Hunting Men

There were three reasons to play Manhunt and none of them were winning.

The first was sometimes, when the whole neighborhood played and not just my cousins, if the right kid was on my team, I got to practice kissing. The right kid changed all the time and I wanted to change, too. When he played basketball, I wore high tops. If he skateboarded on the cul-de-sac, I clipped a chain on my wallet. It jangled while we ran, but that was good: it made him want to keep me still.

Once he was a church kid, so I wore a cross. It didn’t get me what I wanted. We were on the same team, but not really. When church kid told me no, I said he wasn’t my type anyway. He raised his eyebrows and laughed even as I wished I hadn’t said it. They found us then because he ran out of our bush, away from me, and I was left stung and sore.

This brings me to the second point of Manhunt, which was to build a thicker skin. The deeper I went into the forest, the longer I could fend off my inevitable loss (or, more importantly, find enough privacy to kiss). But that meant the running back to base was harder and thornier, risked more poison ivy, ended more often than not with skinned knees and battered ankles to match my swollen lips. I had to learn to love to lose; I had to lick my own wounds after.

I only won once, and that was when the third point stuck to me. That night my team was cousins and mouth breathers. None of them the right kids, no kisses in sight. I zipped my black hoodie all the way up over my set-trap tank top. I skirted the shadowed edge of the forest. I read the backs of my enemies. Long before they felt the endgame creeping up, I sprinted to the telephone pole and skidded into it, dodging their groping hands. The secret to winning was becoming invisible.

I didn’t win again – too many kisses to be had – but once I learned to dissolve, I didn’t need the game to do it. I lay in bed and pretended to sleep before sneaking down the dark stairs. That’s how I watched the movies my Dad liked, where women wore lace nighties and tilted their heads up like baby birds. That’s how I stole my first bottle, vodka pilfered from the lights-out kitchen behind my Mom’s back. That’s how I learned about their divorce before they told me. My thick skin helped me not cry when they finally did.

I poured some of the vodka into a water bottle and shared it with the right kid the next time we were on the same team. He was a football player who ignored me in the hallways, but that night I got to tilt my head up like a baby bird. He licked tears off my cheeks. That changed me, too.