On the way home that night, I wondered how many people the coat had touched or rubbed up against. How many people had gone home so drunk they wouldn't remember the encounter – for instance, say some such man were to walk to the 7-Eleven at the intersection of Lincoln, Sheffield and Wrightwood the next morning. The kind of man people normally wouldn't look at much, or certainly fault the appearance of, what with his straight teeth, college sweatshirt and neat hair under a clean baseball cap. This morning, people would definitely stare. In line for a Super Big Gulp, he'd finally catch sight of the first dark, curly hair on the front of his sweatshirt. Then another, and another. With mounting horror he'd realize he was covered with them. A clump of my pubes would hang on the sweatshirt in such a way that it seemed to say "Diversity" of Michigan. A woman, wearing the same sweatshirt minus the pubes, would look at him and fume, "Fucking radical."
He'd leave the store, trying to picture the girl he must have hooked up with the night before, all the while silently chanting the frat boy mantra:
Please don't let it be a fat chick
Please don't let it be a fat chick
Please don't let it be a fat chick, PLEASE!
With four blocks to my place, I heard drunken male laughter behind me. As the boys drew up close, making clicking and cooing sounds, I turned. The little one, emboldened by the presence of his friends, whistled as if to say, good girls don't walk alone on the streets after dark. He looked at the cuffs of my sepia sweater hanging past the sleeves of my coat: Irish beard on pubic hair. He looked to his friends to see what he should make of it.
I turned around and walked on, but they were still with me at Ashland. "We're at Ashland now boys," I said. "Don't you have to turn around? I mean, you're not going to go to the West Side are you?" They looked at one another searchingly as I looked them down. The little one said "Bitch!" I gave them the finger, which they celebrated with high-fives. Then a green open-top jeep pulled up, filled with women wearing matching white, fur-collared ski jackets over skimpy shorts, bare legs, and high heels. I pulled my pubic hair coat close and stormed across the street, smelling aloe vera as I heard them sing, "We wear short-shorts ..."
– by Jenn Kenn
