Cheeseburger Subversive (14 page)

Suddenly, a voice cuts through my euphoria; “Well, whadda yuh think, boy? She may look a little rough on the outside, but under that there hood — whoo boy, she's wildfire!”

As if the subliminal imagery of referring to the car as a she isn't already more than my inflamed young hormones can handle, my shaggy-faced friend looks me straight in the eyes and delivers the final sales blow.

“There's a bonus involved here, boy.”

What member of the human race can possibly resist a bonus?

“Now I know the thing on the side of the car says `V-8 289 C.I.' but it ain't got no wimpy little excuse of an engine like that,” he explains. “Yep, she's got an overhauled 454 inside. Was put in by the last owner with his own hands. That car there will blow them young mommas' boys in their Camaros right into next week!”

Although I've slept through quite a few math classes, I know that 454 is a much, much larger number than 289; I also relish the image of sending a few mommas' boys for a some unexpected time travel — particularly that weasel Jimmy Tanner. Naturally, when the salesman tells me I can drive away with this classic muscle car this very day, I practically throw my money at him.

The price, interestingly enough, comes to exactly nine hundred dollars and forty-six cents (including titles, taxes, fees, fuel allowances, licenses, and destination charges, whatever any of that means). As I sign on the dotted line, thanking him for letting me forget about the forty-six cents, I wonder exactly what the phrase AS IS on the contract means. As I thunder away in a great billow of blue-grey smoke and volcanic ash, I am too wrapped up in the enormity of my accomplishment to worry about it much.

Unfortunately, my illusions of fame and grandeur quickly disintegrate under the weight of reality. I'd figured that rolling into the school parking lot in my rumbling, backfiring, smoking, mobile road hazard would fill my life with adoring young females, but I've discovered that I actually met more girls when I rode the rumbling, backfiring, smoking school bus. My disillusionment is further amplified by the realization that the money I had previously used to support my weekend six-pack habit is now consumed by my car's insatiable appetite for gasoline, oil, and engine parts.

Now comes the final blow. Exactly three months have passed since I handed my money over to “Vermin” Vic, and as if to deliver the killing stroke to my critically wounded pride, it happens on the night of my first car date with Zoe Perry.

Zoe agreed to the date on two conditions: We cannot technically refer to the date as a date, since her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Jimmy might object, and I have to promise that I won't get her killed on the way there, since I have managed to earn the dubious distinction of being the only guy in the recent history of Faireville High ever to accumulate seven speeding tickets in less than three months. Naturally, being the gentleman that I am, I drive at exactly the speed limit, even going so far as to slow down for stop signs and small children.

Zoe brushes a lock of her silky brown hair from of her face, puts her hand on my shoulder, and smiles at me as we pull up to a stoplight. Everything is going so well. Until, out of the corner of my eye, I see it.

It is a red Camaro. It is in the lane right beside us. And the guy behind the wheel is most certainly a momma's boy. He looks over at my grizzled Pontiac, and I swear I see him snicker. I have no choice. Road war has been declared.

I survey the Camaro to see what I am up against. The shiny gold letters on the side tell me that it is an I.R.O.C.

“Oh yeah, pal?” I say, more to Zoe than to the Camaro's driver. “My car's an I.R.O.C., too. The letters stand for `I Run Over Camaros.'”

The light turns green. I stomp on the accelerator, and my mighty combat machine lurches forward, the magnificent roar of its 454 engine overwhelms the Camaro's pitiful whine. My fingers grip the steering wheel and I stare straight ahead so confident and undaunted that I barely feel Zoe's fingernails digging into my arm.

The engine screams like a crazed warrior as the tachometer edges into the red. Slowly, I start pulling ahead of the Camaro. I am winning! I am winning! If I can just hang on to third gear for a few seconds longer I can —

KA-PLOOOOM!

The overwhelming sound of the mighty 454 exploding reverberates through the surrounding farmland. A valve stem shoots through the sheet metal of the hood and lands on the pavement with a sickening clatter.

An eerie silence follows. I feel as if an ice pick has been thrust through my heart.

Despite my horror, I manage to steer my disabled vehicle onto the gravel at the side of the road as it sputters and coughs and spews oily smoke from under the hood. Through tear-filled eyes, I watch the Camaro disappear into the distance.

In one fateful moment my dreams of fame, fortune, and of Zoe Perry grind to a sickening halt. My big race results in weeks of ridicule, courtesy of my buddies who go as far as to put an ad in the local paper for Dak's Automotive Demolition. I am also forced to suffer the humiliation of being rescued from the scene of devastation by my mom, who spends the trip back into town talking with Zoe, discussing the ridiculous facets of the male ego. I suffer from acute inferiority every time I see a Camaro. Worst of all, Zoe refuses to speak to me, and our study sessions are no more.

Everything I wanted had seemed within my reach. How could I have lost it all so easily?

Thank You, Quentin Alvinstock

(Grade eleven)

I
t's the second month of grade eleven, and my life totally sucks. I blew my savings on a car that now rests in pieces in the Faireville Wrecking Yard, and I am stuck riding the school bus with geeky grade nines and tens. I am helplessly in love with Zoe Perry, who acts as if I don't exist. My annoying sister is in grade nine, and she's doing better on the romantic front than I am. I might as well put myself out of my misery by joining a monastery.

The only small ray of sunshine in my otherwise dark world is that I did not get stuck in my father's grade eleven English composition class. Instead, I've got the new guy, Quentin Alvinstock. As high school teachers go, he's a pretty good guy, other than being in desperate need of effective underarm deodorant. Mr. Alvinstock prefers to teach books like
Catch 22
,
Slaughterhouse Five
, and
The Catcher in the Rye
, unlike my father, who feeds his students a strict diet of Shakespeare and Robertson Davies. Dad is now the head of the English Department at Faireville High. He calls the ex-hippie Mr. Alvinstock a slacker and a pinko, and is desperate to find a reason to rid his English Department of such a menace. So naturally, I've decided to give Quentin Alvinstock a chance.

At first, I hold it against him that he is making all of us write a poetry mini-collection for part of our term mark. Asking an average grade eleven guy to write at least four meaningful poems is, as school assignments go, nearly equivalent to asking my sister to have a telephone conversation with one of her giggly little friends in fifty words or less.

“Oh, man,” I moan, “not poetry! Anything but poetry!”

This is a comment that would get me thrown out of my own father's writing class, but Mr. Alvinstock just chuckles and says, “Well, Dak — and any of you other gentlemen who feel the same way — poetry is often an effective means of communicating our feelings to members of the opposite sex.” We interpret this to mean that poetry will get us laid. And, of course, we are all okay with that!

“Write from your heart!” Mr. Alvinstock sings out. “Write what you know! Write what you feel! Write about the tiniest, most beautiful details you've noticed! Write about the biggest things you've experienced in life! Write, write, write!”

So, I write, write, write. There doesn't seem to be much choice about it, really, considering Mr. Alvinstock is basing a hefty chunk of our term mark on it. Besides, it isn't too difficult to peg down my biggest experience as of late. I only have to look as far back as the end of summer, just before school started.

SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT ON THE FIRST DAY BACK
AT FAIREVILE DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL, GRADE ELEVEN

It was Saturday
I washed my car
Drove up and down the dock past the ice cream bar
See and Be Seen
It was the Summertime Law

Billy called shotgun
Ray back with Dean
Cranked down the windows
Turned up The Max Machine
One-arm-suntan-poses
Were critical

Beach and ocean
Through a rose-coloured windshield
Sun-bronzed bodies
Like wheat in a sand field
If I dare to touch one
Will she die in my hands?

Every day like a pop song
All backbeat, no danger
I steer with my knees
and dream safely of strangers
Speakers thump out bravado
(It's critical)

The last night of August
When Summertime ends
She leans through my window
It's half-past ten
No longer pretending
(It's critical)

She says “Let's go to the boardwalk”
I say “okay”
The buzz of the radio
And seagulls and waves
I ‘ve got beers in the trunk in a cooler
(Also critical)

My heartbeat thunders
Deep in my ears
It may be passion
It may be fear
The boys will wonder why I was late
I don't know what I'll say

Okay, so I stole the rhythm from a tune on an old Joe Walsh album, but I'm still kind of pleased with the way it turned out. And I guess the cool thing is that I didn't tell anyone, not even Billy or Dean, about what happened that night, which makes the title sort of ironic (which might have got me a higher mark from Mr. Alvinstock if he'd known). Why didn't I tell my buddies about the one occurrence which almost every guy in the history of grade eleven lies about experiencing? Well, I have my reasons.

I am more in love with Zoe Perry than ever. At first it was her stunning beauty which drew me in, but after engineering a few study sessions with her in grades nine and ten, I came to realize that she has more than enough intelligence, wit, and personality to match her appearance, and my attraction to her has increased exponentially (even if I have become a little afraid that she might be too good for me). Alas, because of the exploding Pontiac incident during our first and only car date in grade ten, Zoe has decided that I am the biggest geek on the planet, and she has fallen out of the habit of speaking to me on a regular basis — or at all, actually. She occasionally rolls her eyes and shakes her head when I say something stupid in class while trying to be funny, but mostly she just pretends that she doesn't know me.

It hurts me terribly, but fortunately, I have rented
Casablanca
several times and I'm still in with the local bootlegger, so I've been following Bogey's example and drinking my sorrows away. I'm sure even the heartbroken Humphrey Bogart barfed a few times — off camera, of course.

Anyway, Zoe has continued dating that phony-baloney pretty boy Jimmy Tanner. Jimmy has enough hairspray in his salon-perfect hairdo to have his own personal hole in the ozone layer. He wears a pretentious looking trench coat and has a bristly little goatee, and he always walks around with his eyebrows arched as if he either knows something the rest of humanity doesn't, or else he's been the first to smell another person's fart. For some reason, the girls at school all believe that this puffed-up pansy is some sort of Casanova. Yet, rather than throwing a banana peel under his immaculately polished shoes (which, admittedly, is the only idea I had for a while), I have decided to beat him at his own game and learn everything there is to know about pleasuring a woman.

I read the letter sections in the skin magazines I borrowed from my uncle's garage in grade seven. I read all of the books my mom kept carefully hidden at the bottom of her underwear drawer. I secretly exercise my tongue and lips while chewing gum. I even go so far as to drive to another town to buy a pack of those special ribbed-for-her-pleasure condoms. When Zoe finally comes to her senses and dumps Jimmy Tanner, I am going to be ready to satisfy her every need.

Right at the end of summer, an opportunity presented itself for me to put all of my studies and endurance training to the test.

I was cruising up and down the beach in my crummy old rust-perforated pickup, looking for a quiet, unpopulated place to pop a beer, watch the sun go down, and pretend that I was the hero in a forties movie who could take it like a man. I was making a U-turn just in front of the Faireville Docks, the town's most popular outdoor pickup spot, when she waved me over. Winifred Bright. The legendary Winifred Bright.

Winifred Bright lives in one of the apartments above one of the little stores in downtown Faireville. She is considered the Devil's representative when the sins of the flesh are discussed in hushed tones by Faireville's tea-and-cookie social elite. Because she is thirty-two-years old and still single. Because she embraces the people in Faireville who others try to ignore. Because many years ago she spent some time in a mental institution dealing with depression. Because she allegedly had a daughter named Robin, who was sent away during Winifred's time in the mental hospital. But mostly, Winfred Bright is the object of their scorn because she does not attempt to hide any of this.