- In tenth grade, Ben was hospitalized for a kidney infection, but Becca Arrington, Margo’s best friend, started a rumor that the real reason he had blood in his urine was due to chronic masturbation. Despite its medical implausibility, this story had haunted Ben ever since.
- It was a well-known fact that I was opposed to prom. Absolutely nothing about any of it appealed to me—not slow dancing, not fast dancing, not the dresses, and definitely not the rented tuxedo. Renting a tuxedo seemed to me an excellent way to contract some hideous disease from its previous tenant, and I did not aspire to become the world’s only virgin with pubic lice.
- “Honestly, she’s hot, but she’s not that hot. You know who’s seriously hot?” “Who?” I asked. “Lacey,” he said, who was Margo’s other best friend. “Also your mom. Bro, I saw your mom kiss you on the cheek this morning, and forgive me, but I swear to God I was like, man, I wish I was Q. And also, I wish my cheeks had penises.”
- Margo Roth Spiegelman, whose six-syllable name was often spoken in its entirety with a kind of quiet reverence. Margo Roth Spiegelman, whose stories of epic adventures would blow through school like a summer storm: an old guy living in a broken-down house in Hot Coffee, Mississippi, taught Margo how to play the guitar. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who spent three days traveling with the circus—they thought she had potential on the trapeze. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who drank a cup of herbal tea with the Mall ionaires backstage after a concert in St. Louis while they drank whiskey. Margo Roth Spiegelman, who got into that concert by telling the bouncer she was the bassist’s girlfriend, and didn’t they recognize her, and come on guys seriously, my name is Margo Roth Spiegelman and if you go back there and ask the bassist to take one look at me, he will tell you that I either am his girlfriend or he wishes I was, and then the bouncer did so, and then the bassist said “yeah that’s my girlfriend let her in the show,” and then later the bassist wanted to hook up with her and she rejected the bassist from the Mallionaires. The stories, when they were shared, inevitably ended with, I mean, can you believe it? We often could not, but they always proved true.
- “Getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds,” I added.
- Chuck hadn’t given us any serious trouble in a couple years—someone in cool kid land laid down the edict that we were to be left alone. So it was a little unusual for him even to talk to us. Maybe because I spoke and maybe not, he slammed his hands against the lockers on either side of me and then leaned in close enough for me to contemplate his toothpaste brand. “What do you know about Margo and Jase?”
- I said, “Getting you a date to prom is so hard that a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years would never once type ‘ I will go to prom with Ben.’”
- Radar threw his books into his locker and shut it. The din of conversation around us quieted just a bit as he turned his eyes toward the heav-ens and shouted, “IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS OWN THE WORLD’S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS.” I’d heard Radar say “the world’s largest collection of black Santas” perhaps a thousand times in my life, and it never became any less funny to me. But he wasn’t kidding. I remembered the first time I visited. I was maybe thirteen. It was spring, many months past Christmas, and yet black Santas lined the windowsills. Paper cutouts of black Santas hung from the stairway banister. Black Santa candles adorned the dining room table. A black Santa oill painting hung above the mantel, which was itself lined with black Santa figurines. They had a black Santa Pez dispenser purchased from Namibia. The light-up plastic black Santa that stood in their postage-stamp front yard from Thanks-giving to New Year’s spent the rest of the year proudly keeping watch in the corner of the guest bathroom, a bathroom with homemade black Santa wall paper created with paint and a Santa-shaped sponge. In every room, save Radar’s, their home was awash in black Santa-dom—plaster and plastic and marble and clay and wood and resin and cloth. In total, Radar’s parents owned more than twelve hundred black Santas of various sorts. As a plaque beside their front door pro-claimed, Radar’s house was an officially registered Santa Landmark according to the Society for Christmas.
- “You just gotta tell her, man,” I said. “You just gotta say, ‘Angela, I really like you, but there’s something you need to know: when we go to my house and hook up, we’ll be watched by the twenty-four hundred eyes of twelve hundred black Santas.”
- It was May fifth, but it didn’t have to be. My days had a pleasant identicalness about them. I had always liked that: I liked routine. I liked being bored. I didn’t want to, but I did.
- “We’re not friends. We’re neighbors.” “Oh, Christ, Q. Am I not nice to you? Do I not order my various and sundry minions to be kind to you at school?”
- Margo’s list: 3 whole Catfish, Wrapped separately Veet (It’s for Shaving your legs Only you don’t Need A razor It’s with all the Girly cosmetic stuff ); Vaseline; six-pack, Mountain Dew; One dozen Tulips; one Bottle Of water; Tissues; one Can of blue Spray paint. “Interesting capitalization,” I said. “Yeah. I’m a big believer in random capitalization. The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle.”
- As we walked through the Juniors department, I asked Margo, “Why do we need The Club?” Margo managed to speak in her usual manic soliloquy without answering my question. “Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement. There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future, and so they spent more time thinking about it. About the future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.” It felt like Margo was just rambling to avoid the question at hand. So I repeated it. “Why do we need The Club?” Margo patted me in the middle of the back softly. “I mean, obviously this is all going to be revealed to you before the night is over.”
- She may be hot, but she is also 1. aggressively vapid, and 2. an absolute, unadulterated, raging bitch. Those of us who frequent the band room have long suspected that Becca maintains her lovely figure by eating nothing but the souls of kittens and the dreams of impoverished children.
- Upon seeing the stunned, pale face of Jason Worthington, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, God,” Margo said, and pointed. In the rush of the moment, it seemed that Jason had been unable to get Little Jason inside his boxers, and so there it was, hanging out, digitally captured for posterity. “It’s a penis,” Margo said, “in the same sense that Rhode Island is a state: it may have an illustrious history, but it sure isn’t big.” I looked back at the house and noticed that the basement light was now off. I found myself feeling slightly bad for Jason—it wasn’t his fault he had a micropenis and a brilliantly vindictive girlfriend. But then again, in sixth grade, Jase promised not to punch my arm if I ate a live earthworm, so I ate a live earthworm and then he punched me in the face. So I didn’t feel very bad for very long.
- “Well, I don’t remember exactly what I called her, but it was something along the lines of ‘sniveling, repulsive, idiotic, backne-rid-den, snaggletoothed, fat-assed bitch with the worst hair in Central Florida—and that’s saying something.’” “Her hair is ridiculous,” I said. "I know. That was the only thing I said about her that was “true. When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can’t really fully and honestly take those back, you know? I mean, there are highlights. And there are streaks. And then there are skunk stripes.”
- “And I don’t really have anyone upon whom I want to rain down my wrath,” I said, because in truth I didn’t. I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies. Example: Historically, Germany has had more enemies than Luxembourg. Margo Roth Spiegelman was Germany. And Great Britain. And the United States. And czarist Russia. Me, I’m Luxembourg. Just sitting around, tending sheep, and yodeling.
- “Remember at the Crown School of Dance?” she asked. “I was just thinking about that tonight.” “Ugh. Yeah.” “I’m sorry about that, by the way. I have no idea why I went along with him.” “Yeah. It’s all good,” I said, but remembering the godforsaken Crown School of Dance pissed me off, and I said, “Yeah. Chuck Parson. You know where he lives?” “I knew I could bring out your vengeful side. He’s in college Park. Get off at Princeton.” I turned onto the interstate entrance ramp and floored it. “Whoa there,” Margo said. “Don’t break the Chrysler.” In sixth grade, a bunch of kids including Margo and Chuck and me were forced by our parents to take ball room dancing lessons at the Crown School of Humiliation, Degradation, and Dance. And how it worked was the boys would stand on one side and the girls would stand on the other and then when the teacher told us to, the boys would walk over to the girls and the boy would say, “May I have this dance?” and the girl would say, “You may.” Girls were not allowed to say no. But then one day—we were doing the fox-trot—Chuck Parson convinced every single girl to say no to me. Not anyone else. Just me. So I walked across to Mary Beth Shortz and I said, “May I have this dance?” and she said no. And then I asked another girl, and then another, and then Margo, who also said no, and then another, and then I started to cry. The only thing worse than getting rejected at dance school is crying about getting rejected at dance school, and the only thing worse than that is going to the dance teacher and saying through your tears, “The girls are saying no to me and they’re not supposedtuh.” So of course I went weeping to the teacher, and I spent the majority of middle school trying to live down that one embarrassing event. So, long story short, Chuck Parson kept me from ever dancing the fox-trot, which doesn’t seem like a particularly horrible thing to do to a sixth-grader. And I wasn’t really pissed about it anymore, or about everything else he’d done to me over the years. But I certainly wasn’t going to lament his suffering.
- I reclined the passenger seat all the way back, so that I was almost lying down, and I told him everything: Margo at my window, the Wal-Mart, the revenge, the SunTrust Building, entering the wrong house, SeaWorld, the I-will-miss-hanging-out-with-you. He didn’t interrupt me once—Ben was a good friend in the not-interrupting way—but when I finished, he immediately asked me the most pressing question in his mind. “Wait, so about Jase Worthington, how small are we talking?” “Shrinkage may have played a role, since he was under significant anxiety, but have you ever seen a pencil?” I asked him, and Ben nodded. “Well, have you ever seen a pencil eraser?” He nodded again. “Well, have you ever seen the little shavings of rubber left on the paper after you erase something?” More nodding. “I’d say three shavings long and one shaving wide,” I said. Ben had taken a lot of crap from guys like Jason Worthington and Chuck Parson, so I figured he was entitled to enjoy it a little. But he didn’t even laugh. He was just shaking his head slowly, awestruck.
- Ben came out then, his bedhead seeming to challenge our basic understanding of the force gravity exerts upon matter.
- “I can’t imagine she likes his songs,” I said. “Seriously,” Ben said. “This guy sounds like an alcoholic Kermit the Frog with throat cancer.”
jan 11 2014 ∞
jan 8 2016 +