Decidedly Unawesome Revisited

The thing about sleeping around when you live on a small island, is the inevitable awkwardness of running into your exes every time you leave the house. This is one of the reasons I never slept around during the summer I lived on Martha's Vineyard. The other reason I was chaste when I lived here is because of the sheer volume of people on this island who I've seen scratching at their genitalia. Apparently, the only thing that spreads faster than a rumor here, is crabs.

Back when I used to surf Craigslist for...inspiration, I'd occasionally find an entry on the Boston site from some poor schlepp on The Vineyard. If I still had my car, and the old Grub Tub I used to have moored on the Cape, I'd have made the journey just to pity fuck the poor guys. No. No, I wouldn't. But I'd have thought about it.

When I still lived on the Cape, I'd occasionally fling with someone from the Vineyard. They'd have to make the trip over to a very descript bar near the Ferry (please leave your bad fairy puns out of my comments section), where we'd have drinks and see if we clicked. We, usually, did not. But one time a couple of times every once thrice in a while, I'd meet someone I clicked with in several different positions.

One of these occasions was Jordan.

After our Solarcain & Vicodin filled fuckfest, Jordan faded to little more than a sunburnt memory. I forgot his name, the sound of his voice, how cute his hair looked when it was disheveled, pretty much everything about him. Until this afternoon.

My father's wife was dragging us to our third Christmas party in two days. I love his wife. She's sweet, smiley, effervescent...shit, if they made Efferdent in grenadine flavor, they'd have to call it Corrine.

Last night's party was...not so good. I tried to socialize, but apart form one guy who kept telling me about his son, the writer, I didn't have anything in common with any of the super WASPS in the nest.

This morning, we went to my step-grandfather-in-law's house for some of the best scallop chowed in the world, and a few polite conversations.

This evening was another social gathering at the house of someone I'd never met. Or so I'd thought. Turns out it was the guy who's son was a writer, and his son, the writer, was home for Christmas.

"Hi." His son, the writer, said. "My name is Jordan. You look really familiar. Did we go to highschool together?"

"No." I said, not yet able to place him, but knowing I-- *danger* *danger* this is someone you've shared an awkward sexual encounter with, take evasive action. God, bless, my little synapse-alert switcher.

"Huh. I'd swear--" And I saw it in his eyes. "Right, you didn't use to have that beard. I met you" don't say over The Internet. Don't say over The Internet. "a couple of years ago at a poetry slam."

"Oh. Yea." I said. "I do those a lot."

"I bet you did." Asshole. "I used to do them all the time. Not anymore, though. Maybe once a year."

Was he talking about Internet hookups, or was he actually talking about poetry slams? "Still writing?"

"Yea." He said. We sort of stood there for a minute until his father, or my father, or my father's wife, or his father's wife, or someone said something. Unfortunately, what that person said was, "Why don't you show Safey that article you've been working on."

"Awesome." He said. Yeup, it was him. "I've got a copy in my room."

Did the bitch just wink at me? In front of my dad? Oh, hell no. "Ok, why don't you bring it down? I'm going to go get a Coke." And pour some of the Captain Morgan I have stashed in my flask into it.

His article sucked. It was about "Why I write". He used the word awesome four times.

"Cool." I said. Then made a mental note not to say it again. "Where are you publishing it?"

"Oh, I don't get my articles published. I have a little folder I keep them in. When I'm famous, I'm going to put them into a book of essays."

"Great." I was running out of non-committal adjectives. "I'm kinda tired. It was nice seeing you again, and talking to you, but I think I should go home."

"Want me to walk you there?"

No. "Uh, ok."

Most of the walk was idle chitchat about living on the island, and the year he'd spent in Japan, and then "I've never kissed someone with a beard." Christ, dude, shit like that was cute when I was 21, and you were 23, but you're 30 now, and I'm not that gullible.

"So...no Tom Cruise, then?"

"Tom Cruise doesn't have a beard." He said.

"You mean, besides Katie Holmes?"

"You're so witty." He said. I was thinking that was about as stale a pop culture reference as I've ever made. Still, it was in the service of keeping him from kissing me.

"How often do you come visit your Dad?"

"Oh, every year or so."

"You should really come more often." He said.

"I know." I replied. "I feel bad about not seeing my Dad, especially now that he's retired and his wife is--" And then he kissed me.

Fuck.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/163581.html

The Worst Thanksgiving Ever

The worst Thanksgiving ever happened between St. Augustine and Vero Beach Florida in 1995. I was eighteen, and angry at my family for not flying me back to New England for Thanksgiving. "But, Safey, your grandfather lives just a few hours away. And he says you never go and visit him." Probably because I hated the man. Everyone in the world had to conform to his timetable, and his way of life. If you did something that didn't fit exactly into the mold he had set for his life, he would spew forth venom that made Poison Dart Frogs and Sea Wasps blush and ask "Was that really necessary?" I made plans to stay there as short a time as I could.

My roommate, Matt, lived two and a half hours further south. He kindly offered to drop me off on his way to his happy platonic orgy of Thanksgiving Family Fun on Wednesday afternoon, and pick me up Saturday morning, so we could get work done before classes resumed on Monday. Truth be told, I had brought all the work I had to do with me, knowing there would be loads of time that I didn't want to deal with my grandfather.

On our way down, Matt decided to show me what was, at the time, The World's Largest Wal-Mart. A grocery store and three fast food restaurants in one department store was a little much for my non-Walmartian brain to deal with. I had to get away from the grocery section before my head a sploded. As I walked away, I heard a man absolutely screaming at an eight year old boy. The kid was bawling. And while I am just evil enough to be amused by kids who cry at ridiculous things like losing an annoying toy, or not getting to eat ice cream because they called their mother a bitch; seeing a defenseless kid being verbally abused in public while not being in injury threatening danger (I do believe a parent should scream their head off at a kid who is about to seriously hurt himself or someone else.), twists my psyche into something pretzilian and Herculean. It took every fibre of my being not to get involved. I did not know what the kid did that instigated the yelling. Unless there was physical violence, this was none of my business.

After we finished our BK or MCD "food", Matt and I headed back to the car. We were nearly in the car when I saw Screamy MacAsshole continuing to berate his kid. This was easily twenty minutes after I saw them by the grocery section. "Safey, are you ok?" I knew there were blood vessels bursting in my face.

"Do you want me to hit you again?" Again? "Because I'll beat your ass right here in the parking lot."

I snapped. This happens generally every three years or so, when something strikes me as so heinous, I lose all sense of boundaries and social behavior. "I fucken dare you."

"Excuse me?" This was none of my business. I should be in the car. I should be on my way to a miserable Thanksgiving with the one member of my family I truly couldn't stand. And maybe that was a part of the reason why I snapped.

"If you hit him while I'm in the same parking lot," Matt grabbed my arm, which I yanked from his grasp, "I will beat you til you bleed." I very much meant it.

"Safe, we should--" Matt looked into my eyes and backed off.

"No. We shouldn't. This guy has been yelling at this kid for at least a half hour, and he's threatening to beat him right here in public."

"Mind your fucken business, padre?"

Padre? As in Father? As in the thing he wasn't qualified to be? And here, I'm making a huge assumption. Maybe he wasn't a bad dad, maybe he was a kidnapper, or maybe he was what my friend referred to as Daddy Stove Top, a guy who just happened to be stuffing the kid's mom.

We were still close enough to the front entrance that the security guards could see us, and one of them, Spidey Sense all akimbo, came outside. "Is everything alright out here?"

"No." I said, in my sterncalm voice. "This man is threatening to beat up his son in your parking lot."

"Now wait a fucken minute. This isn't anybody's goddamn business."

"Actually, sir," the security guard said, "it is our business. You were asked to leave the store because you couldn't keep your language in check. I've already called the police. If I see you touch your son, I'll make sure your arrested for assaulting a minor. And I doubt the police will be real gentle with you."

The guard went on. But his presence made this very much No Longer My Business. Shaking, I followed Matt to his car. I buckled my seat belt, and we drove out of the parking lot. "I hope I didn't make things any worse for that kid." I said five minutes into the silence.

It was about to get dark when Matt dropped me off at my grandfather's condo. My grandfather's second wife (my grandmother had died in 1991), buzzed me in, and met me at the door. "Your grandfather is...I'm not sure where he is, but he's not in the house, Thank God. Your room is all made up. Do you want any ice cream or anything." I loved Caroline (my step-grandmother). I had no concept of what she was doing with my grandfather. She was unselfish, smart, funny, an English teacher. None of us knew that by next Thanksgiving she'd be ravaged with Cancer.

"No, thanks. I had a long trip."

"How about a game of Cribbage?" Ahh, Cribbage. The family card game.

"Sure. But if Grandpa comes home, let's hide the board. I don't think I can deal with him losing and accusing me of cheating. The only thing worse is actually losing to him."

After three games, and half a bag of Milano cookies, my grandfather came home, and the board and cards were hidden under one of the deck chairs.

"Well lookee who's here." Oh, great, he was drunk. "My favorite grandson. My only grandson."

"Hey Grandpa."

"Up for a game of cribbage?"

"No, I was thinking about turning in. I'm incredibly tired."

"You chicken?" I wanted to fire his internal author.

"Goodnight Grandpa."

I went to the guest room for about a half hour when I heard him snoring on one of the couches. I took the opportunity to sneak out to the beach and get some writing done. I was so incredibly proud of the poetry I wrote that night. It was so cutting edge, so Important. I've long since burned any and all copies of it, but that's because it was too amazing to be comprehended, not because it was horrible crap written by an egomaniacal eighteen year old with three different colored pens in his possession.

I snuck back into the house and went to sleep around three. At six, I woke up to my step-grandmother stage whispering. "Robert, you keep your voice down. Safe is in the other room trying to sleep."

"Well, he needs to get up. We should leave in an hour."

"For heaven's sake, we are not going to spend Thanksgiving at a boat yard--"

"A yacht club."

"A boat yard. This is Thanksgiving. If you want to go to a proper yacht club with a buffet service, that's fine. But I see no reason to drive to your old boat docks and eat turkey with a bunch of strangers who don't need our company."

"Care, they're living on boats, and need some company during the Holidays. It's the Christian thing to do." It's important to note that my Grandfather only attended church for weddings and funerals. I'd never heard him mention Christ's name before without having dropped something on his foot.

"If you want to be Christian, let's go volunteer at a soup kitchen. I'm not going to your damned boat yard."

But we did. When the smoke cleared, Caroline and I were sitting on elementary cafeteria style chairs at the end of an oblong table full of rich people too cheap to buy their own food, and too hated by their families to be invited to Thanksgiving dinners. These were definitely my grandfather's people: assholes who owned boats and treated everyone else like trash. They hated us, despite our best green bean casserole and mashed potato intentions.

"He was the cutest little thing." Snob #47 said. "A Brazilian nigger. Dumb as a tack, but loyal to no end." The part of me that wasn't horrified by the language, was amused that he'd inadvertently admitted the guy was smart. You didn't have to be sharp as a rubber ball to figure that out.

"Sandi" (sometimes you can tell when names are spelled with an "i") "be a good girl and get daddy some more turkey." Daddy was too fat to get it himself.

"Wayers yer bote?" asked a particularly well-groomed boat child. "Ares is the biggggg won over thayer." It's important to note that I'm not making fun of a child's accent. This kid was likely from Connecticut or Ohio, or one of those states that has no discernible accent. He was talking this way specifically to aggravate me.

"We don't have a boat anymore." My grandfather had sold the Spar-Kee a year before.

"Sew weye are ewe heeeeyer?"

"That's a great question." Caroline asked. "Why are we here Bob?"

I excused myself under the pretext of getting more turkey. I have actually never been hungry enough to eat the fried cardboard that they were serving as turkey. But while I was up, Caroline grabbed my arm. "Grab your jacket, we're leaving."

Hallefuckenlujah.

"Do you have a suit with you?" Caroline asked. Given that I'd expected my grandfather to spring a formal meal on me, I had, indeed, brought a suit. "Good, we're going to the Yacht Club."

"We were at a yacht club." My grandfather mumbled.

"We're going to a yacht club that made a big fancy buffet for all the members. Not one where I have to eat jello with marshmallows and broken glass with a bunch of people who were invited to spend time with their family, but decided they were too good for it. You know, civil snobs."

So we stopped off at the condo, and walked to The Yacht Club down the street. The Yacht Club was only about half full. "Most of the members are with their families today." The hot maitre'd said when my grandfather pointed out that they weren't full. There was an implied "But I can see you're the sort of asshole who doesn't get invited to family functions" on the end of his statement that made me miss Alex. I got the feeling that if Alex spoke better, all of his statements would have implied insults in their intonation.

The Yacht Club was...Yacht Clubby. There was a gigantic center island in the ballroom with a six foot tall cornucopia ice sculpture. It was surrounded with every type of food imaginable. And a few types you wouldn't believe even after they'd passed through your digestive system.

Having already had my stomach shredded by the half piece of cardboard I'd ingested with The Boat People (and not the interesting International kind), I was pretty reserved with what I picked up from the buffet. A little bit of turkey with mashed potato. Then, some ham with corn on the cob. Then, a very little roast beef.

"Safe!" My grandfather called from the other side of the ice sculpture. "Come here."

Not willing to sink to his level and scream back across the room, I walked over to him.

"Try this." He said, putting some sort of grease covered squid looking thing on my plate.

"No, thanks. I'm getting kind of full."

"Try this."

I began walking away from him. "No, thank you."

"I'm not asking you. Safe!" My name is not Safe. I am Edouardo. I am minding my own business at this hoity-toity buffet being stalked by a cray person. Ring-around-the-rosy-pocket-full-of-restraining-orders. "SAFE!"

"Robert!" Caroline. "Lower your voice this instant."

Thus began the public unwinding of five years of family turmoil being voiced very loudly in public. I'd like to think that if this happened now, I would have just taken whatever the alien life form was he was trying to get me to eat, and defused the situation. Of course, if this happened now, it would be really creepy because my grandfather has been dead for eight months. But I was eighteen, and angry, so every time he pushed one of my buttons, I pushed his back until the hot maitre'd actually asked us to lower our voices because we were disturbing the other guests.

"I'm going back to the condo." I walked back to the condo, changed into some less formal wear, and went back to the beach to be passive aggressively angry.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/88734.html

Slow Flashes (Part 7: Roommate Scavenger Hunt)

Contrary to rumor, Jeremy Burdick didn't beat me up. I didn't move to Arizona to join the priesthood. I didn't drown, trying to save one of my campers at Camp Davis. I was not institutionalized because of my schizophrenia. I just went away to boarding school. I didn't tell anyone, because I hadn't planned on going. Ninth grade hadn't been a hardship, I'd made a number of popular friends, and discovered that I was really good at American Sign Language, and working with kids. I had every intention of returning to Cranberry Lake High, and yawning my way through another year's worth of classes. My grandfather had other ideas. And my grandfather's ideas were always more important than my own.

My first real memory of him was when I was three or four. I was watching The Smurfs or The Snorks or some tirelessly friendly cartoon inspired by a Scandinavian comic book. My grandfather walked into the room, changed the TV to the news, and then walked out of the room. I turned the cartoon back on. He walked into the room, changed to the news, and walked out. I changed back to the cartoons. When he came back in, I asked "You want to watch the news?"

"No." He said. "I read the paper this morning. I want you to watch the news." And he turned the channel back to the news, and pulled the dial off the TV.

During the summer between ninth and tenth grades, I was a summer camp counselor in training. I helped run the sports program, and taught swimming lessons (and nobody drowned during them). I had planned on being there all ten weeks, but during the fifth week, my grandfather stopped by. He was captaining a boat from Jacksonville, Florida to Portland, Maine. I'd gone with him for the southern part of the journey when I was twelve. This summer, he wanted me to help out with the Cranberry Lake to Portland leg. I agreed, because I had no choice. I figured, it was a three day trip, max. And I was technically correct. We arrived in Portland the next day, spent one day at my uncle's house, eating lobster and catching up with relatives, and the next day, he rented a car, and we began driving, I assumed, home. I assumed wrong.

"It's Reunion Weekend at my old highschool." He said. And I knew I was doomed to spend the next two days with his fellow septuagenarians, listening to dull stories about their childhood, and how I looked just like my grandfather, which was a lie, as I was adopted, and shared none of his body or facial design. I also knew I'd have to take some sort of tour, where a smiling admissions officer would tell me how much fun I'd have there, what a great drama department they had, how I could volunteer to work with kids, and how I would yadda yadda smile love it there.

I knew that if my grandfather wanted me to go there, odds were I was going to go there no matter what I wanted. Plus, it meant I wouldn't have to watch my parents fumble toward their inevitable divorce. So when I got home, I told my parents how much I'd loved the school, and, sure, I'd really apply myself there, and could I please go back to my summer at Camp Davis now?

Three days after camp ended, my parents drove me back to Torpor Heights, carried a bunch of my clothes and belongings up the four flights of stairs to my room, and took me out to lunch. My mother cried. My father was proud of me. Back in Florida, my grandfather was proud of me. The only thing I was excited about was meeting my new roommate.

Through a fluke in the admissions process (or maybe a donation from my grandfather), I'd been booked into the biggest room in the dorm, a triple. But there would only be two of us. Whereas all the other rooms had a single, cumbersome wardrobe, our room had two walk-in closets AND two cumbersome wardrobes. We also had a bunkbed AND a non-bunkbed. My roommate, though absent when I had moved in, had already been in the room, and claimed a closet and the non bunkbed, which was totally fine with me.

It was a few minutes after my parents left when one of the student leaders knocked on my door. "Hey. My name is Daveed. I'll be living across the hall. You met your roommate yet?"

"Not yet."

"Oh, man." He made Oh, man sound precisely like I'm so sorry that your puppy got murdered, but don't worry, you're going to get a chance to see him real soon, because you're about to get hit by a very big truck with very spikey tires.

"Oh, man?" I asked.

My very first roommate at Torpor Heights was a twenty-one year old sophomore named Yao Wen Handsome. A Chinese student, whose mother had recently married a very inaccurately named banker named Sean Handsome. Their marriage was some sort of business arrangement that, for some reason, meant that Yao Wen had to change his last name to his American stepfather's. Yao Wen had been in America for two weeks when school started, and the only English he spoke was "Yes", "No", and "I want fuck yo'r ice", which had been taught to him by one of the very unscrupulous hockey jocks who lived down the hall from us.

I hoped that his English would improve quickly, as THA had one of the premier English as a Second Language programs in the country. Alas, instead of teaching him things he could use like "How do I get to the Science Building?", "Do you mind if I use your stereo to blast my shitty Chinese pop music while you're trying to sleep?", or "Excuse me. I had some really spicy food for dinner.", they taught him annoying phrases like "Need you help now." and "Giant bresteses." Two things he liked to say almost as much as he liked to announce that he wanted to fuck my rice. No matter how many times I explained that I didn't like my rice fucked, he insisted that he would be really good at it.

After the third night in a row that he'd slapped me awake at three in the morning to ask for help with his homework, I started setting up a line of tennis balls in the little dip between my bunk and the wall. Every time I caught him walking in my direction, I'd chuck one at his head.

I wasn't the only person in the school who was less than pleased with the existence of Yao Wen Handsome. Next door to David (pronounced Daveed)'s room were two juniors. A shaved-headed punk fan named Jack Marple, and a purple headed goth rocker, who voluntarily went by the name of Roadkill. I wasn't present when Roadkill and Yao Wen began their war. I don't know who first insulted who, but I do know that I came home from dinner during the third week of school to find Roadkill running down the hall. Yao Wen was chasing him, with three of my tennis balls in his hands, chucking them at Roadkill, yelling "No shoes on bed! No shoes on bed!"

After the fourth time the dormhead was called to settle a dispute between Yao Wen and one of our floormates, I made a request that he be moved out of my room. I was assured that I'd have permission to request a change of roommates by the end of the week. Three weeks, and a dozen or so excuses later, I decided to take matters into my own hands. One of the other sophomores, who lived on the third floor, had the unfortunate pleasure of sharing a room with a kleptomaniac named Charlie Denton. Barely a month into the school year, and Charlie had been caught stealing two jackets, a dozen or so CDs, and Roadkill's favorite hairbrush.

"It's bullshit." JBob (Denton's unfortunate roommate) said. "He's stolen two of my Guns and Roses bootlegs, sharpied out my name, and wrote his own. And my favorite jacket disappeared my first day here. I asked the dormhead to transfer rooms, and he told me he'd get it done by the end of the week. That was two weeks ago. Fuck, dood, there's an empty room on your floor. I don't get why one of us can't move into it."

"I have a better idea." I said.

That afternoon, while Yao Wen was in class, JBob and I moved all of his furniture and clothes into the empty room, and moved all of JBob's furniture into my room. "This way," I said, "we can claim that you didn't know I didn't have permission to move Yao Wen's shit out, and, with any luck, the dormhead will feel sorry for you, and let things stay the way we want them." Which is pretty much what happened. Yao Wen came back from class, flipped out that all his stuff had been moved, and found the nearest Chinese interpreter to take his case to the dormhead who, initially, flipped out, then shook his head after Yao Wen left, and said "Well played. You guys can be roommates, but don't pull any shit like that or again, or I'll put you on disciplinary probation."

Little did he know, JBob and I had one more game to play before we felt we were even.

Every Wednesday morning, there was a mandatory all campus meeting at our Chapel. The student leaders checked each of us in at the beginning of the meeting, and we'd sit in our assigned pews, listening to the deans or the headmaster or a guest speaker fill our minds with morality or mortality or whatever opinion they were determined to inflict on us. JBob and I had loyally attended each one, but we knew that Denton liked to sneak out and take a cab into town and shoplift, since he had the two post-meeting periods open.

On this particular morning, I checked in with David, and JBob checked in with his student leader, then we excused ourselves to go to the bathroom. While our dormmates listened to our Headmaster explain how important cultural diversity was to a school like ours, JBob and I broke into their rooms and began playing a game of Kleptomaniac Scavenger Hunt Bingo. I took Roadkill's brush, and Jack's New York Dolls CD. JBob took David's drumsticks, and one of his roommate's Argentinean porno magazines. I took our resident Republican's U2 poster, and his roommate's favorite sweatshirt. And together, we went up and down all floors, taking one or two things from each room (including our own), and scattering them all throughout Denton's room. Then we went to our fourth period classes.

Neither of us were there to witness the beginning of the chaos. Seeing as he'd already caught Denton stealing his hairbrush once, Roadkill knew where to go when he discovered it missing a second time. And, of course, he saw Jonathan Fletcher Tork the Fourth's U2 poster, and told him about it. JFT4 saw David's drumsticks, and one of the other student leader's guitar, and on and on and on. When Denton came back, he was pulled into the dormhead's apartment. He was completely befuddled, and swore he was innocent. But he was wearing JBob's favorite jacket, and had the inside pockets stuffed with CDs that were stolen from the local music store. He was kicked out at the end of the week.

For the remainder of the first trimester, JBob and I got along famously. Despite his justifiable concern over my taste in music (I had just grown out of a pop phase, and had a Mariah Carey CD and some Paula Abdul tapes scattered throughout my U2 and Nirvana), we found we had a lot in common. Our honeymoon period was brief but enjoyable.

Both of us had work jobs (the most redundantly named program at the school) in the dining hall. He served lunch. I helped prepare dinner. One night, while squeezing whipped cream onto the lime jello, one of the salad ladies approached me with a petition. "Do you know that Yao Wen kid?" She asked.

I told her that we'd been roommates.

"Well, the faculty and students that work here have been having problems with the way he talks to people. And the way he touches them."

I relayed the story about my walk back to the dorm, after my first tennis class, when Yao Wen had touched my ass. How I'd firmly shook my head and said "Don't touch me." And how he'd touched me again, anyway. And how I'd cracked him over the head with my tennis racket and ran like hell to the dining hall.

"So you'll sign this?"

"What will it do?"

That week, it got him banned from the back of the line in the dining hall. He could still eat there, but he wasn't allowed to even talk to the cooks or the students serving the food. The next week, he was told he was no longer welcome at the farm. It wasn't too long before I came back from French class to find his new room empty. Some months later, my guidance counselor told me he'd been sent to "an institution better suited to his needs".

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/229891.html

Slow Flashes (Part 2: Welcome To The Club)

Pilgrim's Academy was my chance to start over. None of the kids in my new school knew that I had been third-grade famous for my Woody Woodpecker impersonation, or that Queen Popular Sarah The First had caught me picking my nose in fifth grade science class. Nobody had heard about the time Kevin Harris pushed me off my porch and broke my arm. Nobody even knew who Kevin Harris was. I was safe.

I've never asked my parents precisely why they decided I should go away to a private middle school. I think they believed that I was too smart for the public school system, and that's why my grades had been dropping. It couldn't have been because I was bored with the facts the teachers mumbled, and terrified of the small humans who were supposed to be my peers.

Whatever the reason, I'm mostly grateful. I've heard stories about what happened during my two year absence from the public education system: group showers, rat tails, stabbings, a pregnant girl, marijuana. The most exciting thing I can remember from my two years at Pilgrim's was when the Latin teacher had a nervous breakdown between third and fourth periods, and stormed out of her classroom yelling that my friend Scott and I were "trying to destroy" her and her "teaching curricula". That night, she called our parents, and the parents of a few of our classmates, and told them how "ill-behaved" and "dangerous" we were. After a brief investigation into our third and fourth period activities (the highlight of third period being that my teacher failed to collect the homework I didn't do, and the highlight of fourth period being that nobody blamed me for the fart someone dropped in the darkroom), the Headmaster issued a written and verbal apology to all the children and parents involved, and the Latin teacher was demoted to assistant librarian.

It was during the Pilgrim's years that I fell in love with the idea of Jennifer. Long brown hair, green eyes, nose that wrinkled pleasantly when she laughed at my stupid, stupid jokes. After voluntarily going to a couple of her cello recitals, and convincing her tutor me in Science, I finally got the courage to ask her out, and was stunned when she said "Yes." I was less stunned when she dumped me four days later, confessing that she'd only really gone out with me because she wanted to make out with my supposed best friend, Scott. And he hadn't noticed her at all, until she started tongue kissing me during lunch.

I'd like to say I spent the rest of the year shunning both my treacherous friend, and that filthy hobag, Jennifer. But I didn't. I continued to worship my ex-best friend's new girlfriend. And pretended to not hate Scott for his betrayal. After all, they were my best friends.

Unlike public school friendships, private school friendships are hindered by distance. No one in my school lived in the same neighborhood that I did. Only two of them lived in the same town, and neither of them were my friends. So, during most school vacations, I stayed home alone and began my affair with computers. Typing elaborate fantasy stories, and some of the worst rhyming couplets recorded by twentieth century man. I became really good at top of the line games like Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and King's Quest IV. During my Spring Break (which did not correspond with the public school's February and April vacations), I spent some time at the doctor's office where my mother worked, and riding in my father's work truck, eating sandwiches while he fixed electrical wires and telephone poles.

On the third day with my father, I ate a runny Grilled Cheese sandwich that had decided that, since it had defeated my throat with its power of burnination, it was more than up for the challenge of destroying my colon. Despite my life-long dislike of public restrooms, I had no choice but to run into the restroom that my father's many coworkers shared, and purge my body of this greasy affront to cheesdom.

I knew this was going to be a multiple part bowel movement. At least a three minute project. Unfortunately, I'd left my copy of The Two Towers in my dad's truck, and the only thing in the stall with me was a Wall Street Journal. I picked it up, and out fell a glossy magazine with a scantily clad woman on the cover. Club. I was ready to put the magazine back within the pages of the newspaper. I'd "read" through my father's Playboys, and hadn't found anything interesting aside from the joke section. Slim women with large breasts leaning over cars, or kneeling on beaches didn't do it for me. But the woman on the cover was not like the women in my dad's Playboys. She didn't look like the kind of girl who liked long walks on the beach, and dreamed of curing cancer, or becoming a veterinarian. This wide-hipped, huge nippled goddess had probably dropped out of highschool after her third abortion, and decided that stripping only provided temporary fame, while posing for porn meant that her nineteen year old pussy would live forever.

I flipped the magazine open. I marvelled at the way she squatted to the ground, a whip held tight in her teeth. In the background was a bright red motorcycle, and beneath her was...a huge cock. Sure enough, the next page showed her leaning over the motorcycle, while a guy in a visored helmet and nothing else pointed his cock in the direction of her mammoth ass. My butt clenched. I leaned over and checked the room for a pair of feet. I was alone. I folded the magazine back into the Wall Street Journal, ran it out to my father's truck, and zipped it into my backpack.

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