by Sarah Miller
Cullen nods. "There comes a certain age in a boy's life..." And with this, he reaches under the bed and produces a contraption, like a plastic vase with tubes coming out of it, "where Dad steps out and the Vaportech steps in." Gideon is about to ask what the Vaportech is when Cullen reaches into his pocket and produces a very large and heavy-looking Ziploc bag full of pot.
Gid is speechless. I feel a strong responsibility toward him, and I will him, as hard as I can, to say something like, "You know, I thought I would have a little bit more time to figure out the extent to which I'm interested in misbehaving," or, "Let me figure out what the rules are before I start breaking them." But I'm clearly not reaching him, because he not only says nothing, he smiles, takes the Ziploc, and opens it.
"Smells like good stuff," he says, although this is the first time he's ever seen pot, let alone smelled it.
the yellow thong
Gideon spends the afternoon with his face wrapped around the Vaportech. Nicholas sleeps. Cullen talks, ceasing the relay of information only long enough to smoke more pot himself.
"So we get our pot delivered from Sanders, the maintenance man. He also put sealant around the doors for us over the summer, so Cockweed, who lives across the hall, can't smell it." Notice Cullen doesn't mention that he pays the maintenance man, dearly. Cullen is one of those rich people who seem to have forgotten about that little element of his transactions and sees the world as this place where people are, miraculously, just really into doing nice things for him.
Gideon tunes in and out. Mostly, he's picturing the girl Cullen was making out with earlier in the closet. If he were friends with Cullen, would girls like Katie like him? That makes sense. Or is he just high?
It makes some sense. But, yes, he is extremely high. "When I got my key from, uhh...Cockweed...he said to tell you guys he was keeping an eye on me," Gid says, and is pleased when Cullen throws his head back in a joyous whoop. "On ail of us."
"He's so not going to win this year." Cullen buzzes with energy, walking around the room, picking up and putting down CD cases, running his hands through his hair, which, Gid notes, is blond and both angelically curly and thick enough to be virile. Gid finds himself going down a bad road, worrying that he is not as handsome as Cullen. And maybe he's not, but he's certainly handsome, if less brazenly so. And his eyes have a lot more kindness, a lot more soul than Cullen's. Maybe some girls are more into perfect abs than soul, but not me.
Cullen bounds over to the door and looks through the peephole into the hallway. "I'm the one who has my eye on him!" He beckons to Gid. "This is a great room on account of the fact that we have our own bathroom, and no other students live on this floor. But it's also a bad room because Captain Cockweed's apartment has an entrance up here. Look."
Indeed, there is the man himself, kneeling down, his head angled toward the ground so that Gid is looking right at his scalp. He holds what appears to be a soup can over a large metal box. "That's weird," Gid says. "He looks like he's using an electric can opener."
"Aha," says Cullen. "And he is. Those faculty apartments are free, because the teachers don't make any money. But they always have something major wrong with them. And the Cockweed-Cavanaughs have an electricity problem. We joke about it. Not a lot to talk about on campus, and I mean, look at that. It's pretty funny."
Gideon thinks, Electricity situation.
"So," Cullen continues, "you will often see them in the hallway using a blender or electric paper shredder or so on. Wait 'til you see Mrs. Cavanaugh out there with her vibrator!"
Gideon's eyes widen.
Cullen claps him on the shoulder. "Joking, my friend." Guys and vibrator jokes. A love that never ends. Cullen looks through the peephole again. "He's gone now. They have a son, Tim, who will be in juvie by the time we're in college. And sort of a cute daughter, Erin. I feel a little sorry for her."
"Really?" The mention of a girl makes Gid excited. "Have you fooled around with her?"
"She's six, dude. Maybe someday. Although she does have some rather attractive babysitters. This girl Fiona that I kind of would like to score with. I was gentleman enough to keep my hands off her last year since she was fourteen.... She takes care of Erin sometimes." Cullen gestures at the Vaportech, now loaded up and ready to go.
He lights it.
Gid smokes. "You're a natural," Cullen says.
Gideon wonders, Is Cullen joking? Did you only call someone who really was not a natural a natural, because if they really were a natural, wouldn't they know it, and not have to hear it from you? To point out the naturalness of something, didn't that really call attention to its very unnaturalness? That word natural really undid him. He's got to remember: He's fucked up. Nothing matters.
"Hey," Gid says, taking a chance, "do you ever think that chicks babysit as a way of trying to say, 'Hey, guys, look, I'm good with kids'?"
Anyone can see this is an unbelievably brilliant insight. Just a second ago, when Cullen called Gid a natural, he was, in fact (I can't read Cullen's mind, of course, but I am almost certain), being a little patronizing. But now Cullen's face lights up. "Oh my God, I never thought of that. I was wondering why Fiona babysat, I mean. The chick's seriously loaded. Even for here. And that she babysits for Cockweed, in this dorm, of all places. Hmm. Now I'm sure she wanted me. Thanks, man."
Cullen stops pacing and squats on his heels, on the floor, dangling his head in his hands. Gid imagines that Cullen might be quite at home in the jungle, a nice jungle, with pillows and refrigerators. Cullen springs up off the floor and hangs off the pull-up bar with one arm. "Did you see there are a lot of good-looking freshmen? A lot of foreign students, which seems great because they're often hot, but which is not so great, because they're all super well-behaved and generally have weird religious beliefs. Sometimes those beliefs keep them from having sex. Except for the ones who are maniacs, of course." Cullen switches to the other arm. "So, Gid, as far as girls go, do you have a type?"
"Well, I wouldn't mind finding myself a maniac," Gid says. No sooner is this out of his mouth than Gid realizes who he sounds like: Jim Rayburn.
Cullen doesn't go so far as to look annoyed with Gid. But for now, he's not asking any more questions. And he stops swinging around and sits back down on his heels.
Nicholas stirs, and Gid feels higher. That is to say, more fucked up. More paranoid. Nicholas turns over on his back and opens his eyes. He looks right at Gideon, then shuts his eyes again, as if Gid were a problem he wasn't quite ready to face. "I gotta go to the bathroom," Gid says.
The bathroom is cavernous. There are six toilet stalls and a hall of showers built, it seems, for an entire football team. There is woodwork in here. Wainscoting and stuff like that. Gid touches it, thinking, Fancy. One wall is taken up with three windows, all flung open to the sweet summer air. Down below, in the grass, a group of girls have made a circle. One of them lies down and settles her blonde head on her arm; another leans back and rests her dark head on this girl's ankles. Gid can't see their faces, but he can tell from the way they move, the seriousness with which they adjust their expanses of hair, that they are beautiful. He shuts the window, an attempt to temper the painful longing that has come over him.
He returns to the room to find Cullen tossing most of Gid's CDs—including, but not limited to, John Mayer, Norah Jones, Jack Johnson, and Maroon Five—into a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag.
"What's up?" Cullen says, as if nothing were happening. Then he grabs a black Magic Marker and across the bag scrawls Lesbian Music. Nicholas is awake, lying in bed, propped up on one elbow, reading The New Yorker. He scarcely glances at Gideon and seems similarly disinterested in Cullen's activities.
"My aunt's a lesbian," Gideon says stiffly, because this is all he can think of. His mother's sister, Clara. She's a nurse. Quel surprise.
"Whatever. So is everyone's," says Cullen. He crosses out Lesbian and in its place writes Girl. He grins at Gideon. "Now we can all relax and watch the LPGA Chick-fil-A Charity Champ
ionship in peace." He winks.
Nicholas snorts and turns a page of his magazine.
Cullen keeps thumbing through Gid's CDs. "Tori Amos? Weren't you afraid when you bought this that it would, like, turn into a little fairy and fly away?" He thumbs through a few more. "Dave Matthews," he says, holding it up. "That fat fuck."
"I think Dave Matthews is cool," Gideon says.
"Nope," Nicholas says, still not looking up. "Wrong."
Nothing is spared save some classic rock, some rap, and Stevie Nicks, which was his mother's and a total accident.
Tm very into Stevie Nicks," Cullen says, and Gideon, formulating a speech about how it wasn't his, retreats to plain old general anxiety. "She was a fox, she had pipes, and she could fucking party. In my book, it doesn't get much cooler than that."
Gideon regards the shopping bag and asks, "Okay, so, do I just keep this music in a special place?" Cullen bursts out laughing. "Not unless you consider my anus a special place."
Nicholas shakes his head but doesn't look up from his reading. "Cullen wouldn't take the time to sort things into a Lesbian Music—"
"Girl Music," Cullen corrects him. "The point Nicholas is trying to make is that this isn't about organization. Did you see anyone make an appointment with Sheila from California Closets? I didn't. This shit is going where it belongs"
And he picks up the bag, walks onto the fire escape, and one by one frisbees the offending CDs out over the quad. They land in the grass, a few feet from the same girls Gid was looking at from the bathroom. One of them crawls over and picks up a CD, then another one, and looks up toward the dorm. She shrugs.
Within a minute, all the CDs have been cleared away.
"Wait," Gid pleads. "You can't do that." This seems abnormally cruel to him. Yet he senses that the right thing is to let it happen. That perhaps he will be better off without this music.
I think that's definitely true. Maroon Five, ugh.
Besides, no one appears to have heard Gid's pleas. Cullen slides the Vaportech over to Nicholas's bedside.
When Nicholas exhales, a giant smile spreads over his face. "I enjoy how much this place annoys me," he says. He goes to the bay window and surveys the campus. "All these spoiled, narcissistic rich people, of which I myself am one." So Nicholas, unlike Cullen, is totally aware of his richness; he's even self-deprecating about it. I guess that's a little less maddening than Cullen's cluelessness. But not much. "I just hope," Nicholas adds, looking a little somber, "that we can find a good way to make the time pass this year. It's our only hope."
He hoists his two matching leather duffels onto the bed and starts to unpack. His clothes are folded department-store neat and arranged by color.
I don't blame Gideon for having no idea what to do next. Is he supposed to get mad? Is he supposed to stand up for himself? He goes to his bag and slowly unzips it, just to give himself something to do. His stomach flutters and roils with a just-punched feeling. He puts his hands around a stack of white T-shirts, feeling comfort in their familiarity. One of them, he notes, is getting a little yellow.
He thinks, Yellow. Wait. The bag. Now I know what's in it.
Yellow? Wait? The bag? Now he knows what? Come on, Gid! I guess I need to get better at piecing together fragmented thoughts, but I'm not there yet.
Gideon reaches frantically into his suitcase, still thinking, unhelpfully, Yellow, wait, the bag.
Slowly, I see it. It's strange how I can hear his thoughts, but it's even stranger how his memories are starting to feel like my own. There's a basketball hoop and a smell of blacktop, car wax and thin milky coffee in a thermos. The Washington Post in its plastic wrapper smacks against flagstone.
It's dawn in Fairfax, Virginia, and Gideon is saying good-bye to a girl. The girl's name is Danielle. They stand underneath a basketball hoop in Gid's suburban cul-de-sac. She's handing him a little paper bag, and Gideon puts it in his suitcase.
Here, back at Midvale, his hand sinks into the suitcase again. Now he's panicking. He did put it in the suitcase, right? Yes, he remembers. So where, then, Gid thinks, his hand giving one more frantic scoop inside the by now obviously very empty pocket of his suitcase, is the fucking paper bag?
"Looking for this?" Cullen says. His hands are behind his back. His left hand emerges, revealing the crumpled paper bag with just the tiniest bit of yellow cloth peeking out of it. Cullen opens the bag and holds up a pair of yellow thong underwear.
"How did you get that?" Gideon demands.
"Oh, you know, I was looking for some women's underwear, and I thought to myself, Hey, before paying those expensive department-store prices, why not rifle through the new kid's luggage? Kidding. I saw a brown bag. Thought it might be something exciting I could eat or smoke or swallow. Turns out...well, this is pretty exciting in its own right, wouldn't you say?" He hands the underwear to Nicholas.
Nicholas's eyes turn bright. "Oh-ho," he says. "I need to hear the story behind these."
"Oh my God," Gid says, feeling panic and a sense of falling, of unreality, almost, more than anger. "You went through my bags. You guys are totally...you...you have no..."
It will take him months to put his finger on it. So let me complete what Gid can't.
Cullen and Nicholas don't care about much except their own amusement. They have no real sense of morality.
"These are my girlfriend's," Gid says, still bewildered to find his most private possession out in the open like this. "My girlfriend from home," he qualifies, not wanting word to get out that he's taken. Although he feels some blushing pride in being so. Sort of.
Nicholas mashes his lips together and makes a low, skeptical sound. "You brought these here as a memento?"
"That's right." Gid lifts his second, smaller suitcase onto the bed and starts to unpack. He makes a sudden decision, gathering his wits, swallowing his shock. He's going to act normal, because then they might just forget about this. "They're my girlfriend's, and I just have them to remember her by."
"I don't buy it," Nicholas replies.
Gid continues to unpack, monitoring his expression, keeping it still, without tells. Inside, he remembers. He remembers the way those underwear felt in his fingers, how the nylon threads stuck to his calluses.
As violated as he feels, he also wants to tell.
Then Cullen takes the underwear from Nicholas. He smells them. "Freshly laundered," he says.
Wow. That was...Cullen is some breed. There's a pause while Gid lets what his new roommate has done sink in.
Gideon doesn't like it that Cullen just smelled his girlfriend's underwear, but he admires it. These two boys are so comfortable in their own skins. Gid wants—hard to admit this to himself because he doesn't yet know what they want—to be around them, to be like them. Mostly it's because he thinks it would be a good way to get girls. But partly it's because these guys seem to have more fun being themselves than he does being himself.
"Uh, sorry I smelled your girlfriend's underwear," Cullen says. He doesn't sound all that sorry. He's just reacting to the length of the pause.
"Well," Gid says carefully, "I did spend the whole ride up here trying to forget her. Maybe letting some guy smell her underwear is a step in the right direction."
Wait. He wasn't trying to forget her. He was trying to forget feeling guilty about not remembering her.
Nicholas, still unpacking, is mostly faced the other way, but Gid can see the side of his mouth. He smiled. He
smiled at one of Gid's jokes.
Gid, this is no small feat. You're my hero.
'Til tell you," he says. Cullen's eyes light up with delight, and there is a hungry glint in Nicholas's "I'll tell you, but you have to promise—"
"Don't tell us not to laugh. You can't tell people not to laugh," Nicholas says. "I mean, you're our roommate, and we're going to try to like you, but if you end up embarrassing yourself, or being a complete asshole, we won't. We can't control how we're going to feel."
"I get it," Gid says, surprising
himself. "You guys are auditioning me to be your friend."
And goddamn if those two masters of confidence aren't speechless and awkward, just for a second. Gid hasn't beaten them at their own game, not by a long shot. But at least he's told them he knows what they're playing. The kid from Virginia is surprisingly smart. And the smarter they get, the cuter they get.
Because we're not like guys. The whole thong thing. Please. It's a pair of friggin' underwear. The most mundane thing in the world. But who am I to stop the magic? Who am I at all?
the bet
They are nice enough to ease Gid's pain with some bourbon. "From the bar on my grandfathers boat," Cullen says.
"My grandfather has a boat," Gid says, enjoying the warm burn in his chest.
"Really?" Cullen says, pouring another small belt into Gid's mug. "My grandfather's is a forty-two-foot Chris-Craft. What's yours?"
Gid's grandfather keeps a twelve-foot Starcraft with a twenty-horsepower Mercury outboard in his garage in Manassas. He sometimes fishes for bass in the Potomac. "Let's just say it doesn't have a bar," Gid says. Cullen nods. Nicholas, Gid is pleased to see, smiles again. He's smoking pot, but not drinking. He only drinks when there's Guinness available, he says. A predictable eccentricity.
Gid's eagerness to be their friend is so understandable to me. Say what you want about these guys, they are charming mother-fuckers. Even though I've been making fun of them, I may already be friends with them, and if I'm not, if they wanted to be friends with me, I don't think I could say no. Gid loves the way the smoky liquor softens his pot buzz. The room is so warm and foggy now that it feels almost tropical.
Cullen removes the thong from his pocket and tosses it to Gid.
Gideon sits down on his own bed and draws his legs up, Indian style. He holds the underwear. "My girlfriend back in Fairfax was named Danielle Rogal," he says. "She lived down the street from me."