Maybe it was all about my ego, but I wanted to at least get a kiss from her, or maybe I wanted a challenge. Or maybe I was playing out my own mother issues. The more my mother averted her eyes away from me–to the television, to the dog, to the best deals at the mall—the more determined I was to make her look at me.

And I was going to make Carrie look at me even if it meant encouraging her to drink. She didn’t need encouraging. Besides, I had to leave in five days and if things didn’t go well, I wouldn’t have to see her again.

We sat on her couch, and she sipped her drink. She threw a ball to her dog and put her legs up on an ottoman. I took her hand, and she looked at my hand and brought it to her lips and kissed it. But still, she wouldn’t look at me. “All right,” she said. “We’re here. Together.”

“And?” I said. “Are you nervous?”

“A little,” she said. “I’m dealing.”

She touched my leg. I caressed her long spine. She leaned forward.

“That feels good,” she said.

I continued to rub her spine. “You want a back massage?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. I suggested we go to her bed, where she lay on her belly and I caressed her back. She moaned, and now I was the Skype Lori and she was a scared bird. I lifted up her shirt and, again, she apologized for how thin she was. I asked if she had lotion and, at first, I picked up the liquid soap but found the lotion. I rubbed it around her back and her long, thin neck, and I told her not to apologize, but without warning, she rolled over and said, “Okay, let’s kiss and get it over with.”

Let’s just say it was awkward and fumbly, and she was on target when she said, “I feel like I’m in high school.”

“Maybe junior high,” I said.

Eventually we held each other, and I stayed the night in her bed. She said she needed more time, she wasn’t ready for sex, and I said no worries. We slept well. In the morning, I made coffee. She hadn’t made herself coffee in years; she usually bought coffee at the café down the street, and what a concept, she said, coffee in bed. She made eggs and bacon and, while rearranging my bag, a copy of Ms. Magazine fell out. Carrie pointed at it. “What’s that?” she asked.

“You don’t know Ms.?,” I said. “It’s a feminist magazine. Started by people like Gloria Steinem.”

“Gloria who?” she said. “I’m not a feminist.”

“Really?” I said. “You don’t know who Gloria Steinem is?” How could I even spend another minute with someone who never heard of Ms. Magazine?

“These days,” she said, “women and men have just as much opportunity to make it in the world. No one helped me out.”

“You’re serious?” I said, now standing up and gesturing with my arms out.

“You’re a feminist?” she said. “A radical feminist?”

“Yes I’m a feminist,” I said. “And so are you!”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

I tried to explain in simple terms what feminism was, the dictionary definition: the belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities. I told her about a documentary she needed to watch that shows how women are portrayed in the media—in advertising, in movies, everywhere, as sex objects without brains.”

A lesbian in her late forties, living in a liberal city, who never heard of Ms. Magazine or Gloria Steinem? I brought up the notion of white privilege and male privilege (after all, I taught women’s studies), concepts that helped my students understand racism and sexism and the connection between the two. Carrie insisted she wasn’t privileged. She worked hard for what she had. She went on and on about how feminism was no longer needed, and besides, most of her friends were men, it was easier that way, and why did feminists have to scream all the time and–”

I leaned over. “–The only way to shut you up,” I said, “is to kiss you.”

We kissed. She pulled away and said, “Kiss like a girl!”

I looked at her, shocked and disgusted, and said, “Why don’t you kiss like a boy?” Did she mean I was too aggressive for her? I didn’t shove my tongue down her throat, and in retrospect, she probably felt like she lost control and needed to get it back. To be intimate in any way, even to make eye contact, I suspected, Carrie needed alcohol.

I put my shoes on. “I need to take a walk,” I said.

“What?” she said. “You’re not leaving, are you?” She got up and hugged me.

“I just need to walk,” I said. I called a friend but didn’t tell her about the “kiss like a girl” comment; it was too embarrassing. I sat on a dock and told my friend about the brain injury and how Carrie never heard of Ms. Magazine.

“Certain injuries cause memory loss,” my friend said. “There’s no way she wouldn’t have heard of Gloria Steinem otherwise.” My friend also said that organizational tasks are difficult for people with brain injuries.

Maybe I needed to stay with my college friend rather than someone who insulted me, who claimed women and men had equal opportunities, who couldn’t even go grocery shopping on her own.

Yet, maybe I needed to give her a break. If she’d never been schooled in feminism, how would she know any better? Besides, I’d grown attached to her after a month of Skyping. I tried to make sense of Carrie, tried to find compassion for her idiosyncrasies: the cocky doctor, the frightened bird trying to hide its broken wing.

Or maybe I didn’t want to stay with my friend, who quarreled nonstop with her boyfriend.