There’s this girl who works at a burger grill near the school I’m flunking out of. She always sneers at me, pinches her nose
like she’s about to die from my fumes, steps way back from the counter
when I walk up, drums her fingers on the top of the cash register like
she can’t wait to get to someone else. I just can’t tell why. There’s
nothing wrong with me — at least, my friends tell me I’m alright —
but she makes me feel totally bubonic. Like I just burrowed out of
a swampy grave or something.
She has this really snooty air about her, like, God, how can
you possibly appreciate these hotdogs and tweezer snacks I make. For
a while I assumed that she was in love with me, but just couldn’t
come to grips with it. There are people like that, I hear, people
who can’t admit to themselves that they’re in love because they know
that acting on their love will force them to make enormous changes in
their lives, take on a new role, plunge them into unfamiliar territory
emotionally and physically, subject them to serious risks —
heartbreak, rejection, loss; pain, pain, pain.
One day I got upset with her aloofness, ordered a giant-sized
plate of jalapeno nachos with tequila cheese, and hurled it in her
face. She was speechless for a while, and the melted cheese had to be
surgically extracted from her pores. It apparently seeped into her
brain and made her a little dopey. Fond of pop music. Vulnerable
to commercial advertising. Perpetually drowsy. When her grey matter
was hosed down in some sort of high-tech laser bath, when she
got her wits back, she hated me, and didn’t believe that I had been
affectionate at all.
“You jerk,” she said, squinting, “You…stupid goddam jerk.”
But another girl, this anorexic blond who always slept in
my philosophy class — I think she was actually enrolled in Biology,
which met in the same room the previous period, she just didn’t bother
to wake up on time to leave — she thought what I did was art.
“The way you threw that giant-sized jalapeno nacho plate?
Sheer brilliance! You have a lot of talent. I’ve known lots of guys.
You’ve got something special.”
So we dated for a while, but it turned out she had major
problems with intimacy. She would shove me off her in the middle of
sex and lie on her side, staring into her fish tank, breathing deeply,
refusing to talk. I admit, it was a fabulous fish tank.
“Where’d you get the money for all that fish gear?” I
asked her once during philosophy.
“My grandfather died and left me five thousand dollars. He
was a fisherman when he was a child, and I wanted to remember him
by something pretty.”
“There are all those psychedelic lights, all those fish not
even shaped like fish.”
“I know.”
“It gurgles, it sometimes spurts for no reason. There’s
a thremometer, a crab, a few snails, a little underwater jungle.”
“Uh huh.”
“I sometimes want to swim in it with you.”
“Yeah, I know. Naked.”
“Uh huh.”
So we both liked her fish tank a lot, but it pissed me off
when she interrupted sex to fixate on it like that. I finally realized
that every time she broke off our love-making to fish-gaze it was
because she was about to have an orgasm. I’ve heard of women like that;
they don’t want to let go entirely, they don’t feel comfortable enough
with you, or with themselves, or with God, so they deny themselves
full pleasure. Once in philosophy I read about a woman who couldn’t
have orgasms because whenever she was about to come she had some great
idea about theology and had to call her rabbi.
One night I came prepared. When she was about to come, she
wriggled out from under me like an eel, protesting.
“Lookit,” I shouted, grabbing my backpack from the floor. “Look,
this is what I’m going to do from now on when you hold yourself back.”
I grabbed a high-powered vibrator from my back, turned it on,
and dropped it into the fish tank. Now, this was one of those
turbo-powered vibrators, one of the ones that if you turn it on and
put it on a dancefloor, it’ll start flipping around and leaping up
into the air. It took large four batteries. Anyway, most of the fish
didn’t notice it, but the snails instantly dropped from the glass onto
the gravel; the crab tried to burrow to safety; two miniscule red fish
began attacking the large, shark-like opalescent fish. And then the
water began steaming and bubbling.
Cursing me, she plunged her hand into the water. Before she
could grasp the vibrator, unfortunately, she was electrocuted.
Now, this was not my plan. I didn’t even think of it. But
she wouldn’t listen to my explanation; she didn’t accept that my
motives were entirely benevolent. Her rage clouded her reason, much
to my disappointment, and in her vindictiveness she began telling
other people about how I had tried to kill her.
This was a real blessing, because everyone began to think of
me as an incredibly passionate person. My love was so consuming that
it drove me to the edge of madness; my affection so profound that
it transcended life, going way beyond any animalistic instinct toward
petty survival. Whatever link procreation might have with love,
I had thoroughly dashed it. I had liberated love from life.
So I was a wild, reckless lover now, and I began to attract
some pretty skiddy people. There was a homosexual guy who said that
he was into auto-erotic asphyxiation — that he would hang himself
while masturbating. Hanging cut off the oxygen supply to his
brain which intensified his orgasms. His eyes seemed to bulge
while he described it to me, and he drooled a little — shiny, black
drool from the licorice whips he was devouring.
“I use these when I do it. Licorice. See?”
“Gotcha.”
“If I ever totally lose consciousness, they’ll just break
eventually ’cause they’re kinda weak. So I won’t totally die, you
know, I’ll just ride the angel of death for a while.”
He held out a licorice whip.
“Want one? These were actually around my neck last night.”
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“By the way, man, I saw when you threw that plate of nachos
at that girl’s face. Man, that was pure genius.”
“Well, I was just trying to wake her up.”
“Yeah. It was inspired.”
I started to walk away.
“Oh, hey!” I turned back reluctantly, and he edged up to
me. “The real reason I use licorice threads? They vibrate.
Just hold them — get a good grip — there’s nothing like it. You
can coil ’em around your Clinton when you jack off; it makes your
semen smoke. No shit.”
A girl named Churla began following me around. She had long,
dark hair, dressed gothic, used make-up to look like a body in a
morgue. She spoke in a breathless, raspy voice, and managed to work
all sorts of weird foreign terms into the stuff she said. I think
it was Arabic, but I’m not too sure. She wore dark silver talismans
around her neck on black strings; she sometimes brought a pet otter
to school with her; her fingertips were pierced with silver loops,
making it difficult for her to hold anyting. One day one the way home
from class I found her lying under the front wheels of my car. Her hair
was tangled and messy, her face smeared with white make-up, and she
had a dribble of fake blood coming out of the corner of her mouth.
In addition, there was a big stain of it across her breasts. I stared
down at her, speechless. After a moment she opened her eyes, glared
up at me, and asked in an exhausted, shrill voice.
“How could you not look where you were going?”
I rolled me eyes.
“Look, Churla, what is this? Huh?”
“You ran me over.”
“Oh, christ. I did not. I was in English, and no one was
driving my car.”
Her eyes fell shut, but somehow she managed to get a couple
of tears to stream out of them. Her voice was convincingly weepy.
“You killed me…!”
“Oh, goddamit, I did not kill you. Look, nice act, all right?
Now please, I have to get going.”
“You’re a murderer.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to be if you don’t get away from my
car. Now beat it.”
There was an extremely athletic girl with a long, blond
ponytail, narrow, intense eyes, and a really spiffy nose that had been
broken twice during polo matches. Her cheeks were always flushed, her
thin lips formed an almost perpetual smile of sarcastic confidence, and
she towered over me like a monument to physical fitness. Her nickname
was Club, and she offered to make me her private gigolo.
“I will pay you one hundred dollars an evening out of my
scholarship money. You will wear only baby blue while we are together,
or — at my whim — nothing at all. When you arrive at my house,
you will bring a dozen pink roses for which I will reimburse you.
You will also bring a foot-long meatball sub, with spicy peppers.
You will not speak unless I demand it. You will sit on the floor
at my feet while I tell you about myself. You will occasionally rub
my amazingly firm calf muscles. You will kiss my knee whenever I
smile down at you. You will look at me longingly, your face well-
shaven, smooth. If I fall asleep while we are together, you will
remain at my side, watching me, listening to my breathing, until
morning. You will not ejaculate without permission. When I ask
you questions, you will answer briefly and elegantly. You will tell
no one about our relationship. You will avoid intimate contact with
other women. You will read books about the middle ages.”
“Uh…wait, Club. No, I won’t.”
She cocked her head, then folded her arms.
“Apparently you haven’t been listening to me.”
“No, no, I have, it’s just…I don’t wanna.”
Her face seemed to become more streamlined, the angles
sharpening. Then she spoke ferociously.
“You don’t `wanna’? Is that what you said to me?”
“Uh…yeah, I think. Yes.”
Club ridiculed me for a while, hissing about how I was a
cowardly baby, an imbecile with no dignity. Spit-mist touched
my face every few words. She spoke faster and faster. Her voice
took on a German accent. Finally, she stomped on the ground then
walked away. My heart was pounding.
All these aggressive people were driving me crazy. I realized
that that whole thing with the girl form the snack shop, the difficulty
of getting to know her, the problem of how to break the ice with her?
That was the best. The nervousness, the battle with shyness, the
inner struggle of just getting to the point where you’re talking with
someone, sharing emotionally, is the best thing I’ve experienced about
relationships so far. The innocence of being strangers, the sweetness
of held-back longing. Now that I’m flocked with lunatic creeps, I
really miss the feeling of having to hurl a plate of nachos at someone
to get their affection.