“I think, it’s. . .” Casey wanted the right word. “It’s sincere. . . your faith. I don’t know how you do it, but. . .”
Tina gazed at her sister intently. Sex was a thing Casey knew, and Tina envied her experience.
“I just can’t imagine not having sex. I like it. I hope you like it. It’s so. . . overwhelming. And I want to be overwhelmed. Can you imagine that?” Casey turned to face her sister, but she couldn’t see her expression clearly. Casey wanted her sister to allow her own desire and not be impeded by conventional ideas. “It’s good to be out of your head. To forget yourself. To just yearn for someone else.”
Tina exhaled. Casey’s boldness impressed her.
“Perhaps I like it too much,” Casey said, feeling ashamed of saying what she believed. Perhaps she shouldn’t lead her sister astray. So few people had any beliefs these days. “I’m probably not a good example for you.” If Casey interpreted her sexual biography by her sister’s template, she was probably a slut—having slept with eight different men, not all of them ones she’d been dating, and seven of them she’d slept with before she was nineteen. At Princeton, there’d been girls who’d had thirty to forty partners （with diaries and ranking methods） and girls who’d had one true love. And there was Tina: one of the last holdouts.
Tina wanted details, clues, advice. At MIT, where most of the students were male, few girls were virgins. Men fell out of the sky to have sex. Now that Tina had a boyfriend, she was beginning to get what the other girls had been telling her all along: There had always been boys willing to record cassettes of her favorite love songs, write her bad poetry, take her to dinner in Cambridge—all for the possibility of taking off her clothes. Her friends, especially the attractive ones, and even the plain ones in her Wednesday prayer circle, couldn’t believe Tina was still a virgin.
“Why is it so overwhelming?” she asked.
“Because the sensations are so powerful. It’s just wonderful being naked with someone you like—touching their warm skin, feeling their breath and bones, being close, so close, and feeling needed, urgently—and afterwards, it can be so soothing; everything else seems so secondary. And. . . and. . .” Casey had never described sex to anyone; no one had ever asked. Images tumbled across her mind. She felt alert, alive suddenly.
“It’s exciting, so exciting to be wanted by someone you like. And with love, it’s even more powerful because when you trust him, it’s possible to surrender. Completely. I think if you love Chul and he loves you. . . well. . .” Casey stopped herself, feeling like some sort of premarriage sex advocate she didn’t want to be.
“Tell me more.”
“You know the first time a boy tries to kiss you?”
Tina nodded.
“It’s that kind of thrill. . . but suspended and stretched out. It’s. . . consummation.”
Casey had liked Jay Currie the moment she’d spotted him beneath Blair Arch. He was standing there in the middle of a group of guys, telling some funny story, and he’d noticed her looking at him, too. His large blue green eyes—the color of a trout’s body with shimmering gray-and-black speckles—had lighted on her, and she’d felt startled. A few days after, he’d sat next to her at Freshman Commons, but it turned out that he was a junior, a member of Terrace. Later, he’d confessed that he’d been trailing her and had snuck into Commons to meet her. She’d agreed to a date, and after Pauline at the Beach ended （she couldn’t remember the story at all） and as the credits rolled, he’d leaned in and pressed his lips against hers, his chin slightly stubbled—his hair wavy and honey colored.
After pulling back, he’d remarked, “You are so soft,” as if this quality had surprised him.
She’d laughed, saying, “Is that so?” and she’d bit her lower lip from happiness. Immediately, he’d kissed her again.
“So do you think Jay is the great love?” Tina asked her.
Casey made a face, not having considered it in such terms. “You mean like the great love of your life?” she asked, smirking. “That’s cute.”
“Don’t be such a hard-ass. I was wondering. . . I mean. . . I don’t mean to rationalize.”
“Rationalize away, Dr. Han.”
Tina ignored the gibe. “Listen, if Chul was the great love of my life, and I wanted to be with him forever, and I could promise that I would want only him. . . then. . .” It was hard for her to get the words out. She was trying to say that it might be okay to sleep with him before getting married.