66 TRUE STORIES, WELL TOLD.
in the bible, when the serpent convinced Eve to eat the fruit from the tree at the
center of the garden, maybe it was the structure of the snake’s body—made of so many
ribs—that made her trust him. The rib was Eve’s beginning, after all, her connection to
God and the only other person who existed on Earth.
Maybe, at the moment when the snake told Eve she wouldn’t die if she ate the forbid-
den fruit, she imagined her body as beautifully protected. How wonderful to fall, she
thought, feeling her lungs fill and empty beneath her ribs.we finally kissed in the fall of our junior year. I was shaking, but when Kate slid
her tongue into my mouth, I forgot how scared I was. Her face was softer than any
boy’s I’d kissed—which was an aspect of kissing her that I hadn’t considered.
The top seven sets of ribs in a human body are called true ribs because they’re at-
tached to the sternum. The lower five sets are known as false ribs because they don’t
directly attach to the sternum. In a very small number of genetic cases, the fourth or
fifth rib of a person will not attach to the sternum in utero, making that rib neither true
nor false.
The first time Kate and I kissed, I realized that everything I’d known about kissing
up until then was somehow false. When Kate and I kissed, it felt like my first kiss, even
though I’d kissed plenty of guys and one other girl before that night. Kate took off her
shirt, shimmied out of her jeans, and crawled next to me in my twin bed.
Kissing Kate, all my nerve endings woke up—a million bees’ wings, humming under
the surface of my skin. “Take off your shirt,” Kate said. “This is the only time this is
going to happen, so we shouldn’t stop.”i knew if I told even our closest friends that I was in love with Kate, they’d think it
was a sin, or at least they’d think it was objectionable. At our college, almost everyone
went to church, regardless of how much they drank the night before or who they’d
slept with. On Sundays after morning services, the school cafeteria filled with students
in their Sunday best.
After church on Sundays, as I carried my tray of fried chicken, green beans, and
sweet tea to my table to sit with Kate and my friends in our college cafeteria, I some-
times worried everyone could see right through me, that my sin was so strong you
could see it, like the outline of my body through my thin cotton dress.that fall, Kate and I hardly got any sleep. I was never more tired and never more
awake. Kate told me that sleeping with me didn’t mean she was a lesbian. “It doesn’t
mean I’m bisexual either,” she said one afternoon on one of our drives.
Miles from campus, we came upon a farm on a back road, where we decided to stop.
When we got out of the car, I noticed a herd of strange animals running toward us
from a distance, their necks tall and alert. As the animals got closer, I realized what
they were, but the realization didn’t ease my fear. I worried they were going to jump