by mcdavis3
“Umm I’ve been hooking up with Asia.” I picked a girl out of a hat for the make-believe affair. She fit the bill perfectly, from Shorecrest, Oakley knew I had ties to Shorecrest. And Asia’d given me huge hugs in front of Oakley. Who knew, maybe she did like me.
“Have you ever felt black skin before?” I asked Oakley.
“I mean, not like that...”
“It’s like the softest most amazing skin you’ve ever felt. It’s like satin.” I spice up the story with a little poetic license. The scandalizing detail is based in reality, Asia’s skin was some of the softest I’d ever felt. “What the f Asia, how is your skin so soft?” I’d asked her while holding out her arm and petting it. “Black girls use a lot of lotion,” Asia’d answered in-between hysterical laughs.
“How many times?” Oakley asked.
“Uh, three times. It’s whatev.”
We pulled up to a big ornamental iron gate, Oakley leaned out and hit the speaker button. “Hey Colby, it’s Oakley.”
The gate started to open, “Yo Oakley, the front doors open.” Oakley slowly drove around the eerily smooth pavement while I admired the roundabout’s big fountain centerpiece. Landscaped trees and bushes growing out of huge marbled vases veiled everything but the Palace’s stone stucco archway in secret luster.
We pushed open one of the big doors to receive a dazzling embrace from a double staircase holding a crystal chandelier. Oak floors, gold framed painting and mounted statues fill out the rest of the grand entrance. With all the little things, like the Brazilian cherry banisters and designer drapes, whose true value was infuriatingly lost on my naivety.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like this,” I whispered to Oakley. “What’s his dad do?”
“I know, it’s amazing right. His dad’s a CEO. Colby said he’s by the kitchen.” I followed Oakley with my hands tied gracefully behind my back. The air smelled like a museum. Down a hallway we reached a kitchen with four stoves and shining gold pans dangling down from a big center rack. We looked around but it was empty.
“He must have meant the other kitchen,” Oakley laughed. We start to backtrack.
We found Colby in a half-room tucked away in the back that was easily the most worked-in room in the house. He was laying perpendicularly with his friend on a sectional watching T.V. They didn’t get up to greet us, primarily focused on their phones.
“What up, Oakley, I told you we weren’t doing shit.”
“It’s ok, nothing else was going on.”
“What up, Marco?”
“Just taking it all in.” I said. “Your casa really is something.”
“For real.” He forced out the response for the zillionth time. Through his associations and appearance I was 90% sure Colby was on oxy. In his current reclined state he looked like he was living heavy breathe to heavy breathe. Focused on whatever synthetic tickle of goodness was pulsating through him—If he could still feel it, maybe he was just getting high on hope and memories.
“Yo man, can I look around some more? Will you come with me Oakley?”
“Uh, huh.” Colby’s vacant stare was the only neglected thing in the whole house.
As we strolled I pretended to be super classy and lingered a moment longer than Oakley at the artwork and fancy furniture.
“This is an impressionist Oakley, look at all the dots.” Really I was just filled with a bunch of socialist musings.
To gain so much off other’s labor is disgusting. A CEO who can’t even motivate his own son off of Oxycontin. Oakley went to the bathroom while I paced around until I finally settled around an Arcadian landscape. The little figurine people were all tranquilly going about their day amongst the forest and garden.
“If you haven’t seen the bathrooms yet you gotta check it out.” Oakley said when she returned.
“No one should have all this.” I finally let lose in a heated screech.
From my side Oakley responded very coolly, “I want all of it.”
I got feverish but clamped down on my mouth.
“And more.” She drove the dagger deeper.
You’re really surprised? I mused. How long has Oakley had this dream? How long have you wanted to be the great savior of your people? 4th grade? Beware the dreams of 10 year olds.
Oakley’s black hair was tied up in a bun at the very top of her head, how she always wore it up. My parents had taught me not to be possessed by material things, but they never said anything about love.
37. Downfall
And then she was gone.
I went to community college after high school. My dad gave me a huge budget because he felt bad for me. But all the restaurants, clothes, movies, video games, bottled sugar water and delivery pizzas in the world couldn’t make me forget about Oakley, or get rid of my panic attacks. They couldn’t make all my peers stop drinking and smoking all the time. Couldn’t make me popular again.
Most downfalls, when you look back on them, are gradual. I’d had a spectacular run for a while. But slowly I started playing wrong card after wrong card. Reaching out desperately and humiliatingly to old acquaintances on Facebook. Buying girls I hardly knew $300 true religion jeans. Losing one friend after the other. Watching my party friends who I’d worked so hard to accumulate slowly fall off. No matter how many times I sat in deep contemplation, trying to once again channel that magic, promising myself I was going to get back, my slide continued. I’d once been in the thick of it, almost everywhere I went I saw someone I knew. People were always calling my phone. Now I was in the thick of nothing.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom. I met Emma and after 2 years of community college, with my 2.4 cumulative G.P.A., the Washington state direct transfer agreement, and my sob story, I got into the University of Washington for my Jr year of college.
Ian, my roommate, and Jonsen surprised me with my acceptance letter when I got home from school.
“As soon as we saw it was big package we knew they accepted you!” They screamed. “One of us made it to college!”
I jumped for joy around the whole apartment and called my increasingly concerned family to give them the fantastic news.
I’d picked the University of Washington for one reason: Oakley Carter. I didn’t even apply to any other easier schools. No backup plan.
38. Larry Swoosh (Winter, 2009)
The heavy rain fell on me but I wasn’t even wearing a coat. I was in one of my deep contemplative moods, but I liked it. It stung, but it was a normal sting. The kind of distinction you can make when you know what a real storm is.
The waving trees and rushing street gutters were momentous omens urging me onward as I trenched through the rain. I took this same path, on the outskirts of the stadium parking lot, most days. On my way to the IMA, UW’s state of the art athletic facility. The gigantic exclusive gym was my favorite part about going to UW. But that night the path was flooded with people all heading to the bball arena next to the IMA.
So many people…I contemplated. They never told us growing up how many people there are, how insignificant we all are. People wearing stupid fucking clothes that don’t even know it, ignorant to their own shittyness. The ones with snooty looks were the worst, the ones who actually thought they were better than other people. Overweight, old, too much makeup, wrinkles, plain. As they passed by I imagined they were all either utterly happier than me or desperately miserable.
I wasn’t headed to the bball game so I veered off, heading across the vast parking lot. My destination was one high school sized bleacher surrounded by a big fence. Over the fence you could make out the top half of the UW soccer field scoreboard.
I felt like a dear entering a prairie as I walked through the gate. What if I saw someone I knew? What if she saw me? It was the last girls’ soccer home game of the season, I’d meant to go to one all year—just one, only one. I kept my head down until I found a suitable spot amongst the bleachers. Finally, feeling comfortably inconspicuous, I began scanning the field for a sight of her.
It was hard to tell in their soccer uniforms with their hair up. No matter how many times I convinced myself one of the players might be her, it wasn’t.
“You poor thing you’re shivering.” The women sitting next to me bellowed. “George get out that poncho we brought.” She directed to her husband.
“Oh thank you, you don’t have to…”
“You see that defender there?” She pointed to a burley girl with bulky arms and hips. “That’s my daughter, Lisa. We’re from the Tri Cities but we haven’t missed a game.”
“Oh, way cool.” I winced in anticipation of the bold woman making some attempt to set us up.
Thank god for ugly people, I thought. I want nothing from them. That sounds poetic, I’m going to write that down. I pulled out my phone and jotted it down.
“Who are you here to see?” The women asked the dreaded question.
“My friend…Oakley…Carter.”
“George, do you know an Oakley Carter?”
“Hey Alex, do you know an Oakley Carter?” It was passed down the whole section.
“Ya, she’s number 10, or 16. On the bench.” Someone finally shouted back. “She played last year some.”
I honed my eyes to the 12 girls sitting on the bench across the field. After a while I was able to determine that one of the specs was definitely her. A bubble of suspense burst dizzily inside me. She didn’t even play? I thought back to watching her in high school, when she could separate from any defender and girls would stumble and wipe-out trying to keep up with her.
A conversation I’d overheard her have with another star player from another high school came to mind.
“What’s the point? Even if I went professional I couldn’t make any money. Maybe 30,000 a year.” She must have stopped trying, I concluded.
I watched the spec laugh with the other players, she was def one of the most popular specs on the bench.
In college, two social groups stood alone a top the stratosphere of popularity: Student-athletes and the Greek system. I’d had brief glimpses into both worlds. I had a group of athlete neighbors in my apartment complex who called me a “normy.” That’s what athletes called everyone that wasn’t an athlete. The athletes live in their own world, especially those on scholarship. They ate together and followed an intense structural schedule during the week. It was a work-hard-play-hard thing though because my neighbors stayed up all night on weekends getting fucked up.
My first run in with the Greek system had come when I was walking along Greek row to an appointment with a transfer advisor. Groups of 30 girls spaced evenly out along the sidewalk became too numerous to be a coincidence. I’d curiously passed maybe ten of these groups when a loud horn went off. Then, as if it’d been rehearsed, the sorority front doors all flung open simultaneously, and sorority sisters began pluming out towards the street in parallel lines. The synchronization of it, in combination with the sisters’ best dresses and make up, gave it a stepford wives feel. And yet it was spectacular. As an unnoticed fly caught in it, I felt alive.
I’d watched one taller, apprehensive, hairy Indian girl make her way through the line, greeting each sister along the way. “‘Welcome to KapaKapa pledges.’ ‘Thank you sister.’ ‘Welcome to KapaKapa pledges.’ ‘Thank you sister.’”
One of the midfielders made a pass that barely got broken up.
“Good ball, Jenny.” George yelled.
“Hell of a ball, Jenny.” Others echoed from the crowd.
I couldn’t help but yell too, “Good ball, Jenny.”
One of my friends was in one of the sororities. She’d told me that for initiation she had to recite the most misogynistic degrading rap lyrics perfectly in front of the sisters after drinking a bunch of tequila. Every time she made a mistake the sisters cussed her out. She had to start from the beginning until she got it perfect. Another time a frat had made all her sorority’s pledges sit on newspaper in their underwear and watch porn to see who would get the wettest. I’d heard at WSU, they made every frat pledge go around to every sorority and dance naked in front of all the sisters. It was all too horrible and great and exciting to even fathom.
I’d gone to a sorority dance before. Brandon’s cousins had asked us to be their dates. It was incredible, the sorority had rented out part of Seattle’s Science Center. We’d danced and then cooled off in the butterfly conservatory.
I’d even slept with a sister, immediately afterward she’d started getting dressed.
Laughingly I’d asked her, “Where are you going?”
She’d answered, “I’m leaving, you want me to leave right?” But her voice had cracked she said it with so little conviction. While her face begged me to stop her I’d let her get half way dressed, daring her to see how far she would really take it.
“This is how they trained you huh? You greek kids think you’re so sophisticated.” I’d teased her before tackling her back into bed.
It had all been intriguing enough to make me want to join the Greek system when I got into UW. Devin was even the president of one of the fraternities.
“The great thing about college, Marco,” He’d told me, “Is everyone gets a fresh start. A new beginning, no matter how many mistakes they made in high school. Remember Terry? That weirdo that was a year younger than us?”
“No.”
“Well now Terry’s really popular in the Greek system.”
“Ya? Does he get mad pussy?”
“We don’t say that, Marco. We’re gentlemen, above everything. But, ya, Terry's popular.”
Devin had put me on the list for one of their biggest parties, a “triad.”1 Inside an army of freshmen bouncers at the door I’d run into a kid I played little league with, wearing a lei.
“Devin said you might be rushing, Marco. Where are your fucking sluts, bros? Hey sluts.” He’d called to a group of girls standing in the hallway. They came over.
“Shut up, Dave.”
“You shut up, you fucking hoes. Yo, this is my bro, talk to him.”
Then he’d left me alone with the girls, who kept saying, “I’m over it,” and asking me, “What house are you from again?”
I’d headed deeper into the triad, into the event hall. Two of UW’s most famous bball players were standing a foot over the sweaty crowd dancing with three girls each. Twenty girls were lined up on the stage dancing. I’d kept staring at one whose sweat drenched hair was stuck to her cheeks and breasts, her body in a trance, pounding fearlessness into the crowd. I was in over my head, I couldn’t hang. Plus, every girl I’d talked to only said one thing, “I’m over it. What house are you from again?”
My gaze had never left the spec in the distance. Oakley was not only a full ride scholarship athlete, she’d gotten into the coolest sorority. I can only imagine what the coolest sorority’s initiation was. How many guys had she shacked up with? That’s what they called it, “shacking up.”
Who gives a shit about sex, I thought, what about all the precious brain cells? I’d never seen people drink so much, I’d seen sorority girls prefunk by taking 6 shots of tequila like it was nothing. They drank like they were Russian, or Irish. F-it, it was all irrelevant now anyways.
I’d been in the gym when I’d heard. Shooting hoops with an old friend and Shorewood alum, Tom. We were watching UW’s star basketball player, Jim, run shooting drills with a team manager on the court next to us.
“I have class with one of the team managers,” I’d whispered scandalously to Tom, “and he says Jim has herpes.”
“How does he know that?”
“You know those two games he missed a month ago cause of the “flu?”
“Ya.”
“It was a herpes flare, swear to god.”
“That’s crazy. Did you hear about Oakley?” One of the pillars of my life had begun shaking at the mention of her name.
“No?”
“She’s dating Larry Swoosh.”
“Haha, nuh uh.” A wave of relief had rushed over me knowing this couldn’t be true
. Larry Swoosh was an NBA player, he’d been one of the stars of the finals two years ago.
“Swear to god. They’ve been dating for a while.”
Had Oakley been making shit up? I’d thought. Who would start a rumor like that? But on my way home I’d had something come to my mind that made me start running back to my apartment. A mysterious Facebook post Oakley had made a few month ago, “Baby boy’s gonna be okay!” I’d absolutely no idea what it meant at the time. I’d wrote it off as some inside joke.
I’d gone back to find the post again, then copied the date and put it into google. The headline came up, “Larry Swoosh Mysteriously Passes Out During Game.” A ghoul of despair possessed me after that, hiding away in my bed.
The game was almost over. UW was losing.
He was definitely cheating on her. Everyone agreed, he was definitely cheating. He was in a different city every night. But did it matter? She was dating an NBA player. What a jersey chaser. His twitter was some stupid shit too, WeOnThatGas, a cocky drug reference that was ambiguous enough to get away with.
The last time I’d seen her was at the lake, when like a vision she’d come out of the water. The sun sparkling off of her damp Mediterranean skin. Then she’d walked over to a crowd of athletes and sorority sisters. The athletes looked like tanks with their shirts off, with muscles popping out I didn’t even know existed. Crevasses so deep under their Adonis belts it didn’t even look anatomically possible.
Maybe Oakley has herpes, I hoped. Something sucky is bound to happen to her eventually. That’s how life works. I wrote another note down in my phone. I don’t know if our generation will ever find love, we’re all shooting so high. I don’t think it works if everyone’s shooting for the stars.
I could hear my social psychology professor’s voice, “Every study ever conducted on social equality shows that it’s better to live in a country that’s more equal but poorer, than a country that’s richer but less equal.” They say ten percent is destined to lead the rest. And what percent is born to be a big shot and then their gigantic dreams get crushed? 20 percent? 90? They say the masses hold greatness back. I say we should be able to, a little.