by Larry Doyle
Denis stood before the painting and tried to urinate. He couldn’t. Valli Woolly’s eyes seemed to be following his penis. The pain, slightly past excruciating, only exacerbated the problem. His entire urogenital system was experiencing a fatal error; he would have to reboot. He closed his eyes and wiped away the image of Valli Woolly watching him pee. It was replaced by the image of Lady Di watching him pee. This is just like that “Don’t think about Pink Elephants” paradox, Denis thought. And soon enough he was thinking of pink elephants and whizzing like one. It felt tremendous. It didn’t sound right, though.
Denis opened his eyes and redirected the stream into the bowl. Fortunately, he hadn’t hit any of the Valli Woollys. He would mop up later. He looked around the room, musing on whether turning your downstairs guest bathroom into a shrine to your daughter was an act of love or depraved parenting. Maybe both. The photodocumentation was unpleasantly complete:
Infant Valli sitting on a cloud dressed as an angel, nothing being cuter than a dead baby;
Toddler Valli, plump and happy right before being put on her first diet;
six-year-old Valli faking her first smile, commemorating her tooth-losing debut, the missing chiclet entombed in a separate mat;
assorted girl Vallis seemingly photographed to accentuate her childhood nose, which mysteriously fell off at summer camp when she was fourteen;
Sweet-and-Sour Sixteen Valli, shortly after breasts miraculously appeared on her over Christmas break;
Malibu Valli, Paxil Valli, Hair-Extensions Valli, Celexa Valli, Liposucked Valli, Stairmaster-Abusing Valli, Ears-Pinned Valli;
Equestrian Valli, standing next to Spencer, her personal horse, his gigantic black schlong snaking up the back of her jodhpurs…
That couldn’t be right. Denis finished his business and took the photograph down. The schlong was anatomically incorrect and a recent addition, judging from the carefully inked into the corner of the frame. Denis tried to rub the offending appendage off with his thumb. Stuart Kramer only worked in permanent marker, it seemed. Denis spat on Valli Woolly and pressed harder. Imagining he was getting somewhere, he placed the frame on the counter, spat twice, and rubbed as hard as he could with the heel of his palm. The glass cracked.
“Fine,” Denis said aloud, “if that’s the way you want it.” He wrapped a towel around his hand and smashed the glass. He picked out the schlong shards and tinkled them into the toilet. He then placed the frame on the ground, as if it had fallen off the wall.
Denis found it supremely ironic that he was doing all this to protect Valli Woolly, after that vicious whispering campaign she financed against him when they both ran for student council vice president. He uncovered the dirty trick when one of the hired lips came up to him in the hall and said, “You know that Cooverman kid? My uncle’s his doctor. Says he’s got that disease where you don’t have any pubes. That’s why he doesn’t go to gym.” That her own henchmen didn’t know who Denis was suggested Valli was wasting her money. Nevertheless, Denis assured his own defeat, over Rich’s strenuous and colorful objections, by writing a letter to the BG Charger denying he had Kallmann’s syndrome but arguing it shouldn’t matter if he did as the presence or absence of pubic hair had no bearing on the duties of student council vice president, and that his gym attendance was not significantly below average. Charger editor Dana Mus-grave illustrated Denis’s impassioned defense with a photograph of a hairless micropenis she had found on the Internet. Dr. Henneman confiscated all copies of the paper, except for a dozen or so, which were enough. Denis and Valli subsequently lost by spectacular margins to Steph Wu, who handed out fortune cookies reading VOTE WU VP FOR STUDENT PROSPERITY.
DENIS WAS ON HIS KNEES, carefully arranging unmarked shards in a statistically likely scatter pattern on the floor, when he heard the door open behind him, then shut.
The smell of lunch meat and salad dressing permeated the bathroom.
“Good evening, Greg,” Denis said without looking. He rose to his feet, his back still to the door. He sighed, and turned.
Greg Saloga’s face was as large and red as it had ever been.
“Go ahead,” Denis said. “If somebody’s going to kill me tonight, it should be you. You’ve earned it.”
Greg Saloga’s lip spasmed with rage. His hands reached for Denis’s throat. They went past it. He dropped his big tomato head on Denis’s shoulder and began to cry.
Denis’s relationship with Greg Saloga was complicated. It had begun in the fifth grade, with threats and extortions, and had gotten physical in middle school. The usual bully-pantywaist dynamic. Then came high school. While other young thugs left behind the childish pleasures of brute violence and graduated to the more sophisticated sociopathologies of torment, terror and pain as theater (wedgies, swirlies, et al.), Greg Saloga did not have the mental toolbox for psychological abuse and could not understand the appeal of physical assaults designed to deliver more humiliation than pain. So he kept doing what he had been doing to Denis, figuring it was either him or small animals, and that led someplace bad. Denis wasn’t happy with the stunted arrangement, but convinced himself that being Greg Saloga’s punching bitch protected him from the state-of-the-art degradations that were visited upon Rich nearly every day. It didn’t, but that’s enabling for you.
And now Greg Saloga was bawling all over him, taking their relationship in a whole new sick direction.
“How did you know?” Greg Saloga wailed.
Denis reviewed the inner monologue he had attributed to this sorry mess on his shoulder:
“I am cruel and violent because I was unloved as a baby, or I was sexually abused or something.”
Denis hoped it was the something. He wasn’t prepared for either of the other conversations. What he didn’t know was that Greg had already had those conversations with Becky Reese, his very special date for the evening. Over the past eleven hours Becky and Greg had shared ice cream and tears; Greg had admitted dark terrible things and Becky had assured him that he was still a good person and that he was loved. She would spring Jesus on him tomorrow.
And so, Greg Saloga was not looking to Denis for answers. He wanted forgiveness.
The blubbering went on for some time. Denis stood still, soaking up Greg Saloga’s pain, a little afraid of what might happen if he tried to wrap it up. In the meantime, he concluded that Valli Woolly looked better with her old nose. It was very British royal family, a shame she lopped it off. Her new nose was too small for the available space, floating like a tiny sailboat in a sea of cheek.
After what in real time was less than two minutes, Greg Saloga lifted his head. He looked stricken. “Did I do that?” He reached tentatively for Denis’s face, and pulled back, repulsed.
“No,” Denis said. “An accident. Series of.”
“Sometimes I don’t remember doing it,” Greg Saloga said.
“I’d have that looked at,” Denis advised.
“Yeah,” nodded Greg Saloga. “Can I call you? To talk about it?”
“Sure. Or maybe a trained professional would be better.”
“Hug,” Greg Saloga said. He hugged. “Hugging’s good,” he snuffled. Then he blew his nose on Denis’s shirt.
Outside the bathroom, Greg Saloga checked to see if anyone had noticed them exit together. Satisfied no one had, he viciously twisted Denis’s tit.
“Ahgg!” responded Denis.
“You’re lucky I’m in a generous mood!” Greg Saloga yelled for the benefit of everyone, swaggering away.
Denis was ready to go home now. He would leave through the back, so as not to disturb the gang bacchanal Beth was no doubt hosting in the front room. Wow, Denis thought, he had gone from smitten to bitter in less than an hour; he was healing remarkably well.
THE KITCHEN was unnecessarily immense, as no one in the Woolly family ate anything with the exception of Mr. Woolly, and all he ate was scotch. It was done in Country Quaint, with lots of milk green and white cream slopped onto fresh-cut wood cabinets and floors
that had been given “a story” by a guy named Tommy with a motorcycle chain. The endless counter space was covered with the asses of thirty party girls, dangling their legs like bait for the school of party boys who were rotating through the selection counterclockwise. It was less deafening back there, meaning the girls could understand the inane things the boys were saying to them. They didn’t seem to care.
Denis wandered into a sales pitch Henry Giroux was giving two sophomore boys who were not yet onto Henry Giroux.
“You got any X?”
“What you wants is f-X,” Henry Giroux said. “The Effexor be inhibitin’ the reuptake fo’real.”
“How about acid? You got any acid?”
“The Ritz been known to cause some serious hallucinatin’.”
“If you’re into imagining insects and snakes crawling on you,” Denis kibitzed.
“Whoa,” the first sophomore said.
“How much?” inquired the second one.
GLANCING AROUND THE KITCHEN, not looking for Beth at all, Denis’s eyes stumbled upon huge brown boob tops that to his amazement belonged to Divya Gupta, his debating partner. She was across the room, wearing a party sari that was missing some essential drapings, accentuating her zaftigitty in a way that wool pants and white Oxford shirts never did. Her black hair was unbound from her skull and fell nearly to her waist. She was attended by two males, neither of them dweebs, who were obviously from another school and did not know her alter ego as Denis’s studious but loose-lipped sidekick. So this was what those leibfraumilching New Trier guys wanted, and not her negative constructive. Denis considered the proposition that while he had been off chasing an angel, the real woman for him was right in his own intermural backyard.
Their eyes met from across the room.
She gave him the finger.
“Let us vow to never again choose indulgence over excellence, whether it be getting sloppy drunk, revealing secrets and betraying our partner, or something else.”
The wounds were still too fresh. He would try her again at Mr. Peterson’s Declaration of Independence and Rebuttal barbecue in July.
DENIS WAS ALMOST TO THE DOOR when he noticed the phone. He should call, he thought, to spare his parents the additional twenty minutes of anguish it would take him to walk home, or better yet, get them to come pick him up.
It went straight to message. (There were already several messages from neighbors wanting to know what the hell was going on over there; and three from Denis’s mother, saying they were stranded on some old road on account of his father always having to relive his glory days, and where was her son, at which hospital?) “I guess you’re asleep,” Denis said, or still publicly fornicating, he shuddered, “but I just wanted you to know I’m on my way home, and…I have an explanation and…I love you. See you soon, or in the morning. Love you.”
“Le Coove!”
Rich ambled across the kitchen, carrying two plates heaped with nosh.
“Check it out,” Rich yelled. “Pedophilia!”
Denis was still holding the phone. “There’s no pedophilia here,” he said quickly into the receiver and hung up. “Where?”
In the pantry a compact balding man in pink polo shirt and black warm-up pants had cornered Anna-belle Leigh, technically now a sophomore. He was acting sophisticated and older-mannish, tossing a five-pound bag of sugar from hand to hand.
“I always thought he was gay,” Rich said.
“Coach Raupp?”
“The way he always watched to make sure we took showers. Which just goes to show, my gaydar sucks donkey dick.”
Rich handed Denis one of his plates. It was filled with all of Denis’s favorite party foods, carefully arrayed in the approximate order Denis would eat them. It was like they were married.
“Thanks.”
“Hey, did you know they call us ‘Dick Muncher and The Penis’?”
“I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“So, hey, ¿Dónde está Elizabeta?”
“Wherever.” Denis folded some blue hummus into his mouth to underline his ennui.
Rich swirled a bluish chicken wing in some orangey honey mustard. “Told you that speech was a good idea.”
“What are you talking about? What that’s happened tonight could possibly be construed as ‘good’?”
“Closure, dude. If you hadn’t given that speech, you would’ve never found out what a scary whackjob Beth Cooper was, so no other girl would ever measure up to her mythic proportions, and the one you ended up marrying because she got pregnant or your mom was dying, she’d be haunted and tormented until she had such low self-esteem she’d be willing to put on a cheerleading outfit and a Beth Cooper mask just to get some conjugal pipe.”
“Do you write these things out or do they just flow out of your ass?”
“Improvisation is writing.”
“Well. She’s not a scary whackjob.” Then: “She’s not a whackjob.”
“Don’t backpedal, dude. Onward. ¡Vamanos! In fact, your new unrequited obsession might be at this very party. And speaking of, did you see Gupta?”
“She has lady parts, evidently.”
“Talk about your hot and spicy curry coconuts!”
“Coconut curry is Thai, Rich, not Indian.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I have to write a term paper about international boobs.”
“Oh, no,” Denis said.
Rich saw it, too, but his reaction was less dread than uncontainable glee.
“Your secret shame!”
PATTY KECK just happened to wander up, unconvincingly. She was with Victoria Smeltzer, or as she was known in the girls’ locker room, Skeletori. Patty was wearing hip huggers and a belly shirt, neither of which was a good idea. Victoria had on a black shift and so much foundation it was disconcerting to see her upright.
“I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Patty.”
“I loved your speech, Denis,” Victoria said. “You said some very perceptive things.”
Patty redirected her friend at Rich. “Richard, you know Victoria?”
“Certanamente,” Rich said. “You’ve lost weight, Vick.”
Victoria bared her see-through teeth. She bowed her head shyly, and noticed Rich’s stocking feet. “You’re not wearing shoes.”
“Nobody wears shoes anymore,” Rich said.
Victoria swooned, though it may have been her blood sugar.
“Denny,” Patty said, using the special name Denis hated. “What happened to your poor face?”
Denis did not immediately answer. Patty, he knew from experience, did not require responses in order to keep a conversation going. Instead, he was thinking, This is my rung. This was where he was going to spend the rest of his life, in regrettable grapplings with women he was ashamed to be seen with, women who were his social and physical equals. Denis had dared to court the sun, and for this hubris he was hurtled back into the muck. He was the Icarus of love.
“—all purply and icky yellow,” Patty was yammering. “Greg Saloga beat you up, I’ll bet. Did you see him here with that wheelchair girl? What disease does she have again?”
Denis had a horrible thought: What if Patty Keck was it? What if hers was the only tongue ever to enter his mouth, rooting around like a dog with his head in a bucket of chicken? Or, what if Patty got that stomach stapling she always talked about, and it turned out she really would be cute if she lost forty pounds? That would be the end of him, most likely. Patty would move up to average-looking guys, and with Rich spending all his time with Skeletori over there, Denis would be alone.
“Valli Woolly paid someone to beat you up! Is that what happened?”
Patty paused, meaning Denis could speak now.
“Uh, no,” Denis said, mentally sorting his accumulated wounds in correct chronological order. “First—”
“The Coove had a little dustup with Beth Cooper’s boyfriend,” Rich interjected.
Patty Keck’s eyes slat. “Beth Cooper.”
“Yeah,” Rich casually falsified, “her ex-boyfriend, army, dark ops, couldn’t stand the idea of Beth and the Coove together. So it came to blows. You think this is bad, you should see him.”
Denis liked this scenario much better than the truth. “I feel terrible about it,” he went along, shaking his head sadly. “He’s at the hospital. I hope he makes it.”
“Actually,” Victoria said, “he’s upstairs.”
15.
THE DEAD KID
I THOUGHT THIS WAS A PARTY! LET’S DANCE!
REN MCCORMICK
“WHOA, THE TIME!” Rich said, glancing at his bare wrist. “My female fiancée is getting off her shift, at Hooters, and we promised to meet her.”
Denis was struggling with the back door. It was locked, dead-bolted, to prevent any of Valli’s so-called friends from messing in her father’s authentic English garden with its valuable antique gnomes.
Rich grabbed the back of Denis’s shirt and yanked him in the other direction. Denis waved noncommittally as he was dragged away. “Nice seeing you.”
“Me, too,” Patty called after him.
THE FRONT DOOR TANTALIZED DENIS, three cliques ahead. He just needed to get past the French Clubettes, slurring the best French of their lives, some gearheads, not so surreptitiously casing the alarm system, and the mathletes who had made it just inside the door and stayed there. Denis could almost smell the safety of his home, of his bed, where he intended to spend the next ten weeks before leaving for Northwestern, where even the football players were his size.
Two large hands clamped his shoulders from behind, and spun him around.
“Will you remember me?”
It was the Big Girl, only she seemed bigger.
“I will remember you,” she said, and then sang it,
I will remember you…
Then she remembered him, “Hey, you’re that creepy dork who gave that creepy dork speech!”
Despite or perhaps because of this, the Big Girl cupped the back of Denis’s head and mashed his face into hers, prying his mouth open with her strong, sinewy tongue. She pillaged his teeth and tonsils with a voracity that made Patty Keck’s frenching seem coy. Plus, there was suction. Denis once had a dream like this, involving Gardulla the Hutt, which did not end well. He tried to tear himself loose, but found that every move sucked him deeper inside her.