“I’m sorry.”
“For what? You didn’t dump me on Valentine’s Day to fuck the class slut.” My voice was not nearly as lighthearted as I had wanted it to sound. And as soon as I said fuck, I felt bad for saying it. I didn’t feel like I should curse in a home for the elderly—you know, with so many of them ready to pass on and all. It’s about as close to church as I get.
“He’s not f—” Marcus stopped himself from making my mistake. “He’s not having sex with her.”
I snorted in disbelief.
“No, really,” he said, shifting his weight off the hearth so he was leaning toward me, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet. “He’s not. He has no intention to, either. Apparently Manda feels that she misused her feminine powers and now wants to abstain from sex.”
“She wants to be a born-again virgin?”
“Apparently.”
“Susan Faludi bullshit!”
“Classic,” he said, nodding his head in agreement.
“Well, I hope they are very happy not having sex together. But what I don’t understand is why he had to break up with me to not have sex with her.”
The more I talked about this, the less it made sense. Marcus knew there was no use arguing with me until I finished, so he just bounced up and down in his sneakers.
“Why didn’t he just not have sex with both of us?”
He shrugged.
“Why did you try to get us together in the first place?”
He leaned in close and put his hand on my knee. And just like the first time he put his hand on my knee—on the cot in the nurse’s office, right before I peed in the cup—a current of electricity shot from my knee, buzzed my bod, and overloaded my circuitry.
But unlike that first time, it was a gesture meant to communicate sincerity, not sin.
Right?
“I tried to get you together because I thought you could make each other happy,” he said. “I really thought you two could be happy together.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I don’t think I was ever convinced of that.”
“Then why did you bother dating him at all?”
It got very quiet in the library as I tried to come up with an answer. In the silence, I could hear a familiar melody coming from the rec room. It really was time for Musical Memories because that sweeping piano and those swooning vocals could belong to only one adult contemporary artist.
“Barry Manilow,” I said.
Marcus cocked his head to the ceiling, then smiled.
“Yes. It’s none other than the showman of our time.”
Christ, this conversation was getting nostalgic.
“Do you still have that Greatest Hits eight-track in the Cadillac?”
His eyes darted around the room. “Can you keep a secret?”
“You know I can.”
“I listened to it so much,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “it blew up. Literally. Smoke and everything.”
“You’re lying to make me laugh!” I said, in between no-holds-barred cackles.
“I wish.”
When I remembered what question I was avoiding by talking about Mr. Copacabana, it got quiet again. Barry sang: “I’m ready to take a chance again / Ready to put my love on the line with you . . .”
“There you have it,” I said, clapping my hands together.
“Have what?”
“The answer.”
“Elaborate.”
“I was taking a chance. I decided to be very unlike me and take a chance on Len. And look what happened. I, unlike Barry, don’t think I’ll be ready to take a chance ever again.”
Marcus slid his butt back on the hearth. He pulled out a lighter. Flickclickflickclickflickclick.
“Did you know that during the teen years, the brain goes through an intense developmental phase comparable to that of a newborn baby?”
“Is that another conversational construct?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I have a point.”
“Make it.”
“During that phase, the cells and connections that are frequently used survive and flourish. And those that aren’t used just die away.”
“Point, please.”
“It was good that you gave Len a chance, even though it didn’t work out. You had to exercise that part of your brain, the part that lets you fall for someone, otherwise you’d never be able to fall in love with anyone. Ever.”
I gazed up at Marcus, who was now standing long and lean in front of me, all mischievous half-smile, sly eyes, and glass-cut cheekbones. I wanted to ask, Hey, Marcus, what happens to people with the opposite problem? The ones who fall three dozen times, plus three?
Instead I said thanks for the Psych lesson and left.
Later, when I got home, I consulted my textbook and found that Marcus wasn’t bullshitting about the brain stuff. The frontal cortex overproduces cells during puberty, and the brain has to get rid of some of them. Doing strengthens neural pathways and the cells survive. Not doing weakens them, and the cells die. So Marcus was right about the use-it-or-lose-it theory.
But the application—love!—was dubious at best.
March 1st
Dear Hope,
I NEVER thought I’d see the day when two of your daily e-mails sandwiched a message from none other than PAUL PARLIPIANO. My crush to end all crushes! Gay man of my dreams! OOOH!
I still can’t believe it. And how sweet was it that he apologized for not writing back sooner? Between the World Economic Summit and the Salt Lake City Olympics, he’s had a lot of nonviolent protests to organize this semester. Since I last talked to you, he actually INVITED me (via e-mail) to join him in PACO’s biggest nondiscriminatory demonstration against all forms of tyranny, the Annual Snake March (for the month of March, get it?).
I was like, “Yes! I’ll be there! That is so COOL!” even though a trip to NYC could interrupt the Toe Lint Super Bowl and I had no idea what the hell a Snake March even was. Thanks to Google, I now know that it’s when a huge crowd walks haphazardly around the streets to cause traffic jams and other forms of low-level mayhem. It’s an antiauthoritarian march that reflects democracy because there’s no line leader and everyone decides which direction the group goes.
SOUNDS LIKE FUN FUN FUN! More fun than moping in my bedroom at least. And it’s right in the middle of spring break, so I won’t even have to skip more school to make it. How fortuitous is that?
By the way, he still thinks I’m a shoo-in for Columbia, which is another thing I needed to hear. He assures me that I shouldn’t worry, that the school is notoriously unorganized and famous for sending out its acceptances long after every other Ivy League school. I hope he’s right.
Leave it to a homosexual to get me out of my Guys Suck malaise. Is it me, or are gay guys the only good guys? Or am I just a masochist?
Fag-haggingly* yours,
J.
* I mean this in the most honest and least politically incorrect way possible. Really.
march
the fourth
Today was Len, Manda, and Scotty’s first day back to school after their suspensions. I had a week without them to practice conducting myself with quiet, dignified grace.
“That’s the classiest way of dealing with bein’ jilted,” Gladdie had assured me during my last visit.
“Gladdie,” I said skeptically, “I’ve never seen you conduct yourself with quiet, dignified grace.”
“That’s ’cause I ain’t never been jilted, J.D.!”
“Who would dump a gal with a mug like this?” Moe said, holding Gladdie’s face in his hands and placing a loud, smacking kiss on her wobbly, painted lips.
“I guess I have a dumpable mug,” I said.
That would have been the perfect moment for Marcus to come up to me from behind and offer me some kind of assurance that everything was going to be okay. Something like, “Jessica, I would never dump your mug.”
But he didn’t. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen in Silver Meadows that day, not that I was looking. (Okay. I was looking a little bit.) Marcus hadn’t said much of anything to me since our library chat. He avoided eye contact and barely said “Hey” to me. I figured his loyalties were with Len after all.
Anyway, I vowed not to give Len, or Manda, or the PHS gossipmongers the satisfaction of seeing me upset. However, I didn’t even get to homeroom before I realized how difficult this was going to be to pull off.
“Omigod!” Sara shrieked when she saw me in the hall before homeroom. “Don’t you just want to die when you see Len and Manda together?”
“I haven’t seen them.”
“Look!”
Then she grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me in the opposite direction, just in time to see Len gently kiss Manda on the hand in parting, like he was a knight and she was a goddamned damsel or something.
Quiet, dignified grace, I thought to myself.
“Omigod! Don’t you want to die?”
“No,” I said calmly. “Not really.”
“If my boyfriend humiliated me the way Len leveled you, I would want to die!”
“Well, it’s a good thing that you don’t have a boyfriend, isn’t it?” I replied in a tone as sickly sweet and artificial as Equal. “Come to think of it, you’ve never had a boyfriend, have you?”
That shut her up and sent her stomping into homeroom.
I had my eyes closed and my head pressed against my locker door when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I had a very definite idea of who I wanted it to be.
“Um. Jess.”
Instead I got the last person I wanted to see.
Quiet, dignified grace, I reminded myself as I opened my eyes.
“What is it, Len?”
“I just want to. Um. Apologize for hurting you.”
I held up my hands to cut him off.
“First of all, spare me your apology because it’s more about making yourself feel less guilty than it is about looking for forgiveness. Second of all, don’t flatter yourself by thinking you hurt me. You’re either an egomaniac or a psychotic like your mother if you think you hurt me.”
Yeah, that’s right. I sunk to a yo mama level. Whatever. He deserved it.
“You blindsided me, that’s for sure. And I was pissed off. Not so much about you hooking up with Manda, because everyone knows you’re just the latest trick in her hobag. No, I was pissed for only one reason: You broke up with me before I had the chance to break up with you. And that makes me an even bigger asshole than you are. But at least I know it!”
When I finished, there was applause. I was so taken with my tirade that I hadn’t noticed the crowd of onlookers. Bridget, Pepe, Scotty, Taryn, and a whole bunch of faces I didn’t even recognize were all clapping as Len slunk away, feeling every inch the huge sphincter he is.
The last bell rang, and the bodies scattered toward their respective homerooms. That’s when I finally heard his voice from behind.
“So much for quiet, dignified grace,” Marcus said, his lips pressed together, and his arms folded against the faded black MONDAY on his chest.
“Not my style,” I said. “I’m more of a loud, offensive mess.”
“Yes,” he said, slowly breaking into the grin I know so well. “Yes, you are.”
As we walked into homeroom together, I decided that his assurance of okayness was better late than never.
the ninth
I just came back from the innermost circle of hell, and it’s decorated in Laura Ashley florals.
My parents forced me go to the Piedmont University tea being held for New Jersey applicants they are trying to woo into their honors program.
“But I already told you, my first choice is Williams.”
“Jessie,” my mom said. “Piedmont is throwing money at you!”
“And as the ones footing the bill for your college education,” my father said, for the bizillionth time, “we are telling you to go.”
I should have told them about Columbia. I should have just ended this whole charade right then and there. But I didn’t. Because I suck.
“Fine,” I said with an exhausted sigh.
I dragged myself upstairs and got dressed.
I will take this opportunity to mention that all the months of no running and yoga have finally paid off. I’ve gained some weight, but in a good way. I don’t know how much because I never weigh myself, but it’s enough flesh to fill out the butt of my cords and stretch the straight and vertical lines of my ribbed turtleneck into two almost-A-cup arcs. Pepe actually commented on the former last week.
“Damn! Tu es belle!”
(“Damn! You are fine!”)
“Vraiment?”
(“Really?”)
“J’aime une fille avec un peu de jonque dans le tronc.”
(“I like a girl with a little junk in the trunk.”)
“Comment?!”
(“What?!”)
“J’ai dit, ‘J’aime une fille avec un peu de jonque dans le tronc.’ ”
(“I said, ‘I like a girl with a little junk in the trunk.’ ”)
“Il y a un problème avec ta traduction.”
(“There’s a problem with your translation.”)
“J’aime une fille avec un booty.”
(“I like a girl with a booty.”)
“Oh. Je le reçois maintenant.”
(“Oh. I get it.”)
“Oh, tu l’as reçu!”
(“Oh, you got it!)
Junk in the trunk must be why Pepe has this hopeless crush on Bridget, who has looked bootylicious and legal since seventh grade. It took me eighteen years, but I finally look like a girl, albeit one five years younger than I am, but even this is an improvement. The point is, when I looked in the mirror, I thought I looked pretty good. For me.
Unfortunately, I did not pass my mother’s white-glove inspection.
“You can’t go dressed like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a tea party, Jessie,” my mom said, “not a keg party.”
“But look,” I said, lifting up my leg. “I’m not wearing sneakers.”
“You go upstairs and change into something more appropriate this minute!”
“Mooooooommmmmm,” I whined unattractively. “I thought this was appropriate.”
Then my mom hustled upstairs and made a beeline for my closet.
“No, no, no, no . . .” she said as she pushed hangers from one side to the other until she reached the inner recesses of my closet, the darkened comers reserved for clothes I never, ever wear.
“Mom,” I said. “There’s nothing back th—”
“This is perfect!” she said, whisking out one of Bethany’s cast-offs, a charcoal-gray suit covered in dry-cleaning plastic.
“No way!” I shrieked. I was completely horrified at the prospect of looking like someone who works on Wall Street. Make that the non-working wife of someone who used to work on Wall Street.
“Jessie,” she said. “This is from Barneys. It’s a very expensive, very well-made suit. You’re lucky your sister got her colors charted and discovered that gray doesn’t suit her hair or complexion.” She chuckled, pleased as punch about her discovery. “Suit her. That’s funny.”
There was nothing funny about this.
“It was very nice of her to give it to you, and since you’ve put on some weight, it just might fit.”
“I’ve already got the scholarship, Mom,” I argued. “I don’t see why I need to dress to impress.”
Then my mom went on and on about how the tea was being held at the home of Ms. Susan Petrone, a very highfalutin Piedmont University alumna, Class of 1986. She’s a big-time district attorney, and even if I chose not to attend Piedmont, she could be a perfect addition to my Rolodex (?!) and someone I could turn to for a reference four years from now when I need a job blahdiddyblahblahblah.
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” she said. br />
I love it when my mom drops deodorant commercial wisdom.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
Another perfect opportunity for my Columbia confession.
“Nothing.”
That’s right. I pussed out and put on the itchy, ill-fitting suit. I suck.
“You look very professional,” my mom said when she looked me over.
Yes, it’s very important to look professional when the only job on your résumé is serving frozen custard and other heart-attack snacks for fatty boombalatty bennies at Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe on the Seaside Heights boardwalk. Christ. How did I let myself get into this?
So we drove to Oceanhead, which is a very hoity-toity waterfront town. It’s probably the classiest town in Ocean County, which is really not saying much. Ms. Susan Petrone lives in one of those slate-and-blond-wood houses with floor-to-ceiling windows exposing grandiose views of creamy sand and crashing surf. It’s a private beach that has never seen a cigarette butt, beer cooler, or a bennie’s plastic flip-flop.
Needless to say, my mom was very impressed. “Do you have any idea how much I could sell this for?” she asked, drooling over the potential commission. “Three mil at least.”
Also needless to say, I was the only fool wearing a damn suit. The room was awash in pastels and floral church dresses. I looked like a bull dyke at the Easter Parade. Yet I made a very unlesbianlike observation.
“Why aren’t any guys here?” I asked myself out loud.
“This is a tea for the girls of Westlake College, Piedmont University,” said Ms. Susan Petrone, a tall, lean woman with newscaster hair, tasteful jewelry, and a no-nonsense demeanor.
“But Piedmont is a coed school—”
“Indeed,” interrupted Ms. Susan Petrone in the very authoritative tone she must use in the courtroom. “One of Piedmont’s greatest strengths is the coordinate system of education, which enables you to grow and share with each other in a women-only environment.”