Second Helpings (5 page)

But right now, limping through workouts seems preferable to this. I may be the best writer at Pineville High, but that really isnt saying much now, is it? I just dont have it in me. If theres one thing Ive learned at the New Jersey Summer Pre-College Enrichment Curriculum in Artistic Learning, its this: I may be SPECIAL, but Im not all that special. Good thing I figured this out here and now instead of next year.

the twenty-first

Having lost all hope for friendship with my classmates, Ive tried to expand my social sphere here at SPECIAL, not because I really want to but because I think it would be a good run-through for college.

Spurred by Bridgets endorsements ormore likelyin desperate need of one more order, which would put them over the twelve-dollar Chinese delivery minimum, her acting-class buddy Ashleigh knocked on my door and invited me to dine with them. I was hungry and tired of the dining halls grilled-cheese sandwiches, so I accepted. Against my better judgment, mind you, because I do not like Ashleigh.

In Ashleigh, Ive discovered a unique breed of girlie annoyingness, different from that of the Clueless Two. Manda and Sara are annoying because their whole belief system is in opposition to my own. They live by a Grand Theft Auto morality, by which lying, whoring, and stealing scores innumerable points. Manda has a compulsive need to sleep with other girls boyfriends, then uses pseudo-feminist arguments to justify why her actions are a fight against the patriarchy and not just an exhibition of heinous skankitude. Sara delights in spreading the word about her best friends misdeeds (and everyone elses, for that matter) yet doesnt think its hypocritical to get pissed when the gossipmongering exposes her own shady debaucheries.

Anyway, Ashleighs annoyingness manifests itself more in form than content. Meaning, her comments arent inherently annoying. In fact, she often says things that Ive been thinking myself. The problem is, even Ashleighs most banal observations become annoying by the irritating force of her personality. She has a compulsive need to not only be right about everything, but to stake her claim as the first genius/philosopher to have ever thought that particular thought. She will argue and argue and argue until you give in to her point-of-view voodoo and see things her all-knowing way.

For example, the first time I met Ashleigh, Bridget tried to speed up the bonding process by pointing out that we are both huge fans of John Hughess earlier work.

Ive loved the Molly Ringwald movies forever , she said. Not just because the eighties are trendy.

As you know, this same comment could also be applied to yours truly. But my fascination with the eighties goes way beyond John Hughes, and has long superceded all interest in my own generation. (With the exception of The Real World , which I still love even though its totally predictable and lame. Like, whos the gay one this year? Whos the one who will have issues with her long-distance boyfriend? Who are gonna be the platonic sexual-tension couple? Duh. But I still love it more than my own real world.) Ashleigh was clearly insinuating that I

liked those flicks only because Seventeen and YM had approved their retro-kitsch appeal. But we had just met, and I was practicing my personable personality.

Me, too, I replied, calmly. I watched them when I was little because my sister liked them and

I didnt need anyone to introduce me.

Well, uh okay.

And it makes me mad when girls suddenly decide that Breakfast Club is their favorite movie, when they havent even seen the version that isnt edited for TV

Its pretty hilarious when they say Flip you! instead of Fuck you! I said, trying to salvage the conversation. She steamrolled right over me.

I didnt jump on the bandwagon. I discovered them on my own.

Ashleigh made this declaration as if she were Columbus, Magellan, and Ponce de Leon all rolled up into one ugly little package. Not so incidentally, Ashleigh uses a similarly contagious mind-over-matter to convince others shes cute. She believes in her cuteness so deeply that others see it, too, despite the evidence to the contrary: flyaway bottle-blond hair, crazed, bulging eyes, and a nose that resembles a stalk of broccoli, inverted. (This is an externalized version of my He Who Shall Remain Nameless trick, which still isnt working.)

I so dislike Ashleighs desperate need for conversation domination that I intentionally pick fights with her, even when Im in total agreement with what shes saying. Very immature, I know. But it wasnt until tonight that my combative behavior came back to chomp me in the ass. No sooner had I looped my first lo mein noodle onto my chopsticks than Ashleigh gave the Last Word on the most infamously self-proclaimed virgin in the pop music community.

Britney? No way, Ashleigh said. She lives with Justin. Case closed.

It would be difficult to find someone in the Western world who disagrees with this. I mean, the only virgins left in the world are, uh, me , Hope, and those True Love Waits religious zealots who wear hip Holy

Roller T-shirts with sayings like CHRISTS MAMA WAS A VIRGIN AND SO AM I. But I just couldnt let Ashleigh go through life thinking that shes right about everything.

How do you know Britneys motto isnt How about a hand job instead ? I countered.

Is that your motto? Ashleigh asked, in the snotty way that only a not-cute-who-thinks-shes-cute devirginized girl can.

Splotches sprouted all over Bridgets face and neck, like a harvest of cherry tomatoes. Make that a harvest of cherry tomatoes with a guilt complex.

Well, like, Ashleigh asked if you were a virgin, so, like

I didnt let her finish her sentence. I just picked up my carton and left.

To add to the insult of my nonsexed status, I returned to my room to discover that Call Me Chantalle had tied one of her toe shoes on the doorknob, her way of letting me know she was getting her wettins on. Unspecified Intimate Moment #6. Ack.

Her moans easily escaped through the walls, so the warning was totally unnecessary. Call Me Chantalles pleasure grunts were so specific that I could tell that her partner was slurping, not screwing. Where, oh where, was the resident adviser when I needed one?

Tonights sexile destroys all hope that my roommate and I will be anything but mortal enemies. Oh, Ive seen her freak side, all right. Unfortunately, its the Rick James, from-her-head-down-to-her-toenails variety. And to think my first impression of Call Me Chantalle, the one I kept to myself because I was being nicethat she was a prissy, anorexic nutcase with an unhealthy obsession with hygienewas a dream compared to the reality. Call Me Chantalle is far more complex than I had thought. Shes a prissy, anorexic nutcase with an unhealthy obsession with personal hygiene that is at odds with her heinous skankitude.

I was contemplating my next move when I looked up and saw Bridget standing over me, chewing on her twenty-four-carat ponytail, looking sincerely apologetic.

Im, like, so sorry, she said. I shouldnt have told Ashleigh that youre, like, you know, a virgin . She whispered the last word as if shed said necrophiliac or crackhead. Come to think of it, it would be more socially acceptable at SPECIAL if she had.

Ash is gone, by the way, if you want to, like, come back to my room with me.

It was better than listening to Call Me Chantalle climax with Joe, the multimedia hottie.

By the way, you, like, forgot this, she said, handing me a fortune cookie.

I opened it up and it said: The road less traveled will not be smooth .

As if I didnt know that already. I should share it with Mac so he can add it to his repertoire.

the thirtieth

Since that last entry, much has happened:

HHHH1. Call Me Chantalle had an Unspecified Intimate Moment with all Lucky Seven, and two others who werent hot enough to make the list. I hope that this hellish roommate means that next year I will blessed by the higher powers in charge of housing assignments.

HHHH2. I spend little time in my own room because it is an incubator for STDs. So Ive struck up quasi-friendships with girls on my floor, which gives me faith that Ill be able to suppress my naturally antisocial tendencies next year and bond with people who arent Hope.

HHHH3. I was quite surprised by Bridgets skillful portrayal of Helena in A Midsummer Nights Dream . Her success in last years spring play wasnt a fluke after all. Shes insists that she isnt going to college but straight to Hollywood stardom. This has become our favorite ponytail-chewing debate.

HHHH4- Ive heard more poems about the futility of human life than I care to mention.

HHHH5. All the evidence is in: I am a sucker for queer bait.

You might be wondering why I didnt write about any of these things. Well, the reason I didnt write about any of these things is that I didnt have this journal to write in. And the reason I didnt have it is so utterly moronic that it could only happen to me.

As you know, we are all required to keep a journal for class. In it, we were supposed to do a half hour of free writing a day, work on drafts of our assignments, and so on. Of course, it didnt take me very long to get back into the habit of writing only the most humiliating things in my journal, because deep down, I dont think anyone, even Hope, should be subjected to these ramblings in real life. Since I knew Mac would eventually ask for our notebooks, I started a new class journal that was highly censored, unlike this personal journal, which isnt censored enough. Both are of the traditional black-and-white-speckled composition-notebook variety.

Last Friday, Mac asked us to turn in our journals so he could start reading them over the weekend. You see where this is going, so Ill just get to the moronic part:

I TURNED IN THE WRONG JOURNAL.

Psychologists would say that I did this on purpose. An intentional accident, because I wanted him to read all my ramblings, which he did, including those about him.

I think my only conscious thought in the forty-eight hours between that realization and my next class was, HOLY SHIT. When I tried explaining my mortifying mistake on Monday morning, he said it was all the more reason for him to read it. Then he quoted Alexander Pope.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for the observers sake.

Uh but

No buts, he replied. Discussion over.

And it was over. For the next five days, Mac didnt say anything about the journal. In the meantime, I hoped that my pagan peers had filled their journals with way more psychotic stuff than I did. I prayed that they were certifiable enough for Mac to overlook my erotic overtures. I even considered asking the Wiccans to cast a spell involving all five points of the pentagram, one that would make these hopes and prayers come true. So what if I had to repay the debt by turning my soul over to the dark lord of the underworld? A small price, indeed.

Finally, today, Monday, as the class took a break for lunch (me) and ceremonial bloodletting (everyone else), Mac held up the wrong journal and said, The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray. Oscar Wilde.

Uh.

Lets discuss this.

Sure, lets discuss that hes thirtysomething and Im a minor and Im lusting after him in a totally inappropriate student/teacher Dont Stand So Close to Me kind of way that ruins reputations and gets people arrested and now were alone in a classroom together and no one is around and its very hot and sweaty and hes talking about leading me astray and Im not wearing that much clothing and

Dont be embarrassed about the things you wrote about me, he started.

I wanted to say, Oh no, I am not embarrassed at all. I believe in articulating ones deepest thoughts and feelings, even those that may be unconven-tional or, yes, illegal. After all, what use is a mind if we disallow freedom of expression ?

But it came out like this: Nuhhh.

You are familiar with my work, right?

Uh, sure! Of course! I love your books! I lied. Id never heard of him or his work before I showed up at SPECIAL.

Then you know that my first novel, Mamas Boy , was a semiautobio-graphical account of my struggle to come out of the closet.

Out of the closet .

And that it was dedicated to my longtime lover

Lover.

Raul.

Raul.

So you know Im gay

Gay.

Hes

gay-

Of course.

OF COURSE HES GAY.

Why would I ever lust after someone who isnt gay? First Paul Parlipiano, now Mac. Are all Manhattan hotties gay? How many more until Im officially a princess among queens? This would only happen to me.

Which means theres no reason for you to be embarrassed or uncomfortable about what you wrote.

He said it matter-of-factly, to make it so, even though he knew the exact opposite was true. I felt like a busted horses ass, one whose only redeeming quality was that it could be shot and turned into glue.

Now that thats out of the way, Id like to talk to you about what I read. Why is it that nothing youve written for me in class holds up to what I read in this journal?

I wanted to say, What do you mean ? But instead it came out: Wuhhh?

I want more of this, he said, handing my journal back to me. This is real. This is you. If you want to be a writer, you need to stop censoring yourself. You need to write like this.