to see if anyone she knew from school could be eavesdropping. “No one knows he and I are a couple, and that’s the way we want to keep it. The man you saw”—she didn’t want to use Wilton’s name for fear it could be overheard—“was my TA in a philosophy of science course I took a couple semesters ago, and now he’s my recitation instructor for a big auditorium lecture course I’m taking. The ‘non-fraternization’ rules the school has are so draconian—couples are required to report the moment they start dating, even if the relationship didn’t begin until after the course came to an end and final grades were turned in. And it’s retroactive until I graduate—or until Wilton’s no longer employed by the school—crazy, right? There’s talk that they might modify the rules, but until then, any grade I earn under Wilton and all my coursework would be subject to review by the judicial board. If we went by the book, it would just fuck things up with red tape; I could delay my graduation and hinder starting grad school next year. Not to mention it would cause him in his career. So we decided to pretend not to know each other socially outside of class.”
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“But isn’t it worse, what you’re doing?” I asked. “If Warren Woodward finds out, they could really come down on you.”
“That’s why we’re keeping it a secret,” said Audrey.
“I’m beginning to like you,” I said.
The waitress took our orders and our hamburgers and baskets of fries came pretty quickly. “I have a feeling this is going to straight to our thighs,” I said.
“I don’t care,” said Audrey. “I love this place.” She took a monster bite out her burger.
“So, did you start balling him while he was still your instructor in your last class?” I asked innocently.
“Oh, no,” said Audrey, her mouth full of food. “We would never break the rules so flah-hum-hum.” The last word didn’t come out too clearly, owing to the fact that her face was stuffed, so she took a swig of beer and wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her Warren Woodward Warriors hoodie. “I mean flagrantly,” she said. We both laughed.
“Good,” I said, chuckling. “I would hate to think of you as a scofflaw.”
“I’ve been balling him since I was fourteen, and he was seventeen.”
“Holy shit!” I said, almost with beer coming out my nose. “Isn’t that worse?” I happened to know that the age of consent in Michigan was sixteen, and the state didn’t have a “Romeo and Juliet” law to exempt minors—or even lovers within a year or so of one another in cases where one is past the age of majority—from prosecution for statutory rape as some other states did. I knew this because Avie, who’s three years younger than me, had also lost her virginity at fifteen, and often dated boys sixteen and older, and it created some real anxiety back in my household when I was already away at college in Ann Arbor. “You two could have gotten into a lot of trouble,” I said to Audrey. “You still might, if anyone ever finds out—I don’t even know if there’s a statute of limitations in such cases.”
“That’s why we don’t tell anyone,” said Audrey. “It’s why we’re good at keeping secrets; we’ve been doing it for so long. Besides, we’re still together. We’re soulmates.”
“Since you were twelve?” I said. Nancy had been the closest thing to a normal dating relationship I’d ever had, and that was only a few weeks along. I couldn’t imagine screwing just one guy for seven years; it would be like still having only gone to bed with Yarn Man. “Haven’t you ever been with anybody else? Haven’t you ever wanted to?”
“Sure, I’ve wanted to,” said Audrey. “But we’re just very loyal people. We’ve had our relationship difficulties—everyone expects their first love to peter out—but I’ve come to realize I’ll never find a more brilliant partner, and neither will he, and we both know it. We thought we dodged a bullet last semester; when I got my schedule and this semester learned I would be his student again, we just decided to keep things on the downlow. I guess after all this time, it’s become second nature to us.”
I should mention that during all of this that I did catch Audrey looking at my chest, too, with almost the same expression as Chuck Bradford had had in his eyes. They weren’t exactly critical—they didn’t seem displeased that my boobs were so small—but they weren’t altogether adoring, either. It was more a fascinated curiosity. I had chosen to wear an old “Ghoul Power!” T-shirt I’d retrieved from my parents’ house under a denim jacket on my first full day of school for good luck, but it had worn thin from years of laundering since the horror movie host’s heyday in the seventies. And I never wear a bra and it must have been showing my nipples fairly prominently.
From what Audrey told me, Chuck Bradford had been a commuter through his first few years of art school, but had moved downtown for his senior year and was living in an apartment across Woodward Avenue from the Union Stripe restaurant, along East Willis, as he told us. I began to see him from time to time in the restaurant, and it was only a matter of time before he would run into my sister. I hadn’t plan to introduce them to each other at all, since I wasn’t sure how she’d take the name thing, but she spotted him drawing over at a corner table and was drawn to him like a fly to the proverbial fly paper.
“Avie, I’d like you to meet…Charlie Bradford. Charlie’s a friend of Nancy’s. Charlie, this is my sister Avril.”
“Hi Avril,” said Chuck, looking up. “Most people call me…”
“Charlie, your sketches are awesome!” said Avie, who immediately sat on the bench seat next to him. She proceeded to gaze at each drawing in his sketchbook as if they were Renaissance studies.
“…Charlie,” he said. “Charlie’s fine. I’m fine with Charlie.” I never saw a guy’s eyes grow so huge and stay glued on my sister’s big boobs for so long.
“You can call me Avie!”
Throughout my shift, as I waited on other customers, I looked over at Avie and Charlie from time to time. They were in constant conversations—well, Avie was doing most of the talking while poor Charlie was getting an eyeful. As far as I could tell, he only looked up when she made some emphatic point about politics or society or culture. But she didn’t seem critical of his drawing. Judging by the light in her eyes, Avie was more than a bit taken. Charlie, as he insisted on being known forever after, had no idea what he was in for.
The next time all of us got together at Nancy’s apartment, Charlie filled us in.
“I interned all summer at Bissell and Banks, a furniture clip-art studio,” he said.
“I worked there until last spring,” said Nancy. “That’s where your drawing board comes from, Clarissa.”
“Yeah, they’ve been cleaning out a lot of that old furniture, downsizing,” said Charlie. “That place has been there forever, but business hasn’t been so good lately. Some of their staff artists date back to the fifties, when the company produced comic books as well as clipart.”
“Comic books?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s all the same kind of art supplies,” explained Charlie. “Pencils and pen and ink and brushes and Bristol board, all drawn by hand. There’s a whole bullpen where the drawing tables are grouped, and the artists sit there all day drawing sofa groupings and armoires and other furniture all day. But in the fifties, briefly, they were under contract with some publisher out of Chicago that need much the same kind of art, only with people in it and hand-lettered word balloons. Bissell and Banks produced comic strip stories and features for generic titles after the war—crime, horror, jungle, teen humor. They still have whole closets full of artwork. They’ve been letting me take it home, little by little, because otherwise they were just going to start throwing it out.”
“Are there any Mod Puma of Simpler Era Mugging Strong Man stories?” I asked.
Charlie shook his head. “I never heard of them,” he said. “But there were a ton of comic books back then—it used to be the national pastime, reading the funnies. Bissell and Banks never did anything you’d have ever heard of; they produced filler material for the most part—their most popular characters being the Death Angel and the Masked Jungle Girl. You ever hear of them?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“See? Totally made-up stuff,” Charlie continued. “Not even based on real costumed crime fighters, like my brother writes about.”
Later, Audrey and I had to study for our first test in urban cultural theory, so I had her over to my place. We had textbooks all over the bed and drawing table, so we sat on the rug.
“I’m breaking up with Wilton,” she suddenly blurted out.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I suppose you got tired of all the secrecy and shame…or just sleeping with the same and only person all this time. Too bad you missed out on Charlie—Avie got to him, and now it’s the love triangle of the century, ‘cause he still has his heart set on that Peggy. Did you notice the swagger he has now, since he lost it? He can even make eye contact with girls. Guys are so funny.”
“No, Wilton and I still sleep together,” said Audrey.
I set down my pencil. “I’m not sure that counts as breaking up, then.”
“We’re just taking a break from monogamy,” said Audrey. “We’re seeing other people.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I mean, if that’s what you want. Has he been seeing other people?”
“No, he doesn’t even know about it.”
“Oh. Well, are you seeing somebody?”
“Yes.”
“Anybody I know?”
“You,” said Audrey, and she leaned over and kissed me right on the mouth.
“I see,” I said, when I could catch my breath. “Have you ever been with a woman before?”
“No, but I want to be with somebody whose mind I respect.”
“That’s very flattering,” I said. “But you don’t have to sleep with everyone who’s your friend. I’m beginning to learn that lesson myself.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be promiscuous like you,” said Audrey, with all sincerity. “I just want to, like, get started.”
“I told you, I’m reluctant to be with virgins,” I said.
“I thought you just meant guys.”
“Jeez, what are they piping into the water over there on Kirby Street?” I asked. “I’m not sure Nancy is really all that into girls; I think she was just exploring. That’s fine, that’s legitimate…but you should really do it with someone you have a crush on, at least.”
Audrey dove in again and started sucking on my nipples. I was wearing a cotton baseball jersey, and she just started sucking my nipples, right through the fabric. She was getting my shirt all wet and everything.
“Audrey,” I said.
She looked up. “Yes?”
I wanted to say more, but her eyes were pretty, and her cheek bones were so lovely. I just started kissing her.
After a spell, she said, “Wait, I can’t do this.”
I was just starting to get all hot and bothered. I said, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m feeling guilty about Wilton,” she said. “And, what if this is just a fling? What if I lose a friend and a study partner because of a youthful indiscretion?”
“Well, I would never stop being your friend,” I said. “But if you don’t feel like, fine.” I stood up and stretched my legs and walked over to my closet. “Take your clothes off,” I said.
“But I just told you…”
“Not for that,” I said. “There’s something I want you to try on, something I’ve wanted to see you in.”
Audrey stood up and unbuttoned her shirt, unsurely. “But what…?”
I pulled a zippered garment bag from the back of the closet. “Go ahead, take your clothes off. Strip, I said.”
Audrey took off every her shirt, jeans, and underwear, and stood there without a stitch on as I laid the contents of the bag on the bed.
“This is my megahero uniform,” I said.
“You’re Ms. Megaton Man,” Audrey said in amazement.
This took me aback. “I thought you knew,” I said. “But never mind. Try it on.”
It took only a few moments for her to slip into the blue body suit with the yellow “M” on the torso, the red panties, the yellow boots and gloves, and the orange visor. Last came the red cape and shiny brass buttons.
“Can I fly in this thing?” she said.
“Could you fly before?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then I should think not,” I said. “And don’t tap anything on the visor. The button shoot laser beams and stuff.”
“You look great in it,” I said. “Your boobs are bigger than mine, but not too big. Otherwise, you’d burst out of the plunging V-neck. You’re an Asian Ms. Megaton Man,” I said. “Do I look this fantastic? You really look fantastic. Charlie was right, we have the same exact bodies.
Audrey looked down at her exposed cleavage. “I could never wear this in public,” she said. “But it does make my medium-sized boobs look great.” She smiled.
They weren’t that big, but I did feel the sudden urge to kiss them, just as she’d kissed mine. I resisted the urge. “I have to pee,” I said.
While I was in the bathroom, there was a knock at the door. I called out, “Wait, you better let me answer the door,” but it was too late.
“Are you Clarissa James?” asked a woman’s voice. “You must be—you’re wearing the uniform I made.”
“Who is it, Audrey?” I called.
“Who are you?” I heard Audrey’s voice say.
“I’m the lady who made your uniform, Ms. Megaton Man,” said the voice. “Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James…you can call me Seedy.”
I flushed the toilet and pulled up my pants and washed my hands as fast as I could, and ran out to the studio room. There, an elderly black lady stood, examining the seams and material of my Ms. Megaton Man uniform Audrey was wearing. She made Audrey turn around to inspect the cape.
“Hi, Mrs., um, Seedy,” I said. “I’m Clarissa James. I’m Ms. Megaton Man; this is just my friend, Audrey.”
“Then why aren’t you wearing your uniform, Ms. James?” said the woman. “I thought they’d told me you were black. You’d better not let Preston Percy know you let your friend here wear your suit; it might be against the law.”
“You’re the lady who made my Ms. Megaton Man uniform? You’re Seedy James?”
“I’m also a noted physicist, dear—retired, thank the Lord. But I’ve always like to keep my hands busy. Sewing and crafts are my hobby, you could say. Naturally, they drafted me to make all those costumes—It wasn’t as if you could just call up a tailor from the city to come over to Bayonne and outfit the Meltdowns. Topmost secret priority and all that business.”
Seedy studied the uniform intensely as Audrey looked at me, wide-eyed. I shrugged my shoulders.
“You certainly haven’t worn this much in a year’s time,” said Seedy. “Often, these megaheroes will wear out a suit every three months.”
I slipped around the two of them and went over to the drawing board, where I kept my dial-up phone. I picked up the receiver. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to make a call.”
“You go right ahead, dear,” said the woman. “I’ll just go about my business and be on my way.”
“No, take your time, please, Dr. James,” I said, spinning the numbers on the dial frantically.
My sister picked up in the residence of the church, two doors away.
“Avie,” I whispered. “Get over here right away!”
“What is it?” Avie asked. “I’m right in the middle of…”
“Avie, our grandmother who passed away before we were born just walked in my door.”