reddeviler
She’s probably got it stored in
That suite. You don’t know what
She’s got squirrelled away in
There.
SEXY_REXY
Who is this guy?
Reddeviler?….BUT HE’S RIGHT!
REAL_DEAL_JOHNSTEELE
Rex if you don’t get that
Letterhead back
From her you’re a pussy.
Comprendo?
Capeach[sic]?
SEXY_REXY
John I haven’t seen you around
The house lately……
REAL_DEAL_JOHNSTEELE
Yah, uh, about that… signing
Off…
K-ZORRO
YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK OF YOU
GUYS?
YOUR ALL BUNCH A IDIOTS? KNOW
WHY?
CAUSE ILL TELL YA. YOU TALK AND
TALK
AND YOU WONT DO ANYTHING!
SEXY_REXY
Chill out, K-Zorro.
Stop yelling at us.
K-ZORRO
DONT CALL ME K-ZORRO.
DONT KNOW ME YOU.
SEXY_REXY
Somebody get a breathalizer
On that guy.
STANLEYJOR_4
I'm on it!
(and 3 min. later)
STANLEYJOR_4
He’s almost three times drunk.
SEXY_REXY
Wait? In what state is he
Almost three times drunk?
STANLEYJOR_4
Iowa. Of course.
SEXY_REXY
Wow. Drailing at 12:30pm.
I'm impressed, K-Zorro.
K-ZORRO
I told YOU! not call me that.
SEXY_REXY
You don’t want to be
Called by your IM tag?
Change your tag at least.
K-ZORRO
2 drunk. And I saw that stuff U
Wrote about me on p2p. why didn't
You come tell it to my face
Instead of write some shit U
Knew i would see.
SEXY_REXY
Do you bite your thumb at me?
K-ZORRO
???? U’re an idiot, Rex.
I dont see how u ever
Voted consul.
SEXY_REXY
Do you bite your thumb at me,
Sir?
K-ZORRO
U’RE LUCKY I DON’T COME OVER
THERE!
SEXY_REXY
My door is always open…
K-ZORRO
I'll be WRITE[sic]! over…
(and 2 min. later)
M_KESSLER
What’s happening? I can't see
Anything I cant get thru the
Hallway crowd??
STANLEYJOR_4
K-ZORRO went to Rex’s room and
Pushed him Then shoving. A few
Punches. Rex’s shirt gets torn
By K-Zorro. Red faces.
(and 3 min. later)
M_KESSLER
What’s happening RIGHT now?
STANLEYJOR_4
I cant see. I lost my place when
I went to type. Can anybody see?
WILL_POWER
They took it to the ground. And
Knocked over a coffee table.
Fights always end on the ground.
Booo!
WILL_POWER
Rex has K-Zorro in a sleeper
Hold. Rex got a cut on his
Forehead and it trickle little
Into his eye. I swear he's
Mumbling somehting about zombies
Or ‘fucking zombies.’
K-zorro’s gonna have some nasty
Carpet burns on his shins
And knees.
WILL_POWER
People are trying to get Rex to
Let K-zorro go because K-zorro’s
Cashed and they think Rex’ll
Kill'em. That mutherfucker’s
Cashed man. He’s so cashed.
Being drunk didn’t help him
Noon[sic].
(and 10 min. later)
SEXY_REXY
DO YOU HEAR ME K-ZORRO? I
FUCKING
LOVE
YOU!!!!
(and 30 seconds later)
SEXY_REXY
I WISH YOU NOTHING BUT
HAPPINESS IN YOUR LIFE.
(and 104 seconds later)
SEXY_REXY
GOD ITS BEAUTIFUL!
I LOVE IT ! ! ! !
(and 1 hour later)
SEXY_REXY
I knew that
Drailing,
Fat-fingering
SOB
Bit his thumb at me.
Thursday: early afternoon
SEXY_REXY
Now, where were we. That&rsqous right:
20 reasons we don’t need a house
Mom, much less Ma Red. 1. what
Are her credentials?
VICTOR_H
Doesn’t it seem wrong: us all
Talking about her behind her
Back?
SEXY_REXY
That’s exactly my point. Her
Authority should be based on her
Ability to help us. She doesn’t
Even know about IM’s.
How can she understand us. She’s
Irrelevant to us…
WILL_POWER
What’s really bothering you,
Rex?
SEXY_REXY
I confronted her this afternoon
About the
Letterhead in her suite. And she
Wouldn’t give it to me. ???…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
VICTOR AND THE SNITZ
Early in the night the phone in my room rang. “Hello,” I said.
“Do you know who this is?” a smug voice asked.
“The… The Snitz?”
“That’s right. And do you know why they call me The Snitz?”
“Because—well—because you punched your brother out, I think.”
“That’s right. And do you know why I punched him out? Because he was trying to stop me from becoming what I was, that’s why. From what Rex told me, you got that same problem only your enemy’s inside your head. You lift weights, Victor?”
“Yah. But I haven’t been lifting lately. I need to, though,” I admitted with fear hinting in my voice.
“So you don’t got no lifting partner?”
“Nope,” I said.
“We should start lifting weights together. Then I can brainwash you back to the way a man’s supposed to think.”
“You’re just going to come out and say it like that?”
“Look, I knew your Pledge Dad: Creamers. That kid was a pussy. He moved out after only living in the house a year and a half. And where is he when you need him? Man, we got a lot of work to do. We should meet up. You wanna lift tonight? How’s your, how’s your ‘right now’.”
“My ‘right now’s’ no good,” I said. “My 7:30’s okay.”
“Better make it 8:00. Might as well get in some Judge Judy and Mac and Cheese, if I’m gonna wait. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yah, that’s cool. So do you still lift at the Rec Center?” (He was twenty-six, after all.)
“Of course. Where else would I lift? I’ll meet your ass at the Rec at 8:00.”
After I hung up, I heard feet stomping and knees pounding over the hallway floors. Someone was wrestling someone somewhere and brothers cheered. They were jockeying for position. They had these unseen hierarchies of the frat, the other competing frats, our college and the looming workforce. Their hierarchies shivered like skyscraper-card-houses in a breeze. I felt my bicep and pinched the new fat settling in around my midsection. Advertising and TV and this competitive simmering all around campus kept haunting me about the Big World and the muscle, the money, the skill it would take to match i
t. So I agreed to workout with The Snitz.
The Snitz and I worked out six times during the week before the big frat party and he tutored me in his wisdom of college women, partying and what was generally important in life. He had a muscular, stocky physique, black hair and a handsome Italian face. At his Des Moines suburban high school he rode the wave of sports and popularity and that ride had yet to stop. Back in high school, he was on the first string of each season’s varsity squad all year long: an I-back for the football team, an off-guard for the basketball team and a catcher for the baseball team. And the wave rolled on. I had no idea how this twenty-six-year-old non-student, even with his campus-bartender connections, had been able to keep using the Rec and maintain his close student relationships.
His muscles were stout and natural. He didn’t just shoulder press twenty or thirty pounds more than me; he moved these heavier weights better. He pressed barbells and dumbbells without the shaking and hesitation that were in my arms. My arms shook because they were bigger than my slender bones had expected them to become and my body was confused with what I was doing to it. Nothing in The Snitz’s body betrayed confusion. As part of my instruction and as an extension of his breathing, he invited attractive girls over to our bench to give them a look that said, ‘Dance for me. Dance on that pole for me,’ while saying, “So… you doing better on them Stat 304 quizzes yet, or what, girl? Don’t make me have to stay on top of you, girl!” And then giggles all around.
* * * * * *
On the Saturday of the party, around 6:00 at night, rain threatened. I walked back from the Rec Center by myself after a tough chest and back workout. I had been oblivious to the football game for lack of interest and had worked out alone in an empty weight room. The sky tried to grab me in its blue silence each time I looked up. By the time I got to my room, fatigue had spread through my chest and shoulders. Ice bag plinked into aluminum beer troughs and tables slid downstairs in preparation for the evening’s After We Win Celebration while others slept off their morning and afternoon tailgating exploits. We had lost the football game by four touchdowns and a field goal. The house had a feel. Midwest houses are insecure. Over on the East Coast, those old, tight-packed, Victorian houses have the confidence that comes with the character of accumulated years. Those snug Eastern homes with their worn and warped floorboards—polished from so many footfalls—they don’t get nervous when storms loom. Our Midwest house stood in insecurity. It hadn’t stood long enough to know what would happen next.
A gale poured. I felt our house’s insecurity from within my room as rain gushed and fingered through the flat pitch and cobblestone roof to rat-rat through the gutters. The insecurity comforted me. Midwest houses were all I had known and the house only talked for the first moments of a rain.
I climbed into my loft and decided to take a quick, half-hour nap… maybe forty-five minutes…
* * * * * *
My eyes opened to the dark yellow drywall of wherever I was and at that instant I wasn’t much more than my nonsense dreams of a balding, banjo-playing spider on a Scooby Doo episode guest starring Vincent Price and the Harlem Globe Trotters. There was a chance that I was twelve, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old again, inside this time when video game last-levels eclipsed the blossoming figures of bashful girls with rubber-band-latched orthodontics. My eyes burned and I tried to rise from my bed before realizing I was six-feet off the ground, dangerously near the edge of my loft bed. I groaned and rolled away from the ledge as I floated toward the surface of a jungle of sound: footsteps and mad music.
It hit me. College… fraternity… Alpha, track team, engineering, football game, The Snitz, working out… frat party… frat party? Oh shit!
How long had I slept? The distant digital clock on the shelves read 11:00… pm. Was it almost over? How long did frat parties last?
I remembered how to climb down from the loft and got dressed in the v-neck cotton field jersey and dark denim jeans that I had set aside earlier. I put on some reasonably-new running shoes, though shoes didn’t matter to girls, as far as I knew. I liked to wear running shoes as often as possible. They were comfortable, they had seeped into my identity and you never knew when you were going to have to break into a sprint.
During a party, everyone left their rooms locked when they weren’t in them. I found my room key and stuck it in my pocket.
I closed the locked door behind me as I entered the hallway. It was dark, lit from moonlight and the spilling glow of open doors. Pockets of drinking partiers fueled and neighboring rooms jungled with dissonant, warbled music which vibrated the wall plaster and thrummed the carpeted cement floors with Johnny Cash, Metallica, Led Zepplin, Lincoln Park, Stevie Wonder, Janice Joplin, Marilyn Manson. Techno chimes fought these twangy banjo strums and electric guitar feedback crosscut Jay-Z as speakers rattled shelves and drinkers whoo-ed Sportscenter.
The Snitz walked into the light spilling from an open room door. He turned to look in. “What up, fools?” he yelled.
Someone rushed to the door and cracked open a beer bottle within the steel door hinge. Everybody cheered and yelled, “THE SNITZ!” He wore black Adidas indoor soccer shoes, the latest dirt stained and stonewashed jeans and an imposter vintage T. This shirt actually had become vintage in the four years since he’d bought it at the Gap. It had an old-gold screen print facsimile of Gary’s 1970’s Sports Complex on green cotton. He looked comfortable in the shirt. It showed his chest, shoulders and arms well.
He spotted me, strode past the room and raised his hand for the fist-pound. We pounded. “What the fuck’s up, Victor!”
I shook my sore hand out and rubbed my knuckles, touching them to see if they bled. “Hey, man. What’s up? I just woke up.”
“What? Huh? You just woke the fuck up? That’s perfect! That’s fucking perfect. You can even tell girls that. They’ll love it. They’ll eat it up; it’s so fucking casual; I love it!”
A door opened and two girls shrieked screamlets as they scampered toward the fire escape exit in a pink tube skirt and black stretch pants with wire clothes hangers and half of someone’s wardrobe bunched in their hands.
“Those girls are stealing shirts!” I darted toward the fire escape door as it slammed close.
“Leave it,” The Snitz said. “That fool shoulda locked his door. Laws of the jungle, Victor.”
I tried my doorknob to make sure it was locked.
“Do you have your cell phone on you?” The Snitz asked.
Over Jay-Z’s lyrics and bass line, partiers howled: “DRINK MOTHERFUCKERS!”
“What?” I yelled.
“Do you, do you have your cell phone on you?”
“What? No. Why?” I asked.
The Snitz pointed at my door. He yelled, “Just get it.” He looked to Dubnicek’s noisy room. “You got text messaging on your phone, man?”
“It costs extra. But I can do it.”
“Good. You’ll need it.”
I unlocked my door and grabbed my cell phone. Then I locked and closed the door again. We walked away from the noisy room. “Can’t I just ask a girl for her last name and then look her up in the online student directory? That’s easier, anyway.”
“No. You can’t just do that. It’s all about routing. You gotta have a girl route you to the right spot in that brain ‘a hers. You don’t want to be an admirer; you want to be her booty call. Trust me. Those are your options. It’s way better to be the booty call. All these young girls at these frat parties, they love to pull bullshit. They’re going to try and swap MySpace handles. You don’t want to swap MySpace handles. You want their phone numbers. That way you can text them. Don’t try and have a conversation with them on the phone. The ones you are going to want to fuck aren’t going to have the confidence to carry-on on the phone with you. They want text messages. They want short, fun, three-word-sentence text messages. Start early on and text them a lot.”
“But if a girl likes me,” I said, “why would she want me to ogle pictures of her on
the Internet? So far as I can tell, when a girl realizes you’ve ogled her before you knew her, then there’s no chance for romance; you know?”
“Yah, I know. I know. It don’t make no sense. Sometimes while I’m tending bar and I’m watching all the young twenty-one-year-old girlies talk about their online profiles, I think about it and I try to figure it out. Best I can see is, there’s two parts of love and both of them is equal. One part is desire: trying to get something that you don’t have. The other part is having kids or some kind of legacy: trying to live forever. These girls and their profiles with all their online pictures, their trying to ‘live forever’. They tell horny guys with smartphones to Google them. The guys go back to their computers and have their fun and they basically become addicted to these girls and the supply of pictures that them girls dribble out. Then the guys tell their other guy friends. Then the girls, they get like this following of worshipers. And there’s always the chance of a girl getting some of her pictures archived on websites that collect the best of the best of them pictures. That way, those girls get to live forever. ‘Cause there’s no telling how long those pictures will be around for.
“Don’t get it twisted, Victor. It’s a battle out there between guys and girls. A girl can either choose to be worshiped or be fucked. Sometimes they do both, or they do one to get the other. But in my honest opinion, dude, I think a girl, nowadays, would always prefer to be worshiped.”
“Why?” I asked. “That’s stupid.”
“Because it’s less risky. Everything’s so fast-paced, nowadays, that it’s real natural for a guy to fuck a girl and then bounce the first thing next morning. That always takes something away from a girl, whether she admits it or not. But this online stuff, that always feels like it’s adding something to her. So, of course she’s going to choose that.
“Now, I told you, didn’t I, that it was a battle. So you can’t be trying to help her out. You gotta do the thing that always adds,”—he poked my chest—“adds to you, Victor. You gotta have sex. You gotta fuck. And if a girl says something like,”—falsetto mocking: “‘Well, just Google me’ then you say, ‘I don’t want to worship you. I want to be with you.’ And if she ain’t cool with that, then you just walk away.”
Growing Up Wired Page 11