The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills

by Joanna Pearson

  I still had a couple hours before the party, so I went to the computer to check my email. Nothing. I thought of Jimmy, how tonight might be my chance to talk to him. I had a mission: Mission Speak to Jimmy Denton at the Party Tonight. This required, as preparation, Operation Jimmy Denton Information Gathering.

  So I Googled him. I typed in “Jimmy Denton, Melva, NC” and clicked SEARCH. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. I waited, guilty, nervous at the computer, ready to close the browser window if my mom or brothers were to walk in.

  But instead of merely finding name twins, I found the Jimmy Denton jackpot. There was his name a few times in the Melva Daily Star for placing in theatre competitions, and there was even a photo of him playing Stanley Kowalski in the Melva High production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

  ANTHROPOLOGIST’S NOTE:

  The Melva High production of the play had been edited due to parental concern over potential sexiness. Even though the changes had been slight, it seemed like a shame to me to alter the genius of Tennessee Williams. I especially respected any writer whose chosen name was a state.

  The real Googling prize, though, was this: Jimmy Denton had a blog! The blogger profile matched him. His blog was called desperatemeasuresmelva.blogspot.com.

  I sat reading it for the next hour and forty-five minutes.

  I learned he liked tuna but hated mayonnaise, that he’d once peed his pants in the third grade and everyone had laughed at him, that he was struggling to pass calculus, that his dad had been stressed out at work recently, that his sister sometimes called him Boo Bear, which embarrassed him, that he had many thoughts on the various performances of Marlon Brando, and on Tennessee Williams, and on and on…. Part of one entry read:

  The play is absolute shit right now, and I told D. so to his face. But he’s got a rock for a brain. Also talked to B. and we agreed to keep quiet about the whole thing. Now hating myself, this town, wishing I could escape. Later tonight, Dad heard that I failed the calculus test again on top of everything else that’s happened recently, and of course he blew up. Flipping out and screaming at me, telling me he doesn’t understand what’s wrong with me, why I’m so messed up that I’ve got to mess up everything around me. My dad says I’m his biggest disappointment. He’s probably right….

  I sat back from the computer, feeling another twinge of guilt. Although I didn’t understand it all, the information seemed so private, so diary-like — and yet the blog had been easy enough to find. I couldn’t decide whether to feel like a) a clever crush detective or b) an Internet creeper. So many of Jimmy’s blog entries seemed angry.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Janice?”

  “Margo, I’m sorry about today at school. So dumb …”

  “Listen, don’t worry about it,” Margo said. There was a pause. “I don’t think I can come tonight. I’m just not feeling good.”

  “Margo! No! Please! I can’t go without you!”

  I could hear her silence on the other end, imagined the words collecting themselves in her mind before she spoke.

  “Well,” she said. “You’ll either have to go without me or not go.”

  “But he invited us both!”

  “Yeah, he did,” she said. “But, Janice, I’m not going. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel like it. I can’t go with you.”

  Her voice had the kind of icy solidity that made me not want to argue further. I wondered if she was still mad at me about the stinky feet comment.

  “You really can go by yourself,” Margo said, and there was a slight hitch in her voice, as if she felt sorry for me, or as if she were urging me to figure something bigger than a stupid party out. “Besides, it might be better that way.”

  “Fine,” I said. “No worries. It’s research for me anyway. I’ll talk to you later, I guess.”

  “Yeah, later,” Margo said. And we hung up.

  I drove there in my mom’s car. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done something without Margo. And I definitely couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a true party. Maybe middle school — a skating rink party. Parties, by the time I got to high school, had morphed into something I’d felt safer avoiding — too rowdy, too free-form, too terrifying. And yet I knew I had to go to this one. Never before had a chance to interact with Jimmy been so obviously presented to me. Never before had I been asked so specifically by my crush himself. I steeled myself with thoughts of the anthropologists I’d read about, packing up supplies for long voyages down snake-infested rivers in wobbly canoes. This voyage required similar bravery.

  Jimmy’s house was farther out in the county. In the darkness, I swooped down long, curving roads, passing cotton fields, barns, pastures, and every now and then, a house. I chanted facts to myself about Jimmy, our similarities — how we both liked Hamlet and old movies and couldn’t wait to escape Melva, how he felt lonely too, all these clues gathered from his blog, as if they were a mantra — as if they would make us truly become soul mates.

  When I reached his address, I saw only a long gravel driveway going down a hill, and all the way up it, parked cars, many recognizable from MHS. Seventy cars? More? I couldn’t tell. I parked just off the road and started to make my way down.

  I wasn’t able to see the house from where I was in the tar-dark, but I could easily follow the sounds of voices. Gravel crunched underfoot. The low thumping bass of muffled hip-hop pounded toward me. The house, when I reached the bottom of the drive, appeared dark on the inside. It was a big, blank, parents-not-home house. I heard the sound of a fire crackling in the backyard.

  I walked around back. A huge bonfire. Faces I recognized vaguely. Girls with long, bare, heavily lotioned legs sat on the laps of guys holding plastic cups. There was a cluster of people dancing. A keg. People milling everywhere, faces flickering in and out of the firelight. The rough laughter of guys kidding around, the coaxing yelps of girls.

  I was here on the edge of the scene. I couldn’t turn back now.

  I thought of Ruth Benedict approaching the Pueblo people in New Mexico for the first time. I thought of Margaret Mead and the Dobu in New Guinea. I took a breath and prepared myself: Janice Wills, field anthropologist, about to enter the world of a true Melva High School bash.

  ANTHROPOLOGICAL

  OBSERVATION # 9:

  The traditional illicit beverage of adolescent gatherings is an effective cure to self-consciousness, but one must be careful of it.

  I found myself walking, zombie-trancelike, over to where the plastic cups were being filled with warm beer. Dan Bleeker, the football player filling cups, was already wasted to the point of friendliness. He handed me a cup and smiled, sloshing my shirt a little.

  FACT:

  I had never so much as tasted an alcoholic beverage. Not even Margo knew this. Of course, I’d also, prior to this moment, never been to a true high school party. If some English class acquaintance ever asked me why I hadn’t shown up to whatever big party, I’d try to play all this off like, Oh, another party? Booooooring! and Beer — disgusting! Over it! It somehow seemed much less dorky to have tried something and decided you weren’t into it rather than to be babyishly consequence-averse and good-girl-ish. Similarly, whenever sex came up, I tried to imply that it was old news — that I’d had sex so many times already that I was simply bored with it by now. Sex = Yawn Factory! Boredomsville! I believed in hiding my hopeless innocence behind scorn whenever possible. (This, when I stopped to think about it, was essentially my life philosophy.)

  I took the beer and sipped. Ahh! my Margaret Mead–self would have said to the native partygoer, Your ritual beverage! Thank you, how marvelous! But it was disgusting — I’d been right all along. Still, in the name of field research, I could endure this. I took another sip.

  I thought about my personal mission, the one I’d researched: Mission Speak to Jimmy Denton at the Party Tonight. I’d just have to find him and then … tell him I liked his blog? Discuss Tennessee Willia
ms? Call him Boo Bear? It was a plan in progress.

  In the meantime, I had no one to talk to without Margo at my side. There were a few lawn chairs scattered about, so I found a seat from which to watch everybody, a darkened spot of lawn with a good view of the bonfire. Missy Wheeler was there. She’d found another one of the junior class officers, an At School Friend of sorts. They were talking intensely about some graduation-related matter. Missy, of course, had carefully strategized by bringing a little box of apple juice that she’d then furtively poured into a plastic cup to make it look like beer. I knew because she’d explained this strategy to me once. She brandished the cup like a secret pass, proudly showing it off. Watching Missy, I took another gulp from my cup. It was warm and gross, but I didn’t mind the new tingly feeling coming over my body.

  I watched Traci Oliver laugh nervously with some basketball player. Seeing her butt cleavage showing, I wondered if this was intentional. Did guys find butt cracks peeking over low-rise jeans seductive? Becky Stevenson started running around, loud and giddy by the fire. There seemed to be this weird pride in showing off how drunk you were becoming, I noted.

  “I’m sooooo tipsy!” Becky yelped on cue, and then collapsed into giggles against Trevor Jones. I watched them laugh and grab each other playfully, the undercurrent of adolescent hormones obvious. I took a sip. I took another, and another. Soon my cup was empty, and I was impressed with myself. I hadn’t passed out, I hadn’t gone crazy — I just felt peaceful and relaxed now. Since it was in the name of research, I figured I might as well get another cup.

  This time the beer went down faster. I was used to it, the fermented taste, the not-quite-coldness of it. I was a highly skilled observer, the Jane Goodall of the teen species. I put my glasses back on to better observe. Missy had now found a small cluster of High Achievers who were still semicool enough to go to parties. She was laughing with them, forcing it. I could tell by the way they gestured that they were thinking, This girl’s trying too hard. I felt sorry for Missy, but not as sorry as I felt for myself.

  Soon I started to feel sleepily content, ready to chat with someone. I thought about walking over and inserting myself into Caroline Henderson’s conversation, maybe say hi to Kip Stevens, but I didn’t want to look desperate like Missy. Instead, I sat on my Jane Goodall chair, documenting the things I’d seen so far in my little notebook:

  RESEARCH NOTES FOR CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

  1. Four couples openly making out. The attractive one made it look really romantic, like in French cinema, but the other three couples, slobbery and ugly, made me want to turn into a robot so I’d never feel human emotion again.

  2. Two breakups (both times, the girl was the one crying, mascara running thick and heavy down her blubbering face).

  3. Two girls and one guy vomiting in the bushes where they thought no one could see.

  4. One guy getting his pants pulled down by the older members of the soccer team. He looked like he was fighting tears before he punched one of them.

  5. One joint.

  6. Twenty-three cigarettes being smoked (at least it was good for the North Carolina economy?).

  7. Five girls bursting into tears for indeterminate reasons before running into the house, flanked by their girl posses. (Most of the girls seemed to move in clusters, like pack animals.)

  8. One weird old man, definitely not in high school, yet who apparently crashes high school parties. He had a long, scraggly beard, sunglasses, and little suspender-shorts like Swiss hikers wear. Compared to him, I felt very normal, noncreepy, and age-appropriate.

  I thought I saw Paul on the other side of the fire. So he’d decided to come after all. I thought of the list, the word “hypercritical.” I thought he might have noticed me, even raising his hand a little as if to wave, but I looked away. And then I was startled by a familiar, deep voice behind me.

  “Hey, Janice, you made it!”

  I felt myself turning in slo-mo. My head was heavy, like I was underwater. In the dimness, I saw the dark eyes, the thick dark hair, the unreadable face.

  “Jimmy,” I said, “Jimmy Denton.” My tongue was thicker and slower. It was like a furry rodent living in the hollow of my mouth, utterly disconnected from my own bodily control.

  “Where’s Margo? Wasn’t she coming with you?”

  “Sick,” I meant to say, but it came out more like “thick,” as if Margo were a really generous cut of steak.

  “Thick? Oh, sick. She’s not coming?”

  I shook my head. I wished I’d worn all black and brought my paperback copy of A Streetcar Named Desire. I wished I owned a pushup bra and took black-and-white photographs. I wished I were cooler. Still, I wanted Jimmy to sit down and talk to me. We would bond. He would prove to have a deep, artistic soul. He would fall in love with me. We would live in a loft in Brooklyn and have writer-friends and theatre-friends and anthropologist-friends —

  Chip Hunter knocked into Jimmy in the midst of imitating some scene from an action movie for a bunch of guys by the bonfire. “Hey, sorry, man,” he said, before backing away.

  “Hey, Janice, so what’s the anthropological term for ‘asshole'?” Jimmy asked.

  “Hmmm. I believe the anthropological term for asshole is ‘Chip Hunter,’ “ I said.

  Jimmy cackled appreciatively. I was hilarious. He thought I was hilarious! Something warm pooled inside of my lungs, filling up my entire chest. Love, I thought, this is what love feels like.

  “What’s the anthropological term for ‘stupid bitch'?” Jimmy asked.

  This jarred me. Maybe it was the term, maybe it was the way he said it — maybe it was the fact he hadn’t immediately indicated anyone in particular. I gazed at him, unsure of myself. Slowly he lifted his arm and gestured toward Missy Wheeler. Missy was giggling hideously in a way that I guessed she thought was alluring. She kept touching the shoulder of some guy. I could feel her desperation even from a distance.

  “Oh, the term we anthropologists use is ‘Missy Wheeler,’ “ I said, but there was a hard pit in my stomach as I said it. I looked at Jimmy again, gauging whether he was pleased. He smiled.

  “You’re great, Janice. Can I get you another beer?”

  I nodded. My mouth was sticky-thirsty, like mayonnaise. Mayonnaise mouth. I remembered how much Jimmy hated mayonnaise, and my slow brain came up with a genius joke.

  “Maybe something else,” I said. “My mouth feels like mayonnaise. Ugh! Reminds me of bodily fluid.”

  He looked at me strangely. In addition to making a terrible nonjoke, my tipsy brain realized too late that it relied on information I’d read on Jimmy’s blog. I wondered if this connection was immediately obvious.

  “Not that anyone would ever drink mayonnaise. Or eat it,” I said, my tongue still slow and uncooperative. Shut up, Janice, shut up, my mind hissed.

  He studied me for a few seconds like he was Dian Fossey and I was one of the gorillas in the mist. I realized then that in the ideal Mission Jimmy Denton plan he would not associate my mouth with mayonnaise, but rather something he loved … like lime Popsicles, I remembered from the blog. Should I mention lime Popsicles? Was that too weird? Would that seem desperate? Was I desperate? Or was desperation the basic state of any mammal that has ever tried to attract a mate?

  “Yeah, I’d love a drink,” I elaborated. My voice sounded strange and tinny — like an old tape recording of me that had been played and played and was now warped. “I may not be able to endure the tribal rituals of all these assholes and stupid bitches otherwise. Please, bring me the beverage of the natives.”

  Jimmy laughed again and turned to head toward the keg. I watched him walk back toward the house. Maybe I’d scared him away, I thought. Maybe he was pretending to get a drink but really he’d just needed an excuse to escape me. Mayonnaise-mouth? God. What was I thinking?

  Some other guys dumped more wood on the fire, and the blaze crackled. I smelled beer and smoke and a breeze off the lake. I coughed. Then Jimmy was back, holding two cups. He han
ded me one and sat down cross-legged on the grass beside me.

  “So,” he said, putting a hand on my knee. “I wanna hear more of your thoughts on Melva. Wait. It’s too loud down here. Wanna come up to my room?”

  ANTHROPOLOGICAL

  OBSERVATION #10:

  Intergender social transactions among the teen species are complex and potentially misleading. Thus one would perhaps be well-advised to avoid all opposite-gender interactions until one is at least thirty-nine years old.

  I sat with Jimmy in his bedroom, looking at the posters on his walls (old movie stars: James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe). I registered the details slowly, savoring them. My head was still murky with the three beers, and I wanted to close my eyes to rest, but I also didn’t want to miss anything. The bedspread I sat on, the entire room in fact, smelled faintly of Jimmy. I inhaled slowly and quietly. I wanted to absorb every molecule of Jimmy-ness.

  He had kept his hand on my arm as we’d walked inside from the party. He had talked to me. He had complained. I hate these people. I hate this town. These assholes. What a joke. In my swimmy brain, I’d thought, How strange that even Jimmy Denton, seemingly the coolest guy in school, is just as miserable as the rest of us. How strange.

  He’d talked, and I’d nodded. Be quiet and throw in a few nods, and suddenly you become the most understanding person in the world. He told me, Wow, Janice. I don’t know why we haven’t talked before. You’re such an understanding person. I’d nodded again. I was an understanding person — I was the Jane Goodall of teenaged behavior. I felt like I really knew Jimmy, down to his core.

  Jimmy touched my arm again. I feel like I can talk to you, he said. Or did I imagine it? I was sleepy. I, Janice Goodall, nodded once more. I felt the sinews of his forearm, his curly arm hair. He smelled of Right Guard mixed with Head & Shoulders mixed with the faintest male sweat, and it was the most wonderful concoction I’d ever smelled. Every moment felt slowed, and I had the definite but not-quite-fully-formed wish that he would press down on top of me, the full weight of his chest against mine.