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 are on a date in a junkyard. Michael is silent.
“So what’s up?” he finally says. “What happened with Christine?”
“Oh, I, uh, started asking her about that letter, you know, and 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