“You’re kidding!” she squirts. “I’m Puck?”
“You, young lady, are Puck.”
“Yes!” Christine jumps out of her seat, pumping her fist. Everyone eyes her with respect and swelled-up cutesy pride, or maybe that’s just me; when girls get happy and jump out of their seats, like on The Price Is Right, it’s sweet to watch.
“Don’t get too excited, Christine; it’s a disgusting number of lines. Maaaaaaah!” Mr. Reyes moves on through Hermia, Helena, Titania, Bottom, and about a dozen other people. Mark, behind me with his Game Boy, gets to be some kind of cross-dressing elf. That’s comforting.
“Okay, those are the roles; now we must have the read-through. Ladies, fetch two metal chairs each and bring them on stage.”
“Wuh?” The girls down in front look confused. (It’s funny how they look confused from behind, with their shoulders bunched up.) Christine is the only one I hear: “How come we have to get the chairs?”
“Come come, it’s a trade-off each time,” Mr. Reyes says. “The men will be on chair-fetching tomorrow. Speaking of which, men! Pick a representative to go to the Teachers’ Lounge and have them microwave my Hot Pocket!”
“For the whole play?” I ask. I don’t want to get stuck with that job.
“No, Jeremy, just for today. Next time the girls will pick someone to go.”
“I don’t understand,” Mark says behind me, actually pausing KAP Three. “Could you explain that again, please?”
“Hugggggh,” Mr. Reyes says. “On day one the girls will set up the chairs and the guys will pick a representative to get my Hot Pocket; on day two the guys will set up the chairs and the girls will pick a representative to get my Hot Pocket; then it repeats.…Does anyone have a question about this?”
Yes, of course: someone up front has one, and another, and another. When we finally get it all sorted out, this kid Jonah with a lisp fetches the Hot Pocket as the girls lug furniture, and then Mr. Reyes brings us on stage, where we sit in a circle of chairs (the girls made it a bit small) as if it were time for Duck-Duck-Goose, but really it’s a read-through of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and really I’m not a little kid; I’m in high school. I have to remember that.
I grab the seat next to Christine’s in the circle.
“So, uh, congratulations,” I say quietly, speaking to the air in front of me and hoping she’ll notice, “on Puck.”
“What is this crap?” she turns, fierce. Christine has brown eyes with her blond hair. Up close she looks like all the cutest movie starlets, all those ones who haven’t really been in any movies, but you see them in Stuff magazine or wherever, all combined in Photoshop, except that someone checked the Constrain Proportions box so nothing got distorted. “I can’t believe he’s making us fetch him chairs—isn’t that illegal?”
“Uh, I don’t think so, actually, but it’s very bad—”
“Oh yeah, whatever. We don’t have any rights under the Constitution about discrimination?”
“We don’t have any rights under the Constitution at all, because we’re students—”
“That is such crap!”
“Yeah…” I drum the head of Shakespeare in my pocket. “I’m Jeremy, by the way.” I reach out to shake her hand, then pull back—I don’t want people seeing.
“I know who you are,” Christine says. “You’re in my math, right?”
“Oh yeah.” I pretend I wasn’t aware of that fact. “But you know, you can be in a class with someone for a long time and never really—”
“Lysander!” Mr. Reyes snaps. “Speak!”
“Uh…” I’m Lysander, right?
“I’m Lysander, right?”
Mr. Reyes: “Yes.”
“Yes. Okay, um…‘You have her father’s love, Demetrius; Let me have Hermia’s: do you marry him.’”
Mr. Reyes: “Thank you, Jeremy.” He sucks in his lips in the angry/disappointed adult way. “Really excellent.”
Me: “‘Uh, I am, my Lord, as well derived as he, as well possessed—’”
Christine: “I hate him. His English classes are awful. He can’t teach—”
Me: “‘And, which is more than all these boasts can be I am beloved of beauteous—’”
Christine: “I’m seriously thinking about writing a letter about him to the Metuchen Home News/Tribune—”
I can’t tell if Christine likes me or she just hates Mr. Reyes, but one way or another she’s talking, and you can’t beat that. I keep going, and every time I come to a sweet line in the read-through (and you know Shakespeare—the sweet lines are really sweet), I direct it at her, tilting my head so my sound waves ruffle some molecules on her cheek and she reacts in some imperceptible way that I might be imagining.
See, when I’m talking to girls, I develop an out-of-body consciousness, or unconsciousness. Everything means so much more. My posture, which is hopeless, gets a temporary lift as I arch my back. I can feel all my organs stacked in place and eyeball with pinpoint accuracy how far Christine’s leg is from mine, and when they touch just for a second I wonder if it’s her doing or my doing or chance. How can she not notice if our legs touch? How can she not notice my extremely unslick peripheral vision? How can she not notice my white socks, showing between my pants and shoes? (I have to fix that.)
“Lysander!” Mr. Reyes snaps again halfway though some scene with fairies. I scramble with the script. Christine smiles, which doesn’t help me, and I try to smile back even though she might not be smiling at me, or she might be smiling at me in the wrong way, the eunuch way.
This is good. This is a step.
“‘Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends,’” Christine reads. The end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is empty without applause. It’s 5:30 and I’m sweaty in bad places.
“Reagggggh…” The cast collectively stretches, inching our chairs back. Some people have left during the reading, but there are still a dozen of us in the circle, including a napping Mr. Reyes.
“Right, hmmmm,” he wakes up. “So that’s the play. Tomorrow we’re going to do scenes with Lysander and Demetrius. Maaaaaaaaa! We need everybody here, and blah blah blah—”
Scraping, chatting, yawning, we drown him in the dive for our backpacks. Here’s my last chance to talk with Christine. I’ve got to (1) give her the chocolate Shakespeare and (2) be slick about it—like I’m her friend, but I could be more—and (3) leave the theater with a flourish.
“So, um, Christine,” I manage before she gets off stage, talking to the back of her head. In my left pocket, a fist clenches and unclenches. In my right, Shakespeare stands tall. “Did you hear anything about me, ah, giving you a letter?”
“Mm?” She faces me. That doesn’t sound like a good Mm.
“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 rumors get started because they’re really hurtful, you know, and—”
“You didn’t, okay?”
“Okay.”
“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 off stage 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 theater. She seems to walk slow, 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 theater 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 strategizing. 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 Midsummer Night’s Dream, industrious Student Union-ers were putting up announcements for the Halloween Dance, these cardstock 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 doctor’s 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 pisses into 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, and 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, Fetal 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 forever.
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. O.J. 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 were 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 toweling off he’ll sit on the Bowflex and flap towels under his crotch to CNBC; nobody bothers to move the machine during the day, so in the evenings it’s still there, graced with the sweat of Dad’s balls, as I eat microwave burritos with cheese and talk to Mom.
“Do you have lots of homework?”
“Nope.”
“I’m swamped 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, because of 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 “Diamond’s Don’t HAVE to Be Forever” 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 favorite 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 to 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—cutthroat social contest, all day, everyday; 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.”
“Dumbass. 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 anymore, 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.”