Chapter 6
With high school dawning just a few weeks away, Lloyd went on an introductory tour of the high school, led by a student tour guide. The main point of her lecture was a warning that high school was much tougher than elementary school and would require a heightened level of studiousness. He was momentously fazed by this development and found himself alarmed at that reality.
His mother was adamantly sure that he was a top notch student and should be in top notch classes to match. His elementary school grades spoke otherwise. Undeterred, she took it upon herself to personally speak with the administrators and was pointedly adamant that he be admitted into some honors level classes. The administrators fairly pointed out that his straight C- average over the last 2 years of grammar school did not qualify him for such lofty status. But his mother would not be swayed and much to his own chagrin, and as a compromise with the administration, Lloyd was entered into the Honors English program.
Merrill Kulligan was a force of nature. She was the dictator of the family and would have a hand in most of Lloyd=s life decisions all the way up and through parts of his marriage. She was a loving mother and was devoted to her children, and they were almost cultlike in their devotion back to her. She stood out in the mostly bland Stepford like town they grew up in.
She didn=t involve herself in her kid=s lives like the other mothers did. She didn=t come to many school events, she didn=t cook for the bake sales, she didn=t participate in the PTA, and she didn=t base her life around her children, which caused much consternation amongst the other mothers. She had a very standoffish manner that tended to make people think she had airs about her. But she didn=t, she just didn=t care like they did.
Growing up, Lloyd and his sister knew not to expect her to involve herself in school functions and held no resentment towards her for it.
She was a fiercely intelligent woman who gave up a rewarding career in teaching to raise her two children. She had an unorthodox mothering style that seemed odd to others but worked for the Kulligans. She was a voracious reader and would stay up until 4 a.m. each night pouring through library books. In his late teen years Lloyd would come home in the middle of the night to find her engrossed in her reading. She was never waiting up for him like a worrier, she was just up reading. It was always comforting to Lloyd.
She was always bemused by her son and his various predicaments he brought upon himself, be it his lack of self esteem, his underachieving ways, or his usual befuddlement. ASlow to grow, slow to grow@, she would say to him, and that always soothed him. He was slow to grow in many ways and it would be a hindrance for him his whole life..
She was also the funniest person Lloyd ever knew. She had a quick wit and did not suffer fools gladly. One time on vacation, they were in a hotel, and she called the front desk looking for scissors. The clerk at the front desk said that they didn=t allow guests to borrow scissors. Well that made no sense to her.
AWhat do you mean, you don=t have scissors@, she asked.
AI am sorry, Ma=am, it is hotel policy.@ the overmatched clerk replied.
ASo, I can=t get any scissors?,@ she calmly asked.
AThat is correct.@
AWell, I just gave birth! How am I supposed to cut the umbilical cord?!@ she shrieked.
The scissors were delivered.
She was known for her quirkiness and one such vagary was her staunch determination to not have any overdue library books. On the due date, she would direct Lloyd=s dad to drop everything and head straight to the library to return her books. The fine was all of five cents a day, Nate Kulligan would say, we can afford it. Merrill would scream at him to do it and he would comply. The money wasn=t the problem, it was her deep fear that the library would ban her if she kept returning her books late.
Palmer=s Grove was not a town known for its culture or intellect. For many years there was a ban at the town=s swimming pool disallowing people from bringing books into the facility. Let that one sink in for awhile.
Apparently the village puritans were worried that the ink would get in the water or some gibberish like that. Merrill Kulligan attended a town board meeting to protest the absurdity of the law. She passionately and mockingly expressed her feelings on the matter to the perplexed board of senile old men and virulent racists. After careful and thoughtful consideration, the town president replied, AAre you some sort of intellectual or something?@ like she was in front of Joseph McCarthey in 1954. Though in fairness, the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities was way less offensive.
In the end the board removed the stupid ban, while most likely muttering Astupid Jews@ under their breath and vowing to ban bar mitzphahs.
Merrill would rise at 7 each morning to make breakfast for the kids and send them off to school. She would then take the phone of the hook, crawl back into bed, and go back to sleep until noon. She saw her kids off like every other mother.
She was charitably known as a character. She liked going to botanic gardens and when no one was looking she would snip a flower, most likely a gardenia, which were her favorite.
She could do no wrong in Lloyd=s eyes, and he was extremely devoted to her and sometimes she would catch him staring at her lovingly.
AWhat is it, Eddie?@ she would say. Eddie was her affectionate name for him.
Lloyd was hopeful that in high school he could somehow change his image, though how do you change invisible? His first week of school was daunting, lots of new people, and of course, new girls. Maybe they would give him the time of day. In his first week he was sauntering the halls and came up upon one such new girl, the name long forgotten. She had a strangely angled face and beady, prick eyes and a crooked ugly mouth. Sort of like a trout. Goodness, he loved girls with prick eyes, the kind that look permanently squinty and menacing. He felt the familiar beads of sweat forming in his anus and his forehead starting dripping. He was trying to be casual, and in an effort to instigate some form of conversation, but before he could she pointed at his head, laughed, and asked him if he had ever had a haircut. For extra emphasis and one more twist of the blade, she wondered why it looked like it housed cobwebs and when the Bozo tryouts were scheduled.
Only four years to go.
He returned to his locker where his supposed best friend Chris had taken his brand new kickass, lime green and yellow Oakland A=s satin jacket and glued pieces of yellow paper all over it. Chris also had taken to mocking everything Lloyd wore and how he behaved. If he had a jacket he really liked, Chris would say he looked stupid, if he dared wear loafers instead of gym shoes, Chris would point and laugh. They had been friends since kindergarten. Everybody had to change in high school, apparently. It did a lot of damage to Lloyd=s ego that his good friend of so many years took to lambasting him and it contributed deeply towards his bourgeoning case of severe lack of self esteem.
He found some solace with his sense of humor. He was making a lot of new friends. Mostly male, of course. There was one good thing to come out of his aforementioned honors English foray, besides his solid C grade the first semester and even solider D, the second. He had no business being in the class from the get go, learning about Greek entymology and the synopses of predicated ellipsi or whatever. He was way out of his league academically, but some of the dorks did make him feel better about his social standing. But the class was notable for one thing. That is where he met his lifelong friend Steve.
The teacher was Mr. Slattery, a failed theater fag with a falsetto voice and a southern, genteel manner, and Lloyd did a spot on imitation of him. The theatrical hand motions and the effete voice sent Steve into hysterics.
AI don=t unduhstahn wah yu ah in this clahss, Lloyyyyyyd. You done seem to wanna learn, wah is thaht.@ he would routinely ask Lloyd. AMy mommy thinks I is smart@, Lloyd would answer. AToo smaht for your own good I might dare say, hoo hoo.@ Mr. Slattery was fired two years later for banging a sophomore girl in the rafters of the school theater, shocking the crap out of Lloyd.
ADoan judth a book by
itth cover@ he said to Steve.
Being somewhat of a social outcast, he decided to seek out some after school activities to join, and he tried out for the freshman baseball team. He was a real good fielder, exceptionally slow on the bases, and couldn=t hit the ball out of the infield.
Surprisingly those skills carried over to the tryouts. He actually made it through the first round, and stumbled just a bit in the second round, whiffing on 20 of the 20 pitches thrown to him.
At one point they timed everyone on their speed to first base. When Lloyd finally made it there, the coach told him to go back and pick up the piano he was lugging behind him and not to bother coming back the next day.
There was a computer club that he tried, but he found the programming aspect tedious and he quit. Way to think ahead there, Bill Gates.
So, he settled on nothing, which would proudly continue for the rest of his high school years, adding a nice emptiness to his college applications.
As to the silly girl who mentioned that high school was tougher than elementary, Lloyd scoffed and proudly displayed his 2.2 GPA to all who asked after his Freshman year.
It was at this time that he got his first job. A friend of a friend was a busboy at The SteakJoynt, a restaurant in town that his family had never, ever frequented. In fact they had never eaten at a place with the word steak or joint in it. It was gentile central, in fact, it is unlikely a Jewish person ever stepped foot in there. It was wood paneled with nice tablecloths and candles on each table, pretty much exactly how Jews pictured Hitler ate his meals. But in truth it was mostly members of the Elks Club and the local Moose lodge, two other notoriously Jew-lacking organizations.
Lloyd was to be a busboy working eight hour shifts. His first day they put him right to work. From 4 till Midnight. Lloyd was clearing tables, filling water glasses, mopping the bathroom.
Pure hell. Afterwards he was told he was going to get paid under the table, which perplexed him. Was he supposed to sit under there and wait for a hand to give him the money?
One patron, asked him his name, and Lloyd replied, ALloyd Kulligan, sir.@ AKulligan?@ he answered with a patronizing tone, AThat aint no Jew name. You look like a kike. Hey that rhymes like a kike. Heh, Hey do you know what they said on Hitler=s birthday? Lets bake a kike!! Hahaha.@ He pulled out a cigar and sniffed his brandy. Two more things Jews never did..
Lloyd parents let him quit after a month, after he lied to them and told them the manager called the waitresses Acunts@ and that he had Nazi paraphernalia hanging in his office. The cunt part was true. And he knew what it meant by now.
After a well deserved six month sabbatical, he got a job at the Orchard Theater as an usher. It was the same ill fated movie house where NaSheen had spurned him so callously two years previous.
This job suited him a bit more than the busboy one. Cleaning up the theaters after shows was easier than trying to keep the members of the Knights of the Klans=glasses filled, anyway.
He enjoyed movies and came to be friends with many of the other ushers. Lloyd was able to hone his comedic skills as plenty of the other ushers were goof-offs like himself. They took particular pleasure in enacting their own sociological tests on the unknowing patrons. Lines of people would stretch around the building for popular movies, and as they poured through the doors like the sheep that they were, Lloyd and his cohorts would take the tickets and randomly insult them. They would throw in expletives amongst the usual platitudes, because they knew that no one ever paid a whit of attention to what they were saying.
ABig Chill to your left in theater 3.@ ABig Chill to your left in theater 3.@ ABig Chill to your left in theater 3.@ ABig Chill to your left in theater 3,
[email protected] Chill to your left in theater
[email protected] Chill to your left in theater 3.@ ABig Chill to your left in theater 3.@ ABig Chill to your left in theater 3, your mother=s a whore.@ ABig Chill to your left in theater 3.@ No one ever noticed.
Another time, one of the other ushers lied down in the supply closet and stuck his hand out the door like he was passed out dead on the floor. People just stepped over the hand and continued on. It was priceless. Got to get a good seat!
Another thing the ushers did to amuse themselves was to go into a movie just as it was ending, and right at the end, maybe right after the main character had died or something gayly emotional happened, the two ushers would stand on each side of the theater and start clapping in unison. Inevitably it would get the whole crowd doing it. The slow clap was the best. Clap......clap.......clap........clap...clap clap clap clap clap. It was an early lesson to Lloyd in something he dubbed the sheep effect. People would just follow the others instead of thinking for themselves. The hive mentality. Many times people would line up 20-30 people deep in one line while the other side was empty and the usher would have to tell people to come over to him. He would notice the sheep effect many times in his life.
He also saw more than his share of crazy things at the theater. One time he was summoned by a patron, that was what you had to call them, patrons, who was complaining about a couple engaging in physical activities in the back of the theater. Lloyd went to check and saw a head bobbing up and down in the lap of a rather happy looking fellow. As he got closer he saw that it was two men. He let the manager handle that one.
The theater was in a town that had a rather large, elderly, Jewish population and when Yentl opened it was pretty much a national holiday. They lined up around the building, creaking with anticipation.. As Lloyd took their tickets he would speak to them in Yiddish, which he had picked up over the years from his grandparents. AHello shegetz (female drunk), hello shicker (male drunk), ultacochers (old farts) to the left ! Schvartzers (black ethnic slur) to the right! Shockingly none of them heard him. By sheer coincidence (rolls eyes), that day set a record for customer complaints
Another benefit was it was easy to tear peoples tickets and not give them back the other half, allowing the usher to keep the full ticket for himself, for use at any time. He had a whole slew of them at home, that he doled out to his friends. Other times, kids from school would come by and ask to be let in, and out of some misguided notion that it would make him cool, he would let them pass. He neglected to take into account that the powder blue suit jacket, the face full of acne, the incredibly poor posture and the clip on bow tie pretty much rendered coolness impossible.
In one of the theaters there was a private room up above the actual seats where dignitaries were able to watch the movie in privacy. It was empty most of the time, so Lloyd would sit there many times during his breaks and memorize the movies and yell at the screen. People would be looking around and shushing people behind them and look flummoxed. They had no clue to actually you know, maybe look up. It didn=t figure into their psyche at all. He learned a lot about sociology during this profession. The room was also good for masturbating. Especially during Debra Winger=s death scene in Terms of Endearment.
There was a mental home next door and sometimes some of the residents would come see the movies. One guy was especially creepy as he was always trying to talk to Lloyd about comet, Mayan death rituals, and the second coming. Comets were Jesus= ejaculations and if one hits earth, it would birth itself into Jesus 2. Like a sequel to a movie. He said Jesus II was coming soon. And that he would shoot nonbelievers with his homemade potato cannon. Lloyd made the mistake once of egging him on by asking what kind of potatoes Jesus would use, he guessed Russet, and the guy stared at him for two minutes straight without saying a word. He finally said, AYou remind me of my brother.@
Lloyd later found out he had murdered his brother with a pickaxe.
Some of the ushers themselves were pretty strange. Sherman was about 24 and had been working there for 6 years, which was really long. And odd. One night he asked Lloyd if he wanted to go out with him and some other guys. Lloyd didn=t really want to, but he figured he had nothing better to do. Sherman picked him up at home. Just Sherman. He said the other guys cancelled. All they ended up doing was driving a
round desolate areas of Chicago, with the guy alternatively crying and screaming about his dead fiancé, and how he still contacts her through seance=s and that she had told him it was ok to be attracted to young boys. Lloyd told him it was time for him to go home as he was due back on planet earth. He was channeling Woody Allen in Annie Hall, and Sherman was just as weird as Christopher Walken. The dude started crying again and asked Lloyd if he could touch his thighs. Sherman quit two weeks later and joined a monastery.
As an adult, Lloyd always thought that it made a perfect place to set a sitcom, but he was too lazy to put any effort into writing it.
One night he went with one of his usher friends, Vince and one of the candy girls, Vanessa, to an underage nightclub in the area. Vanessa was exceptionally attractive and as such, Lloyd stammered and acted like the usual neutered puppy he did around all attractive women. The only time he could be himself was when he was bitching about not every having any girlfriends and never having kissed a girl, and how he is always nervous around them, and could she help him figure it out, and does she think he is attractive at all, and would a girl want to kiss him ever? Yeah, it took a real Sherlock Holmes to figure out why it had never happened.
Once they pulled into the bar parking lot, Vince pulled out some metal contraption and a bag of green stuff. Marijuana. Lloyd had never seen it before, and he had no urge to even try it. SCARY VILE WEED. Don=t do drugs and all that bullshit. It still scared him. He had his first beer recently, one can, and he woke up in the middle of the night with the room spinning. He woke up and started panicking that he had a brain tumor and got out of bed and fell onto one of the many splotchy parts of his carpet. He tasted vomit in his throat and rushed to the toilet and puked his guts out. He never had another Schlitz.
Beginning a trend that would last deep into his 20's, he went into the bar with his two baked friends, found a spot in the back and proceeded to stare daggers in the chests of all the hot girls, never even coming close to making any sort of physical, let alone verbal contact. Vince and Vanessa ended up getting it on and Lloyd had to drive them around while they fooled around in the back. His anger boiled over and he slammed the brakes really hard at a red light and they smashed into his seat. Lloyd told them a squirrel darted across the road. He masturbated really angrily that night and didn=t care at all about cleaning his carpet.
Later that summer, he was hanging out with a bunch of kids and one of them whipped out a joint. He decided he would finally partake and take his first
[email protected] the devil weed. That=s what he said, AI=ll have a hit@, and everyone laughed at his efforts to seem cool. He took the one hitter, he was hip with the lingo by now, and inhaled deeply. He choked out half a lung and went on a massive coughing jag, much to the stoned laughter of the other dudes. He tried again, this time inhaling slower. A small buzz came over him, but he didn=t think it was that big a deal.
The group headed out to see the movie Risky Business. It was at Lloyd=s theater and all the dudes were making Lloyd get them in free. He was stoned and didn=t want any of his coworkers to see him. But peer pressure is a bitch and he found himself talking to Vince at the front door. Vince told him his eyes were redder than menstrual blood, which made Lloyd start choking again. Vince let him go into the theater and Lloyd held the back door open and let the other guys in.
As luck would have it, after the movie Lloyd ran smack into his parents, who had just seen the same movie. He broke out into a huge sweat. He knew he was caught green handed, it had to be written all over his face. The skunky stench, the bloodshot eyes, the stupid giggling. He tried to play it cool, but he knew it was all over. His father asked if he liked the movie and Lloyd mumbled something about it being funny. His father was a lawyer, he knew criminals when he saw one. Lloyd was dead meat. His father sternly looked at him and asked him why he looked so guilty. Lloyd started to tear up, he was halfway to boarding school, he knew it. His dad smiled and said, AHow did you get into an R rated movie, you rapscallion@, and headed off to the car chuckling. I believe that is what pilots refer to as a near miss.
Two months later Lloyd and Ellen found a bag full of weed in their parents dresser. How about that.
By his junior year, Lloyd had sprouted to 6'1 but had gained no weight and was 150 pounds wet. He looked just like an upside down broomstick. His self esteem was plummeting like the Challenger, and his self image was non existent, crushed by the merciless rejection of every girl in school. The truth was that they didn=t even notice him, and he made no effort to make them. But try telling that to a broomstick. His only solace was his sick brain.
Holy crap, Rachel Mencina is wearing a miniskirt. I wonder what color underwear she has on. Her pubic hair is right under that material. I mean it is right there. Right at the top of her legs. And her thighs are right there too. She is naked under those clothes. I want to look at her naked.
Mind you, he wasn=t thinking of Afucking@ her or grabbing her. No, no. Just picturing her naked. What a dork. He was too naive to think anything more obscene than that. Those impurities would pollute his brain later down the line. He hadn=t quite honed and perfected his creepiness to the high art form it would eventually and inevitably evolve into in his later years.
She has nice boobs. I wonder what boobs feel like. I bet just like silly putty, they just mold in your hands and stay that way. And the hand prints just stay there for a few seconds and then fade away.
He didn=t even allow himself to even contemplate what a vagina looked like up close or what sex felt like. It was like contemplating what the surface of the moon felt like under his feet. And he was more likely to walk on the moon than get a little feel.
But oh, could he bitch about not getting any. His friend Henry was the prime recipient of the bitchfests. Henry never had trouble getting girls and Lloyd was envious and more than slightly jealous. Henry was on the short side, and Lloyd wondered why that didn=t hinder him. Henry would say he didn=t care, and that girls liked him for him being himself and being sensitive. Henry also made an effort, something that was annoyingly lost on Lloyd. Even Lloyd=s dad told him it was better to go1 for 100 than O for O. Didn=t matter, he was afraid of being mocked. Not being rejected, but being mocked for whatever his shortcomings most certainly were.
Oh my god, Lloyd Culligan totally asked me out, what a loser. Who does he think he is? Someone who deserves affection from a woman? Hahahahahah. No way. Tell everybody that ugly assface Kulligan asked me out. Oh my god, did you hear Lloyd asked out blah blah blah, no way, that skinny twerp, hahahaha. And so on and so on and so on.
One of Henry and Lloyd=s weekly rituals was to head out to the local park and pontificate on life=s mysteries. Henry would ponder his purpose in life and Lloyd would whine about not ever kissing a girl and just knowing that it would never happen. They would go at night because that made it just pretentious enough. With the stars and the moon.
Deep questions like, Is there a god? And if so why won=t he let me kiss a girl? If there is a heaven God is going to show Lloyd the tapes of his blathering bullshit just to mock him? And also a tape of all the places he masturbated? It is going to be a long tape.
After one of these marathon sessions Henry somehow convinced Lloyd to ask a girl out that he liked in his study hall group. Her name was Melanie and she was tall, pretty, with curly blond hair and a cute figure. A direct replica of his sister, Ellen. That stark realization hit him just as he was approaching her. He excused himself and went into the bathroom and masturbated in a stall. His groaning sounded like he was taking a shit, so he wasn=t worried about being caught. He never got around to asking her out.
Later that year, somehow he found himself driving Henry and some homely girl named Reba to lunch and they started making out in the backseat. Lloyd would have none of that and started swerving the car back and forth until their heads banged together and Henry got a gash on his forehead. He said a squirrel darted across the road. It was turning into a ritual.
For leisure, Henry and Lloyd would go to the m
all and speak in a made up language that sounded vaguely Slavic.
ABorkachta beraktuka schmelkdika?@, Lloyd would ask. AMershlader kerkpta ashlemenka@ Henry would reply. They would sit by people and try to annoy them. One time some old-timer yelled at them to go back to France. ABut ve are frum schlovakia,@ Lloyd vould say. AWell go back there you foreigners,@ the old Ukrainian immigrant replied.
That was the type of humor they would employ to amuse themselves. They made a good team. Henry had an alter-ego named Bill. Unfortunately, Bill was affected with downs syndrome. AMy name if Bill@. Oh man, would that inappropriately crack Lloyd up. In later years ABill@ would call Lloyd at work and leave him messages. ALloydy, this is Bee-yill. How are you tooday? I miss you.@ Ah, the good old days of political incorrectness..
Lloyd had always heard that women liked men who were funny. Well, he thought he was funny, and it didn=t get him anywhere. And years later, there was never that chance run in with some random girl from high school who confesses she always had a crush on him. That never happened. Stupid television and movies with their convenient twists and satisfying endings.
By this time, Lloyd and Steve were enlisted by their nice Jewish grandmothers to join the Bnai= Brith Youth Organization, where they met other nerdy Jewish folk like themself. It turned out to be another situation where Lloyd would be placed in close proximity with other people of the female persuasion and be totally clueless. He was comfortable around Jews because he felt better than most of them. To him, most Jewish males were emasculated wusses with curly hair, who displayed above average intelligence, matched with exceedingly nerdy behavior. In his deluded mind, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man was king. He felt he didn=t look Jewish, which was a capital offense in his book. So he had that going for him.
There was a pretty redhead named Debbie that he found himself attracted to. She was what he called Jew Pretty. It was the same pretense as what he felt about his own Jewish looks. She was pretty for a Jew, but not stacked up against the real goyisha girls in his high school. Land of the blind and all that. And she appeared to tolerate his presence. The big Jew dance was coming up and he figured he would ask her. But his brain was still his great enemy.
She=s going to say no. she=s going to say no. this is stupid. She just likes me like a friend. You are just like a brother to me, she will say for sure. Fuck that brother shit. Does your brother want to mush your boobs?
So in his defeated fashion he stammered out the question. And as he lowered his head for the likely rejection, she shocked the hell out of him and said yes. It took his brain a split second to process this and then being the suave dude that he was he played it cool, though the sweat beading down his forehead gave him away. That gave him 7 days, or 300 hours or 18,000 minutes to ruminate over it. And he ruminate he did..
Oh man, I wonder if I will get a kiss at the end, or more! Maybe more! Should I wear a tie? A bow tie? Jeans? LOAFERS? Oh, man. She said yes, a girl is going out with me! ME! I can=t contain myself. Must masturbate.
His first date ever! Everyone gave him advice. Henry told him to just be himself. Steve told him that she was Jewish, so it doesn=t really count as a real date. His Mom said he should been laid by now. AEddie, Eddie, Eddie,@ she would say as she shook her head.
Lloyd wondered if he could nervous sweat through a blazer. His ass produced more precipitation than Hurricane Katrina. Steve and him referred to it as AS. Ass sweat. He was producing enough to open his own water bottling company.
He didn=t sleep the night before and was a nervous wreck the whole day. By nightfall he was pacing more than the panther in Lincoln Park Zoo. When he got to her door, he stammered something about how nice she looked and she said thanks, and made no mention of his looks. His brillo pad reddish hair was styled as much as it could be, combed into a giant lump, sort of like rotten cotton candy. He escorted her to his car and by escort that means he walked next to her like a Nazi guard, and then nervously farted as he shut her door. He hoped she didn=t hear. She had.
The memories of the dance and after party are lost to history, but there is one thing Lloyd would remember for the rest of his life. As the date was over he walked her to her door, and didn=t even come close to making any sort of move towards kissing her. She said bye. He said bye. The whole evening started out with the highest expectations and ended up utterly forgettable. He woke up in the middle of the night in a pool of AS.
You choking piece of shit, He didn=t even try to kiss her, Harry. Llloyydd, lloydddd, the crowd is booing him after Kulligan just made his third error of the inning. This guy should be sent to the minors. Get laid? He can=t even hold a girls hand What a pussy, Steve. I know, Harry, but he sure has a strong right hand, he sure pumps that a lot, Harry.
She never talked to him again after that. Was it the farting? The Sweating? The deep insecurity? No kiss at the end? He had a plethora to choose from. Another notch in the insecurity belt.
Now things sexual weren=t always against Lloyd. He had some good luck. The scrambled porn on TV was one. Another time he was scrounging the trashcans behind the local convenience store and found a whole stash of Penthouse, Oui and Playboy magazines. Oui was the classy one apparently, as the women spread their labia in a very delicate French fashion, as opposed to the Penthouse ladies who were apparently doing impressions of the Holland Tunnel. And Playboy was Playboy. Nothing but bush. No lips. The vagina lips were scary to him. He never liked seeing them. It was like looking directly into the sun, he was afraid it would blind him. That even carried over into adulthood.
Another time he was driving down the road and saw a bunch of porn magazines in the middle of the road. He took them home, even though some of the pages were stuck together. In his naivete he thought it was from the cars driving over them. So he had some luck with sex.
While incredibly shy and nervous around girls, he was not like that around his friends. He had English class with Henry,(by junior year Lloyd=s mother gave up and he was enrolled in regular english) and would waste the time joking around. One time Lloyd went to sharpen his pencil and looked at Henry, who was sitting directly behind Lisa Simone, the hottest girl in the class. He shoved the pencil in and out of the sharpener in an immature and hilariously sexual motion and then proceeded to put his fingers up to his mouth in the classic V style, implicating that he was performing oral sex on Miss Simone. If he would have known it would be another six years before he would even get that close to a real one, he would have thrown himself out of the window, post haste. Anyhow, Miss Simone looked up at the exact time Lloyd was cunnilinging his fingers and shot him the dirtiest look this side of Oui magazine. The look of disgust on her face was something he would not see again until his marriage.
By this point his grades were pretty much nonstop in the tank, and he was constantly scrambling to maintain his C average. Doing so little work took a lot of work. In his social studies class he would cheat by writing answers on his wrist. Didn=t help during the pop quizzes. And his teacher, Mrs. Candleswipe, wasn=t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. She had to be pushing 70, he thought. Turns out she was 48. Lloyd always wondered why she never caught him cheating. It was so blatant, and he wasn=t the only one. Scott Kerflank would hide notes in his underwear and reach down there during the test. She thought he was scratching his balls and lectured him after class regarding his hygiene.
On at least three occasions, Lloyd would ride his bike to school, for the specific purpose of riding home at lunch to steal his report card out of the mail. He would bike the two miles home and pray that the mail came on time. His mom didn=t check the mailbox until late in the day, but he had to sneak around to the side of the house, hoping she wasn=t looking out the window. It was quite the reconnaissance mission. Once he got the report card he would skillfully change the type. Usually from a D to a C. And by skillfully, that meant erasing the typed out letter and typing in a new one and leaving eraser marks in the spot. Sometimes he would change his other C=s to a C just to make it look
like the whole thing was symmetric. He would explain to his parents that its these newfangled computer thingees that were doing it. That excuse flew in the early 1980's. And most of the time they bought it. Though one semester they caught him and made him study every night in his room. He would inevitably crack out the Oui=s and go to work. One time Ellen caught him and shrieked. He said he was scratching his balls. She said save if for History class. She also told him he plays with himself more than an only child. He laughed and finished himself off after she left.
He also had a propensity to blow off classes. Every missed class resulted in detention. They would also come in the mail, and he would tell his mom the school made a mistake and then tell her he had to stay after school for a study session. In retrospect it really made no sense. Was blowing off a class really worth being forced to stay after school?
One time he asked Mrs. Candleswipe to go to the bathroom and then he never came back. He hooked up with his friend Ray and hung out in the library. If he was cool, he would have gone behind the school to smoke a doob, or sneak a drink in the bathroom. But he was a slacker, not a fuckup. Candleswipe told on him and he had to go to the Dean to explain himself. He gathered his wits about him and told him that he had explosive diarrhea and was in the bathroom the whole time. He started saying how he had cheese for lunch and that sephardic jews from Eastern Europe are prone to such maladies and that it was inherited and that he is seeing a doctor for it. Seriously, if he had expended as much energy on his studies instead of covering his tracks he would have gotten into Harvard. The dean gave him a one day detention just to get him out of the office.
He was an enigma. Around males he was sarcastic, funny, edgy, and a bit cocky. But that cockiness was purely humor related and meant to amuse his friends. Women and sex were part of another world that he genuinely felt he had no part of and never would. To continue the previous analogy, they weren=t just the footing on the moon, they were the moon. He could look at it and enjoy its curves, but there was no way he would ever get there. And that feeling would last a better part of another 10 years, cementing his low self worth and confirming what he felt all along. He didn=t fantasize about fucking chicks, he fantasized about getting any attention from them at all. Have them tell them they like him, touch him. Anything. As an adult his favorite lyric of all-time was, I want you to notice when I=m not around, I wish I was special, you=re so very special. But I=m a creep, I=m a weirdo. Man, Radiohead had him nailed.
He had a thing for the Greeks. Minerva Perdaitis sat right in front of him in study hall.
She has no clue who I am. None. I have sat by her for two years and she passes me in the hall like I am invisible. You are so hot. So hot. Those Mediterranean lips. Oh my god. I wish she was my girlfriend.
Didididooo ddidididoooo didididooo
Let=s have sex tonight, Lloyd. No, no, I want it to be special Minerva, we can just keep oralizing each other for now.
Oh, Lloyd but I want to be your first, and you mine. And I would remember it forever and ever, even when I am married.
Well fine, Minerva, but don=t tell your friends, I want this to be our special secret.
Oh, Lloyd, your brand of self-confidence and assuredness, while also being exceedingly popular and approachable makes you just the perfect male. I am going to tell my friends we are doing it, but only because they deserve to know how thoughtful and intelligent you are. And the way you respect women is going to garner you a lot of lays after you break up with me after getting tired of the monotous sex.
Thanks Minerva.
One day Minerva showed up at the theater as he was taking tickets, and as he saw her he felt the familiar buildup of ass sweat beginning to form on his person, and he panicked as he tried to think of something suave and laid back to say. As she neared, she made eye contact, and a glimpse of recognition crossed her face. This was a crowning achievement, she recognized him. Something to finally hang his hat on. He relaxed. And then smiled. Their eyes met.
AHey, Lowell. I would appreciate if you didn=t breathe so hard on my back in study hall. You sound like a neanderthal. And maybe cut back on the onions.@
She knows who I am! She knows who I am! This is a day from the gods!!!
One day he was sauntering the halls in his usual daze and a girl from his biology class, Deena Saperstein came up to him and started talking. She was a POPULAR girl, and was dating one of the football players. They continued walking down the empty hall.
Oh my god, I am walking in public with Deena Saperstein down the halls of the school! Scanning mind for mocking. Is she mocking me somehow, are there cheerleaders around laughing? Scanning completed. NO MOCKING DETECTED. This is for real, I have no idea what she is saying, but what if people see me with her, they will mock me for walking with a popular girl, this is going to be no good. On the one hand a cool girl isn=t embarrassed to be seen with me, but maybe she will tell everyone how dorky I am. Concentrate, Kulligan, don=t trip. Just walk straight. This is awesome, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot.
ALloyd. Lloyd are you listening? Can I copy your homework?@
He had just banged into a locker.
AUh, sure, Deena.@ He was on cloud nine. Never mind that he was being used. It was contact. He may not have made it to the moon, but he had made contact with an alien.
The walk was maybe a total of three minutes, but for those three minutes he knew what it meant to be king of the world. The In crowd. With it. Hip. Mr. Cool.
Two weeks later he was in the gymnastics room and saw Deena walk in. He had no skills at all, but for some reason decided to start swinging on the rings. She saw him and he started to feel a swell of something building inside him, a small bit of esteem maybe. He was swinging back and forth and thought, alright time to impress her with the dismount. He timed it perfectly, the mat was directly beneath him and he was going to land smack in the middle. He let go of the rings at just the right time, and.... missed the mat by 3 feet. He slammed to the ground, knocking the wind out of himself. He stumbled to his feet, and went and puked in the bathroom. Nice job, Gaylord.
84 Olympics? Mitch Gaylord? Anyone? Anyone? Yeah, it was a huge insult back then.