How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (18 page)

“Maybe you ought to be auditioning for Juilliard instead of me,” I say, trying to laugh.

“Just finish,” Mr. Lucas says.

I clear my throat and crack my neck. “Okay,” I say, “Have you ever seen after a winter storm how a sailor keeps his sail taut . . . and, oh, that's not right . . .”

“Keep going!” Mr. Lucas bellows.

“And his root stiff and rigid,” I yell back.

The class laughs and my face starts to burn.

I'm going to work at Chicken Lickin' for the rest of my life.

Afterward, Ziba suggests that she, Kelly, Natie, and I go to the movies, y'know, to take my mind off my troubles (which, as far as I'm concerned, is really just another way of saying I sucked). So we go see
Yentl.

Now I'm going to assume that anyone reading this story has a working knowledge of the Barbra Streisand oeuvre, but just in case you don't, I'll fill you in.
Yentl
is about a young Jewish girl in Eastern Europe at the turn of the century who disguises herself as a boy so she can go to yeshiva and study. There she falls in love with another student who, of course, doesn't realize she's a girl. It's like
Tootsie on the Roof.

As I sit in the darkened theater I realize that I am
so
like Yentl: we're both prevented from going to the school of our dreams, we both break into song in public places, and we're both so in love with our best friend it's almost physically painful.

It's true. Despite my erection problems with Kelly, one look at Doug and I'm harder than calculus.

I don't share this insight, of course, but instead listen to Ziba as she analyzes the film on the way back to the car. Ziba takes “the cinema” very seriously, which you can tell because she always makes us sit through the credits and she compares everything to the works of Kurosawa. “The direction was surprisingly polished,” she announces, “and the cinematography was astounding, but I still think it would have served the story better if the whole thing had been in Yiddish with subtitles.”

This from the Muslim girl.

“I think Barbra Streisand should have actually had sex with Amy Irving,” Kelly says.

We all stop.

“What are you looking at?” she asks.

Even though she agreed to a three-way and asked me to talk dirty into her vagina, I'm still surprised when Kelly says things like this.

“Interesting,” Ziba says, as she chews over the notion. “But how would she get around not having a penis?”

Kelly thinks for a moment. “She could go down on her.”

I don't like where this conversation is heading, so I change the subject. “Anyone notice how Yentl wore the same glasses as Father Groovy?” I say.

“Yeah,” Natie says. “Maybe you oughta go live in a yeshiva.”

“I don't think they let in Catholics.”

“Okay, a monastery.”

Suddenly Kelly throws her arm in front of me, the way you do when you want to stop someone from stepping into traffic. “That's it,” she says.

“What?”

“You could live at my house.”

“What are you talking about? Your mom would never go for that.”

“She would if she thought you were gay.”

“But I'm not,” I say, my voice rising higher than I intended.

“'Course not, silly,” Kelly says. “You'd just pretend to be—y'know, like Yentl pretends to be a boy.”

Natie nods his head like he's impressed. “Y'know, that's not a bad idea.”

Kelly's eyes brighten with excitement. “It'll be great!” she says. “I'll tell my mom we broke up and of course she'll want to psychoanalyze me, so I'll go on about how you broke my heart but I understand because you're gay, but still I'm not sure I can ever trust men again, blah, blah, blah . . .”

Natie and Ziba continue this train wreck of thought with her, cheerfully hypothesizing about the various ways that Kelly could have discovered my latent homosexuality. While they entertain themselves with the presumably hilarious notion that Doug and I are secret lovers, Kelly leans over and whispers in my ear. “The best part,” she says, “is now we can be together any time we want.”

As they say in the yeshiva: Oy vey.

I
don't go home after I drop everyone off,
but instead drive around trying to sort out Kelly's idea. If I tell Kathleen I'm gay, I'd kind of be telling her the truth, but I'd actually be lying to Kelly, because she thinks I'm totally straight. On the other hand, if Kelly and I are fooling around, then I'd definitely be lying to Kathleen. Then again, how much of a threat can I be to her daughter if I don't have an erection? The whole thing makes my head hurt.

On top of everything else, thoughts of Doug keep knocking at the door of my subconscious. I know he's way too Timberland boots and flannel shirt-y to ever feel about me the way I feel about him, but the forbidden, star-crossed-lovers thing is partly what makes him so appealing. I see us as a modern Romeo and Juliet or, in this case, Romeo and Julius. I imagine us growing up and getting married (to women, I mean) but still carrying on annual clandestine trysts in the manner of
Same Time, Next Year.
I see us renting a cabin with our unsuspecting wives, then stealing away to the woods where we'll fuck like the rugged, outdoorsy men we truly are.

I can't stand it any longer. Just thinking about him is torture, but an almost exquisite kind, like the transcendental agony you see in the paintings of martyred saints. I must be losing my mind.

I drive over to his house.

It's too late to ring the bell, so I prowl along the creaking front porch and peek in the window. Someone is sitting in Mr. Grabowski's uneasy chair watching scrambled porn on cable, but I can't tell who it is from behind. I'm almost sure that it's Doug from the tufts of kinky hair rising above the back of the chair, but I don't want to risk it being his creepy dad, either. Finally, the figure rises and stretches and I see from the boxers and football jersey that it is indeed Doug. I tap on the window. Cupping his eyes with his hands, he leans against the glass to see who it is, then indicates he'll let me in the front door.

“What's up?” he whispers.

“We need to talk,” I say, pushing past him.

The room feels suffocatingly small for the enormous thing I'm about to say and I pace the dingy carpet like a caged animal. Doug looks concerned.

“What's wrong, man?” he says.

“I don't know how to say this, except to just come out with it.”

“What did you do, kill somebody?”

“I'm serious.”

“Okay,” he says, “then just say it.”

I'm certain my lungs have collapsed and that there's no possible way I can draw enough air to speak, but there must be because I hear myself blurt out, “I'm in love with you.” Just like that, as if the words fell out of my mouth and landed on the floor.

Then it's like I can't shut up. “I'm sorry, I had to tell you; I couldn't keep it inside me anymore. I am totally, head over heels in love with you. I think about you a thousand times a day, and even more at night. I don't know what to do anymore. It takes every bit of discipline I have not to leap across a room and grab you whenever I see you.”

Which is exactly what I want to do right now. I want to grab him and kiss him forever, but I don't dare. I'm guessing Doug's more likely to let me blow him before he'd ever submit to something as intimate as a kiss.

Doug doesn't say a word, but his icicle eyes begin to melt. I'm not sure he even realizes it because his face remains expressionless as the tears stream down his cheeks, like water trickling out of a rock at a river base. I can't even begin to understand what this reaction means.

“I'm so sorry,” he whispers. “I just . . . can't.”

I drive around the dark,
sleepy streets of Wallingford feeling deflated and spent. I'm such an idiot. I had this great, intense friendship with lots of touchy-feely, homoerotic action and then, like Frank says, “I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you.” Doug will probably never talk to me again. What's more, I've got nowhere to live, I can't remember the words to Haemon's fucking monologue, my father doesn't care about me, my stepmother hates me, my mother has probably been kidnapped by South American guerrillas, and I've eaten so many baskets of Chicken Pickins that my pants don't fit. Then, to top it all off, I've got to play basketball with a bunch of sophomores out of
Lord of the Flies.
Something's got to give.

It's time for the hammer.

I drag myself into our dark kitchen and open the junk drawer to hunt for a hammer to break my finger, but instead of the usual assortment of paper clips, twist ties, and rubber bands, I'm surprised to see my sister's face staring back at me, tanned and airbrushed, blissfully unaware that she's inside a junk drawer instead of on the wall where she belongs. I pull out Karen's picture and there I am underneath, looking smiley and carefree in my skinny tie. I spin around to look at the wall where our school portraits have hung for the last ten years and see that we've been replaced by one of Dagmar's photographs, a still life of a bowl of fruit.

Now maybe, just maybe, if she'd replaced us with something of equal sentimental value like, say, her ancestral Austrian home or a portrait of her precious Nazi collaborationist father, then
maybe
I wouldn't get so upset. But to be replaced by a goddamn bowl of fruit—that does it.

I snap. Like a rigid root in winter.

Al saunters into the kitchen in nothing but his bikini briefs, looking like the first guy in the evolution of man to walk on two legs.

“You want to explain this to me?” I say, pointing to the photograph.

“Like it?” Al says, scratching his hairy belly and opening the fridge. “Dagmar won some prize for it last weekend.”

“Well, lah dee fucking dah,” I say.

Al glances over his shoulder. “Hey, watch your fucking language.”

“You just don't get it, do you?” I say, my voice rising. I grab our pictures out of the junk drawer. “Don't you see what she's trying to do? She's stuck us in the
junk drawer.
Your own kids. Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

“Don't be so sensitive,” Al says.

There are certain phrases I can't abide hearing, and “Don't be so sensitive” ranks right up there with “Could you please keep it down?” and “No personal calls allowed.” I feel a surge of rage course through me. “How can you support her career as an artist and not mine?”

“What I do with my money is my own goddamned business,” Al says, slamming the refrigerator door. “I could spend it all on bubble gum and blow jobs if I wanted.”

“You got that half right,” I mutter.

Al waves a hairy finger in my face. “You watch your mouth, you little shit. That's my wife you're talking about, and I'll have you know that woman does more for me than you or your lazy-ass sister ever have. All these years I've raised you by myself and I've gotten nothin' but grief in return.”

“I see. All those straight A's I've gotten, and the awards, and the leads in the plays, that's been grief to you, huh?”

“I'm talkin' about respect. And obedience. And maybe some appreciation once in a while. You think I can't see how you sneer at me, Mr. Honor Roll, like I'm too dumb to notice? You and your sister treat me like I'm a fuckin' bank machine. Well, finally somebody comes along who thinks about me for a change. Somebody who cooks and cleans for me and cares for me and loves me; so, yeah, you're damn right, I'm gonna support her.”

“So you're saying if I could fuck you, you'd support me, too?”

“Why, you sick little . . .”

“Well, here you go, watch me,” I say, then I point to my mouth and enunciate in my best actor's elocution:
“Fuck . . . you!”

It feels really good to finally say it.

From behind me I hear a growl like the mouth of Hell opening and I turn just in time to duck a wineglass being thrown in my direction.

“Asshole!” Dagmar screams, except, being foreign, she gets it all wrong, putting the accent on the last syllable. “Azz
hull
! Get out, you fuckink azz
huuull
!”

She lunges for me, claws bared, and Al has to hold her back. “You ungrateful azz
hull,
you . . . you . . .” she struggles for the word,
“. . . Schwanzlutscher.”

Now, thanks to Doug, I happen to know she just called me a cocksucker, which gives me the satisfying opportunity of leaning my face right into hers and saying, “Well, it takes one to know one, you evil bitch.”