I imagined the withdrawal must have held the same irritable frustration as with quitting smoking. But there was no quitting; my body functions were as natural as drinking water. I had to drink water in the right way, to take something seemingly inherently wrong and do it correctly.
I was at the mercy of cyclic, daily taunting from my increased appetite as it waxed and waned in the mornings, in the classroom, in each moment where I couldn’t stand-up with a tucked-in shirt for fear of revealing I was like some animal in heat.
Eventually, the My Pictures file was deleted because it kept calling to me at night. But it was everywhere, in my mind: filled up like a taut balloon with the stuff, on campus and on the radio and on TV. No escape, it seemed. Make babies or die.
The Can Man spotted me while I waited at a cross walk on campus. He waved, jovially. I winced at him and looked away. He grinned, showing needle tracks on his forearm. “What’s so screwy? Not getting that fix? Fixie? Huh, fixie, fix?”
Wilfred beckoned me inside his room with a smile that said he held all the cards. He explained that his ex-girlfriend, Sara, had taken him back after a romantic candlelit dinner and that she had welcomed him into her bed the night before.
“That wasn’t part of the deal!” I yelled.
We hashed it out like lawyers and I relented that we had agreed to abstain from self-pleasure only. He felt his victory was well in hand, however within a week he informed me that he had given up the bet. “It’s a stupid bet,” he said.
“How is it stupid?”
“It just is. It’s stupid.”
I was the winner, “Victor-ious,” as I declared with arms raised to any of the saboteurs who might be listening within their rooms.
It had been thirteen days at that point and to celebrate my victory over Wilfred I decided to hold out for one more night and make it a full two weeks.
That night I woke up in a sweat, got out of my bunk and paced. I wanted to write something but, for obvious reasons, was afraid to use my computer so I scribbled in a notebook about the perfect girlfriend. It all made sense but time was running out. I had to figure it out while still crazy. What did I want?
I wrote faster. My hand cramped.
I was fairly certain I didn’t like Erin Masters anymore. After she had cried in that moment with me wanting her so… I couldn’t see myself trusting her again.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ENEMY INSTRUCTS
Wilfred was alone in Room Six. The smell of sweaty clothes and a rotting apple core from Chris Dubnicek’s side of the desk hung in the hot air. I sat down next to him in the second-hand loveseat beneath the loft.
“Is it loud?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m not studying anymore. You succeeded.”
“Excellent. You study too much, Victor.”
Chris Dubnicek walked across our view and threw his bookbag in a corner. “What are you tools doing in here?”
I crossed my leg.
“We’re watching a movie, Tool-bag,” Wilfred said.
Chris walked to the TV, turning it off. This was the type of arrogant stuff he had started doing since being voted our vice-president.
“Hey, man!” Wilfred said. “It’s almost over.”
Chris looked out his window. “Wilfred, you watch too much TV. You’ve seen that movie three times in my room. And I don’t know how many times in other rooms.” He turned to me. “Aye, Victor, that Erin Masters girl is a prude.”
“As in prudence?” I said. “Our foremost virtue.”
“Whatever, man. I’m going to break through it. We met up this Sunday at her church. And I’ve got a study date with her in ten minutes. You guys gotta get out.”
“Sunday, huh,” Wilfred said, grinning. “The God route. You sly dog.”
“Yeah, I asked one of her friends what church she went to. It was easy. And then, during the sermon, I sent her this great text!” He pulled out his cell phone and showed it to us: ‘Gettin our God on, huh? ;)’
“And you didn’t let being a Catholic hold you back, either,” I said, grinning. “Nice.” I couldn’t understand him at all.
Chris frowned. “Shut-up Hastings. Like I’d take girl advice from an Internet pervert. Everyone in this house is turning into Internet perverts.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter about the church. I know what I believe.”
“All right, man. Sorry.” I grabbed a pen from out of the couch cushions, playing with the plastic cap. Since I’d stopped talking to her, Chris was within his rights to give chase. But I still had enough jealousy to hope his study date was a flop.
Chris stepped toward me. He looked to Wilfred. “He’s getting that smug look.”
“Hastings is hard-core when it comes to believing nothing,” Wilfred said.
“That’s not exactly true,” I said.
“Yes it is,” Wilfred said. “Check this out, Dubnicek. One time freshman year, me and Hastings were hanging out at the Pizza Pit when Hastings sees these tall, beautiful brunette twins and this older chick that was their protector. This was back when Hastings had balls. He sat there at our table across from them and he just started sweating bullets, going through scams of how to—to go over there; right? So he eventually gets up the nerve to talk to them. Something lame about could he borrow a cheese shaker and then he turned it into chit-chat. He was doing pretty good, making both girls and their protector laugh. And the rest of our group starts talking with them. So, Victor, he talks to the first twin for twenty minutes, then he turns to me and he says, ‘I don’t like this one. I think I’m going to try the other.’”
Chris grinned and chuckled. “That’s not bad Hastings. Were you sober?”
“It was the afternoon,” I said.
“That’s not what I asked,” Chris said.
“Anyways, Victor talks to the other one for like ten minutes and he turns to me and says, ‘I like this one, her beauty hasn’t affected her.’ So Victor tries to slide his way into asking for the phone number. But when he pops the question she grins and she whispers Victor’s request into the ear of the upperclassman girl protecting them. The protector comes over and sits between Victor and his lovely twin—separating them so Victor can’t talk to her anymore. This protector proceeds to give Victor a quiz for this girl’s phone number. The first question she asked was stupid, the second question she asked was stupid. The third question she asked Victor was, ‘what religion are you?’ And Victor—he says—what did he say? yah, he says, ‘I was raised Lutheran, but I don’t necessarily believe in God.’”
Chris flinched. “Oh, Victor! Man, I thought for a second you knew what you were doing. You can’t tell a beautiful woman you don’t believe in God. Beautiful women love church. Makes ‘em feel good.”
“No shit, right?” Wilfred said, shrugging his shoulders and showing his palms.
“Wait,” I said. “I don’t understand why the person that I really am isn’t good enough.”
“It’s not about that,” Chris said.
“What’s it about?” I slipped the pen cap between my hind teeth.
They grinned. Chris looked to Wilfred, “Man, he doesn’t know.”
“I know,” Wilfred said. “It’s crazy; isn’t it? He really doesn’t know.”
“Know what?” I said. “You mean that there’s some secret code we’re all supposed to live by: on the outside we pretend to believe in things, but really we do whatever it takes to get laid.”
“No, man,” Chris said. “That’s not what we’re saying. A person has to focus on what they believe and not get side-tracked by judging what they think other people believe.”
I looked to Wilfred. “I got a question. Do you guys worry about whether having sex before marriage will, you know, make God angry?”
“What are you saying, Victor?” Chris said.
“I’m talking about the Ten Commandments: thou shall not commit adultery. I’m not sure if I believe in God but sometimes I wonder: if God is real and that’s His commandment, having sex before marriage
might really upset Him.”
“Man,” Chris said. “Listen to what you said: adultery. I looked that word up when I was in seventh grade. Adultery means having sex with someone other than your spouse. It’s for married couples.”
“Okay,” I said. “But somewhere in Matthew, Jesus said that any man that looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart.”
“It only applies to people who are married. I looked it up,” Chris said. “Anyways, what do you care? You’re an atheist.”
“That’s not exactly true,” I said. “I’m not an atheist. I’m agnostic.”
“That’s a pussy atheist,” Wilfred explained.
“No really, Victor, what’s an agnostic?” Chris asked.
“It’s complex,” I said. “And it won’t be important enough for you to remember for very long.”
“Fuck you Victor,” Chris said. “You know what your problem is? You come from a divorced family. You’re father left your mom. You don’t trust your father. So now—now you can’t trust the Father.” He looked to Wilfred. “Like the pastor at New Hope—in his sermon, he explained how a damaged family unit leads to lost faith.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Hey, didn’t Nietzsche have trouble trusting his father?” Wilfred asked. “Wasn’t Nietzsche’s father a minister or something and that’s why he hated Christianity.”
“Yah,” Chris said, pointing a bouncing finger at me. “Just, like, that, son.”
I chewed the plastic pen cap. “That’s stupid,” I mashed the thin plastic between my molars. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yah? So why are you turning red? He’s blushing, Wilfred. Look at him. Look at him!”
“He is! Look at him.”
“Whatever man,” I said.
Chris glanced over to an amber, LCD alarm clock. “You guys gotta get out of here.” He paced, flipping his ab roller off the ground onto its side, then dug through dirty sweatpants and T-shirts.
“What are you looking for?” Wilfred said.
“My Aqua Di Gio.”
“Gotta smell good, huh?” Wilfred said.
Chris ran his hand over his desktop, sliding around guitar picks, his Audi key fob and blue and red sorority, crush party invites, “Where is it?”
“Is it in a drawer?” Wilfred said.
“No, man. I wouldn’t do that. It’s gotta be accessible.” Chris snatched an empty Omaha Steaks carton off his shelf, flinging it to the floor. He darted to Rex Blauwern’s desktop, rummaging through brushes, pushing Rex’s trowel painting knives into earth-toned pastels which rolled and sent orange clumps of gum Arabic to the carpet. “It’s not here, Will. I’m freaking.”
And as Dubnicek was doing this, I couldn’t help but notice that neither he nor Rex had a laptop or a desktop stowed anywhere in their room. I’d never seen either of them using a computer in their room. Weird. I guessed they must have just borrowed computer use in other people’s rooms.
“Chris,” Wilfred said. “Chris, check the top center drawer below the desktop. I have a feeling you put it in there.”
Chris snatched the rounded glass atomizer from the drawer. “Ah! There she is.” He set it on the desktop. “All right, now you guys get out of here.” He pulled off his loose fitting polo. His tanned, toned abs and pecs flexed as he switched the shirt for a skin-tight gray vintage T.
“Why? Why can’t we hang out with you and your new girlfiend?” Wilfred said.
“I gotta do push-ups and arm curls before she gets here.”
“I see, so you can get all swoll-up in your tight T-shirt. Then you’ll disguise any smell with the cologne,” Wilfred said.
“Plus,” Chris said, “Exercise releases pheromones. I read it in Maxim.”
“But, isn’t filling your muscles with blood before she gets here to make yourself look bigger—isn’t that false advertising?” Wilfred said.
“Nope,” Chris said. “She wears a waterbra. This evens it.” He stepped toward us. “Now, get out. I’m serious.”
We got up and Chris slammed the door behind us.
Chris was the oldest of three siblings. In my family, I was the youngest of three. We had argued during freshman year about what being the oldest or the youngest meant. The Holy Father thing was another of his jabs along his same line of logic which he used to continually suggest to me that eldest siblings were generally the best. He believed the youngest was like the pup that, early on, couldn’t get at its mother’s teat at feeding time. Therefore youngest siblings go through life finding problems with everything, thinking life is unjust, that life doesn’t give them enough.
Christian propagandists had used a similar childhood conditioning ploy with Nietzsche, making television specials explaining how he resented his minister father and therefore Nietzsche’s criticisms were deemed biased.
I scratched the back of my head—thinking—falling in thought, feeling nothing as this young woman rounded the hallway corner.
The tall brunette neared. Huge, dark, lashed eyes. Not a spec of make-up and swollen lips—red as fresh blood—with a walk that told how she comfortably carried her femininity along with her. It was Erin Masters. She looked so beautiful, though she hadn’t changed—
It was like I was numb with my brooding anger and thought. And still, I knew that a bias couldn’t diminish the credibility of a sound, a priori argument. If Pythagoras, for example, hated his artistic father. If his theorems were only to spite his father’s lack of logical rigor, we couldn’t, therefore, say these theorems were false—
“Hello,” Wilfred greeted Erin with a warm smile.
She smiled, passing without a word, looking over brass door numerals and knocking on Chris’s door.
“Did you see her?” Wilfred blurted. “Did you see her?”
I told him, “Youngest siblings create the best theories.”
“What? What are you talking about, Victor?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
We walked toward Wilfred’s northward leg of the ‘U’. This was the party side of the second-floor hallway. Rex and Chris were, in fact, partiers but had set up an outpost on my side to keep an eye on us nerds.
Rex was banging on closed doors. He banged on one then went to the next, “I know you’re in there, you pervert. Get out here and socialize. Make something of yourself.”
It was strange to see that hallway of closed, locked doors with no girls milling about. It seemed like just one year ago the house was much more active and social. Now, it was only the hum of the fluorescent hallway lights and videogame outburst of exploding frag grenades and machinegun fire.
Rex walked toward us, brushing my shoulder without looking up. “The fucking Internet porn is spreading.” He didn’t turn back. “They’re all doing it, now. This is your fault, Victor Hastings. The freshmen pledges look up to you. They’re learning it from you!”
Wilfred got comfortable on the worn blue couch in his room, resting the foot heel of his crossed legs atop the yellow pinewood planks of his storage chest. He’d made this chest himself and it also served him as a coffee table. The top of this table had been carved-out and the engravings of the yellow clear-varnished planks had been inlaid with green, red and black permanent marker. The nicknames were skewed, sloppily carved with large, bold first letters revealing the drunken brazenness that had struck their engravers.
“Someone’s carved-out the engraving I made,” I said.
“I know. It’s Okay. It was a lame engraving.”
“What? Whatever. I’m going to carve a new one in here.”
“Nope. No, Victor. I will not let you carve into my trunk. Not until you learn how to hang-out with people.”
I smiled and chuckled. “As if it were a skill.”
“It is, Hastings. You need to get the slice of time that’s supposed to be yours. Or someone will take it from you.”
“No one seems to appreciate how much time I have to put into my major. You study aerosp
ace; you should appreciate how much work it is.”
“I don’t want to argue about this.” Wilfred leaned forward. He picked up a gray notebook off the trunk and slung it into my hands. “Quiz me on my ice-cream desserts.”
“Again? You’re never going to memorize all these delicious recipes.”
“Victor.” Wilfred held my gaze. “If I don’t memorize these, I can’t graduate from bus-boy to cold dessert router. If I don’t get my Dessert Diploma, I can’t top tasty desserts with the cherries, the jimmies and the hot fudge.”
I sighed, opening the notebook, flipping through pages. “When you and Chris were in high school in North Platte, was he always so competitive with everybody?”
Wilfred raised a hand. “Desserts. Desserts first. Then questions.”
I winced. “Fine.” Wilfred’s care-free, blue cursive was difficult to decipher. “I have two cherries, two scoops of vanilla, hot fudge, a dash of jimmies and I have pecan flakes. What am I?”
Wilfred rubbed his temples, squinting and then looking down. “You’re—you’re that Mexican Ice-cream Pancake.”
“Nope.”
“A… wait, you’re General Gettysburg’s Gut Grower.”
I sighed, glancing out the window at the sunlight dappling through yellowing maple leaves, “No.” I was bored already. “Hey—what’s this I hear about Thomas Clark getting called-up before Standards? You know? for not moving out of his room so Rex could use it?”
“What? Oh—Thomas talked his way out of it with the Alumni House Manager.”
“Who’s that?”
“Brad Torsten. And it’s a good thing too. You don’t want to get called before the Standards Committee. My brother had to go before it once for pee-ing off the roof. It’s a pain in the ass. You have to stand up before members of the Executive Alumni Board, the house President and Vice President and let them grill you. And members of the house get to sit behind in chairs and watch if they want.”
“That sounds like it sucks.”
Someone pounded on the door and flung it open. It was Rex. His face was flushed as he darted his eyes around. “Oh… Never mind,” he said and started to turn away.
Growing Up Wired Page 4