Growing Up Wired

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Growing Up Wired Page 21

by David Wallace Fleming


  “What? I didn’t know that I’d been judged.” Games, games, games—wonderful games! I returned to my seat with her still looking at my inferior monitor. The Q vibrated in my pocket:

  ‘I miss you! What are you doing?’

  “I miss you too,” I mumbled to myself.

  She turned to me, “What’s that one say?”

  “Hey,” I turned the Q’s screen away from her. “This one’s private.”

  “Private, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Private. A man’s got a right to a secret or two.”

  Her cell phone wolf-whistled as she walked back to her seat but she didn’t check it.

  “Aren’t you going to check that?” I asked.

  “What?” she said, distractedly.

  “It could be important,” I pressed.

  “Oh… yah.” She drew out her cell phone and checked it. “It’s—it’s Johnny.” She turned to me. “You know what sucks? You give a guy your number and then even if you don’t call him back, there’s nothing you can do to get him to stop texting you.” She studied my face for a change in my expression. I felt her watching my eye movements. “Oh,” she smiled, “I didn’t mean you, Victor. I’m allowing you to text me… for right now.”

  It was so cold. She was making me feel like a woman. “I—I don’t know how to respond to that.” I wanted someone to text or call or IM me. I was going to win this battle. I was going to make her beg… but then her phone rang.

  She checked the caller ID window.

  “Popular girl,” I said.

  She raised a halting finger in my direction and she answered, “Hello, Daddy. Yes… Yes… Yes, I told you I’d be ready on Sunday. Yes, they’re ironed and clean—the blue ones. I’ll wear them. No. No, you don’t have to do that. Where am I? I’m at the Omega House studying… I—I said I was sorry about that. No. No, I won’t forget. Okay… okay. Love you… What? I said, I said, ‘I love you.’… I know… I know. Love you, ‘bye.”

  “Sounds like a controlling father,” I said.

  “Shut-up, Vic,” She said.

  “I’m sorry, Em.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said. “Let’s just study.”

  We studied for about ten minutes and the Q rang. I checked my caller ID screen. “Oh, I’m not even going to answer this one.”

  “Are you sure,” she said, “are you sure you’re really getting this many calls?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She studied my face. “I mean: are you really getting this many calls or are you just pretending to be popular?”

  “What—?”

  She smirked at something.

  “Who would do something like that?” I asked.

  She laughed.

  “What?”

  “Your eyes,” she pointed at my eyes, “they go down and to the left when you make decisions.”

  “They do, huh?”

  She nodded and grinned before turning to appraise her book.

  She read patiently for twenty minutes, lackadaisically turning pages as I fumed and I plotted.

  “I’m bored,” she declared, looking up and slamming her book closed. “Want to do something fun?”

  “Of course,” I retorted. I swallowed.

  “Wanna play photographer with me?” she asked while digging inside her shoulder bag. She pulled out a digital camera.

  “Photographer, huh?” I asked. “Is that why you wore the leather pants?”

  She furrowed her brow and looked away. Then she looked at her leather pants as if just discovering them. “These?” She smiled at me. “I’m having a bit of a laundry day. It’s a long story. I’m such a mess sometimes, Victor.”

  “Like you need someone to take care of you?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said and stood, making such a magnificently slender visage. “So do you wanna play or what?”

  “Oh, I wanna play,” I said. “What are the stakes?”

  “Stakes?” she asked, fussing with the hem of her tight T shirt.

  “What are we playing for?” I pressed.

  “Oh,” she said, “Stakes. Well there’s this contest and I want to win it. There’s a thousand dollar prize that this website, Sports-n-Looks, is offering. I’ll split it with you.”

  “Five hundred dollars,” I said. “Tempting.”

  She handed me the camera. “Do you know how to handle one of those?”

  “I can manage.”

  She slipped off her running shoes and flexed her petite, bare toes.

  “Can you manage this?” She started taking her shirt off. She was pulling it up slowly with both hands, revealing a tan, toned stomach and woman hips and that brown divot above her navel where, inside her tiny piercing hole, her wounded flesh conspired to heal her. Her health captured my eyes and I wanted to slam her against—she pulled it higher—her breasts!—black laced-covered cups and they flounced as the white cotton shirt pulled above them.

  Shit—! I was in trouble—to escape! Or did I need to? Was I—?

  She arched her back, angled and smiled so I could take it all in. She stepped forward and I stepped back into the edge of my desk. Her eyes beamed desire.

  Her cell phone wolf-whistled but I felt confident we had escaped its power.

  She signaled for a moment with her finger.

  What?… What?

  She turned from me in those black leather pants and thong that, from behind, made her look better than naked. Her phone was behind her shoulder bag and it was another text message. She brought the phone back with her as she let me watch her text message half-nude in the center of my room. Even with her crippled hand, she double thumb texted on her tiny qwerty like a harried stenographer. I was outmatched. If she could send out a signal to a potential mate that fast, how could I match her eligibility?

  “There,” she said and placed the phone back on my desktop.

  “Yes… there,” I repeated.

  My own cell rang.

  It rang, again.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asked, pouting and lovely.

  “Answer?” I asked.

  She stepped closer. “You’re doing that decision thing with your eye movements, again.” She touched my shoulder. “And your shoulders—so tense—”

  My cell phone rang.

  “It might be important,” she said but I was inside her black hair and her slender, womanly brownness—

  “Yes, important,” I agreed with something that was important.

  She looked down and smiled her carnal smile—the one from her shower-door/nipple-covering picture.

  I was rock hard in my jeans to the point of rushing pain and I knew she could see.

  “Take this picture, Victor.” She stepped back and she hid her crippled hand in her black hair. A beautiful place for any injured thing to hide and vanish.

  “The lens,” I said, “the menus on this…”

  She winked at me. “Just push the button, Victor.”

  I pushed the button. It flashed. Her image appeared on the tiny color screen. I got her! There she was! “I got you,” I said, grinning. “I got you.”

  She yanked a chair out from under the desktop, spun it, and sat. Her back arched and her legs splayed with her right hand hidden under her knee. “Get me again.”

  I pressed the button and felt the white flash and there she was on the color screen as my creation, perhaps frozen like that for the rest of time.

  My desktop computer chimed with an IM. The sound was like a hypnotist bringing me out of a spell. I stopped feeling and started calculating. I needed to switch it up. I needed to regain control and throw her off balance. I read the IM:

  Sexy_Janice: Let’s get together and do that thing again, okay?

  “Oh yah, Janice,” I said, “We can do that thing again.”

  Emily rested her chin on my shoulder as she read. I felt her thighs. Her jaw dug into my shoulder as she spoke: “I know they’re not real. Girls don’t talk that way on Messenger.”


  I stood up straight and turned to face her.

  She stood up straight to match my posture. She looked down at herself and I was gripped by the tangibility of her confidence. “But this is real, Victor,” she said. She pressed against me hard and rubbed, “Remember, I did this in your basement with that rap music and that beer smell?”

  “I—” That instant where she had pushed her boobs against me in the Pit invaded my synapses. I was dizzy again with everything of hers. I couldn’t win. Like Drake had said, she was a free-wheeling, game-playing musician, using my reactions and my environment like an improvisational jazz pianist uses her accompaniments and her audience. No cognizant notes; no cognizant games—only her desires and her outcomes.

  She touched my hand as it held her camera. “Let’s get some more pictures.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Let’s get them.”

  I got a few pictures of her on the floor. One with her doing the frogman, one of her falling asleep, one of her waking up, one of her available, one of her unavailable. I told her to look confused. I told her to look agitated. We shot pictures that suggested the straddle, the cow-girl and doggy-style.

  She stood and started to walk away from me.

  “Take your pants off,” I told her.

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  Some foreign voice was piping within me—seizing control. “Come on, girl. Give the world some hip!” And, as I felt that voice shoot through me, I felt I made that demand not just for myself but for everyone that had an itch to see those hips lay bare.

  “Uh,” she said, “Okay,” and she began unbuttoning and unzipping her fly. She pulled her tight leather over her butt and stopped at her upper thighs. We did a picture of her where she leaned over the desktop and looked back at the camera like she’d been caught off-guard. She stood and hopped and scampered toward my daybed. The innocence of her movements coupled with her maturity gave me a twinge of guilt. She motioned to the daybed, “Is this alright?” Meaning: ‘Is this not infested with lice or crabs?’

  “Yah,” I said, “It’s okay. Go ahead.”

  She lay on the daybed and did a couple of poses where she pretended to be taking off her leather pants with her right hand always underneath her hip.

  “I think that’s enough,” She said. She got up from the daybed and pulled up her pants. Her eyes grew serious and distracted. She grabbed her cell phone to check the time as she picked her white T up off the floor.

  “There’s no hurry,” I said. But her defenses were coming back up.

  “It’s almost 3:30,” she said. “I gotta get back to the house.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  She looked up at me crossly as she pulled the T shirt over her stomach, “Nosey.”

  She finished gathering her things, slung her shoulder bag over her shoulder and she came at me for the cheek peck, “Thanks, Victor.” She turned to go.

  “Wait,” I grabbed her wrist and she stopped.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Why do you really want to win that contest, Emily?”

  She looked down and smiled before she met my eyes. “My brother and my dad both love Sports-n-Looks. I know they go there to get pictures to beat-off to all the time.” She moved her legs into a broader stance. “We’ll see how much they think they can still boss me around after they find out I’ve won this contest.”

  “You’re letting them know you’ve arrived,” I said.

  “Yes. That’s right. They’re stubborn and they’re possessive. I’m tired of the bullshit.” She looked at the door. “I gotta go.”

  I walked with her to the door. She opened it and stepped over the threshold into the dark, empty hallway.

  “Wait,” I said.

  She turned to me with a look that said, ‘what?’

  “What if I need more than a peck on the cheek?”

  She shrugged her shoulders as she searched for an answer. “Tough shit?” she ventured, girlishly.

  “Tough shit,” I repeated and she nodded with a gleeful grin.

  She walked down the hall and a couple of guys looked her up and down.

  “Tough shit?” I huffed, loud enough for her to hear but she kept walking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A MIRACLE OF TRUE LIGHT

  At the Exec meeting that evening, tables had been pushed out of the way with two along a sidewall for the ranking officer’s to sit behind. These tables faced a block of plastic chairs for the rest of the attendees. Nicodemus and Brad Torsten were a couple of the officer’s behind the tables and I didn’t recognize the other four. There was a vacant chair for Ma Red back there as well and I knew she had been invited. There were a few current House members in attendance but Rex hadn’t shown. Not yet, anyway. As I walked to a chair in the front corner of the block, all the unfamiliar parents, alumni and officers eyed me as if they recognized me. I wanted to check Youtube for a clip of my Frat Court but I had this mental block that wouldn’t allow it.

  Rex’s adopted mother walked in the room toward the block of chairs. I recognized her from a barbeque function. She was prone to telling everyone she was Rex’s mother—even a houseplant or two when she thought no one was watching. She was in her mid forties and she wore these tight designer jeans with fanciful, yellow embroidery that I had actually seen Emily wearing on a couple occasions. Beneath Mrs. Blauwern’s down coat, her tight pink T-shirt sported an emoticon, winking smiley-face and she flipped off her purple, knitted stocking cap as she sat. Mr. Blauwern came in shortly after. He was a little over six feet with a medium build. His attire was kind of a white-person-goes-to-the-mall karate-chop to the face: some Old-Shipyard performance fleece, his corduroys and a fucking crimson scarf. I swear he had a mustache too.

  We all got settled and the meeting started with Nicodemus grumbling about the weather. Then, for about forty minutes, they discussed a bond issue, the city’s proposed sewage-water tax and National’s reorganization of non-electoral Historians.

  They talked about Sigma Tau Corporation. This corporation was a way to mitigate the financial risk of owning a property, such as our House, which made it its business to house group after group of horny, gregarious boys. The member’s of Sigma Tau Corporation were largely Omega alumni who each owned a number of shares in the land and property which composed our House.

  The Corporation was considering a program whereby members could voluntarily elect to reinvest their dividends into House upkeep and modernization. As Brad Torsten pointed out, this program was prompted by a trend of lowering House memberships. Brad felt we had to compete with recently constructed campus housing projects which were designed to pamper students such as The Palace Apartments and other palatial-style college condominiums. These housings apparently featured personal jacuzzis, masseuses, on-site restaurants, bars and concierge service. Nicodemus felt that the Greek system shouldn’t follow-suite in the pampering of college students. Then he went on about how the collapse of the group and the pampering of the coming-of-age individual marked not only the end of the Greek system but the end of American leadership and of polite society in total.

  I had to admit that, for once, I agreed with him. However, he really made coming-of-age youth in America seem like this pimple that was about to burst. I daydreamed about what had led up to this moment, how the sun’s energy had dribbled out over trillions of years into plant life and dinosaur bones to create such an awe-inspiring energy legacy of fossil fuels, how ancient, North American native civilizations had prepared this country for grazing and farming, how European conquistadors and European disease had decimated millions in South American civilizations so that their gold and gems could be looted back to Europe, so that the industrial revolution could be financed, so that mechanized labor and farming and that awe-inspiring fossil fuel legacy could swell the world’s population twenty-fold beyond sustainability, so that we could fight world-wars and emerge as a super-power, so that we could send men to space, so that we could fuel technology and litera
cy, so that… so that some no-talent guy with a temporary tattoo and a faux-hawk could soak in a jacuzzi while he eats five-dollar delivery pizza and sends some Mexican woman to pick up his laundry… so that that guy could pretend to study Creative Writing and then graduate to be a barista at Starbucks? Was that what it had all been for? I sat there. I wondered. I wasn’t a religious guy, but that was an enormous pyramid of exploited men on top of a gargantuan pyramid of exploited nature. I wondered if all those soot-suffocated T-rexes and disease-decimated natives would be waiting for that Jacuzzi guy on the Other Side.

  Rex kind of reminded me of the jacuzzi guy as his parent’s started defending him while he hadn’t even bothered to show up. As far as Nicodemus was concerned, Rex’s failure to show had sealed his fate and kicked him out of the fraternity. He’d send a police officer to get him off the premises if he didn’t vacate. As the meeting broke up, Rex’s parent’s swarmed over Nicodemus to defend their son. In their panic, anger and haste, they were making an impressive showcase of all the classic logical fallacies: the straw man, ad hominem, appeals to emotion, appeals to belief, etcetera.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE OMEGA SORORITY HOUSE

  My computer chimed with an email from Drake:

  Yo Vic! If you see Emily, tell her ass to install a newer version of Windows on her PC because her shit is real easy to backdoor! Like, here’s a sample of her cookies from her Google searches. I know you’ll have to keep reading…. :)

  loneliness, father figures, the role of the father,

  flirty new dresses, magic mushrooms too long,

  cool new bands, okay magazine, the color green,

  spooning, downplaying disability, lead strong,

  crows feet not good, am I a slut, cute pets, regret,

  I finished reading and looked away. Hairs stood on my neck. How could Drake reach so deep inside her mind? He was ruining things between Em and me. How could he not realize that romance was the control of information? If the rest of my life was flooded with these types of disclosures, I’d never be able to feel anything for anyone again. She treated her Google page like some magic eightball, or a surrogate mother. Again, I thought of Ma Red. If she was still here, I could have asked her what to do. But she had left us. We were alone. I could have asked her how to block it all out and still be a human being. But it was mostly coming from Drake. Did he know that he was fucking things up by giving me too much information? Did he take some secret pleasure in fucking up my desires? I looked at the time stamp on the email. He’d set-up the email to deliver two hours after he’d wrote it. I was already out the door and storming the hallway by the time I realized that Drake had probably put a delay on the email so it would send while he was away at class.

 

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