Wired Man and Other Freaks of Nature

by Sashi Kaufman

  “Win on three,” Coach said, and he put his hand out and everyone else put their hands in the middle.

  The winning goal came in the last ten seconds of play. It was sophomore Matt Middlebury’s first goal of the season. The team swarmed on the kid, jumping all over him and incurring a meaningless penalty from the ref for excessive celebration. Ben was more than relieved. Even though the defense had successfully kept him from touching the ball, the pain in his hand was increasing to a consistent stabbing sensation. Now when he tried to open and close his fingers, the pain surged.

  After they doused Coach with Gatorade, Ben ran over to the fence, where he hugged his mom and dad and Shannan over the top of the black chain links. Dad, of course, wanted to take him to the ER immediately. “Dad,” Ben said. “Phil said I could go home and ice it. He said I don’t have to get it checked out right away. If it still really hurts tomorrow, then I promise I’ll let you drive me to the doctor, okay?” His real motivation was to make it to the evening’s promised festivities without any parental intervention. He could put up with whatever pain was necessary until tomorrow morning at least. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to feel anything tonight.

  “All right, Ben,” Dad relented. “We’ll meet you outside the locker room?”

  “Tyler can give me a ride, Dad.” Ben smiled. His parents hadn’t picked him up after soccer since sophomore year. He knew that his dad was just going into overprotective mode.

  His dad looked at him as though puzzled by this answer. “Oh right, sure.”

  Ben clapped him on the shoulder with his good hand. “Can Tyler come for dinner tonight?” It would make things easier when they both slid out the door later.

  “Sure,” said his dad. “We can celebrate together!”

  “Sounds good, Dad,” Ben said. He ignored Shannan, who was rolling her eyes behind Dad’s back and smirking. Surely thinking of how he and Tyler would really be celebrating later on.

  The bus ride back to school was mayhem. When they pulled into school, Coach gave a quick reminder talk about the athletic contract and what he would personally do to anyone who made himself ineligible to play by getting caught like, in his words, “a drunken jackass.”

  “See?” Tyler said as they piled off the bus and jogged toward the locker room. “He didn’t expressly forbid us from acting like drunken jackasses. He just told us not to get caught.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not what he meant,” Ben said. But he wasn’t going to argue. Not now. Not when things were light and easy between them and everything seemed to be going their way.

  Chapter 9

  Jessica Albright’s house was down a dirt road, about half a mile from the nearest neighbor. It was definitely going to be an epic night, Ben thought as he surveyed the scene. There were two kegs in the backyard when he and Tyler arrived around 9:30, the music was loud, and it seemed like half the school was there. This would be one of those parties that everyone would talk about later and you would feel really bad if you hadn’t been there. Or you would just smile and nod like you had been. There was a different energy—as if these weren’t the people they saw every day in the halls. They were all new people that night. They could be anyone.

  They grabbed yellow plastic keg cups and got in line behind Whitney Morrison and Dana Reid. They were both cheerleaders. Whitney had soft brown eyes and light brown skin. She smiled at Ben and Tyler like she knew the whole party was kind of foolish and destined to end badly but what were they going to do about it anyway. Tyler was uncharacteristically quiet in the face of cute girls. Ben saw Lindsay Walker standing in line for the keg just a few people in front of them. He looked at Tyler, but his face was cold, impassive. Before Ben could come up with something to say, he heard their names being called from the front of the line.

  “Boys! My boys!” It was Brandon Rosetti, and it sounded like he’d already had a few. He was at the front of the line, pumping the keg and working the crowd. Ben followed Tyler up to the front while Brandon shouted out a bunch of bullshit about their prowess on the soccer field. Brandon handed Tyler a full beer, sloshing some of it out onto the ground.

  “Hey, no cutsies!” Ben turned around and saw Julie’s sophomore friend standing behind him. She was pretending to look pissed.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Darcy,” she said.

  “I know,” he lied. He had remembered it began with a D. He tried to think of something else to say. “Is Julie here?” he asked, then kicked himself as he saw a flicker of annoyance in her eyes.

  “I don’t know. I could probably find out if I could ever get my beer. But some people think they’re big shots who get to cut the line.”

  “I hate those people,” Ben said. Whoa, was he flirting with her? She did look cute tonight—her lips were all pink and sparkly. Brandon handed him a full beer, and he turned to offer it to Darcy. “Ladies first?”

  “Thanks,” she said, giving him a real smile. She took it and handed him her empty cup, which he pushed back into Brandon’s hand for a refill.

  “How’s your hand?” she asked when they both had their beers and had moved away from the line. Tyler had already left, pulled away by one of the other soccer guys to haze Matt for his game-winning goal.

  “It’s okay,” he said, holding up his fingers, which were pleasantly numb and still wrapped tightly in athletic tape. “A little cold, I guess.” His glove wouldn’t fit over the bandage, not that he would have left them on at the party anyway.

  “You need, like, the opposite of fingerless gloves,” she said. “Like, whatever happens to all the fingers when they make fingerless gloves? Are they just sitting in a factory somewhere being sad and purposeless?”

  “I don’t think they actually make the fingers and cut them off,” Ben said. “They’re probably just made that way in the first place.”

  Darcy looked at him with a half smile. “I know, Ben. I was just kidding. You’re kind of serious, you know? You should try and lighten up.”

  “I’m not serious.” He tried to say it lightly—like all along he’d known they were joking around. “What makes you think I’m serious?” He took a long pull on his beer. That would help—it had to help.

  Darcy shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like you’re very careful, you know. Like you’re always watching people and, you know, thinking about them.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “Only if you don’t know how to turn it off and just relax and have fun sometimes.”

  “I have fun,” Ben said. But he brought his hand up to his winter hat—the orange one he bought from a traveling hippie flea market when he was visiting Shannan at UMaine. He knew just how it fit snugly over the top parts of his ears. Beside him, Darcy shivered and rubbed her arm with her free hand. “Want to go stand by the fire?” he asked. “I could try and be more fun over there.”

  Darcy laughed and then her teeth chattered, which was somehow incredibly cute. “Sure,” she said. Her laughter made him feel warm and more certain of himself.

  They stood by the fire pit for a while and chatted about little things. Soccer and the upcoming State final, classes, how Darcy hated her chemistry teacher. Ben was glad that the What-Are-You-Going-To-Do-Next-Year topic didn’t come up. He figured sophomores didn’t care that much about that sort of thing yet. Talking with Darcy was easy. And when they weren’t talking it wasn’t awkward either. They just watched other people and Darcy made some comments that were sarcastic but never that mean. She was still shivering a bit, and Ben thought about putting his arm around her—just to keep her warm—but knew he’d never have the guts. Tyler would have. And with Tyler it wouldn’t have seemed sleazy either. It was the kind of thing he would do for anyone, really—not just a girl he thought was cute and kind of interesting. Did he feel that way about Darcy? He looked down. She was at least five inches shorter than he was.

  “Knock it off, Ben,” she said playfully.

  “What?”

  “You’re thinking too
much again.”

  “Sorry,” he said and then in a robot voice, “No more thinking.”

  Darcy laughed. She reached up toward the back of his neck. “There’s got to be a switch around her somewhere.” He flinched even before she touched him and just as quickly wished he could take it back. Her hand fell lightly on his collar and then back at her side. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, I know you didn’t,” he said too quickly. It was awful. He searched his mind for something to say. What he hated most of all was that she felt bad about it. He was the awkward one, not her. But how to explain that without becoming even more awkward? Just then, one of her friends ran up and asked if she could steal Darcy away because she just had to talk to her. Ben nodded numbly, but as she turned to go she reached for his frozen fingers and gave them a little squeeze.

  “If I see any gloveless fingers lying around, I’ll grab them for you.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe she didn’t think he was a total loser after all. He didn’t have too much more time to contemplate it. Someone threw a huge log onto the fire, and a spray of sparks shot up in the air. Some girls screamed. Some moron threw his beer on the fire, and it began to smoke like crazy. Coughing, he made his way back toward the house and the line for the keg. His cup was empty anyway.

  Tyler intercepted him before he could get to the line. “Here,” he said, thrusting a full cup in his hand. “I got this for you. Where’d you go?”

  “I was talking to Darcy. You know, that friend of Julie’s?”

  Tyler stared at him blankly. “The one who doesn’t like steak bombs.” Or you, Ben felt like adding. The one girl who didn’t topple over and faint in your presence.

  Tyler squinted, “Smallish tits, nice ass?”

  “Maybe,” Ben said. “You’re an idiot.”

  “But I’m your idiot,” Tyler grinned and spread his arms wide like he was going to hug him. “Come on over. Let’s both be idiots. Rosetti’s got some game he learned at his brother’s frat at UNH.” Ben grimaced. Tyler always wanted in on whatever the game was. Sometimes he wondered if it bordered on a fear of being left out. But that was ridiculous, because no one ever wanted to leave Tyler Nuson out.

  Ben took a big swig out of his cup and let Tyler drag him over to the side of the yard where the soccer team was lined up in two rows facing each other. He missed most of whatever explanation was given, but the basic premise of Boat Race seemed to be that you drank your beer as fast as you could without spilling and then put your cup on your head upside down. Then the next guy in line could drink, and so on until everyone was finished. The team to chug the fastest, with the least amount of spillage, was declared the winner. People started gathering around to watch, and Ben felt that nervous feeling he got in situations where he was unsure of the rules or expectations. He took another sip but Brandon, who was standing next to him on the seniors’ side, whacked him in the arm. “That’s cheating, dude,” he said. Then more thoughtfully, “Sorry, is that your bad hand?” Ben shook his head.

  “Come on!” Brandon yelled out to their line. “Come on, seniors. We gotta own this!”

  Ben looked across at the sophomores and juniors on the other team. Next year some of them would be standing over here. They were already taking on the roles that would define them in school and on the team. Jason Chiazzo, who played defense, was a leader and a junior with a huge foot—he could boot the ball halfway up the field. Matt Middlebury was a really talented midfielder who played a lot like Tyler did: fluidly and with that same innate sense of where the ball was and where it was going. Ben looked around. No one was really like him, but that wasn’t surprising. Goalies were outsiders by nature. It was probably the reason he felt so at home in the role. He never would have lined up for this game as a sophomore. He probably wouldn’t have even come to the party. It was always Tyler who convinced him that the team meant it when they got invited to parties with upperclassmen.

  The short sharp sound of a whistle pierced his thoughts. He looked quickly around. The guys at the front of each line had started pounding their beers, and everyone else was yelling and cheering them on. There were two more guys in front of him. He put his beer on the ground like everyone else and then leaned forward, waiting for the person behind him to tap him when it was his turn. When the tap came he didn’t hesitate. He opened up the back of this throat and let the liquid pour down, barely tasting it. The last gulp he swallowed hard, and then he turned the cup upside down on his head. There were no drips—just a feeling of cold dampness where the edges of the cup pressed into the knit of his hat.

  Tyler was the anchor—the last man in the line. He downed his beer easily, and the seniors won it with time to spare. Everyone cheered, but one of the sophomores demanded a rematch. There was a general shout of agreement, and they all rushed the keg to refill their cups. A couple of the sophomores looked a little unsteady as they charged over. Even though drinking did make him feel more at ease, he had always been cautious, even as an underclassman. More afraid of what he might do or say if he ever got truly out of control. Tyler’s cheeks were bright red, but that was just something that happened to him when he drank. He said it was an Asian thing. Soon they were all lined up again, and the whistle blew. Seniors won again but this time only by a few seconds—however, all the sophomores and even a few of the juniors had spillage down the fronts of their jackets. Some of the juniors shouted for yet another rematch, but then someone heard that Danny Fisher—a kid who seemed to have an infinite supply of weed—was smoking everyone out. The soccer team began to drift and dissipate throughout the crowd. There was cheering coming from over by the keg, and Ben could see feet in the air. He shook his head. It was going to be an epic night.

  Suddenly his fingers began to tingle. He held up his hand and wiggled them, and they didn’t even hurt. Not even a twinge. He grinned, feeling the same warmth in his stomach. Yup, he was good and buzzed. It was that perfect time of the party, when everyone was having fun and no one was hurling in the bushes yet. Then the crowd sort of parted, and Ben saw Darcy walking toward him and he was really glad to see her. All thoughts of their awkward moment just a half hour earlier had vanished from his head. He smiled as he realized she was walking toward him with a purpose. And then she was right there in front of him, and she grabbed the collar of his jacket and pulled his head down until his mouth was pressed firmly against hers. He started to say something, but when he opened his mouth to speak her tongue was there—warm, and engaging his whole mouth.

  In a move that was totally unlike him, he grabbed at the back of her jeans with his good hand, sliding it down to the curve of her ass. He felt her breathe heavy and warm into his mouth—which seemed like a good response. She kept walking, pushing him backwards, until he fell back onto a piece of outdoor furniture—one of those long chaise chairs with the squishy plastic cushions. Darcy fell forward on top of him. It was cold on his back and the backs of his legs, but everything else was warm.

  Her tongue kept pushing into his mouth and he pushed back, mashing his mouth into hers. One of his legs was between hers and she was grinding on his thigh. He opened his eyes just for a second to see if anyone was watching them, but no one was. He glanced over at another couple similarly intertwined on another chair. He pulled his mouth away and sucked in a breath of the cold night air. His lips were buzzing, almost burning. “Um, do you want to go somewhere?” he asked.

  Darcy laughed, wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “Why?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Are you cold?”

  “Not anymore.”

  So he kept kissing her. And then she was running her hand up and down his leg and over his dick on the outside of his jeans. Each time she did he shuddered uncontrollably because it felt so freaking good and because he felt like his jeans might split open with the sheer force of his hard-on. And then they just had to stop. Because if it wasn’t going to go any further right there, they
had to stop before he burst a blood vessel somewhere. Darcy looked up at him quizzically. “Uh oh,” she said. “You’re not having fun?”

  “No,” Ben said. “I mean, yes. I am definitely having fun. I just, well, you know me. Can’t have too much fun all at once. Just need a little break from the fun for a second.”

  She smiled contentedly, almost smugly, as though pleased with her ability to reduce him to a quivering mass of sexual tension. They lay there for a while watching the party build up to a crescendo—a couple girls wearing only their underwear streaked by in a cacophony of screams and giggles—and then slowly start to mellow out. Ben drank his beer and then finished Darcy’s, but somehow he didn’t feel that drunk. If anything, he felt like he was seeing things more clearly than he ever had before. He could do this—be with a girl. He wasn’t worried about the time because his parents knew he was staying at Tyler’s, and Tyler’s parents didn’t care when they came home. But his butt felt like it was going numb, from either the cold or lack of movement, so when Tyler came over and proposed they do a shot for the road with the rest of the seniors, he was ready to get up and move. Darcy had to find her ride home and declined to join them, but she gave his hand another little squeeze before walking a bit unsteadily toward the house.

  Tyler was already walking back into the yard. Ben gave him a glance but then jogged after Darcy.

  “Hey,” he said when he caught up to her. “You should give me your number or something.” He hoped his voice was casual even as his heart threatened to pound right out of his chest.

  “Okay,” she said. She took his phone and entered her number, handing it back to him so he could read that she’d entered her name as Darcy Is Hot. He couldn’t believe it could be this easy. He tried not to fast-forward to the idea of actually calling her—like, when he was sober.

  “Okay, I’m going to go now, before you start thinking too much about all this,” she said. He smiled at her and watched her walk away. But when he turned to find Tyler had gone ahead, he found he was glad that he hadn’t been watched, that this moment had been achieved on his own for once.