She's My Wingman

I went to college between the Second Ponytail Era, and the Time When Football Coaches Were No Longer Enraged By Earrings On Their Players. The hair of the townie girls, once teased into a heavily sprayed fan that made them look in profile as if they had been struck in the face with a frying pan, was deflating like ice in the spring. By the time I graduated, a year later than expected, the gel was gone altogether.

I met Katryn my sophomore year, when she came back from Burning Man with a navel piercing. She claimed to be the first girl in the Midwest with one; I don’t know how you’d check on something like that.

“Check this out,” she said, and lifted the bottom of her hoodie to show me. The metal sparkled among her field hockey manufactured abs. She was a woman who really knew how to make friends with men.

A lot of people think it’s strange that we became so close without hooking up. Instead, we slept around each other, seducing friends, lab partners, frat brothers and sorority sisters. What can I say, she was my wingman, and I was hers.