by Richard Fore
“You’re right,” I say. “I remember Montana Wildhack. How do you think Chris is doing with Starry?”
“Just think,” says Seth ignoring my question, “if she actually likes Vonnegut so much that she adopted her stage name after one of his characters, she’s bound to like you. After all, you’re just a younger version of his most famous character.”
“Don’t start.” I look around for Chris and don’t see him. “I’m nothing like Kilgore Trout.”
Seth waits to respond, taking a slow drink of beer like a cat toying with a mouse. “Yes, you are. Fifty years from now you’ll be exactly like him. Bitter and alone, an angry old author living in total obscurity. The only real difference is that Trout published novels and stories en masse, they just didn’t make money. You on the other hand, you’ll have written all these works, you’ll just never have allowed anyone to read them.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’ve never read anything you wrote, anything at all. Neither has Chris. And I don’t think you have any other close friends except for Jessica, and since I’ve never actually seen you with her, I can’t be sure she even actually exists.”
“And you never will. You’re the kind of guy she’d sleep with.”
Seth gives me a quizzical look, wonders if he should be insulted. “Pardon?”
“That wasn’t meant to be offensive. I don’t think you’re a bad guy. If I had a sister, I would have no problem with you dating her. It’s just… I like Jessica a lot. I’m not in love with her, but I have some pretty strong feelings for her. And you are the kind of guy she’d go for. Not a jerk, a bad boy, or a cheater, although at present she is with a guy who is all of these things. But you’re someone I could see her wanting. You’re a guy who’s a musician, a guy who is more outgoing and confident than I am. She’d be attracted to you. And you would go for her too, I think. And it might even work out. That’s what scares me.
“I admit I’m being unreasonable about this. But it’s the way I’m going to be. I’m not totally hung up on Jessica. I’ve been interested in other women since I met her. It hasn’t been easy, it still isn’t easy. I don’t know if you’ve ever literally had a girl crying on your shoulder because someone she’s taken back before has left her yet again, and if that same girl has been someone you’d give anything in the world to wrap your arms around and kiss, but it isn’t easy to experience.
“If I ever meet someone else and fall for her, make it work, well then I wouldn’t have a problem with you and Jessica being together. But until that happens, you’re not going to meet her. Because I need to have a friend that’s able to convince me to crawl out of my hole once in awhile, and if I see you holding Jessica’s hand while I am still alone, well then I’d burrow back into my hole so deep no one would ever find me.”
“I believe you when you say you’re not in love with Jessica,” says Seth in a manner that indicates he does not. “At least you’re not so in love with her that you’re unable to be interested in anybody else. You’re defensive enough about Sabrina that it’s clear you do like her. Now, if you’re looking for an opportunity to chuck the Emperor into a reactor shaft and leave the past behind, you should ask Sabrina out.”
“I told you, she can ask me out and then I’ll be more than happy to go out with her.”
“And that my friend is why you’re Kilgore Trout.”
“Uh-huh.”
“First, back to the writing for a moment. You don’t ever share your own work. Why is that?”
“Do you share first drafts of your songs with an audience before they’re finished? Or do you wait for something to be completed before you unveil it to the public?”
“That’s true to a point. I don’t perform anything that isn’t finished to my personal satisfaction. However, whenever I do start something, I will stick with it until it’s finished. And then perform it. You, you don’t share anything. Not even stuff you showcase in class workshops. I assume you don’t have a problem sharing them in the classes themselves, because you’ve taken several and presumably passed them. But you never share with anyone outside of class.
“Now, Kilgore Trout is described as a bad writer, albeit one with some good ideas. I wouldn’t know if you’re a good writer or not. But the thing you have in common is that you both could never be successful as failure is what defines you. You wouldn’t know what to do with success. You couldn’t function as a success. Neither could Trout. The man lived in his basement apartment as a failed writer overlording over a bunch of little paperboys, bitter and cantankerous. He wouldn’t have been able to handle a real publication contract with any promotion. When he meets Billy Pilgrim, one of the only people who’s ever heard of him, and he goes to Billy’s anniversary party he’s asked by a woman what is the most famous story he’s ever written, and on the spot he just makes something up that doesn’t exist. I can see you doing that. I can see you being a bitter old man who never had the faintest taste of success but deep down you never really wanted it or could have handled it anyway.
“And you just proved this theory with your refusal to ask out Sabrina. You’ve been given all the evidence you could realistically ever hope for to prove she’s interested in you, and you still won’t ask her out. Why? Because you just couldn’t handle having a cute little dorky girlfriend who likes you, because your whole wide world of pessimism and negativity would collapse on itself leaving you unable to know how to live. You’re a young Kilgore Trout, that’s what you are. You should have a t-shirt that reads keep the hell out of my body bag.”
I hesitantly stare into my glass like a child looking down into a pool from a diving board. Hands begin to run up and down my chest as Montana Wild places her head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry for the interruption,” she says, “because you were having the quite the conversation there. But you see you’ve made a commitment to spend a little time with me.” She runs her fingers through my hair and sits on my lap.
Seth appears amused. “By all means, take him away. I’ve said what I wanted to say already. I’m morbidly curious though, just how big are those?”
Montana looks down at her breasts. “That’s a very good question. Undo me please, would you sweety?” she asks me. I undo her top’s knot. Montana fondles her breasts as Seth looks at her repellently. “I had them done big enough so that they transcend the traditional A-B-C-D measurement scale,” she says. “But I think I’m somewhere around an F or G-cup.”
“He thinks they’re too big,” I say, turning on Seth as if it needed to be verbalized.
Montana takes my hands and covers her breasts with them. Touching them is a joy as I have no connection to her, the opposite of getting to grab Jessica’s ass, where the longing for more dampened the experience.
“They occupy something of a specialized niche,” admits Montana. “They might be a bit much for some guys. But I’m like a cult leader. Every follower I do have is going to be mine completely.” She tilts her head to look at me. “You’d pretty much do anything I asked, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I say.
“You look like you’d happily down a glass of cyanide flavored Kool-Aid if she asked you to,” says Seth.
“Flavor-Aid,” says Montana. “The Kool-Aid Man would never hurt anybody.” She rises and pulls me out of my chair. “Come on, let’s go play.”
Taking me by one hand and holding her discarded top in the other Montana leads me into a dark and narrow hallway near the entrance of the club. Little rooms line either side, and as we search for a vacancy I spot Chris in one of the rooms with Starry. I wonder how much he’s spent on her given how long he’s been in there.
“Do you want a couch or a bed dance?” asks Montana.
I glance to either side of the hall and see that there’s a black leather couch in the room to the left, and to the right a bed that reminds me of the kind you lie on when being examined by a doctor. It has a single cushion. “What do you recommend?” I ask.
“Ah, so you’re a virgin,” s
he says. I try hard not to react to her words, don’t know if I succeed. “Well, it depends on what you want. If you want to experience my entire body pressing against yours, go for the bed. If you just want to play with my big boobies, get the couch.”
I look down at her jean shorts and imagine the thong she’s wearing beneath them, and her taking it off again to become completely nude.
“Couch,” I say.
“You’re definitely a guy who likes his titties, aren’t you?”
“Did Dickinson like her dashes?” I say instead of think.
Montana laughs. “Well, I can suffice for you, I know.” She leads me into the room on the left and gently pushes me onto the couch. “Now it’s twenty-five dollars per song, all right?” I’m able to give her exact change. “As soon as the music starts up we’ll begin.” Montana uses the down time to take off her boots and shorts, leaving only her thong and hat. She sits on my lap a moment before the song begins. Looking at her, I’m unsure what music she begins to dance to. It could be Moonlight Sonata, it could be Cop Killer. We could be in the vacuum of space for all I know.
Montana straddles me, taking off her hat and hoisting it into the air as if she were riding a wild bull. She then tosses it aside and nibbles on my ear. “Oh, that’s right,” she whispers, “you want to get better acquainted with the twins.” She grabs my head and shoves it between her breasts. “I hope you can hold your breath baby, cuz’ I’m not letting you up for awhile.” She continues to press my head against her chest, finally releasing me and folding her arms around her breasts, concealing them.
Montana stands up and turns around, arms still folded. She falls back into my lap and grinds herself into me. I fondle her breasts from behind and smell her hair. I want this moment, where this beautiful woman whose real name I don’t know is letting me touch her, to go on forever. I see all of her beauty and she sees none of my flaws. We are complete strangers, and that is why she allows me this pleasure.
Montana turns again to face me, rubs both breasts against my face. Bounding off my lap, she sits next to me on the couch and lays her head on my shoulder, mock cuddling with me. “That was fun,” she says. “Can I go for another ride?”
“Next time. I’d like to see you again,” I say as if I were asking for a second date after walking her to her porch.
“I’ll be here.” Montana grabs her clothes but makes no move to actually put them back on. “So what’s your name?” she asks, hurling a brick through the glass window that keeps us strangers.
“Ben,” I say. Benjamin is the suggested name for the hero in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. And there’s also Ben Reilly, the alias used by the Scarlet Spider. Ben is a good name.
“Why don’t I believe that?” asks Montana. “I’ll tell you my real name if you tell me yours.”
She’s intent on making this difficult. But how did she know? “Actually, I like your stage name. You were given your birth name. It doesn’t say anything about you. But you picked your stage name, and picked it for a reason. It does say something about you.”
“So it does,” says Montana. “Not too many people catch onto that, although I heard you talking with your friend about Kilgore Trout earlier, so you must be Vonnegut fans.”
“Yeah,” I say. “My friend Seth, he thinks I’m like Kilgore Trout.”
“Are you a writer?”
“No. But then neither was he. I’m a wannabe at Northwestern majoring in English and minoring in creative writing.”
“Really? That’s where I’m doing my thesis on Vonnegut. I don’t write any fiction myself, I just criticize other peoples’ work.”
“You ever think about just hiring Vonnegut to write your thesis for you?”
Montana laughs. “Vonnegut understands his own work quite poorly, remember?”
“I’m looking forward to having my own work grossly misinterpreted by critics some day.”
“Well, maybe I’ll run into you one day on campus and you can show me something.”
“I’m just an undergraduate.”
“Still, I might see you. And you can also come back here soon and take me for another ride. Do you like the cowgirl theme I’m sporting?”
“Absolutely, though you might want to try a southern accent to complete the motif.”
“You know I used to, but I just got so sick of saying ya’ll all the time and how fake it was.” She glances at her chest. “I hope the irony of that one isn’t lost on you. Well, I’d best go back out there and see if I can earn any more tuition money. It was nice to meet you, anonymous young man.”
“It was nice to meet you, Montana.” She kisses my cheek.
Montana had to go and humanize herself. She’s real to me now, someone more like Jessica than a fantasy like Montana Wild or Power Girl. I try not to dwell on Jessica as I head back to the table and fail.
“Hey, you get yours?” asks Chris, finally emerging from his own room and slapping me on the back. “I spent a little more than I should have, but it was money well spent, let me tell you! I think I just about sucked Beth’s toenail polish right off!”
I walk with Chris back to our table, glancing behind me and seeing Montana sitting on the lap of another guy. I paid twenty-five dollars to buy her affection, now he will. I imagine Jessica being affectionate with me. And I wonder what it costs to not have to pay for it.
Chapter 3: The Riddle of Pong
I must say something. Last semester my writing professor told me that I should participate more during story workshops. Since then I’ve attempted to make at least one substantial comment per class session. The problem is the quality of the stories written by my classmates. Being discussed now is the tale of a lad who at a fraternity party enters a completely darkened bedroom and engages in sexual intercourse with a girl whom he knows to be under the false impression that she’s actually having sex with her boyfriend. Post-coitus the truth comes out and ramifications follow, all presented in a humorous fashion. The author may well have a future writing direct-to-DVD National Lampoon Presents sex comedies, but if that’s the niche he wishes to carve out for himself he really shouldn’t be seeking constructive criticism from me. But I have a participation grade to consider, so I must say something. And since I have no comments, I decide on asking a question that I admittedly wouldn’t mind having answered.
“I find it odd that people at a fraternity party are playing Pong on page thirteen,” I say after raising my hand. “I mean it’s described as beer Pong, but what does that mean exactly? Did they take a Pong system out of the attic, dust it off, and then take shots while they play? These guys aren’t really described as being overly geeky, either. I think this concept either needs to be made clearer or dropped entirely.”
The room becomes completely silent and everyone stares at me, as if an unwelcome stranger had just pushed open the doors of the town saloon in a western. Of the dozen or so students, half appear baffled, the others wondering if I’m being serious. My professor covers her mouth with her knuckle to keep from laughing.
“Are you for real, man?” I hear someone ask.
“You’re confusing your pongs,” says the professor, composure regained. “You’re thinking of the old videogame where the ball bounces off the left and right paddles. Beer pong is a drinking game where you throw ping-pong balls into plastic cups filled with beer.”
That Professor McMullan was able to refrain from breaking into hysterics is to her credit. Michelle, another student who has also written of raunchy escapades at parties whispers something to her friend Amber and they both laugh. Dwayne, the story’s author, who happens to be wearing a Budweiser hat stares at me as if I were a creature from myth, questioning whether one such as I could actually exist.
“I also found some of the dialogue a little unbelievable,” I say.
Sitting in the office of my professor awaiting her return, I imagine myself as a young boy being told by my father to solve The Riddle of Pong. “No one in this world can you trust,” says Dad. “Not men, not
women, not beasts. But this,” he says as he hands me an ancient joystick, “this you can trust.”
I journey through life without ever having solved the riddle until one day in college I manage to stumble upon an Atari-brand Pong console at a yard sale. Grabbing it with both hands I raise it triumphantly towards the sky, believing I have my answer.
An invitation to a fraternity party follows, given to me by Seth. The invite speaks of a thousand full kegs, girls making out with each other with reckless abandon, and a personal bong for every reveler among many other promised wild party wonders. “Be there or be square,” Seth urges as he traces a square with his hands. “Oh, and there’ll be beer pong, so come prepared.”
Ready to party, I put on a red t-shirt, Oshkosh B'Gosh overalls, and a The Amazing Spider-Man backpack that I’m not even cool enough to sling over just one shoulder. I knock on the door of the fraternity house and I’m reluctantly admitted after stating that I’m a friend of Seth’s. “I’m here for beer pong,” I proudly declare, and boast of my skill. A tall jock wearing a letterman’s jacket imprinted with a large S leads me into the basement. Inquiring about his letter, he responds that they are the Fraternity of Set. “We worship the great serpent,” he says coldly.
The basement has a huge ping-pong table covered with red and blue plastic cups filled with beer. On either end of the table two fraternity brothers toss ping-pong balls into the cups with perfect aim. Each brother has a topless woman next to him who dances with a snake coiled around her body.
On the other side of the room are two TV trays, each displaying a television. I remove the Pong console from my backpack and attempt to connect it to the first television. But I fail. The set is too modern, a nice flatscreen with two HDMI connections, incompatible with my console’s ancient switchbox. The second TV is older than the first, predating HDMI, a heavy relic from the past before the dawn of the lightweight flatscreens. It features an RF switch connector, but even this is too new. I break into a cold sweat, search frantically around the room for a compatible television, but find only kegs and plastic cups. “What of Pong?” I yell. “I was told there’d be Pong!”