Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
Ben is on the phone with his mother. Speaking all falling leaves and sunshine. He is planning on spending a weekend on a commune in upstate New York. He wants to get in touch with nature, and spend some quality time with Lisabelle. He does not tell her that he really wants to go because he found an acid connection, and he wants us to do acid together before it starts snowing. And then I hear him say something about Ani Difranco.
“Wait, your mom likes Ani Difranco?” I ask. “Yes.” He says, then relays my question to his mom. “Your mom, who likes to wear flannel, and fixes all the appliances in your house when they break, also likes to listen to Ani Difranco? Your mom is such a dyke.” “My Mom is Not a lesbian.” He says. Then he listens to the phone. “She says she’s a non-practicing bisexual. And she says that if she ever meets you, she’s going to kick your ass.” “She is sooooo a dyke.” Ben scowls, and takes the phone out of the room. I’ve been living with him for two weeks. Nothing’s happened. Everything has happened. I quit my job at the coffeehouse and went back to my old job, waiting tables at Kookaburra Canyon. I got an e-mail from my mother’s boyfriend telling me that she has cancer, and she’s coming to visit me in Boston this weekend to discuss her will and other things I really don’t want to, but know I need to, deal with. “I’ll go with you.” Ben says. “You never talk about your mom, I’d love to meet her.” Thus far in my life, my mother has only met three people I’ve dated: Jennifer (who hates my mother because...well, my mom was a total bitch to her at every opportunity), Ryan (though it was before we were dating...he liked her, but he liked everyone), and Elvis (who she instinctively knew was evil, but she actually tried to be supportive as possible until the day I finally got rid of him, which she claims was one of the happier days in her life). Even my really close friends have never liked my mother. She was emotionally abusive to Liam and Riley. She made Saint quiver whenever she came into our house. Earlier this year, when angry at her for something stupid, I toyed with the idea of inviting my previous crush, Dmitri, to spend some time with me at my mother’s house. We were going to claim he was a fifteen year old street kid addicted to crank that I was “taking care of”. It seemed funny at the time. I don’t know about her meeting Ben. I just don’t think it would be fun for either of them. It would give Ben some new material for his “Letters to My Exes’ Mothers” song, though, since we’re not even dating, I’m still a future ex at this point. I bet he’d do a fantastic impression of her, but she’d also eat him alive. Oh he wouldn’t cry about it, I just imagine, as we left the restaurant, him saying “Jesus, well that explains a lot about you.” Also, I'm not sure how bringing my not boyfriend to a discussion of my inheritance and my responsibilities, in the context of her estate, would go over. “Don’t worry mom. He hasn’t done speed in…” (whispers in Ben’s ear, Ben whispers back) “ok, technically it hasn’t been that long, but he hasn’t really been a drug addict in months. Plus, he has a job. I know. I know he looks like he’s fourteen. He’s not. He’s twenty two.” (and here Ben would add, “Twenty two, and one month.”) “Yes. Twenty two and one month. No, I haven’t IDed him. Mom, he really is twenty-two. And one month. No, I haven’t been spending loads of money on him. In fact, he’s been reallysupportive of me. No, no we’re not...I'm glad you like my haircut...No, I...Ok, well...it’s not...I should really go to work.” It’s just too much for me to contemplate. But as fate or luck or whatever higher power you belive in, would have it, my mom and her boyfriend come for their visit while Ben is at the commune buying acid. The lunch isn’t nearly as awkward as I expect. Turns out, my mother doesn’t havecancer. The cancer was a ploy to get me to meet with them to discuss the will. It sounds awful, but it’s not terribly surprising. When I was living in Arifuckenzona, I went a little over a month without calling or e-mailing them, so my mother called and left a voicemail on my phone, letting me know they were taking a trip down to Florida, and that they’d left their wills on the kitchen counter, so that if their plane crashed.... It’s a cruel game. Avoidance and guilt hop-scotch. After the meal, they drive me back to Ben’s apartment, where an obese man in a too tight t-shirt is knocking on his door. “Do you live here?” he asks. And because it’s Ben’s apartment, and his landlord doesn’t know I’ve been staying here, I say “No. I’m just catsitting.” “Too bad.” He says. “I gotta cut your power.” Out go the lights, the computer, the refrigerator, the fan. Everything’s off. I feel like it’s my shitty luck infecting Ben’s life. I take a bus over to Celeste’s apartment, and tell her the story. “I hope it’s not ametaphor, like Ben’s way of saying Here are the keys to my life, you are alwayswelcome, but you have no power. And then I read the little card the NStar guy gave me, and it says they turned the gas off, too, so I thought, hey, if I’m going with the metaphor, it means that he also thinks I’m not gassy.” “Oh, dude,” Celeste days, taking my hand, “that’s not what it means at all. It means he thinks you're not hot.”
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When I was sixteen, I made a bet with my mother. I would not be caught smoking, drinking, or doing drugs between the time the bet was placed, and my twenty-firstbirthday. If I succeeded, she’d buy me my first used car.
Years later, I learned that the actual bet wasn’t that I wouldn’t get caught, but that I wouldn’t do any of those things. But by the time my mother passed this revelation on to me, I was already on my second car, and was in no financial position to reimburse her for the first one. I have a very competitive nature. Not only was I fixated on winning the bet, but I also gauged my rate of drinking, smoking, and doing drugs against the rates of my friends. I figured, if I was smoking, drinking, and doing drugs less often than my friends, then I wouldn’t get caught, I would win my car, and I would have the satisfaction of being a better person. While I did have a brief addiction to cigarettes when I was twenty-one, I generally only smoke a cigarette or two every six months, when I’m exceptionally stressed. I drink socially, and until I started spending time with Ben, I had been decidedly antisocial. I’ve also held true to my ideal of drug usage. I don’t pay for them. Ever. This way, I don’t run the risk of becoming addicted to them. I do drugs on a purely peer pressure basis. For the most part, I only smoke pot. And again, not very often. Apart from pot, and a few cups of mushroom tea when I lived in Burlington, Vermont, I’ve only ever done one drug, mescaline. I was sixteen, and my high school roommate (thank you, boarding school education), JBob, had bought some from another student. He’d never done it before, I’d certainly never done it before, so we decided we’d do it together, and invited our friend Matt to hang out with us so that we wouldn’t do anything stupider than the sort of things we usually did when we were together. About an hour after we took it, we weren’t feeling anything. Neither of us had ever been buzzed from any of the pot we smoked, so we decided that our experiment with mescaline was a failure, and decided we would go into town and watch a movie. As luck would have it, there was a brand new movie out that all three of us (me, JBob, and Matt) wanted to see: Natural Born Killers. Well, the mescaline kicked in at some point during the movie. I don’t know when. I don’t know what I hallucinated and what was actually in that fucked up movie. All I know is, I haven’t been able to watch the movie since. I also haven’t touched mescaline since. “Have you ever done speed?” Ben asks. It’s Labor Day, and we’ve just finished an extra large pizza, a bottle of Jack Daniels, two liters of Coke, and four hours of watching the Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston reality show. “Never.” I say. “You’ve got to try it.” He says. “I got so much writing done when I was on speed. I mean, it was all terrible, but I used to get sooooo much accomplished. You’d love it. I mean, I’ve always been hyper. My mom used to say I was like a kid on speed, but the truth is I totally was a kid on speed.” Ben kicks his voice up an octave. “Look at my Lego castle. I used 2,458 pieces. The princess sleeps in this room. See the way the drawbridge works…” and he is talking a mile a second, and I am laughing too hard to keep up, because it isn’t that he was a kid on speed when he was a kid, he’s a kid on speed now, just without the actual speed...or the kiddiness. He talks like this all the way to the bus stop, during the entire trip to his house, and most of the way to the grocery store where we are, for some reason, buying a coffee grinder, lemon juice, lemonade, apples, nectarines, and bananas. “I haven’t had bananas in ages.” I say, setting him up for a gay joke. “Why not?” He asks. “I don’t know. I like them, but I mostly have apples when I’m feeling healthy. Apples are my favorite fruit.” Ben smiles. “I thought I was your favorite fruit.” He is. When a cute guy walks by him in the cereal aisle, Ben’s eyes and body follow the cute guy to the left. I push his left shoulder and he turns to the right, toward me. “I wonder if that’s an instinct?” He asks of his newly discovered navigation control. “I don’t know. But there are other portions of your body I’d like to press to find out what happens.” He shakes his head. “Booooo.” And then, “Have you ever done opium?” “No.” I’ve always been leery of opium. All those terrible TV spots tell you that marijuana is a gateway drug, but they never mention which drugs it opens the gate to. Opium, from all the Burroughs I’ve read, is the gateway drug to heroin. And while I have no fear of needles in doctors’ offices, I have no desire to start sticking them into my arm, taint, or spine on a regular basis. Plus, I’ve never been turned on by young Arab boys, or shooting a loved one in the face. “It’s a really mellow high.” He says. “It’s like the anti-speed. Of course, it makes you really nauseous and shit, but that’s totally okay because when you do opium, you do opium with your friends, and puking is like conversation when everyone’s high.” “I don’t think vomit is a language I want to speak.” “You’ll love it.” He says. And on the way back from the grocery store, we stop at a florist, where we buy a dozen dried poppies. While Ben grinds the poppies in his newly acquired coffee grinder, I check my e-mail. Note from my mom’s boyfriend letting me know that my mother may have cancer, porn spam, invitation to a lesbian wedding, Viagra spam, and an e-mail from Celeste: Dude, my roommate was going through Craigslist looking for an apartment for his new girlfriend, when he found this ad. Isn't that your room? Dmitri is on the phone with the airline. It's snowing. And while the snow looks heavy from inside the house, I know it's not heavy enough to ground him here for one more night. Dmitri is leaving to return to his what passes for normal life. Landlord has offered to drive us to the airport whenever Dmitri's flight leaves.
"Hello?" Dmitri asks, signaling he's finally through the robot barricade and talking to an actual living person over the phone. I stare at his bags because I think this will make him more comfortable than if I were to stare at him. I hate it when most people look at me while I'm doing something uninteresting. And because I'm neurotic, and Dmitri is neurotic, I just assume he feels the same way, so I stare at his bags, then his shoes, then...his ass? In the days before wireless phones, my mother used to tangle the fuck out of phone cords during nervous conversation. She always had to be doing something with her hands. Her nervous behavior, and my father's ascent into obesity are just a few reasons I'm glad I'm not biologically related to them. Of course, my birth father was a rapist, so maybe obesity wouldn't be so bad. Rather than tangle the cord on the phone, Dmitri is playing with his pants. As he giggle something about "So you can't tell me whether or not the plane is leaving?" his pants ride just low enough for me to make out a few inches of crack. I hope this is a signal. The snow will pick up. The pants will come down. We'll soon be making out, and I'll be running my fingers down that crack and...look at the bags, Safey, look at the bags. He hangs up the phone and repeats the conversation that I just half heard. He's impossibly cute. Whatever we talk about for the next hour must be fleeting because all I can think of is want to kiss want to kiss want to kiss want to kiss. Then, it's time to head to the airport. Landlord gets the car running, we grab all of Dmitri's bags, and head to the car. We should be at the airport in...wait, we're headed in the wrong direction. Maybe Landlord is helping me kidnap Dmitri. This idea would intrigue me, except that Landlord is a sixty-something year old guy who likes to go to foreign countries and pick up young boys and do...whatever he does. I don't share well. But we are not on our way to the airport, we are clearly at the T station. I am tempted to say "This isn't the airport", but this week has gone particularly bad in every way except for Dmitri, and I'd rather just spend some time on the T with Dmitri anyway. want to kiss want to kiss want to kiss want to kiss Talk about nothing. want to kiss want to kiss want to kiss want to kiss And we're here. The airport. Dmitri is leaving. The lady behind the counter won't let him bring his bags carry on this time, so he checks them. I want to say how sorry I am that my friends let him down (because I'm used to them letting me down, that's no big deal to me, I let them down just as often). I want to say I wish we'd had more time. I want to kiss him, and follow him to the gate, and on the plane, and back to Chicago. I could move my life to Chicago. Steggy is there. Dmitri is there. I know loads of people in Chicago, why I could...kill myself rather than move again. I'm no longer a satellite in search of a planet. I am a star, and someone will make their orbit around me. And it's time for him to go, and we shake hands. A handshake. We met because he liked the way I wrote about being a complete whore, and the only physical contact is a handshake? I'm so far off my game, I'm playing patty-cake. His plane takes him home where his Mutually Exclusive Hookup Partner will soon become his Boyfriend. They'll make forts out of blankets and play video games. I'll be at home playing solitaire. There's no conceivable reason why ACDC's "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You" is stuck in my head. No one around me recently has sung or referenced that song, no one has rocked (or appeared about to), and I have not seen someone salute anyone since I shaved off my Hitler mustache in the mid nineties (I'm kidding, I'd never shave off my Hitler mustache...I mean, I've never had a Hitler mustache).
All week long, the wrong things have been popping into my head: that horribly catchy Maroon 5 single, Manamana, the word "phlebotomy". At work, a softspoken man was trying to order a raisin scone, and I kept hearing him say "bra strap, bra strap, bra strap" over and over. The crazy quotient in my life keeps escalating. My mother called last week to tell me she heard an ad for a job on the radio that would be perfect for me: bag checker at Logan airport. When I tell her that I'm not the least bit interested, she asks if I'm content to bag groceries for the rest of my life. I've never worked in a grocery store in my life, but now I'm considering it just because I think she's prejudiced against supermarket clerks. Yesterday, she called and asked if she could visit on Saturday. Just as she hung up, Zuzu called and suggested driving to New York City on Saturday to see a poetry event. When I reminded her that Dmitri is going to be in town on Saturday, and that he might not want to spend ten hours of his visit in a car, I realized that the real issue was that I didn't want to be trapped in a car for ten hours with Zuzu, Dmitri, and Zuzu's latest "boy toy", a guy who, within the first five minutes of my first conversation with him, brought up both how easy it is to murder someone AND how complicated his life has been since he was released from the mental institution. Today, I received an e-mail from someone saying that they were removing me from their friends list because I mentioned in an entry that I don't like cunnilingus. If you've read enough of my journal to decide to add me as a friend, and you don't realize that I'm not going to be a huge proponent of cunnilingus, I just don't know what to say except: "Penguin lust." My father moved to Martha's Vineyard while I was away at school. It wasn't remotely traumatic. It wasn't even a remote island. I started spending on average about three weeks of the year on the island. I felt like a Clinton.
But despite all my vast Martha's Vineyard experience, I'd never been to Nantucket. Sure, I'd drunk the Nectars, I'd recited the dirty limericks, but I'd never actually been there. I wasoverjoyed when, in April of 2001 I won a two nights stay at The Jared Coffin House, complete with round trip airfare for two from the Cape. In July, I was hanging out with some jailbait who was crushing on me, and who I was...desperately trying not to crush back on (I barely made it...he was sooo cute/funny/smart/completely illegal), and he asked if he could come with me to the island. No. No. No. Hmmmmm...No. But it did remind me that I had to book the trip at some point. I was going to Seattle in August for the National Poetry Slam finals, and I was broker than an old pop culture reference, BUT I didn't want to go to Nantucket during the winter when it was all cold and desolate. So I called and made a reservation for September 14th. 2001. September 11th, I was scheduled to do a poetry show in Portland Maine, with the only really Deaf Poet on Def Jam, Ayisha Knight. I was voicing all her poems, and she was signing all mine. We'd also interwoven our poetry into one long show. It would have kicked so much ass, but, you know the planes and the buildings and the dying happened, and it didn't look like the show was going to happen. We were also opening for Folk Implosion that night. Damnit. After an awkward day of honing my ASL skills on the subject of terrorism, we drove back to Boston, where I was staying with Zuzu the Political Activist. That was fun. Really. I'm beingcompletely sincere. No, I mean it. After a few hours of nonsensical ranting, I checked my e-mail.
Oh, right. Nantucket. Scott. Scott was the one person who ever replied to my PlanetOut ad. He was 23 to my 24, a former fatty who was now borderline anorexic. We'd gone to a PJ Harvey concert together a week before, and had...hmmm...we had something that was almost fun. The concert was good. I discovered he lived on the Cape at the same time I had, yet we had never met. However, we knew about a billion people in common, including Kevin Fucken Harris, so we talked about them. After out pseudo-date we sort of hugged, but not really, and he drove back to the Cape, while I was explaining to Zuzu why, despite our awkward first "date", I had invited him to Nantucket: "No other prospects." Scott picked me up at the bus station (sexy, sexy), and drove to my mother's. The plan was to park his car at her house, take the cab to the airport, and be on our way. But nooooooooooooooooo, Scott wanted to meet my mother, and have her drive us to the airport. I love my mother, but she's CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZY, and more than a bit bitchy to my friends. Jennifer had suggested running her over with my car, my boss at Kookaburra Canyon would hide in the kitchen when my mother came to visit me at work, and Saint was more direct when he asked me "Dude, why is your mom such an insufferable bitch to me?" She had plotted to have Elvis killed before I figured out that that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Why would I want to introduce her to someone I didn't particularly like, but wanted to have sex with in the near future? I prepped him. My mom knew I was gay (she had nearly walked in on me and Elvis on more than the occasion), but we didn't talk about it. Talking about it involved crying. This is the woman who chastised me for voting in VT instead of MA. "Just think, if you'd voted here instead of Vermont, you could have changed things." "What do you mean?" I asked her. "You did vote for Bush, right?" No, she wasn't kidding. My prep for Scott included just telling her we were friends from College (he was currently attending UMCL), and that we were going to get away from the 9/11 stuff. "Actually," he confessed when we were in her house, "I met him on an online personals site. We're going for a romantic weekend." I was so going to kill him. There is little in life as agonizing as the anticipation of knowing your mother is about to walk in on you having sex with a boy when she doesn't know you're gay. I suppose it could be worse. I could have been being gang banged by the football team when my dad walked in, but I've never had much of an affinity for jocks, and my Dad lived over an hour away. He also had a sense of personal space. Something my mother lacks to this day.
There is no way to make this look innocent. We're two guys in a bed who reek of long amazing sex (you can barely smell the "you're better than my brother" at this point), and Mr. NoAss's Gila Monster is still visible through the sheets. The tension is mounting on me, and I'm pretty sure it will hurt worse than Seith's cock when I hear the door open and-- It's not my door. It's the door to the spare bedroom. This is where the sobbing begins to waft under the doorway. I'd been so focused on my pulse moving north from cock to inner ear, that I hadn't noticed it. I threw on some baggy clothes and knocked on the door. "Mom?" "Insafemode, you're awake? Of course you're awake. It's only ten. Insafemode, I did it, I broke up with my boyfriend." Now my blood drains back down from my inner ear, into my feet, and escapes through my toes and on to the carpet. My Mom is breaking up with her boyfriend. My Mom, who owns my house is breaking up with her boyfriend with whom she's been living. My Mom is totally going to kill my fuck factor. Then my blood comes back with resounding force into my brain and kicks my ego's narcissistic ass. "Are you ok?" "Yea, Insafemode, I think--" her phone rings, it's her boyfriend. I do the wiggle-your-feet-while-your-mom-is-on-th e-phone-dance while she sobs, then steels, then says. "Oh--Why didn't you tell me that it--Ok--Well that changes everything. I'll be right over." I never did find out what the fight was about. "I'm so foolish sometimes." My mother said as she picked up her purse, and yanked her jacket off the floor. "I just get so emotiona--Insafemode who's in your bedroom?" I turn slowly. Each crisis has been thus far averted, so this must be the point where Seith and his serpent wave at her from my bad. But Seith is no longer in my bed. He's fully dressed and playing PlayStation. "Oh, Mom, this is Seith, he's a friend of mine. He'll probably be staying here for a while." "Well, lucky thing I won't be needing the spare bedroom then. Goodnight Insafemode. Goodnight Seith." "Night. Good to almost meet you." And my mother, The White Tornado, spun down the stairs and back over to her boyfriend's. The whole ordeal took about five minutes tops. "I figured if we had been playing video games it could have accounted for any noises she would have heard." "Good thinking. Certainly the 'Oh God, you're better than my brother' comment would have been in a better context." "Yea, sorry about that. Are you any good at Breath of Fire 3?" On the ride home, I became convinced that we were going to be in a terrible accident, both of us killed by a tractor-trailer speeding down the wrong side of the highway. When my mom came to identify the bodies, and collect our things, she'd tell the nurse how sweet I'd been, how I'd never cried as a baby, and how I was so smart that I'd been attending private school. And when she got home, and started leafing through my backpack, she'd cry a bit at my tattered Tolkien, she'd cluck her tongue at the blank sheet of graph paper in my algebra book (I was supposed to have finished my homework that afternoon) and then she'd see the Wall Street Journal, and marvel at what an intelligent boy she was raising. A few seconds later, when the porno fell out, she'd realize what a complete sexual deviant I was, and she'd cut me out of all the family photographs.
Luckily for my family, there was no terrible accident between my dad's work and our house. I ran upstairs the moment we got home, and stuffed the magazine under my mattress. During dinner, I realized that my father kept his porn beneath the mattress, so, clearly, my mother would know that that's the first place to check for those kinds of things. I asked to be excused. I ran back upstairs,and began frantically looking around the room. The desk was out, as I'd known for years that my mother liked to go through all of my drawers while I was at school. I couldn't hide it in my closet because my mom had once found a turtle I'd been keeping in a shoebox in there, and she had dug through it once a week, ever since. Under the gerbil cage! Perfect. I hid the magazine and returned to dinner. After dinner, I leisurely watched four minutes of TV before heading back to my room. Under the gerbil cage was a terrible place. What if my mother decided to clean the cage while I played with my friends? Or what if Rhoda or Ralph (the gerbils) decided to make a bigger nest, and moved enough wood chips out of the way to expose the magazine's glossy cover? Doom! I decided that under the mattress was the best I could do for the moment, and decided to go to bed early to protect it. The next day, my parents let me stay home. I searched the basement for an appropriate hiding place for my new treasure. Under the carpet? Inside the jacket of my old Mousercise record? Every possible spot seemed too conspicuous. The magazine was just too thick. There was no safe place for it. I was a wreck. There were only four hours before my parents came back from work, and I had no idea what to do with it. I had a small heart attack when the phone rang, and my mom asked me what I was doing. "Playing....Nintendo." I said. My hands were shaking. "Ok, hon, see you soon." Soon? Oh, God. Not soon. Anything but soon. I had to do something. Something must be done. Drastic measures needed to be taken. And that's when it hit me. I didn't need the entire magazine. Most of the articles didn't make any sense to me, and I had no use for the pictures of just women. I ran up to my room, took out a pair of scissors, and cut out my favorite fifteen pages of the magazine, which I tucked between the covers of my Where's Waldo books. Then, I brought the rest of the magazine downstairs, tore it into tiny pieces, and used it to start a fire in our charcoal grill. After about twenty minutes, there was nothing left of the magazine but ashes, and my fifteen favorite pages. But what if my mom picked up the Waldo books while she was dusting, and the pictures fell out? I went into the basement, swiped a roll of my father's electical tape, and attached the top of each page on the inside covers of all four of Waldo books, so that they were secure, but I could still flip them over to see the other side of the pages. I was clearly well on my way to becoming a criminal mastermind. I longed to tell someone about my evil genius. But who? Jennifer would be grossed out. Scott was treacherous scum. I couldn't risk showing the Waldo books to the other kids in school, lest a teacher discover my secret. Kevin! Kevin would appreciate my burgeoning life of crime. I tossed my Waldo books into my backpack, and walked down the street to his house, and knocked on his door. He was in his room, playing Ninja Gaiden with Jeremy. When we were done marvelling at the graphics of the game, I opened up my backpack, and made them both swear not to tell anyone about what I was going to show them. A week later, every kid in my neighborhood had borrowed my Where's Waldo books. When they were safely back on my bookshelf, I breathed for the first time since I found the stupid magazine. No one had been caught. By then, school was back in session, and life had returned to passably normal. I kept my Where's Waldo books in my backpack at all times. Nobody at school knew I had them, and there was never a moment when my mom might stumble upon them while she was cleaning. On a Saturday night that seemed as docile and soothing as any Saturday night, my parents invited Jeremy Burdick's parents over for dinner and drinks. I knew that Mr. Burdick and my father worked together, but I didn't know they were friends. And I'd never seen Mrs. Burdick out of their house before. After dinner, while the adults sat on the porch, drinking cocktails and telling stories, Jeremy and I went into the basement to play Kid Icarus. I had just been turned into an eggplant when my mother opened the door to the basement. "Hon?" She called. "Yea, mom?" "We're getting a little bored of playing cards up here. We were wondering if you'd mind going up to your room and bringing us a couple of your Waldo books. We want to see who can find him the fastest." My little eggplant eyes bugged out. "Uhhhh...Sure." I ran upstairs and tore all the pictures out of the book, leaving noticeable rips. I asked Jeremy to fold up the evidence and hide them somewhere. Crisis averted. I went back to the basement and tried to de-eggplant myself. Jeremy came down a minute later. "Where did you put them?" I asked. He smiled. "I'll tell you later. Our parents might be listening." We played the game a few minutes longer, and then he said "How come all the pictures in that book had guys in them? You gay?" I paused the game. "They had girls in them, too." "Fag." Jeremy said. Then he went upstairs and told his parents he wanted to go home. After he left, I scoured my room for my pictures. When I didn't find them, I knew that Jeremy had taken them home with him. Oh, well. I hoped his parents found them and grounded him for a year. Pilgrim's Academy was my chance to start over. None of the kids in my new school knew that I had been third-grade famous for my Woody Woodpecker impersonation, or that Queen Popular Sarah The First had caught me picking my nose in fifth grade science class. Nobody had heard about the time Kevin Harris pushed me off my porch and broke my arm. Nobody even knew who Kevin Harris was. I was safe.
I've never asked my parents precisely why they decided I should go away to a private middle school. I think they believed that I was too smart for the public school system, and that's why my grades had been dropping. It couldn't have been because I was bored with the facts the teachers mumbled, and terrified of the small humans who were supposed to be my peers. Whatever the reason, I'm mostly grateful. I've heard stories about what happened during my two year absence from the public education system: group showers, rat tails, stabbings, a pregnant girl, marijuana. The most exciting thing I can remember from my two years at Pilgrim's was when the Latin teacher had a nervous breakdown between third and fourth periods, and stormed out of her classroom yelling that my friend Scott and I were "trying to destroy" her and her "teaching curricula". That night, she called our parents, and the parents of a few of our classmates, and told them how "ill-behaved" and "dangerous" we were. After a brief investigation into our third and fourth period activities (the highlight of third period being that my teacher failed to collect the homework I didn't do, and the highlight of fourth period being that nobody blamed me for the fart someone dropped in the darkroom), the Headmaster issued a written and verbal apology to all the children and parents involved, and the Latin teacher was demoted to assistant librarian. It was during the Pilgrim's years that I fell in love with the idea of Jennifer. Long brown hair, green eyes, nose that wrinkled pleasantly when she laughed at my stupid, stupid jokes. After voluntarily going to a couple of her cello recitals, and convincing her tutor me in Science, I finally got the courage to ask her out, and was stunned when she said "Yes." I was less stunned when she dumped me four days later, confessing that she'd only really gone out with me because she wanted to make out with my supposed best friend, Scott. And he hadn't noticed her at all, until she started tongue kissing me during lunch. I'd like to say I spent the rest of the year shunning both my treacherous friend, and that filthy hobag, Jennifer. But I didn't. I continued to worship my ex-best friend's new girlfriend. And pretended to not hate Scott for his betrayal. After all, they were my best friends. Unlike public school friendships, private school friendships are hindered by distance. No one in my school lived in the same neighborhood that I did. Only two of them lived in the same town, and neither of them were my friends. So, during most school vacations, I stayed home alone and began my affair with computers. Typing elaborate fantasy stories, and some of the worst rhyming couplets recorded by twentieth century man. I became really good at top of the line games like Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and King's Quest IV. During my Spring Break (which did not correspond with the public school's February and April vacations), I spent some time at the doctor's office where my mother worked, and riding in my father's work truck, eating sandwiches while he fixed electrical wires and telephone poles. On the third day with my father, I ate a runny Grilled Cheese sandwich that had decided that, since it had defeated my throat with its power of burnination, it was more than up for the challenge of destroying my colon. Despite my life-long dislike of public restrooms, I had no choice but to run into the restroom that my father's many coworkers shared, and purge my body of this greasy affront to cheesdom. I knew this was going to be a multiple part bowel movement. At least a three minute project. Unfortunately, I'd left my copy of The Two Towers in my dad's truck, and the only thing in the stall with me was a Wall Street Journal. I picked it up, and out fell a glossy magazine with a scantily clad woman on the cover. Club magazine. I was ready to put the potentially offensive periodical back within the pages of the newspaper. I'd "read" through my father's Playboys, and hadn't found anything interesting aside from the joke section. Slim women with large breasts leaning over cars, or kneeling on beaches didn't do it for me. But the woman on the cover was not like the women in my dad's Playboys. She didn't look like the kind of girl who liked long walks on the beach, and dreamed of curing cancer, or becoming a veterinarian. This wide-hipped, huge nippled goddess had probably dropped out of highschool after her third abortion, and decided that stripping only provided temporary fame, while posing for porn meant that her nineteen year old pussy would live forever. I flipped the magazine open. I marvelled at the way she squatted to the ground, a whip held tight in her teeth. In the background was a bright red motorcycle, and beneath her was...a huge cock. Sure enough, the next page showed her leaning over the motorcycle, while a guy in a visored helmet and nothing else pointed his cock in the direction of her mammoth ass. My butt clenched. I leaned over and checked the room for a pair of feet. I was alone. I folded the magazine back into the Wall Street Journal, ran it out to my father's truck, and zipped it into my backpack. |
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