“A letter, like…Well, in my math class this morning Jenna, who sits next to me, y’know, Jenna Rolan, said something about me giving you a letter and, like, I don’t even know you that well, so there might be, or have been, a misunderstanding.”
“I don’t understand.”
I don’t either, and that’s what I just said. Doesn’t she know what a misunderstanding is? I don’t say anything.
“You want to make sure that you didn’t give me a letter?”
“Well…”
“Why? What’s this about?” Christine leans her folding chair against her hip.
“Well, I just hate when rumours get started because they’re really hurtful, you know, and—”
“You didn’t, OK?”
“OK.”
“You didn’t give me any letter. Are you happy?”
“Well, I’m pretty happy—”
“Are you proud about not giving me a letter?”
Uh-oh. Against her hip, her chair twitches.
“Is that like your big accomplishment of the day? Not giving me something?”
“No, actually, I was—”
“Whatever.” Christine walks offstage and gets her backpack. I reach into my pocket for Shakespeare but—ewwww—fingers grab mushy chocolate head and sink into soup ringed by foil! Abort mission! Chocolate filth!
“Wait, Christine—”
But she’s already on her way out of the theatre. She seems to walk slowly, saying something to herself, maybe about Mr Reyes but more likely about me, I hope/fear, and then suddenly she’s at the door and she scowls back once, as if thinking, Well, figured as much—his name’s Jeremy. And then she’s gone as if, you know, a giant dragon coiled its way up from the floor of the theatre and decided to take her for its mate.
Fuck.
I should be pissed, right?
But, well…I’m weirdly relieved. It’s like I knew this would happen all along. It’s like I couldn’t handle anything else; it’s like this is the way the world works for me and, what do you know, it worked again. Failure justifies all my worrying and planning and strategising. I was right. I couldn’t do it. It’s almost as if I got away with something. My posture is back to being no good, my unslick peripheral vision has relaxed and I’m staring at the floor. I trudge to the bathroom to clean out my pocket.
Middle Borough has changed. While I was reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, industrious Student Unioners were putting up decorations for the Halloween Dance, these card-stock pumpkins. They look like they should have a Hallmark logo on them somewhere, taped to the walls, holding each others’ plump hands, dancing in circles. Pumpkins in love.
I go into the guys’ bathroom. I stand in front of the sink and turn my right pocket inside out. It’s not so bad; most of the Shakespeare stayed in the foil. I lick my fingertips as I remove it, soap up my hands and scrub the inner lining. It’s peaceful here: a cracked-open window, the click-clack of the soap dispenser…It’s like that moment just after you leave the doctors’ office, feeling all tingly and examined.
The door clangs. I try not to look—it’s Rich, striding to the urinals and hitching up his pants, like his penis is so huge he has to take special 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