Play Me

  Yeah.

  Right.

  She flicked my serves away as if they were gnats and ran me all over the court. I was grunting and running and sweating and even swore once, so the referee docked me a point. I managed to humiliate myself soundly, or Lucinda did. When the match was over, after I was beaten, stomped, trounced, spit out like a cherry pit, we were supposed to shake hands over the net. With the jeers of my friends in my ears, I took her hand and squeezed it as hard as I could. She squeezed back just as hard.

  Something in my gut thrummed like a guitar string.

  Later that afternoon, I found her by the water fountain. I told her that I needed to talk in private. She nodded, followed me into a dense wall of trees next to the locker rooms. I hadn’t planned what I was going to say or what I was going to do, but when I saw her leaning against an oak tree with green vines twining around the trunk, when I saw the sunbeams that shot through the leaves and spiked her like javelins, I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her. I’d never kissed anyone before, but I’d been thinking about it, wondering what the big deal was, wondering if I’d like it, if I’d be any good at it. After a few seconds, she kissed back. The guitar string in my gut twitched like a hot wire.

  Every afternoon for two weeks, we stole away from the art shack or the locker room or the bingo game in the main pavilion, hid in the trees, and kissed till our lips chapped. The weekends took forever—I stomped around, slammed doors, and screamed at my parents and poor baby Meatball, who didn’t understand the meaning of “leave me alone.” My mother told Marty one Sunday dinner that I was officially going through puberty and that the whole family should expect me to behave like a rabid grizzly on roller skates for at least five years.

  One Tuesday afternoon I sneaked away from my group to meet Lucinda in the woods. She was leaning up against the oak tree, but her arms were crossed and she was eyeing me as if I’d stepped in dog crap and she could smell it.

  “What?” I said.

  “I was talking to a bunch of the girls at lunch. Want to know what we talked about?”

  I didn’t. “Okay.”

  “We were talking about first kisses.”

  I said, “Okay.”

  “Out of ten of us, five of us had kissed a guy for the first time this summer.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Four of us had kissed the same guy. Wanna guess who the guy was?”

  Lucinda wouldn’t let me kiss her anymore.

  Now we’re sitting on the bench right outside the court. I’m dripping sweat onto the pavement, so Lucinda hands me her towel.

  “Thanks,” I say, wiping my forehead. “I’ll wash it and bring it back next time.”

  “Next time?”

  “I want to play you again.”

  She’s in the process of bringing a water bottle to her lips when I say this, and it makes her stop midway. “I totally creamed you today,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “So why would you want to play me again?”

  I shrug. “I just do.”

  “But why, Ed?”

  I look her in the eye and she looks right back, just as hard, just as directly. And for a second we’re back on the tennis court at Camp Arrowhead, grinding each other’s knuckles over the net. We’re back at that fountain seconds before I lead her into the trees and watch the sunlight give her a crown. I don’t know what it is. There have been plenty of girls around since her. But she was the very first. I can still remember how she tasted. And here she is again.

  One side of my brain says exactly what she said: But why, Ed?

  One side of my brain says the opposite: Why not?

  And this is what I say. “Why not?”

  She says, “You know this is just tennis, right?”

  I don’t know that. “Next Saturday?”

  Lucinda holds up that bottle of water, looking at me through it as if it’s a magnifying glass. Then she takes a long drink before she nods.

  Yes.

  The Matrix

  “I don’t like to be handled,” squawks Tippi Hedren.

  “But you like to be fed,” says Joe, holding out another sunflower seed from the bag I gave him. Joe scares a lot of people with his Bible and his brain, his big bug eyes and bony pumpkin head, but Tippi sees right through him. She’s making kissy noises in his ear. If I wasn’t so sure I was Tippi’s main man, I’d be jealous.

  “Okay,” says Rory. “While we’re waiting for Gina. Top-five chase scenes.”

  “We’ve done this one,” says Joe.

  Rory doesn’t take no for an answer. “Five. The Road Warrior. Mel Gibson before he started screaming at cops and directing films in dead languages.”

  “Retro, yet decent,” I say.

  “Four. The Blues Brothers. Car chase through a shopping mall.”

  “That’s a good one,” says Joe.

  “Three: Gone in 60 Seconds.”

  “Original or the remake?” Joe wants to know.

  “The remake,” says Rory.

  “Figures,” says Joe.

  “One word,” Rory says. “Angelina Jolie.”

  Joe holds up his index. “Angelina.” Then he holds up his middle finger. “Jolie.” He pretends to count.

  “Tarantino’s Death Proof,” Rory says. He’s on a roll and can’t stop. “Zoe Bell hanging from the hood of Kurt Russell’s car.”

  “Okay, I’ll concede that one,” I say.

  “Ronin. De Niro at his finest.”

  “That wasn’t De Niro’s finest,” I say.

  “His finest car chase,” Rory says.

  “No Bullitt? No The Fast and the Furious? No Bourne Identity?”

  “Cliché,” says Rory.

  “You’re cliché. What about Casino Royale, the incredible chase that opens the movie? Bond going all out after that guy through the construction site, up on a crane, and into the embassy?”

  “That’s not a car chase.”

  “But you didn’t specify a car chase,” Joe says. “You just said chase.”

  “Exactly,” I say. “And then there’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Zhang Ziyi chasing Chang Chen on horseback.”

  “Crouching meerkat and hidden iguana,” Rory says in disgust. “What the hell was that movie even about? If you want to do chopsocky, do chopsocky. Don’t pretend it’s some grand romantic crap.”

  “You’re getting too complex for Rory, Ed,” Joe says. Today he’s thankfully Bible free, but he is holding up a small mirror and checking out his emaciated face. I think he’s contemplating having his cheekbones surgically sharpened.

  “Fine. Let’s simplify. How about Terminator II?” I say. “Arnold Schwarzenegger on a motorcycle gets chased by a molten metal head in a big rig.”

  “And then,” says Joe, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Mine shaft chase in carts. Or The Dead Pool, where Dirty Harry is chased through the streets of San Francisco by a remote control car with a bomb.”

  “And what about North by Northwest, where Cary Grant is chased by a crop duster?” I say.

  “He’s not actually chased as much as dive-bombed.”

  “He runs away and the plane follows. That’s a chase.”

  “I forgot that one.”

  “And you claim to work in the world’s most comprehensive video store.”

  “I never claimed anything,” Rory says. “And I never liked you people.”

  I say, “Mutual.”

  “Okay,” says Rory. “Let’s do the top-five non-porn sex scenes.”

  “One word: Angelina Jolie,” I say.

  “I am just a wild animal!” says Tippi Hedren.

  Joe gestures at me with his chin. “Speaking of porn, where are all your girlfriends?”

  I’m focusing the camera on an empty chair, because Gina still isn’t here. “What are you talking about?”

  “The chicks,” Rory yells. He’s drinking from a brown bottle he found in my fridge that I hope is root beer and not regular beer, because I really don’t want to
be responsible for Rory becoming an even bigger tool than he already is.

  “Bring on the hos!”

  Too late.

  Now Joe glances up. “Stop calling people hos.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Sensitive. I was just kidding.”

  “Stop kidding,” says Joe. He mostly thinks Rory’s an idiot, but Rory either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

  But Rory’s right. It’s the first time in a while that there are no groupies to watch us film. I hope that doesn’t mean Gina’s going to stay home. I don’t like to admit it, but we don’t have a show without her.

  Joe plays us some music he wants to use for the new episode.

  “Jesus, it sounds emo,” says Rory.

  “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it emo,” Joe says.

  “It’s emo. And even if it’s not emo, it sounds emo. I hate emo,” Rory says. “Plus it doesn’t work for the character. What about the Meteors or the Distillers or one of those screamy chick bands?”

  Joe pets Tippi Hedren. “I was thinking that maybe it’s time to soften Riot Grrl a little bit.”

  “Soften her?” Rory says. “Why would we do that?”

  “Well, she just broke up with the boyfriend. She’s sad.”

  “You do know Riot Grrl is a fictional character, right?” Rory says.

  Joe sighs. “Somebody thinks this show is called All About Rory and His Tiny Little—”

  “In case you’re interested, I was pushed into that fountain,” says Tippi Hedren.

  “What the hell is that crazy bird talking about now?” Gina says, walking into the garage. She’s wearing denim cutoffs and black boots that come up to her knees.

  “Nice of you to show up,” I say.

  “Fight with the parents,” she says.

  Rory says, “Again?”

  “They didn’t like my boots.”

  “I thought they were all about understanding you.”

  “They were. They are. But I’m tired of being understood all the time. I’d like to be surprising once in a while. Maybe even annoying or thoroughly exasperating. So I’m wearing my boots.”

  Rory nods appreciatively. “I enjoy it when you wear those boots.”

  Gina sits on a tattered velvet couch we keep in the back of the garage. “They want me to go to the University of Michigan. That’s where they met,” says Gina. “One of the top schools in the nation. Blah blah blah.”

  “So,” Joe says. “Are you going?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why should I go halfway across the country? At home I have everything.”

  This is true. Back in the late nineties, Gina’s parents made a boatload of cash when they sold off their dotcom business right before everyone else went broke. Gina’s house out-McMansions McMansions. She has a swimming pool shaped like an organ complete with individual cabanas. A game room. A private theater. There’s even “guest quarters” over the garage, which, of course, they call a “carriage house” and not a garage. The whole place is solar powered. They’re environmentalists now. If, by environmentalist, you mean a person who has a private theater, an organ-shaped pool, a cleaning woman from Nicaragua, and enough money to buy an island.

  “They got me a new car,” Gina says. “A hybrid.”

  “You already had a hybrid.”

  “This is a better hybrid. Or so they say. They’re thinking about taking it back. They’re mad because I don’t want to go to their stupid school and because I’m wearing boots made in China.”

  “Where are your boots supposed to be made?” Joe wants to know.

  “Ideally? I’d travel by horseback out to the Dakotas, shoot a buffalo with my trusty bow and arrow, skin the animal, and make the shoes myself using an awl I fashioned from a shinbone. Then I’d be sure to cure all the meat, turn it into pemmican, and eat it for the next year. Only take from the earth what you really need and what you use. That kind of thing.”

  Rory says, “I’d like to see you with a bow and arrow.”

  I say, “I don’t think we should give her any weapons.”

  “You mean, you don’t think we should give her any other weapons,” says Joe.

  Gina smiles and holds out a boot. “I think I’ll wait till these wear out.” She lights a cigarette and coughs into her hand. She never smoked before Riot Grrl. Now she can’t stop. Joe would tell me that I’m responsible for her bad health as well as her bad attitude.

  I say, “She’s quoting The Birds.”

  “Huh? Who?”

  “Tippi Hedren,” I say. “She quotes lines from Hitchcock movies. The Birds. Marnie.”

  “Why does she do that?”

  “Because they’re the only two Hitchcocks my mom doesn’t like.”

  “That makes perfect sense,” says Joe.

  “What do you want? It’s a goddamn bird,” says Rory.

  “I think you’re a louse,” Tippi Hedren says.

  “What do you want? She’s just a goddamned bird,” Joe says, eyes glinting in his skeletal face.

  Gina rolls her eyes and tries to get comfortable on the tattered couch. We picked the garage as our backdrop instead of, say, a girl’s bedroom, because we wanted the show to look stripped down. Dark. Gritty. Kind of like Gina herself. Or maybe the Gina she’s become since we started the show. It’s getting harder and harder to tell them apart.

  The episode we’re working on is one I officially call Episode Nine and, unofficially, Makeup Sex. In it, Riot Grrl 16 talks about the fight she has with her boyfriend, Weasel, at a Dresden Dolls concert. He walks out on her and she has to find her own way home. She breaks up with him, but just a few days later she sees him at a friend’s house and they end up having sex in a closet. It’s her first time. She’s not sure what to make of it later.

  At least, that’s what I wrote in the script. I pass out copies and everyone flips through them. I take out a pen and wait.

  Joe says, “Wait, what is this?”

  Rory says, “Cool!”

  Gina blows smoke out of the corner of her mouth as she flips through the pages. “No,” she says.

  I say, “Listen, Gina, I thought—”

  “They can make out in the closet maybe. I’ll describe that. But Riot Grrl does not have sex in closets, okay? Especially not the first time. Riot Grrl is not some stupid slut. Riot Grrl has dignity.”

  Rory says, “She does? Since when?”

  “I think I know what Riot Grrl 16 does and doesn’t do,” I say.

  “Like hell,” Gina says. She grabs my pen and starts marking up the script.

  I’m starting to get mad. “Look, we might get more votes if—”

  “If we cater to Cro-Magnons like Attila the Hun?” says Joe.

  I want to say, well, now that you mention it, yes. And I’m about to, but I get interrupted again.

  “Think for a second,” says Gina. “It doesn’t work. After all this time, why would she all of a sudden have sex in a closet?”

  “This is a satire. It’s supposed to be making fun of other vlogs. It’s supposed to be making fun of the whole video culture. The more outrageous we make her, the better the show will be.”

  “But that’s the thing. This isn’t outrageous. It’s just really, really sad,” Gina says.

  Once, Gina and I did some grappling in a closet. I had fun. I thought she did, too.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Don’t you agree?” she says.

  “I said, fine.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.”

  “I’m not being a baby.”

  She smirks and I feel like getting that metaphorical bow and arrow and shooting her in the head with it. “Let’s just get this done. I’ll rewrite as we talk.” I grab my laptop and open up the document. I stay pretty quiet while the rest of them decide that Riot Grrl isn’t going to get with her ex-boyfriend at the party. Instead, the ex-boyfriend will show up in one of her dreams in an evil bunny suit.

  “And Riot Grrl will say to Weasel, ?
??Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit?’” says Rory. “And Weasel will say to Riot Grrl, ‘Why are you wearing that stupid girl suit?’”

  Joe says, “Will anyone get the Donnie Darko reference?”

  I say, “Who cares? If they do, great. If they don’t, evil bunnies are funny.” I don’t even glance at Gina. “And I think they qualify as outrageous, too.”

  She laughs and then collapses in a fit of coughing.

  “Maybe we should have Riot Grrl go on the patch,” says Joe. “Before you die of lung rot and kill us with secondhand smoke.”

  “Eventually,” Gina says. “Right now, it’s too amusing to irritate my parents by polluting the body that Mother Earth gave me.”

  “I thought your mother was your mother,” Rory says.

  I’m still thinking that sex would bring in better ratings than an evil bunny, but I decide to keep it to myself. I print out the revised script and give out the copies. We start blocking the scenes, trying to pick the best location for the dream sequence. We work for another hour, then decide to take a break.

  Rory says, “Can I use the laptop?” He whips it off my lap before I can answer. “Let’s take a look at the voting results. Riot Grrl, Riot Grrl, now coming in at number six. That’s still pretty good. Lots of lovely comments from some clearly brilliant people.” He frowns. “And some not so lovely comments. A lot of not so lovely ones. Rear*Window13. Isn’t that you, Ed?”

  “So?”

  “Did you post something?”

  “Only once, because some dumb ass annoyed me.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “What do you mean?” I pull my chair next to him so I can look at the screen. There’s my post:

  Satire: the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

  Duh.

  And here’s the response from the Tin Man:

  Aristophanes wrote satires. Molière. Swift. If you want, throw Jon Stewart or Sacha Baron Cohen in there, I don’t care. But Riot Grrl 16 ain’t Gulliver’s Travels. It isn’t even Borat. You’re pathetic. Derivative. Dull.