BOY OH BOYS
JULIE
WE HAVE ENOUGH PLAYERS to field the opposing team. I posted on the Internet and we had a lot of guys driving in from Chicago. My speech went something like this: “You are playing a football player who is on a team that will lose the game. I will direct you via a headset in your helmet. The other team knows they are supposed to win. This whole game is being staged so my son can catch a winning touchdown. I need your best. You will just hit lightly and don’t worry, the other team is on it. I will pay union scale.”
The only problem I really foresee is that we have probably 90 percent gay actors. This actor named Bruce, who didn’t like his helmet, wanted to know if the shirts would have their names on it and he had one question that unnerved me. “Excuse me Maam, which way is the goal line?”
That was my first sign we might have some trouble. I knew then we would need a lot of practice. So I picked the nine who looked the least gay and the rest would be extras in the stands because Coach Higgins said attendance was terrible, and I really needed the crowd to cheer. I was going to hedge my bet anyway with hidden speakers to help the crowd along. I had also purchased fireworks to go off when Toby made his catch. This would be the classic Homecoming.
So we lined up my players in the warehouse.
“Ooooh. I liked it when you touch my ass,” Bruce said, who was the center.
The quarterback batted his eyes and Paul came out of our office then.
“I know what happened,” I whispered staring at our nine queens playing patty-cake.
“What,” Paul whispered back.
“My ad was supposed to go in Craigslist, but it ended up in the Gay Times. I guess I hit the wrong keystroke.”
My football team was now running around and batting each other on the ass.
Paul likes to think there are never going to be bugs in a program, like he can anticipate the next virus. I guess our gay football recruits just proved him wrong. But I knew there would always be bugs. There are just too many variables and as many contingency and work-arounds you come up with there is always something that comes out of left field. It is like autism. You play whack-a-mole all the time trying to think what could go wrong. And you are always one step behind.
That’s the way it felt with Toby for years—like I have been homeschooling him and he’s still way behind. Don’t let anyone tell you that in the age of the Internet the mothers aren’t doing all the teaching. And if you have a special needs child then you might as well homeschool him even with an IEP or Special Ed or Riddling Adderall or Focalin. Toby and I went head to head for years. Paul couldn’t take it. Men just aren’t that tough. He would just leave when the yelling started.
Maybe that is why women go through childbirth because everything else is less painful. The world is not a computer program. Our son is not a computer program. Paul still believes computers can save the day. He has run all sorts of data on what really informs a good high school experience. And on random surveys Homecoming and being a football star ranks up there for boys.
Paul said he needed cheerleaders and of course it fell in my lap to become the cheer coach. Four girls came out for cheerleading, including Macy, the most popular girl in the school. We began working every day after school. No stunts or anything. Just straight up Victory cheers. I found some outfits on cheerleading.com and got them made in the school colors with WARRIORS across the bust.
Homecoming was three weeks away so my girls would be ready. Paul was handling the football team and getting Toby ready. Sometimes when I was out in the field with the girls with the sun slanting down behind the autumn trees I thought back on my days in high school. I loved those days where the world stood in attention and the future was a glittering ship far out on the sea.
We have both hit the middle forties and sometimes I still think like a kid. Like if I get through this test then everything will be great. If I can just get to Christmas vacation or spring break or summer then life will be perfect. This works when you are young but when you get older then you realize nothing really ends. There is always another problem. And I think Paul saw us dumping the house as a way to get a do over for us. He will never admit it but we had been in a holding pattern for a long time.
And now that I had followed him to this town in the middle of nowhere I am not sure I wasn’t asleep. I had left a life and a lot of friends for this. It was all supposed to be for Toby. He is supposed to get the year he never had and we are going to change the course of his life. I think this is all for a good cause, but I am wondering if this is Paul’s do over. Maybe he is reliving a year where everything was perfect and there were no unsolvable problems. That’s what being young is all about really. There is a Yellow Brick Road still out there.
TIGHT END
TOBY
I HAVE BEEN READING several books about socializing. All bring up eye contact, which I feel I am very good at although my dad constantly tells me to look him in the eye.
The Coach says I’m going to be a tight end, but I really can’t catch. Dad says we are going to work on that. A girl named Macy came up to me in the hallway.
“Hi Toby. Are you going to the Homecoming dance?’
“No,” I respond.
“Oh well, I would like to go. I hear you are on the football team.”
“Yes. Tight end.”
She looks around me.
“You do have a tight end.”
I frown.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
She smiles.
“Well I’m head of the cheerleading squad. Maybe you would like to take me to the Homecoming dance?”
“Ya, I can do that.”
“Great!”
And then she just walks off. Dad says this will be my best year, and maybe he is right.
Everyone is nice to me. Even the teachers and the coach, and that has never happened. So far, the coach doesn’t yell at me and nobody has dumped cleaner in my locker and nobody gets mad at me because I can’t figure out how to put on my pads. Maybe this is the new me Dad talked about.
PAY TO PLAY
MACY
MOM SAYS I SHOULD take this guy Clampet to the cleaners. I mean it’s just Mom and I in this shitty apartment on Main Street and when I told her this guy was willing to pay twenty-five hundred for me just to go to Homecoming with his son she just about shit a brick. She’s been waitressing ever since Dad left and we haven’t gotten a penny out of that deadbeat for years. We both want to get out this town and figure with me graduating we will head for Hollywood. I mean college is not an option because I’m not going to owe anybody a hundred grand.
Clampet had given me a thousand bucks already and Mom and I went out to dinner and I bought a really cute top and Mom got some more skinny jeans. That’s when she looked at me and says, “You know I was his girlfriend in high school.”
“Really?” I said, shrugging. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”
Mom put down her cigarette
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean. I didn’t always go out with losers like Dwayne. I was a hotter piece of ass then than you are now.”
Gross. I hate it when Mom talks that way.
“We were the popular couple like you and Randy.”
“Huh.”
Mom picked up her cigarette and pulled on it.
“What if you screwed this kid … you think he would pay for that?”
I stare at her feeling like I should be really upset but I had thought of it myself.
“MOM!”
She stares at me dully. She’s in her forties but still has a good body and I’ve heard her with more than a few trucker drivers in the next room. She gets pretty noisy and says some really disgusting things.
“Cut the shit. You know he’ll pay a lot for his son to lose his cherry.”
And right then I know she is right and I tell Randy about the plan the next day.
“No way.”
We are in his pickup by the Super Q Truck
Stop eating some chili dogs.
I look at him.
“Big deal. So I give him a little. You don’t have any way for us to make money and we graduate this year remember? We need money to get to Hollywood and set ourselves up.”
Randy is the most popular guy at Sycamore, but his old man is a cop and a fixture down at the Ritz for years. This is not Obama country, alright. This is a dying town and everybody knows it. He talks a big game about going to college but I know he hasn’t even applied and will probably end up at the CAT factory over in Peoria.
“You aren’t going to fuck this guy for five grand,” he says.
So I start thinking about it then. What we really need is a nest egg when we go to LA. Mom has always talked about that. I mean I wouldn’t mind being an actress and Randy could start a bar or something like he always talks about.
“Ten grand and I fuck his kid.”
Randy just stares at me.
“I don’t think I can allow—“
“Oh shut up and hand me my Coke,” I say.
Randy tells me he’s not sure he’s okay with me dating the retard, but I tell him I can get ten grand out of it and we will get the hell out of Sycamore. Randy starts to see dollar signs too then.
“Come to think of it, I’m going to up my price for playing along because there is no way this kid can make the team and it’s kind of unfair to the other guys,” Randy says. “And Clampet wants me to hang with him and make sure he doesn’t become the butt of everybody’s jokes, which he definitely would if I didn’t say he was cool. I mean he is pretty weird. I think that’s probably worth at least five more grand. I mean if you think you can get ten grand for screwing the guy I really should up my price.”
“I’m gonna ask for a raise tomorrow,” I say. “Don’t you hit up Clampet until after I do.”
So I when I meet with Mr. Clampet at the DQ again the next day I just say right out. “How far should I go with your son?”
Clampet stares at me.
“I’m sorry?”
I roll my eyes.
“Look I know you used to go out with my mom and you probably fucked out in those cornfields. She always tells me about she used to do it out there.”
He’s just staring at me like I came off a spaceship or something.
“So. You know. How far? It is Homecoming and if you want his son to lose his cherry then I’m willing to help, but I need to get paid for it.
This Clampet guy is sweating. I can’t believe Mom dated him.
“Well I wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Is he a virgin?”
“Well…yes. He is but I didn’t really think you would—“
“He can lose his virginity for another five grand.”
Just like that. Clampet turns real red. It’s like I stripped in front of him or something. I mean we are just talking about fucking but Mom says they used to think about it differently…like it was supposed to mean something.
“So what do you say? I fuck your kid on Homecoming and he gets a memory for the rest of his life.”
He stares down the road and then looks around like the cops are coming.
“Five grand?”
I then begin to think I fucked up. I should have asked for more.
“Five grand,” I say.
The Clampet guy starts pulling on his goatee.
“I don’t see a problem with that,” he says.
HOTTIE
GEORGIA
IT’S TRUE. PAUL CLAMPET and I were sweeties once. I didn’t always work in the Sycamore Diner. We were the popular couple like Randy and Macy are now. I was a nice piece of ass then. I mean I’m older and you just don t have the same ass that you had when you were sixteen.
But I hear Paul has done real well for himself and is hiring people at the high school to have some football game for his retarded son. Macy says he is willing to pay her twenty-five hundred just to go out on a date with the retard. Hell, I told her. Why don’t you see what he will pay for getting his son laid? I mean if he has all this money. Macy and I have been talking about going to Los Angeles after she graduates. She wants to go to Hollywood and I wouldn’t mind taking a shot myself at some of them reality shows.
I have had to go it alone without that asshole Dwayne. He don’t give a nickel for child support. It’s funny in high school I didn’t even know Dwayne existed. He was one of the burnouts and I was a cheerleader. He wasn’t popular like I was, and really Paul and I should have ended up together but he left for college and I worked at the Corral Steak House until Dwayne knocked me up and then twenty-five years goes by.
I wonder what his wife is like. Probably one of those stuck-up bitches that watches Parenthood and thinks that’s what the world is like. I got news for her. It isn’t that way in Sycamore. I wouldn’t mind hooking up with Paul for old time sake. Maybe I can squeeze him for a few bucks, too. We sure fucked a lot in the cornfields back then. Thinking back on it, I think high school was the best time of my life.
HOMECOMING PHARADE
PAUL
THE QUEENS WANT THEIR own float. Julie went around town with the hope some of the businesses (the few there were) would want to sponsor a float. They just stared at her as if she was an alien from another planet. We realized then we would have to float the entire parade and decided to make up businesses to sponsor the floats. Bruce, the captain of the Queens with a high voice and Billy Idol hair, just winked at me when I asked him what their float would consist of.
“Don’t worry about a thing Mr. C.”
All the Queens had started calling me that in our practices in the warehouse. The uniforms had come in from highschooluniforms.com and we decided it would be parade, game, dance. That was the order. Julie and her cheerleaders did up the gym for the dance with a little help from Homecomingdances.com, which supplied the DJ and itinerary. We ordered Toby a tux from highschooltuxes.com and really all that was left was to get Toby ready for the parade, the dance, and the game. I had rented a baby blue Grandville. It was the same exact car I had ridden on the back of in the eighties.
It was about this time the North Koreans hacked Sony to pieces and dumped out all their emails and made them cancel this satiric film. You don’t think the Internet is powerful then think again. I believe in the power of the Internet to recreate our world. And the hackers brought a mighty corporation to its knees. Then the United States unplugged North Korea’s whole Internet the next day. Like someone had just unplugged your desktop. You don’t think the US has a bunch of guys like me sitting around and just waiting for the word, then guess again.
So I felt very good about the way things were going. Toby and I are now on our street and he’s sitting on the back of the convertible with his hands on the seat and staring straight ahead with the dark circles under his eyes.
“Alright Toby. In the parade, all you are going to do is sit there and wave at the people who are watching,” I said getting into the car that flooded my memory. I mean when I rode on the back of the car I was the Student Government President. And I remember clearly the way the autumn light came down from the buildings and the way the people cheered and waved from both sides of the street.
“Ready Toby?”
He is sitting up ramrod straight on the back of the convertible.
“Yes.”
“Alright, just hold on,” I say accelerating very slowly.
I heard a clunk and I saw Toby do a backward flip over the trunk onto the street. I hit the brakes and run to the back of the car where he is sitting on the warm pavement.
“What happened?”
Toby stands up and blinks.
“You didn’t tell me to hang on.”
“You alright?
“I think so.”
I had him get back in the car and sit on the top of the seat again. I looked at him in the rearview mirror again.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you hanging on?”
“
Yes.”
I slowly gave the Grandville the gas. He almost did it again but caught his balance. I slowly accelerated to fifteen miles an hour with Toby’s long hair whipping back.
“Okay, ready to wave?”
“Yeah.”
He raised both his hands and waved and then did a barrel roll across the trunk and onto the street where he bounced twice and ended up sitting. I slammed on the brakes and tore out of the car, thinking I had killed my son.
“Are you alright?” I shouted.
He stared at me blankly.
“Yes. I am fine.”
“I told you to just wave! But you have to stay in the car son!”
“If I wave then I don’t have a hand to support myself.”
“But you should have still held on,” I said feeling him for broken bones. “Just wave with one hand and support yourself with the other.”
“Fine.”
I knew then we would have to modify the car. A harness would be in order that would keep my son in his the car during the parade.
“Alright, enough of the parade practice for today. Let’s go practice some passes,” I said.
“Fine with me,” he said walking back to the car and getting in.
I remember once at Boy Scouts when the boys went sledding and Toby was standing at the top of the hill with his sled. Come on down, I yelled at him. He ran all the way down the hill and stared at me when I told him I meant to come on down on his sled. Like the North Koreans who must have wondered what hit them the next day when their Internet went dark. I got in the car and drove back thinking of all the possible bugs I had missed in my program.
JOY RIDE
RANDY
SO I’M SUPPOSED TO drive this Toby guy in the parade. Clampet said I was the quarterback so it would make sense. We are in this long line of weird-looking floats that I have never seen before. One looks like a big dick. I shit you not. It says GO QUEENS and is this big fist ramming straight ahead with two big balls that are really kettle drums and these two guys in leather chaps with their asses sticking out are banging on the balls. I guess they used it in some parade in Chicago they said they have every year. So, this is the team Clampet scraped up for us to play?
My Best Year Page 4