precautionary measures getting it out. “What up, bitch?”
“Hey Rich,” I say, not moving. I’ve got to stop this, this deer-in-the-headlights freeze state that I go into whenever I’m confronted with girls or guys or even actual deer, or especially other guys’ penises…
“What’d you do, crap your pocket?” Rich asks over his shoulder as he excretes in the urinal. He’s here after school for some manly sport.
“I don’t talk to people who are pissing,” I say. Only I don’t say that.
Rich walks to the sink next to mine. He’s probably still dripping. “Seriously, dude. What is that? You got chocolate in your pants?” He seems concerned.
“Yeah, well…”
“I’m not even gonna say the obvious thing about you being a fudge packer.”
“Uh…” I don’t really know what a fudge packer is, but when I think about it it’s pretty clear. Meanwhile, Rich laughs and calls me a bitch again. He leaves without washing his hands. I pull out my Humiliation Sheet and press it against the mirror with my wet wrist, scraping tally marks next to Laugh and Snotty Comment. It never ends with this school, with Rich; for every one of him, there are mini-hims like George or Ryu and sometimes I think about renaming all of them, about standing inside the front door of Middle Borough on a stepladder and stamping their foreheads as they come in in the morning: Mouth Breather, Waste of Sperm, Ingrate, Troll, Skank, Retard, Pus Head, Junkie, Foetal Alcohol Casualty, Yellow Teeth, Stinky, Preggers, Soon to be Featured on World’s Scariest Police Chases, whack, whack, whack. I know them all so well.
Then I think about how among these people, these afterthoughts of all races and creeds, some are Cool and some aren’t. How is that? It’s something I’ve been wondering for ever.
See, because being Cool is obviously the most important thing on Earth. It’s more important than getting a job, or having a girlfriend, or political power, or money, because all those things are predicated by Coolness. They happen because of it. They depend on it. I mean, Saddam Hussein was Cool, not that he’s a good guy or anything, but he had to be pretty slick to get in power and keep it for so long. Alexander the Great was Cool. Henry Kissinger. Ben Franklin. Rick James. OJ. Bill Clinton. I’m not. I don’t know why I’m not. I don’t know how to change it. Maybe you’re born with it. Maybe it skips a generation, because my parents are pretty popular people; they host little parties every few months. (I used to love them as a kid, hiding behind couches and stealing mini-sandwiches from the kitchen.) Maybe it all comes down to whether you’re a bully or a chump in nursery school. Maybe that first confrontation is what does it, the first time you say “Screw it, this isn’t worth fighting for” instead of “Screw you people, eat my fear”.
Wherever Cool is, anyway, I missed it and now I’m stuck observing these machinations of sex and status and dancing and parties and people sucking at each other under bleacher seating like some kind of freak, when I’m not the freak. Rich is the freak. Clearly. When I grow up, that had better be understood and I had better be compensated or I’m going to shoot myself in the head.
“How was school today?”
“Chocolate melted in my pants and I had a run-in with my short-statured tormentor.” Only I don’t say that. How can I explain this to Mom? Let’s try the normal way:
“Fine.”
“That’s good.”
I’m sitting on the couch in front of the Bowflex machine in the living room. Mom bought Dad a Bowflex years ago in hopes he would exercise on it. She’s bought him a lot of things—gym memberships, Slim-Fast, “Think Like a Thin Person” hypnosis tapes, liposuction consultations, Weight Watchers, Nautilus—but the Bowflex was the worst. Dad looked it over and decided the best place for it would be right between the couch and the TV; he now uses it exclusively as a rig to dry himself on in the morning after showering. Instead of towelling off, he’ll sit on the Bowflex and flap towels under his crotch to CNBC. Nobody bothers to move the machine during the day so in the evenings it’s still there, graced with the sweat of Dad’s balls, as I eat microwave burritos with cheese and talk to Mom.
“Do you have lots of homework?”
“Nope.”
“I’m swamped with work.” Mom is in the dining room, which is basically the same as the living room but with a curtain separating the two, so it’s like I’m talking to the Wizard of Oz. “It’s time to snip some nips, you know?”
That’s a divorce term. Mom is a divorce lawyer. In fact, she’s one of the most well-known divorce lawyers in central (non-Essex) New Jersey, with Dad, due to her bus ads. They run a firm together called Heere & Heere (“I should’ve kept my maiden name, Theyer,” Mom jokes, but really her maiden name is Simonson) that advertises on buses in Trenton, New Brunswick and Rahway. The ads say “Diamonds Don’t HAVE to be for Ever” and show a gold ring being thrown into a hungry fire. I think it’s great. I tell people I’m a child of divorce in an entirely different way from most kids.
“Yes, yes, a lot of Jersey couples are fed up right now…” Mom continues to read documents. I can see her silhouette through the curtain; she’s hunched over the dining room table behind stacks of envelopes.
“Mom, play rehearsal started today.”
“What’s your play called again?”
That’s just what Mark asked, four hours ago. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“You know what play I love? Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Are you going to do that one?”
“No, Mom. Is there any chance you could work with me on my lines sometime?”
“Ask your father. I’m busy.”
“Dad’s not home, Mom.” I take the remote and turn the TV to my family’s favourite show—whatever’s on digital cable obscured by a big Bowflex shadow. Naturally, Dismissed fills my screen; it’s always there in my lowest moments, so weird and dangerous and hypocritical that I’d, like, shoot up my school just to blame it. I mean, what kind of show throws ménage-style blind dates at teenage boys? What are you telling them—all of a sudden, you’re not Cool unless you’re going out with two girls? You’re entitled to two girls? Where’s my one girl? And if you are a girl, are you better suited to competitive harem-living than any sort of independent, self-sustaining existence, like Mom’s doing right now behind her curtain? Are you bred for competition like a horse?
Naturally, MTV switches it around so girls go on a date with two guys, or gay and lesbian people go out, but the result—cut-throat social contest, all day, every day; death to the ugly; death to the stammerers; death to the faces that got scarred in a playground sometime—stays the same.
Still, one of the incredibly hot girls on Dismissed is Asian. So I call up Michael Mell.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You watching TV?” I hear his television click; Michael sighs as he sees her. The contestants
