How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (31 page)

As Natie instructs Doug to rest his balls on Jordan's forehead I assure Ziba that, no, we don't mind having the would-be rapist son of a U.S. senator passed out in our bathroom and listen, I gotta go, okay, bye-bye. After I hang up, I trot back to see what I've been missing. I peek over Natie's shoulder and see Doug lying on the floor next to Jordan, whose open, drooling mouth makes him appear as if he's in spasms of rectal ecstasy.

“That one alone may cover a year's tuition,” Natie says.

We step around Jordan as best we can while we brush our teeth, although it's a little weird trying to take a piss when there's someone lying between your feet. But by the time I climb into bed I've almost come to think of Jordan affectionately, like he's our big St. Bernard asleep on the bathroom floor.

I'm awoken by the sound
of the fan in the bathroom. I look up and see the light from under the door, then glance at the digital clock. It's 3:22. Doug is still fast asleep next to me, but Natie's awake, his Afro flattened on one side from where he's been sleeping. His head looks like the top of the Citicorp building.

“He's awake,” Natie hisses.

The two of us listen in silence while Jordan attempts to set the Olympic record for endurance peeing. The longer it takes, the more nervous I get. Will he fall back asleep? Will he try to beat us up again? Will he mistake one of us for Ziba and rape us? I'm just about to wake up Doug when the stream of pee slows, first to a trickle, then finally to a drip . . . drap . . . drop. Jordan moans and staggers out of the bathroom, his water-heater frame silhouetted by the bathroom light. I lie completely still, the way you're supposed to when you come upon a grizzly bear in the woods, and listen to Jordan release a long, cheek-flapping fart. He stumbles toward the empty space on Natie's bed, lunges face-first onto the pillow, and in an instant is snoring like a buzz saw. He rolls onto his side and thrusts a lumpy arm around Natie.

“What I go through for you,” Natie mutters.

A
long, vertical line
of light slicing between the curtains tells me it's morning, but otherwise the room is as dark as a cave. I roll over to go back to sleep (as is my custom) but the thought of a violent would-be rapist son of a senator in the other bed smashes into my consciousness and I sit up to see what's happened to him.

Jordan is sprawled across the entire bed, nude, unconscious, and completely unaware that Natie and Doug are fastening his wrists to the bedposts with their choir neckties. I get up and we pack our bags as silently as we can, sneaking out like thieves in the night, albeit ones who make sure to hang the
MAID, PLEASE CLEAN THIS ROOM
thingy on the doorknob when we go.

Serves him right.

We spend an uneventful day at the Smithsonian (I mean, try topping blackmail), followed by an even more uneventful bus ride home. Kathleen picks us up and, as we round the bend into Wallingford Heights, I notice immediately that something about the front yard doesn't look right. I scan the curved path of stepping stones to the front door, trying to figure it out—yes, something is definitely missing, but what is it? I'm heaving my duffle bag out of the back of the Wagon Ho when it dawns on me.

“Where's the Buddha?” I ask.

Kathleen bites her lip. “Oh, sweetie, I hate to tell you,” she says, “but he got stolen.”

“Stolen?”

Kathleen nods. “I'm sorry.”

I turn to Kelly and we both bust up laughing. “What kind of fiend would do such a thing?” I say. “I mean, besides us?”

I don't know much about Buddhism, but I'm guessing that this is what's meant by karmic justice. It almost makes me feel as if there's a divine order to this random universe.

The next morning
I skip school so I can get Jordan's blackmail pictures developed. It's a testament to just how corrupt I've become that I can embark on such an errand so matter-of-factly, as if I were off to do some shopping or banking which, I suppose, in a way I am. Figuring that the Wallingford Fotomat might not want to develop pictures of naked men simulating sex, I go to the only place I know of that might: Toto Photo, the camera store in the Village near Something for the Boys.

I drop off the film with the clerk (a gay guy, good-looking in that well-groomed gay kind of way, but with a shiny, overmoisturized face) then roam around the neighborhood for an hour while I wait. I wander into a shop called Dionysus—okay that's not entirely accurate: I make a point of crossing the street to go into a shop called Dionysus. They have a window display of blow-up sex dolls wearing leather and whipping each other; I figure that just because I'm cutting school doesn't mean I shouldn't get an education.

Dionysus is clean and well lit, cheerful almost, which seems odd for a store selling studded leather harnesses and barbed-wire corsets at ten o'clock in the morning. The girl behind the counter wears a mohawk, black lipstick, and a Catholic schoolgirl's uniform. She doesn't even look up when I come in, engrossed as she is reading a magazine called
Sister Fister.
The place is full of various kinds of leather paraphernalia, including all sorts of metal chains, clips, and straps, most of which I can't figure out how you'd actually use. I admire a few dildos, some the size of baseball bats and one in the shape of Jesus crucified on the cross, but I get sucked into the gravitational pull of the magazines at the back of the store, particularly by a section marked
CHICKS WITH DICKS.
The magazines are sealed in clear plastic, but it's obvious from the covers that the description is entirely accurate. I honestly had no idea people like this existed. I flip through the stacks of various “she-male” publications and come upon one called
The Bust of Both Worlds,
featuring someone named Jenny Talia. It's as if someone had grafted Kelly and Doug together into one person. The only thing that could make Jenny more perfect would be if, after sex, she turned into a pepperoni pizza.

I buy the magazine.

Back at Toto Photo
the clerk greets me by fanning his shiny face with an envelope as if what's inside has made him glisten instead of the industrial moisturizer he must use.

“Are these of you?” he says, addressing my crotch.

I shake my head, not like he's looking anyway. “They're of my friend,” I mumble. It's sort of humiliating to constantly stand in the shadow of your best friend's dick, as it were. “How much do I owe you?” I ask.

He hands me the envelope. “Don't worry about it. Just be sure to tell your friend he's welcome here anytime.”

As someone who's not above borrowing his friend's penis for blackmail photos, I certainly don't mind using it to get them for free either, but this guy's uncontained lust for Doug makes me feel sort of inadequate. “Thanks,” I say, addressing my Keds.

Monsieur Moisturizer leans over the counter. “And tell him to take some shots of your hot ass next time, okay?” he says, smiling a said-the-spider-to-the-fly kind of smile.

Now it's my turn to fan my face.

He tilts his head in that way that pretty girls and gay guys do. “You don't even know how cute you are, do ya', kid?”

I don't know how to answer a question like that. I guess I don't. I've always thought I was okay-looking, but there's nothing like unrequited love to make you feel like a real bowzer. The clerk reaches his hand toward me and lifts my chin up to look at him.

“Oh honey, believe me,” he murmurs, “if I didn't have to work right now I'd throw you over my shoulder, carry you back to my place, and bang you like a screen door till Tuesday.”

Strange as it may sound, that's about the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. I turn to leave, pleased in the knowledge that he's watching my hot ass as I go.

I can still make it to English after I get back to Wallingford. It's not that I'm particularly motivated academically; I just want to get the pictures to Natie as soon as possible.

Mr. Lucas is assigning another in-class writing exercise to practice for the AP exam.
“Nineteen eighty-four,”
he declaims in a debating team voice. “Has Orwell's vision come to pass? Are we oppressed by sinister forces? Or is it more like Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World,
in which we're seduced by irrelevant pleasures? I want a five-paragraph essay on the subject—thesis, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.” Around the room there's the sound of notebooks flipping open, along with the clicks of three-ring binders as some students loan paper to people who don't show up prepared, like me. I scooch my desk closer to Natie's and, reaching into the pocket of my judo jacket, discreetly pull out pictures.

“Wow,” Natie whispers as he gazes at a shot of Doug dangling over Jordan's head like a pendulum. “How do you suppose he stands up without tipping over?” He flips through the rest, making favorable comments on his talent as a pornographer. “I'll write Jordan's letter tonight and send these babies off tomorrow,” he says. “Stick with me and you won't even need Al's money.”

“What are you going to say?”

“Oh, you know, the usual, give us $10,000 or we'll send these to your dad and the Republican National Committee, that kind of thing.”

“Do you really think we could get $10,000 for these?”

Natie snorts. “Hell, if Doug were still a minor we could've gotten twice that.”

From over my shoulder I hear Mr. Lucas clear his throat. How a man on crutches could manage to sneak up on us is beyond me.

“Illustrations won't be necessary, gentlemen,” he says.

I'm pretty fried
from the weekend in D.C., so I'm ready to crash by the time Friday rolls around. Kelly, Kathleen, and I hang out at home because Kelly's brother, Brad, is due to arrive that night for spring break. We watch
Victor/Victoria
for like the gazillionth time on HBO. Julie Andrews is about as convincing as a man as Barbra Streisand is in
Yentl,
but we don't care; we've practically got the whole thing memorized, not just the songs, but the dialogue, too. Brad shows up before the movie's over, which is a shame because I like the scene where Lesley Ann Warren does the number in her panties and you can almost see her pubes.

Brad was already at Notre Dame when Kelly and I first started going out, so I've only met him a couple of times. But now that I'm part of the family, so to speak, he greets me like we're old buddies, giving me one of those one-armed hugs that guys do to show affection without appearing queer.

Brad Corcoran looks just like his dad. In fact, if you look at the photo albums of Kathleen and Jack back when they were in college (which Kelly and I did on one particularly icy Saturday night last winter), you'd swear it was Brad and not Dr. Corcoran whooping it up at all those corny-looking socials thrown by Delta Ramma Lamma Ding Dong. The lean sprinter's build, the toothpaste-commercial smile, the craggy sun-kissed features—it's all there.

It makes me uncomfortable.

Brad's brought his girlfriend with him, a boxy-looking preppy girl in a headband named Kit. She's one of those hearty field-hockey types who everyone describes as having a lot of personality, which really means she talks too much. Wallingford is full of them—bossy, beefy women who, for some unknown reason, often seem to be the wife of choice for slender patrician men; y'know, like Barbara Bush.

It's an awkward reunion. Kit laughs too much at nothing in particular and Brad makes demeaning inquiries into Kelly's “little dancing thing,” as if her future college major and life ambition were some trifling whim on her part. Kathleen seems glad to see her son, but I can tell she feels disconnected from all the hardy-har-har tales of dear old Delta Ramma Lamma Ding Dong. Kathleen, Kelly, and I have, in our own little functional dysfunctional way, formed a new family during the last few months, one that seems to have more in common with the two neurotic cats than with these two rambunctious preps. Luckily, Brad and the Headband are eager to meet up with some friends for drinks, leaving Kathleen, Kelly, and me to our HBO and an early night.

It's like dark o'clock
when I'm stirred out of a coma by the sound of someone banging around. At first, I think it must be Brad coming in late but, as I pry open my eyes, I realize Brad's actually risen early and is on the floor with his feet locked under the spare bed, doing sit-ups.

He is obviously mentally ill.

I squint so I can admire his flat, lean belly and rippling colt's legs without it appearing as if that's what I'm actually doing, but as he comes up for his final sit-up he glances over and catches my eye.

Oops.

“Sorry to wake you,” he whispers. He smiles at me with both sets of teeth, the way Kelly does.

“S'all right,” I gurgle. “I had to get up anyway.”

This is, of course, an outright lie, but one that forces me to make good on it, so I flop down the hallway to the bathroom to take a leak. When I come back, I nearly knock Brad in the head with the door because he's doing push-ups on the narrow strip of floor in front of the beds. He springs up, his body unfolding like a pocketknife, and stands too close to me, massaging the spot where his chest meets his shoulder, the muscles quivering under his skin. His eyes are as green as an Irish meadow.