by Steve Bloom
“You like Modigliani?” I hear Shelby inquire.
She’s suddenly reappeared, standing beside me so close I can breathe her mother’s best French perfume. And, boy, the stuff really works. I’m intoxicated. Shelby’s referring to yet another painting I’ve been drooling over by some other famous artist whose name I should know, but don’t.
“The long sinuous necks, vulva-shaped eyes, his unadorned depiction of pubic hair,” she observes. “I think it’s so sensual, don’t you?”
Actually, at the moment, I am thinking of the bloody fortune it must cost to insure everything just for a year.
“Plus, ever see a picture of him?” she asks. “Total hunkster.”
“Oh, yeah, Modie’s great, one of my all-time favorites,” I opine sagely.
“I should have known you’d be into art,” she says. “Any guy who’d go out with Celia Lieberman has to have real substance. Not like Tommy. He’s so deeply shallow.”
“That’s me,” I state, continuing my search for any sort of physical imperfection on any part of her. “I’m all about substance.”
“Unafraid to go against the crowd,” she projects. “A man among boys.”
“Right again,” I say modestly.
“So where have you been my whole life?”
“New Jersey?” I venture.
Shelby laughs, thinking I’m kidding. I fervently wish I were. How can you be ashamed of an entire state? Somehow I am.
“No, really,” she says.
“Actually, I . . . I live in the City.”
“Lucky. I love the City. Where do you go?”
“Where do I go?” I’m spit-balling here, marveling how I just pulled the City out of my butt.
“To school, silly. Dalton? Collegiate? Trinity?”
I blink at her several times, at a loss. Then . . .
“The Electra School.”
“Interesting name. Electra. The daughter of Agamemnon who blackmailed her brother Orestes to avenge their father’s murder by viciously killing their mother.”
“And here I thought it was just a kind of Buick,” I say weakly.
She laughs again. She thinks I’m a riot.
“I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it.”
“That’s because it’s very small and very new. In the Village. Very experimental. Very out there.” Man, am I good.
“Where in the Village? I’m down there all the time.”
Jesus, I think, give it up already. What difference does it make? But it clearly does to her.
“Uh, there’s no building.” I grimace. That is so lame.
“Your school doesn’t have a building?” She gives me a sideways look.
This is going badly. I can feel myself losing her.
“No, every day we just move around from place to place.” I close my eyes, convinced I’ve just jumped the shark. You know, taken that one extra step too far, like plunging-off-a-cliff far.
“Wow, that is out there,” she says doubtfully, but sort of buying it.
Then, out of the blue, I am rocked by a thunderbolt of inspiration.
“Actually, I’m homeschooled.”
Her expression relaxes. I’ve struck pay dirt. Homeschooling’s elegant in its simplicity. Very “in” these days, plausible, and most important of all, virtually unverifiable. Once again, I’m truly blown away by my own bullshit.
“Really had me going there,” she chuckles, apparently still intrigued and entertained by me.
Things are going dashingly. More than dashingly. Because it’s just now registering that Shelby has said the words “vulva” and “pubic” during the course of our conversation. With a portent like this, there’s no telling where the night might lead . . .
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”
It’s a horrifying cry. The cry of a wounded animal.
The cry of Celia Lieberman.
---
I sprint back to the pool and find a Roman orgy. Teenagers in the all together, making out in the Jacuzzi, mooning—your basic indecent frolicking and cavorting. And in the center of it all, Celia Lieberman, curled up on the chaise lounge, wide-eyed in terror, as right before her, the entire first line of the Green Meadow Country Prep hockey team, hairy parts and beefy cheeks exposed, take turns belly flopping, engaged in fierce competition for most humungous crater. Even I cringe at the horrific view.
Seeing me, Celia Lieberman scrambles from the chair and across the tile my way.
“Where did you take me?” she hisses.
“We’re at Shelby Pace’s after-party,” I say under my breath, pulling her to her feet. “Chill out. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before!”
But her stricken expression tells me I’m very wrong. She has just seen something—numerous somethings, in fact—that she’s never seen before. Everyone who’s anyone at Green Meadow Country Prep is watching us, cracking up. Celia Lieberman goes white as a sheet.
“You let me be the main attraction at Shelby Pace’s after-party?”
I duck as she takes a swing at me.
---
Celia darts out the front door. I scramble through the crush after her, only to be intercepted by Shelby who, get this, has changed into a string bikini that leaves even less for my already over-revved imagination to imagine. Let’s just say it clings and accentuates the way a string bikini’s supposed to cling and accentuate.
“Leaving so soon?” she purrs.
“Uh, Celia’s not feeling too good,” I state in the understatement of the century. “Thanks for letting us crash here.”
I hold out my hand to shake a tragic farewell. She wraps it in both of hers and doesn’t let go.
“Maybe I’ll see you around, Brooks.”
“Doubtful. I don’t get out of the City much.” I’m heartsick. I know I will never see her again, let alone see her again in a string bikini.
“In that case . . .”
She leans forward and gives me the softest, sexiest, most playful, most frustrating kiss I’ve ever received. Exquisite tongue work. Although it’s unmanly, I’m literally weak at the knees. It takes me more than a few moments to remember to show token resistance.
“Uh, uh,” I mumble. “Got to go. Celia . . .”
“Nice meeting you.”
---
As we drive, I don’t dare turn on the radio, not after what happened last time I tried. But I can’t listen to Celia Lieberman anymore. She’s huddled against her door, sniffling back tears and snot in regular intervals. I’m in a pretty foul mood myself. The taste of Shelby’s citrus-flavored gloss still tingles on my lips, and it’s a tart, tantalizing taste that I sadly will partake of no more. But that dipshit Tommy will.
“I had to take you somewhere,” I snap, having had enough. “You were in no condition to go home. I was doing you a favor.”
She whirls at me, her face a soggy, streaky mess.
“So you made me a laughingstock!”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it. “I didn’t realize you had that much to drink.”
“I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!” she shouts.
“DON’T WORRY, YOU WON’T!” I return, as good as I get, braking sharply. We’ve reached the welcome conclusion of our wretched time together not a second too soon. I hurriedly climb out to complete my duties and swiftly escort her to the bitter but happily liberating end. But Celia Lieberman bolts from the car to the front door, which is whisked open before she can reach it by her clueless, beaming parents in their jammies. His have padded feet.
“So? Tell! Tell! Who was wearing what?” Gayle glows. “How was it?”
“YOU’VE DESTROYED MY LIFE!!” Celia Lieberman shrieks at them, shaking the walls, and then she stomps up the stairs to her room. Her door slams, shaking the walls again.
Harvey and Gayle, amazingly unfazed, turn to me expectantly. If even this doesn’t warrant the parental sirens going off then I shudder to think what’s considered abnormal in this house.
“Celia had a little too much to dri
nk . . . ,” I grimace by way of explanation.
“Celia was drinking?” says Harvey, shocked.
“Our Celia was drinking!” exclaims Gayle, clasping her hands.
“Gayle, really!” he says, scandalized.
“Oh, can it, Harvey! It’s totally age appropriate!”
They look at me eagerly, wanting more details.
“Carrot juice and vodka,” I inform them.
For a moment, even they recoil at the combination.
“Good God!” says Harvey.
“She threw up,” I report reluctantly. “A whole lot.”
“Good God!” repeats Harvey, only more emphatic. Gayle elbows him hard in ribs, making him double over, then refocuses her scarily enthusiastic gaze on me.
“And then what happened?”
I had been expecting any number of reactions to Celia Lieberman’s dire, disheveled state. Outrage. Threats of the police. Demands for a refund. This is not one of them.
“Well, then we went to an after-party,” I continue.
Gayle literally hops up and down in joy.
“Hear that, Harvey?” she squeals in girlish delight. “Our Celia had too much to drink, threw up a whole lot, and went to an after-party!”
“And this is a positive thing?” Harvey asks, mildly encouraged but understandably confused.
“Cataclysmic!” The woman’s eyes are shining. “Our daughter’s participated in a normal rite of adolescence!”
She gets all weepy and emotional. So does he. They take turns hugging me. I pretty much have to peel them off.
Harvey wants to give me a seventy-five-dollar bonus. Gayle insists he make it an even hundred.
Getting Personal
Verbal’s up sixty points.
At first thought I’m flooded with relief as I stare in the still night at my glowing screen. I’ve been dreading just this moment for fifteen interminable days, the time it takes the fascists at the ETS to supposedly process and post scores. Personally, I think they turn them over in twenty-four hours, then get off on making millions of unbalanced kids twist in the wind. I was so sure I tanked. Yeah, I know everyone feels that way, but I really, really felt that way. But there it is in blue and white pixels. Sixty points. Sixty points may not be a giant leap for mankind, but it’s a gigantic step for me. I overflow with gratification, brim with self-congratulation. All those pointless drills, exercises, and sacrifices at last had a point. Sixty of them! Seven-twenty Verbal, baby! Didn’t think I had it in me. I reflect on that bastard Farkus. On the pain and humiliation I suffered. And suddenly the five hundred bucks doesn’t sting so bad. Though if I ever see the runt again, his ass is mine.
But then second thoughts arrive, as they always do. Sixty points, as miraculous as it undoubtedly is, is not seventy-five points. Strack, who is never wrong, said seventy-five. Sixty, together with my math, puts me in the lower-mids. Columbia’s median is the mid-mids. Seventy-five would have just put me there. Sixty barely touches the bottom fringes of the accepted range, down with the athletes, billionaire offspring, and legacies, the difference, of course, being they’re athletes, billionaire offspring, and legacies. End result? Rattigan comes up just short again. Close but no cigar. My pathetic existence in an answer bubble. I fill with bitterness and self-pity. For the want of a few measly percentiles, my potentially Promising Future comes crashing down.
Fortunately for me, third thoughts creep in. What is it they say? Hope springs eternal? I grasp at straws. So what if I’m marginal? Theoretically, cold hard numbers are only part of the Admissions Equation. There are always the Intangibles. Every college catalog’s replete with them. The mythic figures who defy the odds, who break the mold. The functional illiterate who launched a massive website in his bedroom, the girl who discovered the cure for cancer in her spare time when she wasn’t working to support her starving family, the Nobel Peace Prize nominee at fifteen, and most apocryphal—adjective, of dubious authority—the kid who wrote seven-fifty words or less so sensitive, so moving, yet so understated, that the lives of even the most jaded members of the Admissions Committee were forever altered and all normal criteria unanimously and unceremoniously cast to the winds.
I will have to be that kid.
Which means it’s back to the damn Application. It all comes down to the damn Application. My Short Answers are answered, spell-checked, and buffed to a luster. Which leaves the all-important, all-impossible Personal Essay. According to books on the subject, of which there is an astounding abundance, a great Personal Essay has to jump out at you. Unfortunately, so far, mine have kind of limped around. For the past month, I’ve struggled mightily for Worthy Topics. Racked my most distant memories for Major Misfortunes, Character Building Episodes, or Moments of Supreme Clarity, scoured the darkest recesses of my mind for examples of my own selflessness. The best I can come up with is the time I found some guy’s wallet on the ground and returned it to him even though it had forty-three dollars in it. For a week or so, I explore the subject of my mom skipping out before I ever got a chance to know her, but, as a rule, I try not to ever really think about that because when I do it gets me all pissed off and bummed out, which I ultimately decide is way too personal for a Personal Essay.
Everybody has their Thing to make them Stand Out in some way. Drinking problems, domestic violence, self-mutilation. Again I curse myself for not being more messed up. I read about one guy who actually wrote about having a really big complex about having a really small dick. Now there’s an Attention Grabber, though I’m relieved to report he was rejected everywhere, even his Safety, and is currently manning the register at his local Wendy’s. There’s always the Nobility of Minimum Wage and Starting At the Very-Very Bottom, subjects in which I am much too well versed, but Poverty’s been done to death and besides, nobody wants to hear it. Maybe I should express my desire to earn an Ivy League degree that costs a bloody ransom in order to volunteer in the Peace Corps and serve those who have it even shittier than me? Yeah, that’s the ticket. Doing Good for Others never goes out of style.
Columbia says it doesn’t matter when you get your application in as long it’s by the Due Date, which is tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. But the fact is, I should have submitted mine weeks ago. Anecdotally, the earlier you get your application in for Early Decision, the infinitesimally better your chances. Due to my own ineptitude and indecisiveness, I’ve pushed it as far as I can push it. Whatever I come up with now is going to have to be It.
Thus, I reach the grim conclusion that since I’m not extraordinary in any definable or measurable way, my Thing is going to have to be being super good at being a super do-gooder. And since I’m actually not so good at that either, I’m pretty much going to have to make something up. And quick.
Easier said than done. One more minor detail. Like so many countless other things, creative writing’s not exactly a major talent either. In English classes of past, my literary efforts have been ridiculed and ripped to shreds, which doesn’t help the already flagging self-confidence. The hours tick past in unrecoverable tiny increments. The blank screen taunts me to fill it. Maybe I don’t have a Thing. What if I’m Thingless? I pace, I get jittery. The walls close in. To settle my nerves, I decide to partake in a surreptitious toke or two on one of Charlie’s finest that I’ve swiped and hidden away for extreme occasions such as this.
---
One thing I gotta say for the old man, he smokes primo shit. To get the muses going, I cut to the chase and opt for tried-and-true mood music for my sorely needed flight of fancy. Thirteen minutes and two and a half tracks into Dark Side of the Moon on my headsets later, I am transfixed by the rapidly changing star patterns on my screen saver. I’m winging through the cosmos, weightlessly floating past ringed planets, psychedelic constellations, and swirling black holes as electric guitars are flailing. You know that song, “Time”? Yeah, you know the one. All those clocks are ticking faster and faster and faster, then all of a sudden they all start to ring at the same time, so loud you feel like
your head’s going to split in two like an overripe watermelon? Yeah, that one. Well, that’s when it happens, that’s when Little Billy emerges in fully hatched glory in my thoroughly baked consciousness.
Little Billy, as in the little blind crippled kid whom I’ve so heroically and thanklessly mentored through the years.
I fantasize that I first met Little Billy when Little Billy got trapped in a crosswalk after the light turned green. Nobody waits the like two seconds it would take Little Billy to get across, nobody cuts the poor kid a break. No, traffic blasts all around Little Billy, stranded in the middle of the intersection, stumbling helplessly in circles with his little cane. It’s just a matter of nanoseconds before poor Little Billy’s going to be lunch meat. People are always in such a rush, rush, rush to get nowhere, you know? So I have to do what anybody with a heart and conscience would do. Alas, there are so few of us. Risking life and limb, yours truly dashes into the line of fire and conducts Little Billy through a barrage of vehicles to sanctuary. That’s right, I save his disabled behind. Me, that’s who, because nobody else would. Which makes me exceptionally exceptional, if I do say so myself.
As the Floyd drones majestically on and on and on, so do my fingers, nimbly dancing across the keyboard to my laptop, almost in a trance. For this is just the beginning of my and Little Billy’s mutually rewarding relationship. You see, after I dry Little Billy’s little tears and buy him a large Tofutti with my last few hard-earned cents, I lead him home to the shabby rent-controlled apartment he shares with his overwhelmed, zoned-out single mom. It doesn’t take a Steve Jobs to deduce that Little Billy desperately needs a Man In His Life and a Suitable Role Model. So, while my peers get to play varsity sports or build up their college applications by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or paying through the orthodontured teeth for after-school seminars with Pulitzer Prize winners, I schlep Little Billy to his doctors, of which he has tons, to ball games, where I have to patiently give him the play-by-play, and to concerts in the park, which Little Billy especially enjoys because he can hear okay even if he can’t see jack shit. When I finally get my license, I drive Little Billy to the beach. I teach the little fucker to swim.