How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

by Marc Acito

  “Now we have something really special for you that I'm sure you'll find very enjoyable. Bringing the break-dancing craze to WHS for the first time . . .” (he pronounces “break dancing” like it's a foreign word he doesn't want to screw up) “. . . here are the Four Masters!”

  The curtain opens to reveal about two dozen black guys. The audience roars, all coming to the same horrible, simultaneous conclusion: these guys can't count. It's a thoroughly chilling moment, far worse than anything the Show Choir had to endure. I see TeeJay, now decked out in a shiny warm-up jacket and pants, rush to the front of the stage and shout “That's the Floor Masters!” but he can hardly be heard over the laughter and the music.

  I look at Kelly. She bites her lip and squeezes my hand harder. Like I said, high-school audiences are the worst.

  Most of the Show Choir is respectful and attentive, sitting forward, heads tilted, like we're anthropologists observing the native dance of some visiting Zulu tribe. Sure it's condescending, but it beats the three sopranos who go running out in a panic when they realize that practically every black guy in the school is up there and they've left their purses backstage.

  I can't wait to get out of this preppy prison.

  On Thanksgiving, Kelly and I decide to go to the big game. Now let me just say that I've never been to the big game; I've never wanted to go to the big game; in fact, I couldn't give two shits about the big game. But Doug's playing and Kelly wants to go and I'll be damned if I'm going to let those two have this shared bonding experience without me.

  It's a crisp fall day with a sky as blue as the blood coursing through the veins of Wallingford's old guard. The air smells toasty with the scent of dry leaves and I'm determined to look as autumnal and football-y as I can for the occasion. So I put on a cable-knit fisherman's sweater and a down vest with a woolly hat instead of my usual Sinatra fedora. Since Kelly's a former cheerleader, I don't watch the game in the ironic, detached way I would with, say, Ziba or Natie. Sure, it's the usual snoozefest—start, stop, start, stop—but I do enjoy the Battle Brook cheerleaders, a nearly all-black squad of girls whose booty-shaking choreography is worthy of Soul Train. They've got great cheers, too, like this one:

  Pork chop, pork chop,

  Greazy, greazy,

  We'ze gonna beat you,

  Easy, easy.

  Corn bread, Jeri Curl,

  Bar-bee-cue,

  We'ze gonna beat the whoopy outta you!

  Beats “Ready to go, ready to fight” any day, as far as I'm concerned. I watch their high, hard asses flip and bump as they cheer and feel embarrassed for Amber Wright and the rest of the Wallingford rah-rahs, who seem about as hip as a squad of Girl Scouts by comparison. The crowd on the Wallingford side senses that we're being shown up and some drunk trust-fund types high up in the bleachers start chanting:

  Hey, hey, that's okay,

  You'll all work for us someday.

  I see people snicker among themselves, clearly enjoying the joke, but not wanting to look like they do.

  Kelly's really into the game and I feel like an asshole needing to have my girlfriend explain to me what's going on. A semester's worth of flag football has still not revealed the mysteries of this game to me, nor its appeal. Instead I content myself with making a mental note of Doug's nimble grace on the field and cataloguing every bit of body language that could be construed as evidence of repressed homosexual desires.

  Afterward, Kelly and I wait by the field house for Doug. I don't know if this kind of stage-door-Johnny behavior is part of the postgame etiquette or not, and I feel weird and awkward standing there with nothing to do. TeeJay comes out and says hello to four black girls I've never seen before.

  Okay, Edward, try not to sound like an asshole.

  “Yo, TeeJay,” I say. “Wha's happenin'?”

  I'm an asshole. What is it about black people that makes me behave so stupidly?

  “Yo, Edward, whassup?” he mumbles.

  “Great game,” I say.

  “Yeah, too bad we lost.”

  Damnit. We don't encounter these problems in the theater. Even if the play sucks, no one admits it.

  TeeJay introduces the girls he's with as his cousins from Battle Brook: Bonté, Shezadra, and one whose name I don't catch but I could swear sounded like Pneumonia. He looks over his shoulder at the fourth cousin, a short, cherub-y girl in a puffy down coat with a hood. “And this here's Margaret,” he says.

  Poor Margaret. Not only does it seem they ran out of interesting names by the time they'd gotten to her, but apparently all the glamorous genes had been used up, too. Black or white, every clique's got a cheesehead, I guess.

  Doug emerges from the field house in his uniform, his spiky hair sticking up in different directions from having been under his helmet. Kelly and I wave and he trots over to us. Duncan and SOTGFTT stare at us like we're aliens.

  Kelly gives Doug a squeeze as best she can around the shoulder pads, kisses him on the cheek, and says, “You did great!”

  “Ya' think so?” Doug says. His eyes gleam at her like shiny marbles as she proceeds to enumerate all the good football-y things he did in the game, none of which I can repeat here because I have no goddamn idea what she's talking about. She goes on for a really long time, too, like she's Phyllis fucking George commentating on Monday Night Football.

  Oh God. She's a leggy blonde who likes football and hand jobs. He's a muscular jock with a sensitive side and a huge dick.

  I'm history.

  Despite Kelly and Doug's shared love of pigskin, it's me who's invited for Thanksgiving dinner and I make a point of holding Kelly's hand as we walk back to the car, leaves crunching under our feet, the crisp autumn air tight against our skin. I lean her up against MoM and we make out right there in the parking lot, stopping occasionally to wave hello to someone we know. She tastes so good and her body feels so right in my hands, like we were designed to fit together. In fact, this whole going-to-the-big-game-with-your-girlfriend thing feels so normal and all-American, the way being a teenager is supposed to feel, that for a moment I allow myself to imagine I'm some preppy guy with craggy Kennedyesque features and windswept hair. I grip Kelly tighter.

  I don't want to let go of her or that feeling.

  It's warm inside the house and smells of good food cooking. Kelly and I go into the kitchen where Kathleen struggles with the pages of a recipe book with floury hands. There's an open bottle of Chardonnay on the counter next to her.

  “Isn't it a little early for wine?” Kelly asks.

  “It's just for cooking,” Kathleen snaps. This is not an easy day for her. Neither of her other kids are coming home, what with Brad having gone to his girlfriend's parents and Bridget spending her junior year abroad. “Oh, sweetie,” she says to me, “Paula Amicadora keeps calling.” She hands me an electric bill with a phone number written on the back. While Kelly helps with dinner and acts as her mother's Chardon-nay sayer, I hunt for the phone amid the nuclear holocaust that is the living room. I've just found it underneath a copy of When Bad Things Happen to Good People when the Lincoln Continental Divide pulls up in front of the house.

  I dash out into the yard in time to see Paula flounce out of the car while it's still practically moving, all bouncing hair and boobs.

  “Edward!” she cries, her wide mouth in full curtain-up-light-the-lights mode. She's wearing a raspberry beret with a long ostrich feather coming out of it and a full-length coat made of crushed velvet the color of crushed frogs. She leaps across the lawn and practically picks me up as she hugs me. We part and she smacks me on the shoulder with a purse made of fake fur. “What the fuck is going on?” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I called your house and Colonel Klink refused to tell me where you were—absolutely refused—so I tried here and Kelly's mom said you were at the football game—the fucking football game, of all things—so I knew at once that something had to be terribly, terribly wrong.”

  “I was at the fucking
football game,” I say, savoring the irony.

  Paula gives me a stunned, horror-movie look. “Who the fuck are you and what have you done with Edward Zanni?” she says.

  “What's with you and the word fuck?” I ask.

  “Oh, it's a New York thing,” she says, flipping her scarf over her shoulder, then adding conspiratorially, “and not only am I saying it, Edward—I'm doing it, too.”

  “No!” I scream.

  “Yes!” she screams back, patty-caking her tiny hands together and jumping up and down.

  I grab a hunk of flesh on her arm and lead her to the porch swing. “Tell me everything.”

  “Well,” she says, “his name is Gino Marinelli. I know, he sounds like a macaroni dish, but he's this brilliant film student at NYU. We met when I auditioned for his film.”

  “You're going to be in a movie?” I ask.

  “Actually, he hasn't decided yet, but who cares, I'm no longer a virgin! Isn't that rapturous? Me, the girl who always had to play the mother.” Paula pulls out a compact to inspect her face. “Oh, and it's made such a difference in my craft, Edward, you wouldn't believe it. I did an improv where I reenacted losing my virginity and my professor gave me an A plus! An A plus!”

  “You simulated sex in front of the whole class?”

  “No silly, I did that one privately, you know, because it was so personal and revealing. Oh, Edward, you must, you absolutely must get into Juilliard. It is so . . . profound. And next year, oh my God, next year, you'll never guess who's coming to teach. C'mon, guess.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “John Gielgud. Sir John fucking Gielgud. Can you believe it? Edward, are you all right? Do you have to throw up?”

  “I'm okay,” I say from between my knees.

  “What's going on? C'mon, you're scaring me.”

  “Oh, Sis . . .”

  I reach for her tiny teardrop hand and relate my whole sordid family drama. It feels good to talk to her, but strange that my life could change so drastically in such a short time. When I finish Paula stands up, pulls off her gloves, and says, “Well, there's only one thing for you to do.”

  “Patricide?”

  “No,” she says. “You've got to declare financial independence.”

  “Financial independence? What's that?”

  “It means you emancipate yourself. I know some people who've done it. You've got to move out of Al's house and refuse to accept any money from him so he can't claim you as a dependent on his taxes. That way the school will only look at your finances instead of his and you'll be eligible for financial aid.”

  The storm clouds in my head start to clear. “I can really do that?” I ask.

  “Absolutely.”

  “That's great!”

  “Of course, you need to show three years of independent tax returns before they'll consider you.”

  “Three years? But I'll be almost twenty-one by then. I'll be ancient.”

  “True,” Paula says, “but at least you'll be eligible for your senior year, which means we only have to figure out how to pay for the first three. Or you could get in, defer a year, make some money, and then have the last two years paid for. Oh, we'll figure something out. Don't worry.”

  “But what about Sir John fucking Gielgud?”

  “Oh, that,” Paula says. “I'm sure all the stuff they say about him being a brilliant teacher is just hype. I'll take lots of notes for you, I promise. The most important thing is that you look out for yourself. Why should Al get to keep you as a tax deduction when he refuses to support you? You've got to get out of that house by your eighteenth birthday, Edward, you've simply got to!”

  “But that's just five weeks away,” I say.

  “Then I suggest you start packing.”

  Kathleen's so Chardonnayed out by the time we finish dinner she staggers to bed, at which point Kelly begins tearing off my clothes like I'm a birthday present she can't wait to unwrap. I suspect her horniness has something to do with seeing Doug be all rugged on the field today, but I figure a make-out session is just the thing I need to get my mind off my worries. We go down to the basement.

  Now, if you've been reading carefully you realize that going down to the basement means we're in Kathleen's office where she sees her cryents. But if you're thinking I'm unaware of the symbolic implications of making out on a psychotherapist's couch, well, then you'd be right. It doesn't even occur to me.

  We stumble onto the couch, attached at the tongue, clothes flying. I grab Kelly's breasts like I'm holding on for dear life. She gasps.

  “Sorry,” I whisper.

  “That's okay,” she says, “I like it,” and digs her fingernails into my back. You'd think by now I'd be used to Kelly's sexual appetite, but her girl-next-door looks always manage to throw me off. I give her a vigorous, tonsil-licking kiss and she reaches for my crotch and that's when I realize it.

  I'm not hard.

  This has never happened before; normally I go up like a flag in a park. I feel a slight flush of panic, but I tell myself it's a momentary lapse and grab Kelly's hand to suck on her fingers and buy myself some time, then start feeling her up so aggressively it's like I'm performing CPR.

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  What the hell is wrong with me? Mission control to penis—are you there? Kelly grinds her hips against mine and I bump and hump to try to get something to happen, but nothing doing: my cock is simply not a member in good standing.

  The thought of Kelly reaching into my pants expecting a hot dog and finding a cocktail wiener instead is just too excruciating, particularly after handling Doug's Polish sausage. So I do what any sensible person would do: I go down on her.

  I've never done it before and figure my timing has got to be off because I'm just diving in when Kelly moans, “Oh yeah, talk to me.”

  Like I don't have enough on my mind, now I have to provide a simultaneous running commentary. I knew I shouldn't have bought her that subscription to Cosmo.

  “What do you want me to . . .”

  “Don't stop,” she says, mashing my face into her crotch.

  “I dnt thnk I cn tlk lk ths,” I say into her pelvis. I sound just like the muffled teacher's voice in the Peanuts cartoons.

  “Oh yeah, that's it,” she purrs.

  “I cnt brth.”

  She shivers and her pink skin turns to gooseflesh. I'm glad to see one of us is having a good time.

  “Yu dnt ndrstnd.”

  “More,” she says.

  I have no idea what to talk about, never having conversed with a vagina before, so I say the first thing that pops into my head: Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

  I'm not sure this is what Mrs. Sugden had in mind when she assigned it in the fourth grade, but I am here to tell you that Longfellow's poem and a supple tongue make an effective substitute if you do not have a long fellow of your own available. (So does “I am the very model of a modern major general,” as it turns out.) More important, it keeps Kelly happy, and that's all I'm worried about. At one point she tries to curve her body around like maybe she should reciprocate, but I stop her by popping my head up and saying in my best sensitive, New Age-y, pro-feminist, Alan Alda–like way, “Let's just focus on you, okay?”

  Kelly lies back, relieved to not have to bother, and stretches her arms out like she's a cat wanting her belly scratched, or in this case, wanting her cat scratched, I guess. I cup her firm butt in my hands as I reach deeper inside her with my tongue and start reciting all the various Shakespeare monologues I've memorized. She gasps and bucks her hips like she's trying to swallow me whole, which, frankly, would suit me just fine. I'm so freaked about not being hard there's nothing I'd like better than to peel back the secret layers of her and crawl inside, feeling my way along the dark, moist walls of her vagina until I've disappeared completely, leaving the world and my flaccid dick behind me. Then I could just curl up like a baby inside her womb, all quiet and warm and peaceful.

  T
he good news is that my strategy works: for those of you who aspire to be cunning linguists, you should know that rapid iambic pentameter drives my girlfriend so wild that she almost boxes my ears in with her thighs when she comes.

  The bad news is that now she wants to do it all the time.

  It only takes a few sessions for Kelly to grow suspicious of my “I only care about your orgasm, honey” attitude. I'm a seventeen-year-old guy; it's not natural to be so considerate. But no matter what I do, my cock is still as limp as a cooked carrot. It's freaking me out.