Your Princess is in Another Castle (31 page)

A game is in progress and I’m eager to observe in order to learn the rules but
notice that Pink is among the spectators.  Playing it cool, I act like I don’t notice her, which is why she approaches me. 

“Hey,” says Pink.
  “So I watched Pi.  I really liked it.  Except about halfway through Briley started asking me what I was doing watching a movie that was in black and white.”

“It’s a good movie,” I say.  “I’m glad I’m not as smart as Max though, because if I was
, I’d probably go crazy trying to decipher the Voynich Manuscript and have fragments of it written all over my walls.” 

Good.  I’ve said I’m not that smart.  Women li
ke stupid.  If some high-minded knight found that his fair maiden had been kidnapped by some stupid ogre, the knight would enter the ogre’s lair only to walk in on the ogre pounding the maiden doggystyle while having the maiden’s full blessing.  Then she’d just turn red and tell the knight
this isn’t what it looks like
.         

“What’s the Vo
ynich Manuscript?” asks Pink.

“It’s this
manuscript dating from around the 1400s written in an undeciphered, unique language that doesn’t appear in any other known text.  And it has a lot of bizarre illustrations, like plants that don’t match any actual known species.”

“That sounds interesting.  Maybe it’s a real life cipher that
reveals the true name of God.  Or it could be the Necronomicon, so you might not want to study it too carefully.” 

Pink
surprises me.  But beneath her façade I know that what she really wants is to be drunk and naked in one of the upstairs bedrooms with me.  If she really wanted to talk Aronofsky or Lovecraft we’d be in a coffee house instead of this beer pong bunker. 

“Maybe we’d be able to solve it
after we’ve had a few drinks.  Do you play?” I ask gesturing at the table.

“Absolutely,” says Pink
.  “Shall we join in?”

“Sure.”

“Clyde and I want to play,” says Pink to the congregation of players.   

“You’re gonna have to wait your turn,” says a guy i
n a blue polo shirt with his back to us.  He’s big and tall, like a frost giant. 

He turns to face us
and I realize he’s actually Dwayne, author of rape fiction. He smiles at me like I’ve just run out of bullets and he has one left.  “Never mind,” says Dwayne, “you can play us next.”  He laughs.  “So what the hell are you doing here, man?  Are you here on assignment for sociology class or something?  And since when do you like the NHL?”

Dwayne
either didn’t hear Pink say Clyde or he doesn’t know what my name really is, which doesn’t surprise me.  “I just felt like showing off that I’m better than you outside of the classroom too, Dwayne.”  That was way too nerdy of a response, but I couldn’t think of any good one-liners.  If only I’d just killed Dwayne in a creative fashion and Pink had set the stage for an eighties action film style pun by asking
what happened to Dwayne?

“Fine,
” says Dwayne, “if that’s what you want, you can make an ass out of yourself here, too.  You and your strangely hot partner can play me and Tracy next.”  He returns to watching the game in session. 

“Friend of yours?” asks Pink
.

“He’s in my story writing class.
  He’s the kind of guy who when he’s reading aloud you have to correct him every other word and that’s including stuff he wrote himself.  He seems to like you, though.”

Pink laughs.  “I know the type.  My roommate’s
boyfriend, for example.  Or for that matter, my roommate.” 

While Pink is somewhat nerdy herself
I’m still a little wary of being called out by Dwayne in front of her.  Damage control comes in the form of Seth who is coming down the steps in the company of a girl.  I wave at him.  Pink seeing me interacting with Seth should help to reassure her that I belong here.

“Hey, Seth,” I say.  “This is Richelle.
  You’re just in time.  We’re up next for beer pong.” 

“Hi,” he
says.  “I’m Seth.  This is Kayla.  Kayla… this is Clyde.”

We exchange gre
etings.  Kayla is raven-haired going against Seth’s usual preference for blondes, and I learn that she and Pink are already friends.  It’d be wise to flirt with Kayla in Pink’s presence were Seth not already interested in her.

“May I see you in private for a moment?” asks Seth.

“Of course,” I say.  “We’ll be right back.”

Seth leads me into the back corner of the basement. 
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks.

“What?  I’m just playing beer pong.  You saw
Richelle.  You know she’s worth doing.  And once she gets wasted she’ll want to go through with it.”

“Is it really wise for you to get hammered for the fi
rst time in your life the night before your first date with a girl with real potential?”

“I’m not going to be drinking.
  Just Richelle.  I’m confident enough in my skill set that I won’t have to drink much.  I’ll make my shots.  It’ll be just like Beggar’s Canyon back home.”

“You don’t even know how
the game is played.  Were you even watching just now?  You don’t avoid drinking if you make your own shots.  You make a shot, the guy you’re playing against drinks that cup.  If he makes a shot, you drink from the cup.  Beer pong champions aren’t celebrated for their sobriety.  The goal of a drinking game is for everyone to achieve drunkenness, not avoid it.  But you’d already know that if you had ever come to my Super Friends drinking game nights.”          

“Nevertheless, I’m here and I’m playing.  I c
an handle myself.  Maybe Dwayne isn’t a Hawkeye-level marksman anyway.  And a few drinks might ease off some of the tension when I’m upstairs with Richelle later.”   

“Alright, fine, go on ahead and play beer pong.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“What was that about?” asks Pink when I return to her.

“Seth just wan
ted to warn me that he might be needing our dorm room tonight.  I told him he could have it.”   

“So he’s your roommate?”

“Yeah,” I say.  “I pretty much had to drag him here tonight, though.”

“Time to play,” says Dwayne who slaps me on the back hard.

In position, Dwayne and I stare each other down from opposite ends of the table like gunfighters about to have a fast draw duel.  Pink stands at my side, Tracy at Dwayne’s.  There are ten cups on either side of the table but only eight get filled by the sorority sisters.  Suddenly another sister seems to materialize out of thin air.   She is beautiful and blonde, looking like she answered a casting call for a stereotypical snobby sorority girl.  Perhaps she is the leader of Zeta Psi Mu.  The Arch-Sister.

“House rules,” says the Arch-Sister, “we play wi
th daily doubles.  Two shots of everclear per every ten cups per team.”  She makes a big show of pouring the everclear into the remaining cups and there’s a lot of cheering coming from the crowd around us.  I can only assume that means everclear is either an expensive brand of alcohol rationed out carefully due to its high price or that it’s more potent than regular beer.  Bring it on if it’s the latter. 

“And remember,” says the Arch-Sister,
“one full match per person, because at Zeta Psi Mu we drink responsibly!”  In one of the more forced displays of irony I’ve bore witness too, the Arch-Sister proceeds to chug from the bottle to the delight of the spectators.  “Let the game begin!” she says. 

Because it seems like the right thing to
do, I put my hand up for a high five from Pink.  She obliges me and I’m reminded that Jessica was fond of high fives, which only increases my zeal for my current mission.

“Ladies first,” says Pink.  She tosses a ball and it e
asily lands into one of the non everclear filled cups.  Tracy picks up the cup and empties it, retaliating with a successful shot of her own.  Pink drinks from her cup like a professional. 

I palm a ping pong ball and have Pink blow it on
for good luck like I was a high roller in a casino.  And I still miss the shot.  I get heat from the crowd, but Pink does not turn on me. 

Dwayne smirks and effortlessly
but deliberately makes a shot into an everclear cup.  The crowd erupts in shouts and applause.

I pick up the cup.  It smells terrible. 
But needing to maintain my cover I attempt to drink the entire cup in one mighty gulp as celebrated partiers like Thor or Spuds McKenzie would do. 

But I’m not a chugger. 
I spit out the everclear as soon as it hits my mouth and everyone begins laughing at me.  I’m like Wile E. Coyote after walking over to a stack of TNT to see why it hadn’t gone off only to have it blow up in my face.  But unlike the relentless Mr. Coyote, I’m capable of recognizing when a cause is lost.  Revealed for what I am, I can’t even look Pink in the eye.  Seth says something to me on my departure but I don’t hear him.  But as I walk solemnly up the stairs I swear I hear Dwayne say
beep beep
.

Scoop is Woody Allen’s thirty-sixth feature film, part romantic comedy and part murder mystery.  It stars Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman.  Scarlett plays a journalism student who conducts an amateur investigation into the life of a wealthy aristocrat played by Jackman, who Scarlett suspects may be a serial killer.   

“I liked it,” says Chris, lounging in his bean bag chair.

“What was your favorite scene?” I ask. 

“Hmm, well I guess my favorite scene would be when Scarlett Johansson wa
s at the social club pool wearing that red swimsuit and giving herself a foot massage.”

“I thought you’d like that.  You know
, this is actually Woody Allen’s second film featuring Scarlett Johansson.  The first one is good, too.  It’s called Match Point.”

“Is there a not inconsiderab
le Scarlett foot presence in that film?”

“I don’t really remember.  The last time I watched
it was before I’d have known to be on the lookout for such a presence.  But Woody likes working with beautiful young women, so I expect more Allen and Johansson collaborations in the future.”

“Then the future is bright ind
eed.  And I’m glad you used Scoop as my introduction to Woody Allen.  I hadn’t seen a film of his before because way back when he made that appearance at the Oscars he really offended me.”

“How so?”

“Remember how he was doing that comedic monologue?  Well, one of his bits was him talking about his next film and how it was about a foot fetishist who falls in love with a professor who writes this paper on existential philosophy.  And then Allen jokes that the guy is aroused by the professor’s footnotes.  Get it?  Talk about disrespect.  Like foot fetishism is just one big joke to him, you know?  I was really offended and it totally turned me off of Allen.  I mean you’d think a guy who married his stepdaughter would be a little more tolerant of atypical sexual interests.”  

“Not to completely defend Woody
, he did cheat on Mia Farrow with Soon-Yi after all, but he never actually married Mia.  So Soon-Yi was never legally Woody Allen’s stepdaughter.”

“Still, the
re was a lack of respect in Woody’s Oscar monologue.  And we don’t have it easy, man.  The media is always demonizing foot fetishists.  Sometimes literally.”

“Example?”

“Ever see the movie Road Trip?”

“No.”

“Well, in the movie there’s a scene where Amy Smart is travelling by bus.  She’s napping and has her bare feet dangling off her seat.  This catches the attention of the guy sitting in front of her and he slowly creeps down and tries to suck on Amy’s big toe.  Of course Amy wakes up and freaks out, understandably so.  Then the guy offers to give Amy a foot massage which she angrily declines. 

“
I mean it’s kind of a funny scene, but it also gives foot fetishists a bad image, like we can’t control ourselves, you know?  And I guarantee you everyone would have found the guy grabbing Amy’s breast instead to have just been creepy and derogatory.  But because it’s a foot fetish they can laugh at it.”

“I
see your point.  I like Amy Smart, though.  She was good in Crank.” 

“Yeah, she was.  She has cute feet, too.”

“So that’s an example of a lack of restraint.  What about literal demonization?”

“You’ve seen The Devil’s Advocate, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well
, remember that one scene where Keanu Reeves is having a dream where he’s having sex with his wife, Charlize Theron?  In that dream sequence Charlize suddenly morphs into Connie Nielson, a lawyer who works with Keanu at the same law firm that’s run by the Devil.  And Keanu’s sex with Connie is much rougher, more intense than sex with Charlize.  Then Keanu starts sucking on Connie’s toes.  And right after that, he gets a vision of Connie in her true form as a hellspawn.  So, basically the filmmakers are saying toe sucking is one step away from being in league with Satan himself.”

“I don’t think they were actually trying to send the message that toe sucking is a gateway to Satan worship
.  I think they just wanted to portray Connie Nielson as a dark temptress.”

“Well, Keanu
sure wasn’t doing any toe sucking when he was having good Christian sex with his wife, Charlize.  So you can see why I’m anxious to see foot fetishism be portrayed positively in the media.  A likeable, moral character needs to be shown having a foot fetish.  Like maybe George Washington in a biopic film.  You could have a scene where George sucks on Martha’s toes and have Martha be completely at ease with it, enjoying it even.  And then later on maybe Washington could be swapping sex stories with Benedict Arnold who’d be disgusted by the idea.”

“Why
Washington?”

“Because of a
ll the founding fathers Washington was the only one who I know had a foot fetish.  There’s an undercurrent to his writings that strongly suggests it.  And I’m pretty sure Benjamin Franklin didn’t have one.  But our community is making some progress towards tolerance now.  I think Scarlett Johansson is helping to pave the way for mainstream foot fetish acceptance because her own are just so beautiful, which is why they’re always featured in her films so prominently. Don’t think Woody Allen didn’t notice them while he was making Scoop.”

“Are Scarlett’s featured for
an inordinate amount of screen time compared to those of other actresses?  I mean, I’m a big Scarlett fan, but physically I’m always going to be focusing on her bust.”

“
See, that’s what makes this such a sad situation for guys like me.  Guys like you being so preoccupied with Scarlett’s bust.  You never focus on her feet even though they’re a gift Scarlett’s so adamant about sharing with her audience.  Now the first film I can remember seeing Scarlett in was The Man Who Wasn’t There.  I saw it at the theater, then I also bought it on DVD.  One hour, twenty-seven minutes and thirty-six seconds into the film Scarlett is lying on her bed when she moves into a half omega position, which is having only one leg in the air while lying on your stomach instead of both.  She’s also wearing socks in the scene.  Now, normally the socks would kill it for me, but with Scarlett I could see beneath the socks.  I could see how beautiful her feet were even when they were left under guard.

“
Then I started seeing all of Scarlett’s movies.  Next I saw Ghost World.  Twelve minutes, twenty-nine seconds into the DVD you’ll see Scarlett sitting on a bed again, only this time she spends eight seconds massaging her own feet.  Now I know that wasn’t in the script.  Scarlett improvised her self-administered foot rub because her feet were hurting.  And it broke my heart to think that there was no one on set to rub Scarlett’s feet for her, and that maybe she didn’t have anyone in real life to do it for her, either.  I started thinking how Scarlett must get so sick of guys always focusing on her chest when that isn’t the pair of extremities that actually merits time and attention.

“But the best view of Scarlett’s feet
comes from An American Rhapsody, although sadly it’s among her least known films.  There’s a scene where Scarlett’s leaning back in a chair writing and she has her bare feet propped up on her bed.  We’re treated to an excellent, lingering close-up view of Scarlett’s soles.  Now I don’t remember at precisely what point in the film they’re on screen because I actually use that sole screenshot as my desktop image.

“
And I know that baring Scarlett’s soles like that was a deliberate move on the director’s part. You don’t just do a sole close-up for no reason.  And the director of An American Rhapsody was a woman.  So it wasn’t even a sexual thing.  The director just wanted to show off the beauty of Scarlett’s soles, purely in a beholding sense.”

“What’s the movie about?” I ask.

“I dunno, Scarlett plays an angst-ridden girl from Bosnia or something and struggles to fit into American life.  It’s a good movie, though.  But anyway, you can see that Scarlett showing off her feet is her own personal leitmotif.  I just wish that more people would start realizing and appreciating it. 

“
Now, I’m not saying that this is ever going to happen.  That’s not what I’m saying.  But if, and I mean if, I were say going to Comic-Con or something and Scarlett was one of the celebrity panelists, on the off chance that maybe we were to make eye contact, well, I think that Scarlett could see in my eyes that I could make her happy.  That I could give her the foot massage that she’s always wanted but has never been given.  I think that Scarlett’s been waiting for the Perfect Rub for a long time now and I know that I could give it to her.  Again, I’m not saying that that’s actually going to happen, just that if our paths ever did happen to cross for one reason or another that Scarlett would know.  Know what I could do for her.”

Chris lets out a heavy sigh of futility
as a mediator between Israel and Palestine might after another failed round of negotiations.

“It’s alright,” I say.
  “I know how you feel.  We all have our celebrity crushes.  I’d love to be able to Eskimo kiss Amanda Bynes one day.”

“I don’t understand y
our fascination with her at all, man.  I mean she’s got nothing for you.  Scarlett’s appeal for me is based on her perfection of the pedis, while Amanda is sorely lacking in mammary magnificence even without your extreme standards.”

“Pedis?” I ask.

“It’s the Latin word for feet.  It’s where the word pedicure comes from.  Pedicures were very big in ancient Rome.  Caesar Augustus was fond of giving them to the women in his life.  And he was a good emperor, not one of those despotic psychos, so that’s one more point for our side.”      

“Well, I think Amanda is adorable. 
And since you’re so into pedicures I think you’d like her if you gave her a chance.  Amanda really enjoys being given a pedicure.  I remember one time I was watching a show on MTV that was about a day in Amanda’s life and in it she goes and gets a pedicure.  Some guy is giving it to her and she’s teasing him sweet-naturedly saying he must have a foot fetish since he gives pedicures for a living.”

“That’s not
a good-natured ribbing, man.  Amanda shouldn’t be grilling anybody about that.  I told you how bad regular guys have it.  Quentin Tarantino and Joss Whedon can both flaunt their foot fetishes because they’re rich and famous.  So maybe this poor professional pedicurist did have a foot fetish, but maybe he didn’t, and it wasn’t Amanda’s right to humiliate him on TV about it if he did.  He probably hanged himself after that episode aired because he was so ridiculed over it.”

“
Oh come on, she was just being silly, Chris.  Amanda might even appreciate a guy with a foot fetish.  Then she wouldn’t have to go to a salon to pay for her pedicures.”

“Even so
, that doesn’t give her the right to go outing some poor guy on national TV.”

“Well, if he’s
a straight guy and he’s giving women pedicures for a living, him having a foot fetish isn’t really gonna be the hardest to reach spot on the old jump to conclusions mat, now is it?”

“Nevertheless.  A foot fetish is
nothing to be ashamed of, but until the world at large understands that, people need to treat us with more respect.”

“
Since it’s been brought up, have you ever thought about becoming a pedicurist?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m t
oo manly for that.  Besides, it’s not like you get to pick and choose the feet you work on when you do that.  You have to take whoever would happen to come in.  And they’re definitely not all going to be Van Tassels.  And more importantly, what I really want is to become some form of mediator.  Work in conflict resolution as a university ombudsman, something like that.  I’d like to be known as someone you can always count on to be fair and impartial in resolving disputes.  To be someone known for their Solomon-like wisdom. 

“
And having said that and considering I agreed to watch your movie and everything, why don’t you tell me what went down at that sorority party?  All Seth would say is that you walked away from that sorority house in total despair just like Bruce Banner at the end of every episode of The Incredible Hulk.”

“
It was David Banner on the show.” 

“I ain’t calling him David.  Never have, never will.
”

I give Chris a rundown of what happened last
night at the Zeta Psi Mu house,   ending the story with my spitting out the everclear.  “It was like that scene in The Rock where Nicolas Cage shoves that sphere of VX poison gas into the bad guy’s mouth then socks him in the jaw and then the guy spits it out and starts dying horribly.”

“A good death scene. 
But a bad party trick. ” 

“Yeah.  So
, I pretty much blew it.  My cover was blown and I left the party in disgrace.  I wasn’t able to accomplish anything as a bad boy.” 

“
Of course you weren’t able to, man.  Because you’re a winner.”               

“
A winner?”

“
Yeah, a winner.  The kind that would make William S. Sessions proud.  A winner who doesn’t do drugs.  Or drink.  Or smoke.  Or have premarital sex.  Or do anything at all risqué.  You were the kind of youngster those comic book ads used to try and recruit to sell grit.  Clean cut, pure and innocent all the way.”