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After several minutes of this back and forth she handed the
hamster off to me for good and we settled in to watch TV. The
next thing I knew I was waking up. I hadn’t even noticed myself
dozing off and I definitely hadn’t noticed my fists clenching in
my sleep. I lifted my right fist to see two tiny black eyes bulg-
ing out at me. I had squeezed Tara’s hamster so hard my finger
imprints remained dented into its soft body even after I relaxed
my hand. A sickening wave of guilt washed over me. I was sup-
posed to have been careful with Tara’s favorite little hamster and
I had murdered it. I couldn’t stop imagining its desperate little
suffering as I unconsciously crushed it. How long had it taken
it to die? Had it struggled? I was going to be sick. After check-
ing to see that Tara was still asleep, I tiptoed to her room and
dumped the body back in its hamster cage. When Tara woke up
and found my crime she began crying and I began sweating. My
story was that the two older hamsters had beaten the little one
to death—they had a reputation after all. To this day I remain in
awe that she believed my ridiculous story. After the initial panic
and the paranoid fear that someone would find out what I had
done wore off I felt strangely satisfied. I had taken something
from her and the fact that she was older wouldn’t change that. It
was a secret I kept to myself, something she would never know.

As the tape rolled on I sat mere inches from the screen,
legs folded underneath me, eyes wide, and watched. Did I blink
during the half hour I sat there? It didn’t seem like it; my eyes
were dry and slow moving by the time I pushed stop on the
VCR. But before then, scene after salacious scene seared into my
brain—blow jobs, kissing, vaginal sex, doggy style, missionary,
sixty-nine, anal sex, money shots, and reverse cowgirl joined my
visual vocabulary, even though I had yet to learn the names.
After I turned off the tape and carefully rewound it to
what I desperately hoped was the exact moment at which I had
begun playing it, I removed myself to the basement, as far away

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