she got pretty pissed off.”
“Dumb-ass. Why’d you do that?”
Huh. I never considered that. Self-sabotage?
“I guess I just wanted to clear things up before proceeding.”
“You talked to her, though, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s great, man.”
“No, it’s not. She’s not talking to me any more and I didn’t give her the Shakespeare.”
“Dude, I knew you weren’t gonna give her the Shakespeare. When I saw you at lunch, I knew that wasn’t gonna happen.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Anyway. What’s up with you?”
“My brother is acting weird again. He just called. He thinks the government is putting pills in people’s brains.”
“Ah, I see. Like that pill he got that got him through the SATs?”
“Yeah. But that one really happened.”
“Sure.”
“I’m telling you, man!” Michael says. “How could my brother get a 1530 on his SATs? How the hell is he going to Brown? He had this pill, I’m telling you.”
“Sure. So listen.” I have to refocus the conversation; Michael can go on and on. (On TV, the Dismissed threesome frolics in a hot-air balloon.) “Did you see the announcements for the Halloween Dance?”
“Nope. Do I care?”
“They went up late today.”
“Yeah. And?”
“You think we should go?”
“Are you asking me out?”
“C’mon, Michael. Seriously. Why don’t we go to a dance?”
“You should go. Christine will be there, right?”
Jeez, I didn’t even think of that! Of course! “Yeah, she will!”
“So go. Good luck.”
“What—am I supposed to go by myself?”
“Whoa! Whoa!” On TV, the Dismissed girls have taken to wrestling in some sort of oatmeal in their hot-air balloon. One of them has her top fuzzed out; any time anything gets fuzzed out on TV, Michael turns to his—
“De-Fuzzer time, baby!” My friend whoops—really, he can whoop; I picture him walking across his living room with the whoop-grin on his face to man the De-Fuzzer box. The De-Fuzzer is something that you can only attach to digital, flat-screen televisions and it costs $400 to get one from some guys in New York. The quality of the unpixelation is really bootleg, like it makes breasts look blocky and weird, but it works as advertised. Every time Michael turns it on I’m understandably jealous.
“Daaaaaamn,” he says. “Nice nipples. Dark.”
“C’mon man, focus.” I watch my boring, non-titty television. “I’m tired of this crap, looking at nipples or listening to you look at nipples. We have to get some real girls.”
“No shit,” Michael says. “But you know, it’s not a good environment, evolutionarily, right now. Like, humanity is currently at its genetic peak. Did you know that?”
Michael’s full of crap like this. I just wanted to talk about the dance.
“I read about it. We’re all able to theoretically date whoever we want, whether they have bad eyesight or they’re prone to disease or whatever. If you’re a midget, you’re still going to be able to find another midget and have good midget sex and breed, so we’re not evolving any more. No natural selection is taking place. In that sort of ‘flat’ climate, scientists think that instead of survival of the fittest, it’s just survival of whoever’s out there and uninhibited, you know. Confidence prevails. So we might be screwed.”
“Thanks, man. I always knew I was screwed.”
“No problem. Hey, I’m gonna watch the rest of this Dismissed by myself, cool?”
“Yeah, it’s cool. Don’t use Vaseline. See you tomorrow.”
“See ya.”
And I go into my room (wop wop wop)…to enter the Internet. I use the Internet like most teenage boys do: exclusively for sex.
Next morning I am determined to sort out who started the rumour about me and Christine and the letter.
Before that, though, I go to the bathroom to do an Appearance Check. I’ve been doing a lot of Appearance Checks lately. I’ve noticed that I’m kind of ugly. I mean, I have brown hair and brown eyes—good, right?—but under a critical light, which is how the world views you, I can see how I might resemble someone with a palsy. My face is too long and the sockets that my eyes sit in are off-kilter sizewise, as if I were meant to have a larger eye on the left. My hair might be thick but it’s full of dandruff like a snowstorm. (Me and Michael used to have dandruff battles, actually, ruffling our heads violently in a sunbeam to see who had more glittering scalp waste.) My lips are drawn back and ghoulish. My earlobes are huge. When I get enough money for plastic surgery, I’m going to start with—
“Goood morning,” Dad says, ushering himself into the bathroom.
“Uh, hey,” I say, breaking my stare with the mirror, turning the water on so it looks like I was washing my face. Dad is completely naked, as usual before 10.00 a.m, except for his black socks. “Um, could I, um, get a little privacy in here?”
“Son, you’re catching me midstream,” Dad says.
“Yeah, I can hear that.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. Pretend we’re in the army. No other heads available. Ten-hut.”
“Dad, you were never in the army.” I turn toward him, then regret it because his naked butt looks weird. It always looks like it’s pressed up against a sheet of glass.
“How’re my two boys in there?” Mom asks from outside in a sing-song voice. “I’ve got to take a sho-wer!”
“Ho pippity pum pum!” Dad says, shaking his penis—
“Jesus, what is wrong with you people?!”
“Jeremy?”
“Can you finish off in the second bathroom? Please?!” I plant my hands to either side of the sink and close my eyes.
“Jeremy?” Mom asks, cracking the door. Then, hissing at Dad: “Put a towel on!”
“It’s
