Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List (23 page)
I don’t feel much better.
I feel even worse when we get there and find a line full of hipless hipsters, drag queens holding court, go-go boy aspirants, and flavas of the week.
“I guess word got out,” Ely mumbles.
It’s almost sweet to see Ely in a crowd that’s never heard of him. It means he has to wait on line like everyone else.
“This one time?” Ely says, and I almost expect him to continue with
“At band camp?”
But instead he says the quarantined name—“Naomi and I decided to go to the Night of a Thousand Stevies. Just to see all the girls and guys dressed like Stevie Nicks. And Naomi? She thought it would be really funny if she went as Stevie Wonder. This one drag queen nearly suffocated her in muslin. It was a time.”
He’s not only said her name, but he’s tied it to a good memory. It makes me hopeful, but I don’t want to jinx it by pointing it out.
The line is moving slowly, and some people who were ahead of us are actually walking back the way they came— meaning: The bouncer is actually bouncing.
There is no way I’m going to make the cut.
I don’t know this as an objective fact; I’ve never actually been bounced in my entire life, for the simple reason that I’ve never put myself in a position where there was any risk of being bounced. I mean, you can get through life pretty easily if you avoid places guarded by bouncers. It’s not like they’re at supermarkets or libraries.
“What’s the name of this place, anyway?” I ask.
“I dunno,” Ely replies. “It changes every night.”
Odds are the name’s a pretentious singular noun— bouncered hipster establishments are usually named with a pretentious singular noun. Not unlike perfumes.
I put on a little Enchantress in order to go downtown to Fugue.
Or
I sprayed my wrist with some Mannerism, and we hopped from Heathen to Backwash to Striation and then ended the night at End.
Personally, if I ever open a club, I’m naming it Inquisition.
The bouncer tonight is certainly a sight I’ve never seen in econ class. It’s this ginormous guy dressed in what looks like an inflatable pouch of parachute fabric. Ely laughs when he sees the guy, but it’s a joke I don’t get. Which is made even worse when we get to the front of the line and the bouncer looks at me and asks, “Who am I?”
I’m stuck on
Do I know you?
when Ely jumps in and says, “You’re Missy Elliot! Lilith Fair’s token black girl from year two!”
This is clearly the right answer, but the bouncer isn’t about to give me the prize.
“I wasn’t asking you,” he says to Ely. “Now you get to go in, but he stays out.”
This is nothing short of humiliating. I know Ely’s getting in because he’s hot, and I’m being bounced because I’m not— musical trivia aside.
“C’mon . . . pleeeeeeease?” Ely says, batting his eyelashes.
The bouncer shakes his head and starts to look at the guy behind me, who has done his hair in braids.
“I’ll show you my dick!” Ely playfully offers.
This makes the bouncer smile and raise his eyebrow.
“Here,” Ely says, and before I can stop him, he’s unbuttoned his fly and pulled out the waistband of his underwear so the bouncer can take a look.
“Not bad,” the bouncer says to Ely. “You’re a lucky guy.” Then he looks at me and says, “You are, too.”
As I walk by, the bouncer spanks me on the ass.
I am so not in the mood.
Ely’s beaming, like the winning contestant on a reality show.
“You really didn’t have to do that,” I have to say.
“No worries. All in a day’s work.”
And I guess what I should’ve said is:
You really shouldn’t have done that.
Not that there’s anything wrong with what he did—it’s his dick, and he can show it to whoever he wants. In passing. But it’s like he’s given me a new definition of himself for me to consider and feel inadequate about. I am not the kind of guy who has a boyfriend who shows his dick to a stranger. I know this. And he has just proved himself to be a guy who shows his dick to a stranger.
And he’s not even drunk.
Therefore.
Ergo.
Erg.
Argh.
Ugh.
We’re on completely different tracks now, our evening splitting in two directions. His is up. Mine is down. The club is packed, and the DJ is blasting beat-heavy remixes of ordinarily mellow Liliths. Ely’s loving it,
loving it
— I know this because he’s calling out, “I’m loving this—
loving this
!” He gets a Fiona Appletini at the bar, and I get one, too, but for a different reason—his is to enhance and mine is to deny.
My boyfriend’s a hit. Other boys are coming over to flirt. Some are clearly repeat flirters, and Ely clearly doesn’t remember any of their names. As he talks to them, he holds my hand. Ordinarily this would make me feel giddy with mine-mine-mine-ness, but now I feel like I should say to him,
Oh no no no, don’t mind me, you go ahead and have a good time. I’ll just go home and watch PBS.
It’s funny, because I think about how Naomi must’ve known what this was like. Although she, at least, could hold her own. My version of flirting bears a striking resemblance to mime.
I want to pull Ely aside and ask
Who are you?
And
Why haven’t we had sex yet?
(Slept together? Yes. First, second, and third bases? Covered. All the way? Nope.) And
Why are you with me?
But I am so terrified of sounding needy. And I am so resentful that there is no
want
version of the word
needy
—
And that was the point where he got all wanty on me. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you have some serious wantiness issues.”
And maybe I
do
have wantiness issues. I want to go. I want to be alone with him. I want to be the kind of person who has a boyfriend who shows his dick to a stranger—once, in order to get them into a club. I want to be cool enough. I want to erase all these thoughts—all thoughts, period—and have a good time. But Ely can’t just show his dick to my wantiness and make it go away.
I feel like the mutant among the mutants. Like the boy who showed up at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and found out that, whoops, he didn’t have any superpowers at all.
I’m so tired of being uncool. You can dress me up, give me a cool boyfriend, even laugh at one of my jokes every now and then—but the anxiety always gives it away.
The techno Lilith ends and the floor show begins. The hostess is a drag queen calling herself Sarah McLocklips, and she starts by asking for some volunteers from the audience to be the impromptu opening act—apparently, Paula Cole-Minor’s-Slaughter retired and nobody bothered to tell the organizers. The music’s all cued—they just need a Paula.
Before you can say “Where have all the cowboys gone?” Ely’s onstage.
“Because my friend Naomi has all five seasons of
Dawson’s Creek,
I think I know this one cold,” he says. Then, warming into it, he adds, “This one is for Pacey, for being the Jughead. And Jen, who never got the respect she deserved. And Bruce.”
(“Was Bruce the gay one?” the girl next to me asks her staple-pierced boyfriend.
“No, that was Jack,” the punk replies. “Andie’s brother.”
“Oh! I loved Andie!” the girl screams.)
Ely doesn’t even try to sound like Paula Cole—instead he belts the song out like it’s graduation, telling everyone in teh room (if not the five boroughs beyond) that he doesn’t want to wait for our lives to be over. And since neither Pacey nor Jen is in the room, he’s looking at me as he sings it. So I smile and cheer and sing along when he asks everyone to join him. But what I’m thinking is:
I don’t want to wait, either. And I don’t want you to have to wait.
Everyone adores him. What can I give him besides that, besides what everyone else does?
When the song ends, he’s more popular than ever. People buy him drinks. He puts his hand on their shoulders as he says thank you. It’s not an invitation; he’s just being nice. He’d hold my hand if I offered it. But I’m off offering. I don’t just feel like the third wheel—it’s more like the twenty-sixth.
I don’t blame him. I direct it all at myself. For not being able to go along.
I finally make my excuses and shove my way to the restroom. The person in front of me is clearly Natalie Merchant-of-Penis, since her T-shirt reads
I BLEW
10,000
MANIACS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT.
She takes so long inside that I’m worried she’s found her 10,001st maniac, but when she emerges, she’s all alone. When she passes me, she says, “I just want to thank you,” and I don’t know what to do but nod.
Once I’ve locked the door behind me, I do my business. And then I just sit there, because I realize I don’t want to face Ely yet. In fact, I realize that I’m actually going to leave. And I’m not even going to tell Ely I’m leaving, since I don’t want to ruin his night. I want him to stay and have fun. I’ll text him once I’m safely away. I don’t want to rain on his parade. Although, yeah, I wouldn’t mind if his parade decided to follow me out the door.
I look at all the graffiti in the stall. Some of it even has pictures. I don’t understand half of it. It’s only after I’ve been reading for two minutes or so and the person waiting outside has started to pound on the door that I know what I’ve been looking for—not words of wisdom, but a blank space.
There’s one available under an inscription that says:
The Cure. For the Ex’s? I’m sorry, Nick. You know. Will you kiss me again?
I take a pen out of my pocket and write:
Ely, I want. You, me, the rest of it. I want someone to make it work, and I don’t know if it can be me. Because I’m so uncool and so afraid.
I wonder if you’re supposed to sign something like this. But I figure if he ever sees it, he’ll know it’s from me. And if he doesn’t know it’s from me . . . well, then it wasn’t meant to happen anyway.
When I leave the bathroom, the person waiting says pretty much the opposite of “I just want to thank you.” But that’s the least of my cares. I search the club for Ely, thinking maybe I’ll say good-bye in person after all. But then I see him at the bar, drinking his bright green drink and chatting with the bouncer from before and two gay boys who almost look like they could be twins. They’re all laughing. Enjoying themselves.
I feel like an outsider to that. To Ely, and to that. So I head where the outsiders belong: outside.
I’m never going to fit in with him. Never.
I know this is the wrong choice. But it feels like the only choice. So I make it.
Was that you I just heard snort from the other side of class?
I didn’t realize the sound of a snort could carry as far as where girl-Robin, sitting on the opposite end of the lecture hall, is IM’ing me during Introduction to Psychology class. At least I didn’t fart.
Yeah,
I type back.
Bruce the First’s new thing is to e-mail me daily inspirational quotes.
I copy and paste today’s installment into the IM screen and send it over to Robin. It’s a Nicholas Sparks quote about flowers and talking to animals and refreshing breezes.
Robin’s hearty snort from the other side of the room is twice as loud as mine. Schenectady really knows how to raise ’em right.
Here’s the math on psych: Probably one hundred students in this class. Eighty percent type lecture notes into their laptops as the professor-drone pontificates about some sick experiment where people were told to perform a task completely unrelated to the behavior they were actually being observed for (shrinks are mean fucks but excellent liars—I respect that). The remaining 20 percent of students appear to be dozing, while easily half the laptop note takers are IM’ing or perusing online dating services instead of paying attention to professor-drone. The likelihood that I will fail this class is about 60/40 (professor-drone’s T.A. has a thing for me, but I can’t bother to fake a girl-crush on her, even for a passing grade). I’m here, though. The odds of me bothering to show at any class these days are nil.
But I had to escape Mom. She took another sick day off work. Since I wouldn’t have the apartment to myself, where I could spend the day not being in class, and I couldn’t bear a third consecutive day of hanging out in Mom’s giant bed reading fashion mags and watching DVDs while she naps, I opted to go to class. But I arrived too late to grab a seat by Robin, dutifully sitting in the front row.
She queries:
I thought Bruce the First was over you.
I respond:
I think he is. But he will never get over Nicholas Sparks.