by Paul Kropp
“No, I’m not taking anybody. I’m going with Jeremy.”
“He’s such a nice boy,” she said.
From my mother’s point of view, Jeremy was polite, didn’t dress too ghetto and always brought her a chocolate on Mother’s Day. She thought he was a wonderful kid to have as my best friend. What she didn’t know was that Jeremy has more porn on his computer than I have Word files. I suspect that information might change her opinion.
Jeremy wasn’t too thrilled about going along with me to the dance. He said that St. Hilda’s was having a dance the same night and he was going to go to that dance with some girl named Mona or Monica. Jeremy is always going off to church dances and says he prefers girls from Catholic schools. I think that’s funny because Jeremy is Jewish and we both go to a public high school, but he says that the Catholic girls have a touch of class about them, a je ne sais quoi, he would say, except that he studied Spanish.
Nonetheless, Jeremy agreed to give up an evening with Mona or Monica to keep me company at the Regis High School Spring Fling. I think he felt guilty about the way Maggie had demolished me in the cafeteria. Or maybe he thought he could get the project back on track by finding somebody for me at the dance.
“Hey, Alan,” Jeremy said, walking in our front door after a quick knock. “You’re not going like that, are you?”
“What do you mean, ‘like that’?”
“I mean, like that, like how you’re dressed.”
“What’s wrong with how I’m dressed?” I shot back. “My mother said I looked fine.”
“That should have been your first clue, Al,” he said in a whisper. “When your mother thinks you look good, you really look like a total reject. It’s the rule. Never listen to your mom on matters of clothing, romance or advanced math.”
“Oh,” I replied.
“You look like you’re going to McDonald’s for the Happy Meal. I mean, those shoes have got to go. You can’t dance in those. And the shirt? Have you ever seen anybody on a music video wearing a button-down shirt? Frankly, Al, you can’t do much about your face or your hopeless hair, but you can at least pick some decent clothes. Let’s go see what’s in your closet.”
It took a good half-hour for Jeremy to re-dress me for the dance. This time, I was mostly in black: black shoes, black pants, black T with a wonky Hawaiian shirt that my uncle had brought back from Oahu, and a black necklace that Jeremy found in my mom’s room.
“A necklace?” I said.
“It means you’re not worried about dressing like a girl. It means you’re sexually confident.”
“But what if I’m not.”
“Then fake it. Remember, Al, this is part of a long-term project. Don’t lose sight of the goal.”
It was easy to lose sight of everything when I stared at myself in the mirror. Together, we looked like the two Men in Black, except he wasn’t Will Smith and I wasn’t Tommy Lee Jones, even after we put on the sunglasses.
“Now that’s cool,” Jeremy said.
“I look just like you,” I told him.
“That’s what I said, Al, you look cool. Now let’s go.”
The two of us walked to school, avoiding the demeaning offer of a ride from my mom. It didn’t matter how cool you dressed if you got out of the family van for a school dance. “Your entrance,” Jeremy told me, “is key. Imagine you’re going into the party scene in La Traviata.” Jeremy’s father is into opera, so he can talk about things like that.
Our actual entrance to the school dance didn’t quite measure up to an operatic standard. Old Mr. Tarkington, the VP, smiled at the two of us and mumbled something unintelligible; the official rent-a-cop looked at me as if I had a mickey of whisky hidden in my shirt; and the breathless student council social convenor took our tickets without looking up or even once batting her gorgeous blue eyes. When we walked into the dance, I found myself quite blind in the darkened gym. It turned out that I couldn’t see much of anything wearing the sunglasses, so I pushed them down on my nose and looked out over their lenses.
Elegant it was not. You can flash some strobe lights in a school gym, you can set up big video screens under the basketball nets, but you still can’t eliminate the smell of fifty years of dirty socks and sweaty underarms. I wondered if La Traviata had ever been performed in a school gym.
“Hey, dude,” I heard. It was the voice of Leroy Anderson, a kid we’d called Scrooge ever since a monumental production of A Christmas Carol back in grade three. Leroy was maybe the first black Scrooge ever, and he pulled off the role so brilliantly that the nickname stuck.
“Hey, guy,” I replied. All I could see through the sunglasses were his smiling teeth.
“You look cool,” he said.
“Thanks,” I replied. I figured that approval from Scrooge was probably worth more than a few kind words from my mother.
“Hey, Scrooge,” Jeremy piped up, “any babes around here?”
“The usual,” he reported. “Marci came with Adrienne, but they’re just here to dance. Joanna brought a date, Allison has five guys hanging off her, Nikki’s wearing a top so tight you could bounce a quarter off it, and that’s about it except for the baby chicks.”
The baby chicks were the girls in their first year of high school. These were the minor niners who giggled whenever you said anything, dressed like J. Lo but without her physical assets, and tended to smell like a mix of bubble gum and cheap perfume. We, of course, were two years older and therefore much more sophisticated.
“Alan’s looking for a girl,” Jeremy volunteered.
“Anybody in particular?” Scrooge asked.
“Nah, he’ll settle for anything older than a baby chick. Maybe Naomi?”
“She came with Rod,” Scrooge said, “so there’s no way.”
“Jen Beecroft?”
“Haven’t seen her.”
I thought it was time to offer my own suggestion. “How about Allison?”
I could see their eyes, staring at me, even through the sunglasses. I had an idea of the look on their faces.
“Get real, Alan,” Scrooge told me. “She’s the closest thing we have to a goddess here, and you just wouldn’t make the cut. And the way she spreads gossip—Al, you’d be the laughingstock of the school in no time.” He took a moment to reflect, and then grinned at me. “I mean, even I don’t have a chance with Allison.”
I guess that put me in my place. Scrooge pretty much had his pick of the girls in our school. He was cool, funny, smart, talented and black—a pretty devastating combination in a town of 150,000 that had very few black guys, and none who were cool, funny, smart and talented except Scrooge himself.
In comparison, I was klutzy, dull, dim-witted, unfocussed and pimpled. If Scrooge couldn’t get anywhere with Allison Mackenzie, I couldn’t even get in her vicinity.
“Let’s go look around,” Jeremy said to Scrooge. I think he was purposely excluding me. “We’ll go scouting and see if there’s anybody in your league, Al.”
So I was left standing there, in a league of my own.
This dance seemed to be more successful than the previous student council event, which is to say that a few kids actually were dancing. By and large, the first-year kids propped up the walls on two sides—boys on one, girls on the other—the second-year kids hung around the snack bar, and the third-year kids like us tried to stand around and look cool. Fourth-year kids didn’t come to these dances, or they came drunk and the rent-a-cop had to usher them out.
I was just standing there, staring at the world through my dark glasses, when Maggie came up beside me.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” she said.
“What’s that?” I replied. I thought she’d said “I’m slurpy.”
“I’m sorry about what I said last week. When you asked me to the dance. I really didn’t mean to be mean. Sometimes I get like that, kind of bristly and obnoxious.”
“No problem,” I replied, looking at her over my shades. Maggie looked kind of good in the coloured lights. She
was wearing an iridescent top that caught the light and a pair of low-slung pants that showed a nice bit of skin. There seemed to be some sparkles on her cheeks, which I took to be makeup rather than freckles. And she had taken off her glasses, but I guess she had to squint to see much.
“I figured out later that Jeremy must have put you up to it,” she said.
“Up to what?”
“Asking me to the dance.”
“Well, he kind of encouraged me. He’s my project manager.”
“A project manager?” she asked.
“Yeah, or maybe a personal trainer. He’s trying to help me get a date…I mean, a date with you.”
“So I’m like the five-pound barbells that you lift until you get in shape,” Maggie suggested. “Then you go on to the heavier weights, like Nikki or Allison.”
“No, not like that,” I said. “I mean, I like you, kind of, and I just thought you might want to go to the dance, that’s all. But you’re already here, so it’s kind of a moot point.”
Moot point! I thought to myself. Had I actually said moot point in conversation? I’m not even sure I know what moot point means.
“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, turning away from me. “I didn’t mean to be the way that I was. It’s just that I’m not ready for this whole dating thing. So I guess I should have said that instead of doing a number on you.”
I nodded. We were both quiet for a second while Céline Dion sang something loud and romantic. I can never hear her voice without thinking of all those bodies floating in the water after the Titanic sank.
I listened to the music, taking surreptitious peeks at Maggie from the corner of my eye. She seemed to be thinking about something, biting her lip periodically, then finally nodding her head as if she’d made up her mind.
“Looks like your project buddies are back,” Maggie said as Jeremy and Scrooge came up.
“Hi, Maggie,” Jeremy replied, not missing a beat. “What’s this about a project?”
“Alan says you’re his project manager in romance, kind of a dating coach.”
“Did you say that?” Jeremy asked accusingly.
“Well, not exactly,” I mumbled.
Maggie squinted at the two of us. “All I can say is, God help Alan if he’s looking to you for advice on girls. You wouldn’t know how to come on to a girl if she had both arms wrapped around your neck and was sticking her tongue in your ear.”
“Whooo!” Scrooge broke in. “That one came in low and hard!”
Maggie didn’t stop. “Alan needs some good advice if he wants to start going out with a decent girl. And the best place to get that advice is from…a girl.”
“Like who?” Scrooge asked.
“Like me,” Maggie went on. “Good advice. Reasonable rates. Good connections. If I can’t get Alan half a dozen dates in the next couple of months, nobody can.”
“Well, we had a little bit more in mind,” Jeremy replied. The spit on his lips seemed to glow in the dark, a none-too-pleasant effect.
“I figured,” Maggie went on, “but I can’t guarantee that. Listen, Alan,” she said, turning to me, “if you want me to help on this project, I will. We can start tonight laying out a plan. Meet me at Starbucks after the dance.” Then she turned to Jeremy. “That is, if your current project manager will let you stay up that late.”
3
Project Costs Escalate
IT WASN’T THAT late when we left for Starbucks. School dances always end at eleven o’clock for some reason, maybe because “Stairway to Heaven” takes forever to play so they have to start it at ten thirty. Actually, the Spring Fling had ended for me even before it began. I didn’t even dance, since there was no sense making a fool of myself by asking one of the baby chicks, and the older girls weren’t looking particularly friendly.
So there we sat in Starbucks with our grande cappuccinos: danceless me, irritated Jeremy and way-cool Scrooge.
“This is stupid,” Jeremy said as he sipped his double frappuccino.
“This is a hoot,” Scrooge replied, using one of those seventies terms he gets from his mother.
“This gives me a chance,” I told them, gritting my teeth.
Jeremy shot me an angry glance over his grande cup. “Listen, Alan, I already offered to tell you anything you want to know about girls.”
“Yeah, what do you know?” Scrooge asked. Scrooge could get away with that because, whenever he called you a BS artist, he did it with this enormous grin on his face.
“I know plenty,” Jeremy shot back. “I’ve been out with more girls than…well, maybe not you, Scrooge, but more than most of the guys at school. I know all their secrets, all their little turn-ons. I know all the tricks that’ll get Alan laid.”
“You ever got laid?” Scrooge asked.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said, sticking out his chin. “More times than I can count.”
Scrooge laughed. “You are so full of it.”
“Shhh,” I told them both. “She’s here.”
We all looked as Maggie came in the door. She nodded to us and got in the lineup for her coffee. Scrooge began grumbling because Allison hadn’t come with her, so now I understood his real agenda. Jeremy kept making nasty comments about Maggie and her general lack of style, not to mention her obnoxious attitude. I kept my mouth shut. After all, Maggie’s offer of advice had come to me, not to them. They were only here because I needed some moral support.
“I see you brought your crew,” Maggie said, sitting down across from me.
“Yeah, well…”
“That’s the first thing we’ve got to fix, Alan. If you’re going to start moving in on girls, you’ve got to do it by yourself. This wolf-pack thing just won’t work.”
“Hey, we’re not a wolf pack,” Scrooge said. “We’re a support group for our buddy here. We give him our solidarity and emotional backup, not to mention the benefit of our wisdom and experience. And by the way, where’s Allison?”
“See, you just proved my point. Scrooge, why don’t you go prowl the streets and see if you can find her. Failing that, there’s a moon you can howl at.”
“Whoa!” Scrooge told her. “I can tell when I’m not wanted. C’mon, Jeremy, I think this girl wants to be alone with our friend.”
“Whooo, pretty romantic,” Jeremy joined in. “Nobody told us this was going to be a private conversation.” He got up out of his chair and looked at me with a superior smile on his face. “Looks like you’ve got to wrestle this barracuda all by yourself, Al. Lots of luck.”
Laughing to each other, my friends headed for the door. I stared at my coffee cup.
“So juvenile,” Maggie grumbled.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So listen, Alan, I’m not billing you by the minute or anything, but we might as well get to the point. Just what is it that you want?”
That was a tough one. It was one of those questions that you can’t just fire back something easy, your basic one-line zinger that you see on sitcoms all the time.
What did I want? Well, I wanted to go out with a girl. No, I wanted a girl to like me, and I wanted to make out and I wanted to have sex. At least, I think I wanted to have sex, but I wasn’t really one hundred percent sure about that. After all, sex comes with all sorts of complications, so really I just wanted to make out. But what’s the point of making out unless you’ve got some hope of going all the way, so maybe I really did want sex.
In a second or two, I thought about all those things, except not as clearly, and mostly in pictures rather than words. I often think in pictures, like a very fast dream playing through my brain, and then the words come later. So what I saw was me on a date with Nikki, and me kissing Allison, who was dressed only in lingerie, and me making out with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and a dozen other images—some of them unrepeatable—that went zooming across my mental computer screen.
What I finally said is, “I’m not sure.”
“Oh, come on,” Maggie replied, shaking her head. “You didn’t ask me to the
dance because you weren’t sure. You had to have some idea about some kind of objective. I mean, even your friends know what they want. Scrooge wants to make a play for Allison just to add to his girl collection and Jeremy wants to get more material for his fantasy life.”
“No, Jeremy goes out a lot, but not with girls from our school,” I said.
She snorted. “Yeah, right. But the question remains, what do you want? Would it be easier if I made it multiple choice?”
“Yeah, that would be good,” I said, breathing a little more easily. I’m good at multiple choice; it’s the essay questions that kill me.
“Okay, so here’s the possible answers,” she said, licking some coffee off her bottom lip.
“Ready.”
“You want to (a) go out on a date to prove you’re normal and not a homosexual, (b) go out with a girl because you’ve seen it on TV and it looks cool, (c) start a relationship with a girl so you can make out, or (d) you want to get laid.”
“Can I pick more than one?”
“No, you have to pick the best answer, just like on Greer’s math tests. It may not be the right answer, but the best answer of the ones given.”
I suddenly felt very warm, as if the Starbucks staff had chosen that moment to pump up the heat. “Well, uh, I’m seventeen now and I think, you know, it’s about time I had a relationship, you know, a serious relationship…”
I was in the middle of this long and complex answer, an answer that I thought would be both forthright and politically correct, an answer that would get Maggie on my side and pave the way for a brilliant social life for the rest of the school year if not the rest of my life, but something short-circuited in my brain and the big answer stopped cold. Then, from somewhere at the back of my brain, another voice took over. “I…uh, I pick (d).”
Ohmygod, I thought. I’ve just told a girl, an actual girl, that what I really want to do is get laid. She’ll think I’m a pig. She might hit me. She might tell all her friends.
Maggie didn’t do any of those things. “Well, at least you’re honest,” she said. “I thought I was going to have to sit here for an hour while you went through some convoluted BS about wanting a deep and meaningful relationship. I mean, at seventeen who’s looking for deep and meaningful?”
