Summary
Yolanda tells the story, in the first person, of how for
a few years she was the wildest one of her sisters. In high school
she was vivacious, and had a lot of callers, though no serious relationships.
In college, however, she could not keep the callers interested for
long, since she refused to sleep with any of them. She went to college
during the late sixties and the sexual revolution. She insists that
she was Americanized enough not to be concerned with her Dominican
Catholicism, so she did not have a good excuse for her prudishness.
In her first English class, she met Rudy Brodermann Elmenhurst, the
third. Yolanda felt out of place and foreign, and appreciated Rudy's
odd name, his lateness, and his acne scars. He had "bedroom eyes,"
was able to laugh at himself, and did not bring a pen to class. She
felt a shiver of sexual chemistry as he asked her if she had an extra
one. Yolanda did not have an extra pen, and felt awkward while explaining
this in a whisper. But she handed him a small red pencil inscribed
with the Americanized version of her name, Jolinda. The pencil had
been sharpened down to the J, and Yolanda was embarrassed that she
had saved the pencil for such a long time.
That night, Rudy stopped by her room as Yolanda was reciting
a love sonnet she had written for class. He claimed he only wanted
to return her tiny pencil, but then asked her out to lunch. Yolanda
was confused but agreed to have lunch anyway. They had lunch and
then also had dinner, because they became so absorbed in each other. They
wrote a pornographic poem together, and Rudy explained all the sexual
double meanings found within images of nature. Yolanda was a very
innocent virgin and did not understand Rudy's strategies of flirtation.
He would linger in her room late at night before kissing her goodbye
behind her ear.
Yolanda felt that her innocence regarding sex and drugs
was related to her situation as an immigrant. The boys' dorm rooms hosted
parties with drugs and alcohol, and Yolanda was afraid that Rudy
would take advantage of her if she drank or smoked marijuana. She
told him she was afraid he might rape her, and his explicit language
shocked her when he denied it. They would kiss and cuddle, but she
refused to let him touch her. He would get frustrated with her "hangups,"
and Yolanda would get disgusted by the language he used to describe
sex. Yolanda feared pregnancy and also the possibility of being
frigid.
She felt ashamed of her uptight and formal Old World parents and
envied his parents' relaxed attitude toward sex. Rudy thought sex
should be fun and she thought it should be meaningful and serious.
She stormed out of his room one night and put a crucifix under her
pillow for comfort. After they broke up, Yolanda missed Rudy and
noticed his poems were more explicitly affectionate. Yolanda fantasized
about Rudy coming back to her during the spring dance. But Rudy
brought another girl to the dance and Yolanda could tell by looking
at the way they interacted that they were sexually intimate.
Five years later, while Yolanda was in grad school and
finally sexually experienced, Rudy stopped by unexpectedly. He asked
if she wanted "to fuck" and she got offended and threw him out.
She messily uncorked his expensive bottle of wine and drank it from
the bottle like "some decadent wild woman who had just dismissed
an unsatisfactory lover."
