Chapter 2

Kim-ly’s first and only other three-way happened years before, when she was an eighteen-year-old sophomore at the State University of Minnesota at Bemidji. She and her twin brother Bao received full scholarships to SUM@B when they graduated years early from their high school in Minneapolis, where they were living at the time. Their parents saw an opportunity to branch out in the family business, so they moved to Grant Valley, a rural community near Bemidji, Minnesota, and opened a restaurant, saving the twins a fortune on food and dorm fees. Being an accounting major, Kim-ly could understand her parent’s concerns. She had two older siblings in Minneapolis, both working on their postgrad degrees, her oldest sibling, her sister Tam looking for her doctorate in psychology, and her oldest brother Huy working on his degree in jurisprudence. Her other older brother Trung was going to school in North Dakota at UND on a hockey scholarship studying agronomy.

In return for room and board, Kim-ly and her 2 minute older twin brother Bao help her parents with the books at the restaurant and at home. There was no way she and Bao could get their university degree solely on what the restaurant brings in, so everyone pitches in to make Nguyen Pho a success, and they work their tails off to maintain their scholastic scholarships.

That was her family, má (Southern Vietnamese for mom), ba (dad), three boys and three girls. The only one she didn’t mention was her little sister, Lanh. Lanh was born two years after Bao and Kim-ly and was a preemie. She was born tiny and fragile, and her mom Mai was almost too terrified to touch her, Lanh had so many tubes and sensors on her for so long that Kim-ly and Bao weren’t allowed to touch her for months after she came home. Eventually, eight-year-old Tam, the oldest Nguyen child, started taking care of tiny Lanh while their mother worked and concentrated on the rambunctious twins.

Lanh grew up lonely, sad, and scared. The older kids tried to get her to smile, but their antics merely terrified Lanh, so the boys gave up on her. So weak and tiny she wasn’t able to go to kindergarten until after she turned six, and she wasn’t able to advance in school rapidly like her siblings, putting in the effort that they did almost killed her. Kim-ly loved her, but Kim-ly’s attempts to play with her little sister often hurt Lanh, so Kim-ly also distanced herself from Lanh.

Her parents were afraid that she was autistic, but when tiny Lanh saw it was Tam, her mother Mai, or her father Duong holding her, she would break into a smile that was heartbreaking in its beauty and adoration. But when the other children touched her, she was worried, confused, and tried to get away.

When the family moved to Grant Valley, the move traumatized Lanh. In rural Grant Valley High School, she was the only Asian in the school. Being Asian and no taller than most student’s kid sisters branded her as an outcast. Her only outlets were excelling in her classes just to piss off the other students and the debate team, where her skill and analytical mind made her the first freshman captain of the debate team in the history of Grant Valley High School. Her final outlet was a goldfish named Marissa, with whom she confided all of her secrets.

Fast forward to Kim-ly’s eighteenth year. She was no longer that underage kid in college. She still couldn’t buy alcohol, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get it. She quickly discovered that sex was a bigger rush than alcohol and if she wanted alcohol, all she had to do was swing her cute little ass at any of her classmates who were all several years older than her. “You bring the wine, I’ll bring this,” in a sexy voice was all it took.

Then came Poli-Sci. Gawd how she hated that class. She had a straight A average in all of her classes, but Poli-Sci just galled her, and it was a prerequisite for her degree. Her grade in that class was border line mostly because the professor would spend the hour on a personal rant, then assign reading from a book that a friend of his wrote, and her grade stuck out like a big sore thumb. She had to boost her grade somehow.

Her opportunity to improve her grade came when Professor Lefkowitz, her Poli-sci professor, invited her to his place for a “kwanza, wine and cheese soiree” but only if she could “leave her bourgeois moralism behind.” She was hoping he meant “let’s snack and fuck.” This may be her chance to bump her grades up. Her buddies all told her they’re doing it, there’s no reason to let her 4.0 GPA go to shit just because of one stupid class.

Professor Lefkowitz shows up to class every day wearing a knit suit coat with elbow patches, a t-shirt emblazoned with slogans like a black power fist above the word RESIST! in stencil typeface, and blue jeans. He was so scrawny she doubted he could stand up against a stiff breeze let alone a well thought out disagreement, but she needed an A in his indoctrination ... um ... class, so why not try? He only asked her to his place because she was hot, so why not?

At five foot six she flaunted her 35-22-32 figure with clothing that showed off her curves, and she didn’t hide the fact that she was Asian by dying or perming her hair, in a land of blue-eyed blonds she wanted to stand out! She wore her hair straight and left it black, and it raised eyebrows. She even flaunted her love of everything kawaii by carrying a notebook emblazoned with ultra-cute Sunshine Bunny! and a darling Domo Kun purse.

Kim-ly arrived at Professor Lefkowitz’ apartment fifteen minutes late because being punctual was “soooo bourgeois,” as he said in class. He greeted her at the door wearing a dashiki, the colorful robe worn by men in western Africa, and an African kufi hat, which made him look like he was wearing a rainbow colored pill box on his head. At least it covered his bald spot. He ushered her into a dark apartment lit by candles and black lights. The air was thick with the smoke of incense and marijuana, both of which being the cheap kind. This place was like a temple to the year 1968 and Kim-ly couldn’t wait to tell Professor Lefkowitz that the Beatles broke up.

As she sat on the couch waiting for Ruben, or Ruben X as he insisted he be called by the students, she studied the posters that covered the living room walls. Most were communist “workers unite” kind of thing. She wondered if Ruben X ever physically worked a day in his life. The rest of the posters were black velvet black light posters depicting strange images. One showed Elvis sodomizing Jesus with a naked John Wayne sitting next to them smoking a postcoital cigarette, another showed the coyote sodomizing the roadrunner and saying, “Now let’s hear you say beep-beep you son of a bitch!” Kim-ly wasn’t a psychology major, but clearly Ruben X was fixated on something.

The music was strictly 60s stoner, late Beatles, Grateful Dead, Grace Slick, etc. A 60s style light organ flickered with the music as an eleven-inch reel to reel slowly churned out the stream of acid inspired rock music. As she surveyed the bookshelf from a distance, praying she’d find a copy of the Federalist Papers, or at least anything by Orwell, a naked woman walked into the room and sagged into a chair across from Kim-ly.

This woman was scrawny, ghost white, and stoned out of her skull. Her ribs and hip bones stuck out, there was barely any flesh on her legs and arms, her knees and elbows were knobs marking the halfway point down each limb. Her eyes were sunken, and her breasts were mere folds of flesh with dangling nipples. Her head was adorned with a huge ginger afro and her cheekbones were prominent, but with sunken cheeks she looked like a skull that was painted with flesh-colored paint.