Knowing all that, how can I not find it fascinating? This act that requires odd-looking body parts to get weird and wet and combine together and makes everyone feel uncomfortable at least a little is the one thing that keeps our species on planet earth.
I mean, HOW DOES EVERYONE NOT FIND IT AS FASCINATING AS ME?!
* * *
Oh, Pen. Because other people have better things to think about, I guess. Or maybe because if they thought about it as much as I think about it, they’d get horny as much as I get horny and then everyone would masturbate as much as me and no one would do anything else and all of society would stop functioning.
Like now. No way could I do homework now. No, no, no, no, no way. My head’s got all these thoughts and images and my body is throbbing and fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-ck, I’m going to look at his pictures on Facebook, aren’t I? Yes, I totally am. I fall back on my bed, tap on my phone, open the app, search my friends, type his name:
Benedict Pendleton.
We’re still friends from the time we first signed up in junior high, and even though I barely post on it anymore because my mom’s on it, I bet Benedict uses it still. Of course he does.
Of course.
Oh-my-god, he’s such a dork. He’s got pictures of himself in a suit standing in front of his fancy car. Oh-my-god, he’s got pictures of his computer game scores. With him in black sunglasses pointing at the screen like he’s the coolest person in the world for being good at a silly game when it actually makes him the least cool person in the world. How can someone be so oblivious to how the rest of us at school behave and dress?
And,
AND,
AND OH-MY-GOD,
HOW CAN THAT SOMEONE TURN ME ON SO MUCH?!
I keep swiping through his pictures while my free hand—not even knowing what it is doing—digs under the top of my jeans, doesn’t even unbutton them, maybe if I had unbuttoned them I could have stopped or closed the door or gotten under my bedcover or SOMETHING but instead I just keep swiping through the pictures and touching myself. My underwear is drenched and it is so gross, sex is so gross, my body is gross, but it’s so sexy when I feel gross, like the more animal and disgusting I am the more my body gushes. FREAK.
Of course I keep touching and swiping pictures and touching and then I stop on this one close-up of just Benedict’s eyes and the top of his nose and I feel like he is in the room with me and it is eerie and I hate it and I keep looking at it. I mean, those eyes are not the eyes of a human! They are empty! They go on forever! It’s a Tin Man stare! Like he’s got no soul! Or he doesn’t think you have one or he’s going to steal yours or I don’t know it’s so creepy I can’t breathe right!
I’m moaning, I don’t even know I’m moaning, IF I KNEW I WAS MOANING, I WOULD HAVE STOPPED.
But I don’t know, and my body is lifting off the bed, not really, but sort of, and this orgasm is going to be the best orgasm of my life and am I crying? I don’t even know, but my body is humming, yes, humming, crying, moaning, humming, and body shaking and MOANING and …
A shadow at the door.
Then a voice.
A screaming voice.
My mother’s screaming voice.
“AAAAAH! AAAAAH! AAAAAAH!” These screams of hers are sirens, sirens that knock over buildings, sirens that kill dogs, sirens that mark the end of the world.
My body finishes, my moans stop, all joy stops, and as soon I can dig my voice out of its deep-freeze mortification, I yell, not even half as loud as her, but as loud as I can, “I WAS SINGING, MOM! I WAS SINGING TO A SONG ON MY PHONE!” This is insane. But what else could I have said? My mother is the biggest Catholic ever to be a Catholic who thinks all people that aren’t Catholic are demons going to hell. She doesn’t want the truth, that she just caught her sixteen-year-old daughter masturbating to pictures on her phone; she wants any lie she can grasp on to to delude her into believing I’m not a dirty-slut-heathen-Antichrist.
But her screams don’t stop. Words start forming. “PENELOPE! PENELOPE! HOW COULD YOU! HOW COULD YOU!” Then back to guttural wails. As if her organs are being yanked out through her nose. She is pacing in the hallway. She can’t look at me. Can’t even look in my room. I get to my feet and wipe my fingers on my jeans and move toward the door.
I’ll hug her, I’ll calm her down. Yeah, that’ll work. Do that, Pen.
My mother gets like this—I mean, never this bad, but gets hysterical once a month or so. Usually over my dad yelling at her or me ignoring her, and if I just grab her and wrap my arms around her, she usually starts settling down.
But just before I step into the hallway, I stop. I look. My mother in her pink muumuu nightgown that hasn’t been taken off in three days, her neck craned toward the ceiling, eyes clenched closed, arms shaking toward God, surely asking him what she did to deserve such a horrible daughter.
If she had walked into my bedroom and found me dead instead of masturbating, my mother would have had a nice, contained, respectful cry. She would have called Father Jeremy and he would have come over and they would have held hands and prayed to Jesus at the side of my bed. Then she would have worked tirelessly to throw a very elaborate funeral where she would have repeated, “She’s with Jesus now, she’s in Jesus’s arms now,” and she would have loved how everyone felt sorry for her, how they all thought she was handling her daughter’s death with “God’s grace.”
And that vision, that vision of my stoic mother at my funeral contrasting with this madwoman throwing a temper tantrum because I had my hand down my jeans … I don’t know. I cracked. Something in me cracked. I always tried to appease my mom’s craziness.
But—
“FUCK YOU, MOM! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!” I spent most of my life wanting to tell my mom to fuck off. This was the first time I actually did it.
She stopped her yells, turned toward me. No more hysteria. Just pure rage. “AAAAAAAAH!” And she charged at me like a rabid elephant and I slammed the door in her face and locked it. She hit the frame and yelled and pounded and demanded I let her in.
My dad, who probably wouldn’t have woken up from his La-Z-Boy downstairs if you stabbed him in the leg with a steak knife, started yelling at her, “WHAT’S ALL THIS YELLING?! WHY ARE YOU SO CRAZY?!”
And she yelled back and he yelled louder. And my mother told him he was the worst husband and I was the worst daughter and then he said no, she was the craziest bitch alive. It got more vile from there.
It had been a while, but I knew their yelling match was going to end with someone getting hit, so I put my earphones on and turned the music so loud that I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.
* * *
When I was about five, my mom got pregnant. You can’t imagine how happy I was. Even when I was that young, I knew my parents were nuts, but to have a baby brother or sister that I could talk to and hold at night when they fought? This was all I asked or prayed or thought about. I wanted this baby so much I’d cry at night wishing for it.
But then my mom got sick and went to the hospital, and I stayed with my aunt for a week. When I finally was allowed back home, all I wanted to know was if the baby was okay.
And my mom said, “God made me give the baby back to him.” She didn’t say it with sadness, or even like she was trying to make me feel better. She said it like she was warning me. Like maybe God could make her give me back too. She never mentioned the baby again. My dad never mentioned it at all. I never asked.
But for years, I’d have dreams of my mom coming into my room while I was sleeping, holding this dead fetus, asking me if I wanted to hold my baby brother. (Always a boy in the dream, I don’t know why.) And I’d say yes because—even though I was terrified—I had to protect the baby like I promised, right? But when I’d reach out, the baby would turn into a pillow and my mom would put it over my face … and I’d wake up.
That night, even though my door was locked, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even stop staring at the doorknob. I kept waiting for
my mom to break in and give her horrible, masturbating daughter back to God.
15
BENEDICT MAXIMUS PE …
After I got beaten up on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at school were not very positive experiences. I still was sure people were laughing at me, even if they were only doing it inside their minds. Robert still hated me and I hated him for hating me. That’s not precisely true. I hated myself for having a best friend who hated me. Evil Benny has more to say about this, but I’m trying to ignore Evil Benny.
Penelope Lupo was not in school either day. There was a rumor she tried to kill herself and was in an insane asylum. I would have believed this on Tuesday, but after what happened in the dean’s office, I don’t. But I’m not very smart right now, so I don’t think I should believe what I don’t believe. That makes no sense. I apologize for not being intelligent anymore.
Usually I did not notice, or care, whether someone like Penelope was in school or even alive. But I kept thinking about her smell and even though I should be able to stop myself from thinking about something so unimportant as a girl’s smell, my “powers of self-empowerment” (from chapter four in my dad’s book) were not very powerful at all right now.
* * *
I did have a secret in my head that I would repeat over and over if my mind became too dark with destructive thoughts: Christmas vacation started Saturday, and when I returned to school in January, I would be a new person. My sister and mom, after I asked for help, spent the rest of our dinner at the Cheesecake Factory planning how they were going to give me the “biggest makeover in history” during the break. My mom reminded me that I was great just the way I was but that sometimes you have to change some things so other people can see it as well.
That’s what good moms are supposed to say. But the truth was, at this current time, I was a worthless, friendless loser. But maybe if I changed so that other people stopped thinking I was a worthless, friendless loser, then maybe I’d stop thinking I was one too.
* * *
At lunch Friday, I ate in the library bathroom because no one ever uses it because no one even knows the library has a bathroom. Except me. And Robert. And, I learned halfway through my peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich, the weirdest kid in the junior class: Gator Green.
“Oh,” he said as he swung open the bathroom door and saw me. “What are you doing here?”
“Eating lunch,” I said, which was true even though it sounded ridiculous.
“Oh.” Gator used to be a popular athlete in junior high, but then his dad died and he got strange. For instance, right now he looked like he was having a conversation with an imaginary friend. I should say that I’d probably get strange if my dad died too. (Evil Benny says it would be difficult for me to get much stranger than I already am.)
“Do you come here often?” I asked. This made me sound like we were on a bad television show about people who don’t know how to talk to girls. Which, obviously, we don’t know how to because if we did we both wouldn’t hide out in a bathroom no one else knows exists.
“Yes, I come hang here when I need to be alone.”
“Me too,” I said, even though this was the first time I had come here without Robert. Then we were both quiet. I kept taking small bites of my sandwich and looking mostly down at the floor. Gator, whose real name is George but for some reason prefers to be compared to a giant reptile, didn’t do anything but stand there, staring at me. He was thinking, I’m sure. But mostly it felt like he was trying to teleport me out of his special bathroom with his eyes. This was just another sign that I don’t fit in anywhere anymore, even with a kid who doesn’t fit in anywhere either.
“I’m going to go,” he said. “Do you think you’ll come back here often or do you think this will be your only time eating lunch alone in the library bathroom?” He didn’t say it like that to be mean. But I wanted to cry anyway. When you lose intelligence, like I have, you gain emotions. This is a terrible trade and I don’t recommend it to anyone.
“I … don’t know.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, if you decide you’d like to come back, maybe we will work out a schedule so we don’t come back at the same time.”
“That’s fair,” I said even though, again, my eyes began to well with tears.
“See ya, Benny,” Gator said, then turned and left. Him calling me Benny reminded me we were friends, sort of, back in third grade. Except then girls started liking him in fourth grade, and if girls like you, then you can’t really be friends with someone like me who girls don’t like. Someone who, as was recently proven, girls will never like. But now girls don’t like Gator anymore, so maybe we can become friends again. I was very desperate. Very, very desperate. But Gator doesn’t seem desperate like me. Or, like my sister says, like he doesn’t know what planet he’s on. He just seems like he doesn’t belong on this planet at all.
* * *
During seventh-period AP U.S. History, the teacher Mr. Rice started class by saying there would be a new student joining us in January and she was here today to introduce herself.
Because I was walking everywhere with my head down (so I wouldn’t see if anyone was mocking me) I hadn’t noticed the new girl standing by Mr. Rice when I walked into class. Because if I had been looking up, I would have noticed that the girl of my dreams would soon be attending Riverbend High School.
“Hi,” the girl said as she stepped forward to address us. She had blond hair. Golden hair. Her hair was not made of literal gold, obviously, but it’s a metaphor for how valuable her hair was to my senses. I enjoyed staring at it so much I think I was getting dizzy from its sheen. She wore a teal dress with small straps and high white heels, which made her look like she was going to a wedding in June and not to school in December. She had rosy cheeks, bright white teeth, and blue eyes that said to me, “Hi, Benedict, I am the manifestation of your romantic ideal and now you will spend the rest of your life obsessing over me.” And I said, “Okay,” but not out loud.
Her actual words, to the class, were “My name is Allison Wray. I’m from South Carolina and my mom got transferred to Chicago for work and everyone said Riverbend High School is the best school and so I’m really excited to be here and meet you all.” Then she giggled, which was nice because girls who giggle are probably nice to socially awkward boys like me. I couldn’t know, of course, how smart she was without seeing her class rank from her previous school, but considering that she was transferring into our Advanced Placement history class allowed me to give her a high probability for intelligence. The old Benedict from two days ago would have felt very confident that the arrival of my perfect female specimen was a sign that my life itself was going according to my perfect plan. But seeing her now only felt like a reminder that no girl like her would ever consider me and I am probably a delusional lunatic for thinking for even one second that she would.
After she introduced herself, she sat next to me in the front row. Let me repeat this so I can grasp it more completely: She sat next to me. Since I had been staring at her, without blinking, from the time Mr. Rice introduced her, I must assume she thought I’d be a friendly new face to connect with. She couldn’t have known, obviously, that I was the last person in Riverbend High School she should befriend if she wished to be anything other than an outcast.
“I was so nervous. Hope I did okay,” she whispered to me. Even her whisper had a small Southern accent that made me think of pretty wives in lawyer movies.
If only my sister had already started her lessons on how to be normal, I might have said something normal back to Allison Wray. Instead I said, “Because you are attractive and well spoken, I’m sure you will have a very fulfilling time here at Riverbend and you will go on to a very successful life.”
Then Allison Wray, the new girl and my dream girl, tried to hide her confused and maybe even frightened face as she turned ahead toward the teacher. She never looked my way again for the rest of class.
(Nor will she for eternity! Evil Benny said with
a cackle. He had never cackled before. Maybe as I become less smart, he’s becoming more evil.)
* * *
When the final bell rang, every student at Riverbend High School raced and yelled with one another to celebrate our school-free next two weeks.
Except for me. Obviously.
I went back to the library to take out books my dad wouldn’t yell at me for reading. (He doesn’t allow any fiction written in the past ten years because he said most of it will be irrelevant within eighteen months. He’s probably right. Of course he’s right.) I also looked in the bathroom for Gator even though I knew he wouldn’t be there. Mostly, I was just wasting time out of view from everyone else. So I couldn’t see how happy they all were and they couldn’t see how sad I was.
Even though my dad’s book talks about how you should never care about what other people think about you because other people only stand in the way between you and greatness, I decided that only works if you are a genius like him. I’m not a genius. A genius would never have lost his best friend, would never have gotten beaten up, would never have asked out five different girls and gotten rejected by all of them. A genius would have been able to say something funny to Gator Green to make him my friend and something charming to Allison Wray to make her my girl.
A genius would never be anything like me.
* * *
(Evil Benny didn’t say anything. Not right away. Then he said he might take a vacation because I was doing his job for him.)
16
pen
After the big fight with my mom and trying to ignore her fight with my dad, I fell asleep even though I thought I wouldn’t. Your body does all sorts of things you can’t control, I guess.
Usually when I woke up on a school morning, I’d hear my mom in the kitchen, maybe on the phone, maybe making me eggs if she was in a motherly mood. But the house was quiet. A quiet that made me squirm in my skin. When I was a kid and I’d wake up to the house this silent after my parents fought the night before, I’d always picture walking downstairs and finding their bloody, lifeless bodies.
The Nerdy and the Dirty Page 6