Editor's Note: As an erasure piece, "16 on College Weekends" was created by selectively removing text from an originating source. The original text of this story comes from Chapter 9, "16-Point Plan for Making Good on College and Prep School Weekends," of The Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Entertaining by Enid A. Haupt (1963). Following standard erasure practice, no words/letters have been added (although occasional punctuation has been), and all words/letters appear in their original order. ​

16 ON COLLEGE WEEKENDS

Nonfiction by Kristine Langley Mahler

You’ve been halfway up the ladder; you wait for the definitive mark of success: a boy.

You need other arrangements.

“He’ll let you know”? You have a better idea: take. Everyone is going sailing, swimming, skiing—whatever. You need poetry, folk songs, coffee.

You talk to a girl—not your mother, not your aunt. Times change. The climate is like how many parties? What places to avoid? Ask what the rules are.

At some parties, there is a room clear of girls, forbidden. A sensible habit is not to visit unless another girl is with you. You might need repair tools, such as antiseptic cream, Band-Aids, sunglasses, scarf, rubbers, comfort wherever you can. You’ll be less than your best without ballast.

You drink to prove you’re trying it, know how to handle it. You ask for a twist of lemon peel. You want to curb the next sport who’s eager to fix you a drink—some “funny boy”—but you say nothing, manage quietly.

He probably has money at home, so you turn him into one of those bachelors. Go with him when he asks you, but if he doesn’t, be glad to see him when he comes back. Don’t comment on the impossible.

For this weekend, you risk your future. Romantic lines spellbind you, but don’t take them seriously, don’t suspect there’s anyone around.

You let yourself be taken over: it’s your move to end the evening’s gaieties. He says, “But you can’t turn in now,” and you change your mind, you sit up all night listening to that guitar and hesitate to keep love-making in bounds, snuggling by the lake, necking with the lights turned low, young love spoiled by straight sex. You have the control, but you act as if it’s impossible—you’re enjoying the weekend, you seem to be a great girl.

You leave; he recounts the end in a letter, prompt and brief.

Kristine Langley Mahler

Kristine Langley Mahler lives on the suburban prairie of Nebraska, where she is completing an erasure book on Seventeen's advice to teenage girls, a grant-funded project about immigration/inhabitation on native land through the lens of her French-Canadian ancestors, and a graduate degree in creative nonfiction. Her work received the 2016 Rafael Torch Award for Literary Nonfiction from Crab Orchard Review and has appeared/is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Quarter After Eight, Sweet, Storm Cellar, Split Lip Magazine, (b)OINK, Chautauqua, and elsewhere.