The Loser's Guide to Life and Love (3 page)

I, Quentin Andrews O'Rourke, believe in the following things.

I believe in the scientific method.

I believe in empiricism.

I believe that men, in general, can and should choose to be rational creatures.

I believe that I, in particular, am a rational creature.

And I believe that my existence has become excruciatingly, unbearably, mind-numbingly dull.

For many months now, I have been carefully observing the movements of the moon through my telescope in the backyard. Furthermore, I have dutifully and accurately kept track of them in this same journal.

I am nothing if not accurate and dutiful.

Yet, as I look over my notes tonight, I suddenly find myself dissatisfied and restless. My observations are facts devoid of real meaning. Stupid. Pointless. Who cares? What of it? It's not as if I will discover anything new about the moon, staring at it night after night. Lunar research fills volumes. Man has even been to the moon, though there are those who claim the moon landing was only a clever conspiracy, a weakly supported thesis that I unequivocally reject.

But I digress.

What I really want to do is kick over my telescope and toss my notes to the wind!

Except then my father and his newest girlfriend named Ashley (they're watching TV inside) would think I am even more disturbed than they already do.

What
is happening to me? WHAT DO I WANT?

I can pinpoint exactly my new restlessness to a night several weeks ago. I was shooting baskets in the light from the street lamps. Dad was working on his car, listening to a radio station that plays the songs he liked when he was growing up in Southern California.

“Hey Quen, this is one of the all-time greats,” he shouted at me. “It was the theme song for my junior prom.”

Dad is always trying to interest me in popular culture—music, television, movies, novels by Stephen King
and John Grisham. As if
any
of these things would make me a better student of the sciences. But I indulge him. I held on to my basketball and sat on the curb near his car, pretending to be interested as I watched a pair of dragonflies flit by.

I, Quentin Andrews O'Rourke, believe that small kindnesses such as these are important.

The song, not surprisingly, was the kind Dad usually favors—emotional and overblown, with violins swelling in the background. “I'm Irish,” he always says with a shrug whenever a song makes him cry. “What are you gonna do?”

I myself was neutral about the song. I am often neutral about songs. At the end, however, the singer stopped singing and started reciting a poem—something about a “coldhearted orb.”

The moon.

“What did you say the name of this song is?” I asked.

Dad peered out from underneath the car, a surprised smile on his face. “You like this one, Quen?”

I shrugged.

“It's called ‘Nights in White Satin' by the Moody Blues,” he said nonchalantly. Then he stuck his head back under the car, but not until I heard him say, “Hot damn!”

Later, after Dad was in bed, I got online and Googled the song's lyrics. As I expected they were full of emotional drama. People lamenting. Lonely men crying. Old people wishing. Lovers wrestling.

Things happening at night beneath a high moon.

Things I have chosen to know nothing about.

Why?

Why have I chosen NOT to know? Could this be the subject of an investigation using the scientific method?

1. NAME THE PROBLEM OR QUESTION. (See above.)
   
2. FORM AN EDUCATED GUESS (that would be my hypothesis) OF THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM AND MAKE PREDICTIONS.
   
3. TEST HYPOTHESIS BY DOING AN EXPERIMENT USING PROPER CONTROLS. (Controls? When it comes to human beings? )
   
4. ORGANIZE AND INTERPRET DATA. (What do you suggest? Creating a graph? Making a chart? It's not like I'm in the first grade again, tracking how long it takes for lima beans to sprout.)
   
5. REPORT YOUR RESULTS TO A GROUP. (A group? Who could possibly care? ANSWER: I do.)
   

I don't know why I do, and so suddenly, too. It's as though I've contracted one of those viruses that hit out of the blue and flatten you.

But there it is. I care.

So. Here it is. The (late) morning after. I'm parked on the couch in front of the television, wondering about a number of things.

First, I'm wondering if I could make Maggie come in here and find the remote so I don't have to get up from the couch.

Second, I'm wondering if that's actually my stomach I spy creeping over the top of my boxers like rising dough. How can this possibly be? I've always been a very skinny guy. When did I start getting a gut? Is this why Scout's been begging me to start working out with her at Body, Inc.?

And I thought she just liked my wonderful company!

Third, I'm wondering how the dragonfly that just flew past my face got into the house.

Fourth, I'm wondering about that girl, Ellie Fenn. Will I see her again? I hope I do.

While I'm mulling these things over, I notice there's one of those talk shows on the television right now where everybody is bragging about the first time they had sex, and I start wondering about something else, namely this: Am I the ONLY living teenage boy in America who hasn't had sex ONCE, let alone THREE or possibly FOUR times? A day? Between classes? In the janitor's closet even?

Trust me on this one. If you watch enough daytime television in the summer, you start thinking thoughts like this on a regular basis.

Just then my mom cruises through with a laundry basket full of socks. “As long as you're sitting there in your boxers rotting your brains out in front of the TV, Ed, you can match these for me.”

Great, I think, as I take the basket from her. Now I can be a short, boxer-wearing, weight-gaining, laundry-folding, not-sex-having teenage American guy.

Yes! Just what I always wanted to be!

Mom squints at the TV for a minute and bursts out laughing. Then she looks at me. “Oh stop worrying, Ed,” she says breezily. “Believe me, you're not the only teenager in America who isn't having sex. There's plenty
of time for that later.”

Then she sails out of the room with her invisible crystal ball, leaving me on the couch feeling depressed and really scared of her.

That's when I make two extremely important decisions.

First, I'm going to start working out with Scout so I can turn my stomach into a six-pack. Or possibly even a twelve-pack. Or maybe even a complete crate of soda like the kind Mom buys at Costco.

Second, if Ellie ever comes back to Reel Life, I'm gonna be ready. I'm not gonna blow my chances with her. Do you hear me?

I leave the unfolded socks sitting on the couch, pick up the telephone, and call Scout as Quark's silver-striped cat, Helena, begins to thread herself lovingly through my legs.

The phone rings and I pick it up. Someone shouts in my ear.

“STOP DOING THAT, HELENA!” This is followed by very loud hissing and meowing. “MAGGIE! GET THIS STUPID CAT OUT OF HERE!”

“Um. Hello?”

“Sorry about that, Scout,” Ed bellows. “My neighbor's cat won't leave me alone. She's in love with me.”

I laugh. “That's sweet.”

“It's not sweet. It's sick! She sneaks into our house and stalks me, even though I am highly allergic to cats.”

“Why is she in love with you if she belongs to your neighbor?” I ask, smiling.

Ed heaves a huge mock sigh. “It's like that old comedian guy Woody Allen said when he started dating his own daughter. The heart wants what it wants.”

“Technically speaking, Woody Allen wasn't her father,” I point out, in the interest of fairness to disgusting and lecherous movie stars. “He wasn't even her stepfather, Ed. He was her mother's lover, which makes him the steplover.”

Ed gives a halfhearted, sad little laugh, and I start to wonder if something is wrong.

“What's up?” I ask lightly, although my worry alarm is going off.

“I'm getting a gut, Scout.”

Relieved that he's okay, I laugh. “You are not getting a gut. Jeez, Ed, you sound like a girl. Next thing I know you'll be asking me if your pants make your butt look too big.”

“Then why do you keep dropping hints about me going to the gym with you?”

This truly takes me by surprise. I pause, wanting to say the words people in Regency romance novels always say.

Because I want to be with you. Always. Anywhere. Even in a gym.

Okay, maybe they don't mention “gyms” in Regency romances. But you get the idea.

“Duh,” I say instead. “I just thought it would be fun.
You'd like Body, Inc. Ali works out there too.”

“Great!” Ed laughs nervously. “Sign me up then!”

I pause. “Seriously?”

“Yup. If I have to work out, I can't think of anybody I'd rather work out with than you.”

My heart skips a beat. Ed wants to be with me! And then he throws a bucket of cold water my way.

“I need you to teach me some Portuguese fast, Scout. I took Spanish in seventh grade. How hard could it be?”

“You're crazy, Ed. Oh, excuse me,
Senhor
Sergio Mendes.” I do my all-purpose foreign accent.

“I'm serious about this, Scout,” he persists.

“Ed,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “Do you even realize who Sergio Mendes is?”

“Um. Me?”

“No. He is a Brazilian musician who had a group called Brasil '66.” Then I tell him about all those old Sergio Mendes albums in my dad's vinyl record collection.

There's a little pause. “No wonder my new name sounded so familiar. I used to be a Latino rock star,” Ed observes weakly.

“Why do you want to learn Portuguese anyway, Ed?” I know already, of course, but I want to hear him say it. Call me a masochist, but it's always interesting to watch Ed wrap his nimble brain around things.

“For your information, Scout, Portuguese is a lan
guage I happen to admire and respect very much,” Ed says. “Sometimes I do nothing all day long except sit around admiring and respecting Portuguese. You can ask my mom, who also admires and respects Portuguese.”

He's good. I gotta give the guy credit for that. “Can't help you out, Ed. Too bad, so sad.”

He starts to plead. “Come on, Scout. Please.
Please
.”

I don't answer.

“Scout?”

“Tell me the truth. Why do you want to learn Portuguese?”

He lets out a heavy sigh—a real one this time. “Because I'm short,” he says simply.

Normally I would laugh at such a goofy answer. For one thing, Ed is not that short. I'm serious. For another, his size doesn't matter. Not to me. Not to anybody. But I can tell he isn't joking with me for once.

“I'm a short guy in boxers who's sick of being from Salt Lake City instead of Brazil,” he clarifies.

What could I say after that?

“Well,
sim
means ‘yes,'” I say finally. “So
sim
, I guess I can teach you how to count to ten.”

“I love to count to ten!” Ed perks up. “Frontwards! Backwards! Sideways!”

I say the numbers and he repeats them after me.

“Now here are the days of the week,” I say.

He repeats these, too. Then I teach him how to
greet people and how to respond when they return the greeting.

“Scout,” he says when we're through, “I freakin' love you!”

I don't answer. Instead, I just hang up the phone.