How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (17 page)

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“That's okay,” she says, “I like it,” and digs her fingernails into my back. You'd think by now I'd be used to Kelly's sexual appetite, but her girl-next-door looks always manage to throw me off. I give her a vigorous, tonsil-licking kiss and she reaches for my crotch and that's when I realize it.

I'm not hard.

This has never happened before; normally I go up like a flag in a park. I feel a slight flush of panic, but I tell myself it's a momentary lapse and grab Kelly's hand to suck on her fingers and buy myself some time, then start feeling her up so aggressively it's like I'm performing CPR.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

What the hell is wrong with me? Mission control to penis—are you there? Kelly grinds her hips against mine and I bump and hump to try to get something to happen, but nothing doing: my cock is simply not a member in good standing.

The thought of Kelly reaching into my pants expecting a hot dog and finding a cocktail wiener instead is just too excruciating, particularly after handling Doug's Polish sausage. So I do what any sensible person would do: I go down on her.

I've never done it before and figure my timing has got to be off because I'm just diving in when Kelly moans, “Oh yeah, talk to me.”

Like I don't have enough on my mind, now I have to provide a simultaneous running commentary. I knew I shouldn't have bought her that subscription to
Cosmo.

“What do you want me to . . .”

“Don't stop,” she says, mashing my face into her crotch.

“I dnt thnk I cn tlk lk ths,” I say into her pelvis. I sound just like the muffled teacher's voice in the Peanuts cartoons.

“Oh yeah, that's it,” she purrs.

“I cnt brth.”

She shivers and her pink skin turns to gooseflesh. I'm glad to see one of us is having a good time.

“Yu dnt ndrstnd.”

“More,” she says.

I have no idea what to talk about, never having conversed with a vagina before, so I say the first thing that pops into my head:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

I'm not sure this is what Mrs. Sugden had in mind when she assigned it in the fourth grade, but I am here to tell you that Longfellow's poem and a supple tongue make an effective substitute if you do not have a long fellow of your own available. (So does “I am the very model of a modern major general,” as it turns out.) More important, it keeps Kelly happy, and that's all I'm worried about. At one point she tries to curve her body around like maybe she should reciprocate, but I stop her by popping my head up and saying in my best sensitive, New Age-y, pro-feminist, Alan Alda–like way, “Let's just focus on you, okay?”

Kelly lies back, relieved to not have to bother, and stretches her arms out like she's a cat wanting her belly scratched, or in this case, wanting her cat scratched, I guess. I cup her firm butt in my hands as I reach deeper inside her with my tongue and start reciting all the various Shakespeare monologues I've memorized. She gasps and bucks her hips like she's trying to swallow me whole, which, frankly, would suit me just fine. I'm so freaked about not being hard there's nothing I'd like better than to peel back the secret layers of her and crawl inside, feeling my way along the dark, moist walls of her vagina until I've disappeared completely, leaving the world and my flaccid dick behind me. Then I could just curl up like a baby inside her womb, all quiet and warm and peaceful.

The good news is that my strategy works: for those of you who aspire to be cunning linguists, you should know that rapid iambic pentameter drives my girlfriend so wild that she almost boxes my ears in with her thighs when she comes.

The bad news is that now she wants to do it all the time.

I
t only takes a few sessions for
Kelly to grow suspicious of my “I only care about your orgasm, honey” attitude. I'm a seventeen-year-old guy; it's not natural to be so considerate. But no matter what I do, my cock is still as limp as a cooked carrot. It's freaking me out.

Things are no better on the job front. Desperate for any kind of work, I answer an ad for a chambermaid at a motel out on the highway. The manager, an old Asian lady, doesn't get it.

“Why you wanna be chambermaid?” she says. “You a boy.”

“I just need a job and figured since I'm very clean . . .”

“But you a boy.”

“Does that matter?”

“I don't want no trouble.”

“I'm not making . . .”

“You a boy. Go get boy job. I don't want no trouble.”

We continue in this vein until I realize that either I'm encountering some huge cultural divide or this woman is seriously insane.

My only option left is the mall. I can't believe it's come to this. I'm from Colonial Wallingford, for God's sake. We don't even shop at the mall.

I answer a help wanted ad for a fast-food place called Chicken Lickin'. I'm demoralized at the thought of working anywhere that sounds like an adorable Beatrix Potter character and I pray I don't have to wear a stupid hat. Chicken Lickin' is in the food court, an orange-and-yellow assault on humanity that Dante, were he alive today, would surely have included as one of his rings of Hell. Onion rings of Hell, to be precise. I wait in line behind two guys with combs in the back pockets of their Jordaches, confirming that this is indeed the Mall That Time Forgot. The girl behind the counter has a blond frizzy perm with black roots—less of a hairdo and more of a hair don't—and wears black mascara on both upper and lower eyelashes for that my-boyfriend-beats-me look.

“Welcome to Chicken Lickin'. How can I help yuz?” she says without actually moving her lips.

Jordache Guy #1 leans his crotch against the counter and says, “Yeah, uh, are you the chick I get to lick?” He looks over his shoulder at Jordache Guy #2, who punches him in the arm and pants a voiceless laugh. Obviously National Merit scholars.

“That depends,” Miss Hair Don't mumbles. “Are you the dick whose ass I kick?”

The Jordache guys don't know what to say, so they just get an order of Chicken Pickins, pay, and make a hasty exit. “Have a chick-a-licious day,” Miss Hair Don't says in a tone that's usually reserved for phrases like “Come near me and I'll break both of your fucking legs.”

I step up to the counter and announce I'm here about the job. Miss Hair Don't responds with the same level of unbridled enthusiasm.

“So?” she says.

I fill out an application full of lies and hand it back to her. I tell her I really need a job and that I'm available for any shift outside of school hours.

“That's good,” she says, “'cuz, here at Chicken Lickin' we do things the Chicken Lickin' way. We don't work around no one's schedule. We pay more than minimum wage, y'know, so we expect more of yuz.”

Minimum wage is $3.25 per hour. Chicken Lickin' pays $3.35 per hour. I'm not at the job more than a day before I start calibrating what I think constitutes ten cents an hour more of effort. What's worse is that I continually get shifts with a girl too stupid to realize that this job sucks. We call her Nice Shirt, because she always has some cheery compliment for every single person with an IQ low enough to want to actually eat at Chicken Lickin'. “Ooh, where'd you get your earrings?” she'll coo, or “I like your pants,” or her signature line: “Nice shirt!” Customers love her.

She makes the rest of us look bad.

I entertain myself by imagining Nice Shirt in other social situations where her chipper demeanor might be less appreciated, like a funeral (“Nice casket!”), or the hospital (“Cool catheter!”), or a prison (“Love your jumpsuit, where'd ya' get it?”). Sometimes I just fantasize about drowning the silly bitch in the deep fryer.

I feel like Pip in
Great Expectations,
working at a job I loathe and am certain I'm too good for. Like Pip, I too have great expectations, or as Sinatra would say, high hopes, although it's hard to keep them in mind when your job requires you to say things like “Would you care for one of our chick-a-riffic side dishes?” At least I don't run into anyone I know except TeeJay, who works weekends at Meister Burger. Occasionally we'll nod a brief but solemn hello to one another across the food court, like we're in prison and don't want the warden to notice us communicating. His boss, a sweaty lump of a guy with a comb-over, is always standing over him at the grill, carping about something.

To add to the endless cycle of misery that is my life, I continue to endure playing basketball in gym. As with football, I have no idea how to play this ridiculous game, nor do I care to learn. It all seems like a lot of gratuitous running back and forth to me, which is exactly what I do, in the hopes that I'll appear to be playing the game when in actuality I am avoiding it. As expected, Ms. Burro makes us play shirts and skins, which is particularly demoralizing because I haven't taken a dance class all fall and now have the added pressure of trying to scamper about without letting any accumulated fat jiggle unbecomingly.

It's exhausting.

Once again, not only am I the worst player but I am also the oldest and, once again, I have to contend with Darren O'Boyle, the evil sophomore, who looks like he's going to have an aneurysm every time I make a little mistake like pass the ball to someone on the other team. (How do mean kids get so mean? Are their parents mean, too? Say what you want about Al and Barbara Zanni, at least they didn't raise mean kids.) Smashing my finger with a hammer is starting to sound more attractive.

As if that weren't bad enough, I'm growing increasingly panicked about my Juilliard audition. Even the thought of performing my monologues for Mr. Lucas in drama class makes me constipated. I don't know what the hell's wrong with me. Usually I can't wait to get onstage. I ask Ziba to follow on book in case I need prompting.

I come out onstage and face the big black giant that is the audience. “I am Edward Zanni . . .” I say. (Mr. Lucas told me to say “I am” instead of “My name is” because it sounds more confident and assertive.) “And this is Haemon's monologue from Sophocles'
Antigone.”

So far so good. I close my eyes to collect myself, then look up to begin.

I can't remember a fucking thing.

“I'm sorry, can I start again?” I say.

“NO!” Mr. Lucas bellows, his voice echoing in the darkness like the voice of God. “Pretend this is the real audition.”

“I'm sorry. I guess I'm a little nervous,” I say.

“Keep going.”

What the fuck is happening? I know this monologue cold. I must've recited it into Kelly's vagina a gazillion times. I close my eyes again to collect myself. The first line is “Father, you must not think that your word and no other must be so.” Got it. I look up.

“Father, you must not think that your word and no other must be so. For if any man thinks that he alone is wise . . .”

Oh, God.

“Line?” I say.

“That in what he says and what he does . . .” Ziba says.

“That in what he says and what he does . . . uh . . .”

This can't be happening to me.

“Line?”

“That man is but an empty tomb . . .”

“That in what he says and what he does he's above all else—that man is but an empty tomb . . .”

“A wise man,” Ziba says.

“I know it, don't tell me,” I say. “A wise man . . . A wise man . . .”

“. . . isn't ashamed . . .”

“. . . isn't ashamed to admit his ignorance and he understands that true power lies in being . . .” I stop. “I'm sorry, I can't seem to do it,” I say. My entire body is soaked in flop sweat. I see Kelly and Natie in the front row, looking pained.

“Of course you can,” Mr. Lucas says. “You're doing fine. Don't worry.”

Oh shit. If Mr. Lucas is being nice, then I must really suck.

“Just give me a second,” I say. Okay, Edward, concentrate. Concentrate. Concentrate.

“I have no idea what comes next,” I say.

“Ziba, please read the rest of the passage to Edward.”

Ziba reads:

“Have you seen after a winter storm how the trees that stand beside the torrential streams yield to it and save their branches, while the stiff and rigid perish, root and all? Or how a sailor who always keeps his sail taut and never slackens will only capsize his boat?

“Father, I may be young, but you must listen to reason. Please, I beg you to soften your heart and allow a change from your rage.”