The Tent by Ray Wise
Associate creative nonfiction editor Ari Koontz on today’s bonus essay: In this tense yet tender snapshot of youthful daring, Wise turns a humorous scene into a site of heartache and discovery. With deft imagery that skirts around the open wound of unrequited queer yearning, “The Tent” lingers on the small details and transforms a brief romp into a crystallized, catalyzing encounter.
The Tent
Anna and I were crammed into one dressing room in the Sports Authority of the strip mall plaza two towns away from our own. A pile of untouched nylon clothing and a ransacked box sat on the floor beneath us. The walls were scarlet, our bare skin cast in their rose glow. We stood inches from each other, shirts off, buttons of our jeans undone, trying to locate the correct positioning for the task at hand. We were attempting to place each piece of the contents of the box—a camping tent—beneath our clothing.
We were almost there. I had poles lining my jeans, forcing my knees straight, and running up my chest beneath my bra. Shorter pieces tucked in my Ugg boots, skirting my calves. We rolled up the tarp overlay, polyester crinkling between our fingers, secured it in my waistband and pulled our t-shirts back on. When our puffer jackets were zipped, bounty secured, we closed the box carefully, so it appeared untouched. I tried to ignore the price sticker, which read two hundred and eighty nine dollars.
We were stealing the tent for Anna’s boyfriend, whose birthday was next month. The plan was to use the tent to camp out in his backyard, where she’d lose her virginity.
Anna was tall, blonde, and full of sex appeal. People called her a bombshell when she was eleven. She’d had boyfriends ever since. I didn’t have boyfriends; I had Anna. We’d been friends since we were two. Each time she dated someone, she slipped further away, toward a version of adulthood I knew I was supposed to slip toward too. For some reason, it felt out of my grasp. I didn’t know why friendship felt so much better than the prospect of boys, but I’d do anything to stop the feeling of losing it.
Earlier that week in English class, we read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato wrote we are always able to move toward the light, to become enlightened. The trick is to recognize when we’re in the dark and see an alternative, a new direction.
Anna taught me to steal when we were fourteen. We wore the privilege of our skin color, our unassuming gender as shields, frequenting the mall just to take things. At the end of that year, we’d graduate high school, leave for college, and go off into the real world. We took stuff to pass the time until we got there.
I unlocked the flaming door. Anna carried the empty box. The glare of fluorescents assaulted. My skin was pale, near translucent under their glow, the same way it looked in our high school’s cafeteria. In both places, I felt like a ghost.
Anna walked ahead making deliberate, slow movements. I let my footsteps fall in line, my soles landing wherever hers did. I waited for her to look back, smile, make the conspiracy ours. I wanted a thank you for helping her love someone else.
She arrived at the shelf and placed the box back where we got it. When she turned, she looked past me.
The exit sign shimmered across the store like a lighthouse on the other side of a storm. We moved toward the glare, faster now, weaving through racks of athletic shorts and sports bras, past entrance displays stacked with caffeine gels. We paused at the automatic sliding doors, readjusting our waistbands. I had the urge to place my hand into hers so we could run through together, but before I could the glass parted and she strode out in front of me.
Oh my fucking god, we screeched when we made it to her Buick. Our breath fogged the windows. We couldn’t stop laughing at how giant we felt. We stripped our shirts, untangled our loot. Adrenaline spiked our skin with goosebumps.
Dave can never know we did this, Anna said as she put the packed bag on the back seat. My heart sank. I pictured them in the tent in his backyard, bodies intertwined on hard earth, hot breath condensing on skin.
The Sports Authority sign smoldered, red letters towering over the dark lot. The entrance gleamed bright white.
I wanted credit for my role; to be a part of their us. If she wasn’t going to let me join, I wanted to run back and confess.
Anna pushed the key into the ignition and we pulled out of the parking spot. The speedometer ticked across the dial: two, five, ten, fifteen, eighteen. We turned onto the main road and she sped up, all the way to thirty. I shifted my gaze to the taillights in the side mirror and watched the pavement streak bloody behind us.
Ray Wise writes from Philadelphia, where they are an MFA candidate at Rutgers Camden. Ray's work has been published or is forthcoming in Rose Books Reader, Hobart, HAD & others.
