Perfect Fifths (24 page)

She could also tell Sunny how Marcus went out of his way to press her on the subject of her friendship with Manda, whom he must know was the one who ramblingly

revealed their identities as the subjects of the aforementioned song to the Mighties' modest but rabid blogospheric fan base. This was a development that Sunny herself first reported to Jessica within minutes of this praecoxal post to a fansite calledTheMiqhtiest.com in response to the question from an approved commenter

screen-named LensGirl2010: does ANYONE know who MY SONG is about? i'm DYING to find out and Len won't tell!

Couchsurfeminist commented: i went to high school with everyone in MY SONG, i was so fortunate to date LEN (so sweet, smart, sensitive—a male feminist!) and i am not exaggerating when i say that if any man were worth conforming to the oppressive heterosexual monogamous paradigm for, it's him. we might still be together if it weren't for my former roommate JESSICA DARLING (not the porn star, but she still exploits her body to get what she wants), who I know for a FACT is the YOU in MY

SONG. JESSICA DARLING fucks LEN whenever she gets horny or bored or whenever anyone else (like me or any commenters;A*) shows an interest in him and she feels threatened that he might not worship her the way he has since the third grade because she, sadly, is only as powerful as the men who love her. the HE of MY

SONG is a walking phallus named MARCUS FLUTIE who ONCE SANG a song for JESSICA DARLING before senior prom that made her spread for the first time, which was such a MOMENTOUS OCCASION because she was the only virgin left in our entire high school because she thought her TWAT was a precious jewel or a rare flower or whatever crap pushed by the patriarchy to suppress the female orgasm. MARCUS FLUTIE

slept with just about every girl on the Eastern Seaboard except ME

though he tried to get into my panties when i was a freshman but I turned him down because i will not disempower myself just for a few clit twitches. MARCUS FLUTIE

actually proposed to JESSICA DARLING and she said no (which is shocking because what better proof of female value is there than BEING A BRIDE, RIGHT?!), anyway i guess she got all panicky that no one else would ever love her (her identity being all caught up in the male gaze) because not too long after that she briefly rebounded with Len, who was so traumatized by this last attack from her VAGINA DENTATA({X})—that our sweet, sensitive, sexy Len had to exorcise the demons by writing MY SONG, if you don't believe me, i've got photographic proof on my blog:

http://bloqqist.com/couchsurfeminist

A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life.

Jessica could tell Sunny that the worst part about Couchsurfemi-nist/Manda's loopily vitriolic rebuke was not how it bordered on slander but how it was totally justified and almost entirely true in essence, if not in actuality. For example, Couchsurfeminist/Manda neglected to mention that her time in the heterosexual monogamous

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paradigm ended immediately after Len innocently walked in and interrupted a Sapphic entanglement in Manda's dorm room. This shocking betrayal and convenient

omission had as much to do with their breakup—if not more—than any lingering feelings Len had for Jessica. Jessica had been tempted, for the briefest of moments, to assign herself a screen name and defend herself against Couchsurfeminist's accusations: NotThePornStar commented: How dare YOU of all people make such libelous smears about other people's promiscuity? You who taste-tested half the dicks in Pineville before deciding that vagina was the only meat on your menu.

What kind of example would that set? This was precisely the kind of debased public grievance-airing that Jessica tried to persuade the Girls to keep offline and private, best left for black-and-white-speckled composition notebooks. (In fact, Jessica begged a certain commenter screen-named SunnyDaze not to launch a

counterattack to defend her mentor's honor, then overpraised said teen for being so worldly and mature beyond her years when she grudgingly agreed.) What's more, was Couchsurfeminist/Manda so far off the mark in her scathing summarization? Hadn't Jessica callously disregarded Len's feelings for her—and, to a lesser degree, Manda's feelings for Len—over the years?

As much as Jessica hated to admit it, Couchsurfeminist/Manda was right in that regard, and it didn't even matter if she portrayed herself as an innocent victim. After reading that post, Jessica understood that Manda truly believed Len could have been the Great Love of Her Life, just as she truly believed Jessica was the sole reason why it hadn't turned out that way. After all, as Jessica told Sunny and all the Girls in the program: "The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves make us who we are ...

and who we might be." If it made Manda feel better to buy in to her self-delusion, then Jessica could certainly accept the blame as penance for the very real pain she had caused. Jessica had wounded Manda; therefore, she couldn't blame Manda for pushing her revisionist history on an audience all too eager to believe it.

Jessica felt far worse about how she had mistreated Len, who really was as sweet, smart, and sensitive as Couchsurfeminist boasted. Len, who, to his never-ending credit, disavowed these online rumors. ("The song is fiction but is inspired by universal truths about breakups and broken hearts.") Len, who had never done anything wrong except for the fatal, natal error of not being born into this world as Marcus Flutie. Len, whom Jessica had conned into believing would finally have the grown-up relationship he had always wished for and always deserved. Len, who, when so callously informed otherwise ("It was just a one-night thing, Len"), coped with his pain and jealousy the only way he knew how. There's no doubt in Jessica's mind that Len is even more surprised than she is that his therapeutic outpouring has gone so very public.

Just twenty-four hours ago, Jessica couldn't think of anything to say to Sunny. But now she's convinced she could station herself by the hospital bed for hours, telling stories. If Len's song was the most prominent omission from their conversation, she could tell Sunny about how the opposite was also true, that Marcus had

conspicuously asked or spoken about major and minor characters from their past—Bridget and Percy, Scotty and Sara, Paul Parlipiano and Mac, Bethany and Marin, her parents, her employer/founder of Do Better, her landlady in Brooklyn, even her AP English teacher, Ms. Haviland, for Christ's sake—before bringing himself to ask
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about the person he'd known longest (longer than Jessica, even) and best (though not better than Jessica): Hope. And even more revealing than his reluctance to ask

—Virginia Woolf

about Hope was Jessica's shameful first response ("She dropped out of school!"), which was by far the most negative and least significant part of her best friend's life.

Not only did Jessica still feel irrationally threatened by Hope's status as the Nice One, but Marcus had sensed as much, a truth that seemed so unfair to Jessica, as if this one stubborn flaw in her character proved she hadn't evolved at all in the three years since she and Marcus had parted ways.

Yes, Jessica could squeeze a valuable life lesson out of this unflattering confession (/ tried to make Hope look bad to make myself look better. This strategy never

works, Sunny. Never.), one that could teach her teenage mentee about the complicated dynamics of friendship between two women of any age, one Sunny could draw upon should she ever be in the position to forgive her own best friend (a girl named Leah, who, like Hope, is the shyer, more unassuming, and nicer of the two) the next time she does something (like being nice for no good reason) that tests their bond. Jessica would also have to point out—darkly, sardonically—how such tedious

pedantry isn't necessary for the likes of Hope or Leah because such forgiveness comes naturally to them.

Signing on as the primary beneficiary of their best friends'

compassion is the great advantage to being the Not So Nice One, but also the greatest burden. That so much niceness ultimately contributes to feelings of guilt and inadequacy is something Jessica knows only too well.

Many friends and family members have tried to perform what Jessica called "interwenchions" to save her from a lifetime of bitching and bitterness. Even Marcus, who always told her that he loved her for who she was, often tried to make her see how oppressive her bad attitude could be. Though it was never said, Jessica had always assumed Marcus wished she could be just a little bit more like her optimistic, open-minded best friend.

Why can't you be yourself but just a little bit nicer? It was this unspoken question that at the time, but even more so afterward, Jessica found so insulting, as if she didn't understand the depressing downside of going through life

with such a personality defect. That she had been born with a bleak streak was inarguable. As for what to do about it, that was a question Jessica has struggled with for too many years, still struggles with, but less often since she started working for Do Better. Jessica was always uncomfortable with the idea of being a role model, and she still cringes at the term because anyone who allows herself to be placed atop such a pedestal is begging to get knocked off it. When Jessica voiced such

objections, Sunny pointed out what should have been self-evident:

"You're a role model because you're not perfect. You were a mess when you were my age, but you turned out okay. You give me hope! Just don't tell anyone or they might mistake my optimism for one of those rare brain disorders you've told me about."

Imperfections weren't enough to endear Jessica to the Girls—after all, there are plenty of repugnant fuckups out there. It's her gift for storytelling, Jessica's uncanny ability to enlighten and entertain with tales of past mistakes, that made her a hero among the tart-tongued eye-rollers like Sunny. Jessica wishes she could talk to her right now, taking full advantage of another opportunity to serve by flawed example.

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Jessica hadn't noticed it yesterday, surely because she was going out of her way not to take in too many specifics of the whole gruesome situation, but she

wondered whether Sunny was hooked up to a machine that monitored her brain activity. Wouldn't such information be useful to Sunny's doctors? Jessica remembered studying colorful brain scans in her advanced psychology classes at Columbia, where certain zones lit up in response to different stimuli. If such a real-time mind map were possible, Jessica could have edited and embellished her tales to increase blood flow in key regions, all to Sunny's maximum medical benefit. In fact, Jessica can perfectly visualize the explosion of primary brights—Mondrian meets Pollock—in Sunny's hypothalamus as a response to the following sentence:

Marcus Flutie is slowly getting naked right in front of me. And I'm not going to stop him.

five

Marcus starts with the sweater, seizing it gently at the hem, then raising it up and over his head in one graceful, fluid movement. This sweater has meant nothing to him, really. But now it's become something more: a symbol. It's the symbol of what can't be shared, the start of stories that go unfinished. He takes the sweater by the arms and stretches it out in front of him. In this moment, the sweater and Marcus look like dance partners, about to take a grand ballroom spin. It's a bold gesture, one he would not be making if he were in this hotel room all by himself.

He clasps the arms of the sweater together, first halving it in a hug, then folding it once more into quarters. He's making a big production out of putting away this sweater, a sweater he normally rips over his head and throws into a ball on the floor, forgotten until the next time temperatures dip low enough to need it. Marcus places the now meticulously cared-for sweater on his bed, which is located three footsteps away from hers.

There is an unobstructed sight line between Jessica and this sweater. He doesn't want Jessica to forget about the sweater. He's waiting for her to ask about the sweater. He's waiting for her to ask for the rest of the story, and he wants her to suffer through its telling. He's waiting for her to ask about Greta. To encourage the question, he unclasps the dumb-ass watch and places it right on top of the sweater as an extra visual aid. It doesn't help.

His eyes meet her silent, heavy-lidded stare. Mildly unnerved by her implacable expression, he clears his throat and turns away in a false show of modesty. The

room is silent save for the muted roar of airplanes taking off and landing not far from their window. His back is to her as he begins with the top button of his tasteful blue-striped dress shirt, origin unknown. The cotton parts as he finger-picks his way down, providing a peek at the letters printed across the T-shirt he's wearing underneath. The text is revealed in a manner that might be enjoyed by lovers of word games —NT, ENTS, BENTSP, EBENTSPO, HEBENTSPOO—before the dress shirt is peeled wide open to reveal all the letters spelling out the name of a popular Princeton ice-cream shop: THE BENT SPOON. An anticlimactic message, Marcus thinks. If he had known when he got dressed this morning that he would be here in this hotel room with Jessica Darling, Marcus would have chosen a more meaningful T-shirt, such as the red YOU. YES. YOU. shirt he had taken off the first time they'd made love. This was the same T-shirt Marcus was wearing when he sang the song immortalized in Len's song, a topic that Jessica blatantly dodged even after Marcus dropped hints so clunky and
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unavoidable that they could not accurately be defined as hints.

No, no, no. Wearing that T-shirt would have been the wrong way to go: red shirt as red flag. Not that he had even considered wearing it this morning, because it sits in the bottom of a drawer in Princeton, unworn for many months because he dislikes answering questions about it. ("Me? Yes? Me?" was a popular line of flirtation.) Such a gesture would have been too obvious. Too calculated. Too much of the same-old-same-old over-the-top Marcus Flutie bullshit that drove Jessica to distraction when they were together. Wearing the YOU. YES. YOU. T-shirt would've validated that he hasn't changed at all over the last three years, that he's still compelled to pull stunts to get and keep her attention.