I used to impress boys by biting into dead corn cobs. This was impressive for many reasons—the dead corn was decayed corn, left behind after harvest as an apology to the soil. It was muddy and moldy and putting it into my mouth made the boys gasp because they did not know girls were capable of such sick shit.

Often, the dead corn was hard. I split my gums on sharp kernels and bled pretty bad, but when the boys went off to spit dip I was invited. I spat ruby-colored tobacco as far as I could. I never won—I couldn't hock like Randy, clearing the length of his truck, or Nick, sure-lipped enough to hit the head of some unassuming girl he wanted to fuck—but I was bloodied and quiet about it. And the boys liked that. Tough tits, they liked to call me. Sometimes kernel tits, because of the corn thing and because I had small boobs. They had nicknames for one another and no one else, so I didn't mind mine too much.

If there was husk and corn silk still on the dead ear, I'd swallow it. I didn't like this bit of corn performance, because when you vomit up corn silk it sits in your throat like a long hair. I was always puking corn silk because I was drinking so much. Our high school class gathered every weekend at a backroad intersection buried deep in farmland. The boys would park their trucks in a row and keep their headlights lit to illuminate a patch of razed field on which we drank and puked and touched one another. The farmer who owned the field didn't mind—he'd done the same when he was a high school boy. Rural whites love little else like they love tradition.

Sometimes I tried running Randy's lighter along tougher kernels to see if they'd turn into popcorn. It never worked. Randy would take his lighter back and use it to start a small fire for the girls, so that they'd take their coats off and the boys could watch girl shoulders and throats in the moonlight. They ranked the tits and asses of our girl classmates crudely, which meant I had permission to think about girl tits and asses. This was important to me. I wasn't bad for picturing Jessica's thighs and the soft rustle they made when they rubbed together because Randy had brought it up first. Jessica was top ranked in their list of tits and asses. Once, in science class, she leaned over her desk to ask me if Randy liked anybody, and I said no while watching her neck pulse as she swallowed. By the fire, in the farmland, she looked like a mistake. Like a holy light dropped in dead corn and cow shit. After discussing Jessica's tits and ass, Randy would smear the burnt corn ash on my mouth like an earthen lipstick and pull my sweatshirt tight to expose the nothing beneath it. The boys laughed at this. The girls, Jessica, faces solemn in the firelight, never did.

Nick spit on me as the fall fell colder and the dead corn got tougher. His hands followed, friendly at first in the middle of my back, and then lower. Nick was a nightmare. His parents owned a meat processing plant where everyone brought their stock to get slaughtered which meant he was rich and loved blood. But when I told Nick I didn't want his hands on me, he told the boys I took home dead corn to put up inside myself. And they didn't like that—the image of me Nick had given them. Or that versus the fact that I wouldn't fuck Nick. They didn't want to see my corn acts after that. They didn't want me to spit with them. They didn't want to discuss girl bodies in front of me because I was a girl body; I wouldn't understand. They sent me back to the light of the girls' fire where I could be watched, lit up ugly like a lone, unruly stalk.

The girls were not impressed with my corn tricks because the girls knew better. Instead, they made me spill on the boys' tits and asses list, stretched uncomfortably when they learned how they were loved. Jessica shivered happily in her trashed jeans and tank top every time she came out on top of the boys' lists. She spent most of the evening by my side, her bare arms brushing against mine, her sharp vodka breath in my mouth, asking if Randy ever spoke sweet about her.

She learned later, when Randy sidled up to us. A hallowed part of every evening—a boy would break off from the boy group and pick a girl to go neck with. The boy and girl would walk over to the boundary of darkness, a dim lick of light between the ferocity of headlights and the expanse of unlit farmland. And they would run their hands over one another, shadowed just enough to feel alone with their bodies, illuminated just enough so everyone else would know. Jessica smiled when Randy asked her to walk a little ways out with him, put her hand in his and waved goodbye to me.

As they went off, I thought about how far I would have to go into farmland. I wondered what kind of pitch would be deep enough for me to hold what I wanted. How dense, how lush the cornstalks would need to be for what I wanted to want me back. Randy and Jessica's hands moved feverishly, like they couldn't figure out how to take in enough of what they wanted from one another. And I couldn't conjure it, a place here, lonely enough for me to do the same.



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