The Lie

by Chad Kultgen

  The rest of our conversation that day was about fraternities. I had no real choice in the matter. Although I had little to no interest in Greek life, my father and grandfather were both ATOs and so would I be in the spring. I expected more of the same type of entitled pricks I had gone to high school with, but potentially from different states. I urged Kyle to rush as well so that I might have one person in the whole ordeal who didn’t make me want to swallow razor blades, but he had even less interest in all of it than I did.

  I tried to convince him further by suggesting that Heather was most likely interested in joining a sorority, and if they were to be a couple he would surely have to change his mind or their relationship would be doomed from the start. He laughed it off. I couldn’t tell if it was because he found the notion of having a relationship with this girl he barely knew to be absurd, or if he thought the idea that she could care about such things to be absurd. When he told me she had mentioned she was going to rush in the coming semester, I assumed it was the former.

  chapter four

  A few weeks had passed. Class was actually starting to get interesting. In chemistry we were talking about mass relations in chemical reactions and reactions in aqueous solutions, which I wasn’t fascinated by, but college chemistry wasn’t as boring as I thought it would be. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be either. We had one mini-exam in thermochemistry and I got the highest grade in the class.

  I started to make a few friends in some of my classes. A guy named Carl Gill was doing pretty much the same thing I was—majoring in biology and then going to med school somewhere. He was a pretty smart guy and we ended up becoming lab partners in a few classes. His older brother had just finished the exact same set of classes two years before and was in his second year of med school at UCLA. Carl said he still had all of his brother’s notes and everything, so that would be a pretty big help.

  I also started my work-study job at Mac’s, which was complete shit. My scholarship covered a decent amount of my tuition, and my dad helped me out, too, but I had to do work-study to cover the rest. I worked at a pizza place in high school, so I wasn’t completely foreign to this type of work environment—I mean I was used to being the only person there who spoke English as a first language. I thought there might be one other student working with me who was also forced into work-study, but no, Mac’s Place cafeteria was staffed with nine people per shift. There was some overlap but not much, so with a total of probably about sixteen to twenty employees whose first language was Spanish, I was forced to brush up on mine in a hurry. The lunch shift manager, Raulio, was probably the worst English speaker in the whole bunch. His favorite phrase was, “Now find trays and make them new.” The “make them new” part didn’t really bother me, but I always thought “Now find trays” was funny because it implied that the trays were hidden instead of being on tables or in the tray return bins, both in plain sight.

  My job, by the way, was basically to wash the dishes during the lunch and dinner rushes and go get the tray stacks and return them to the front of the line where people first come in. The work itself wasn’t bad, I guess, but being the douchebag in a hairnet that every hot chick in McElvaney would point and laugh at was about as bad an experience as I could have hoped for in a job. But I had no real choice. It was either that or not go to school, so I did it.

  Anyway, even though I hadn’t run into her at all, Heather was pretty much all I thought about over those next few weeks. I would go from being pissed at myself for not trying anything when she was in my bed to the more gay emotion of being sad that I would probably never see her again. I think I thought about her so much because all the chicks in my classes were either fat ugly pigs or they were so nerdy that they couldn’t carry on a normal conversation. I remember telling Brett that and he said something like, “I’ve fucked a few nerds in my life and let me tell you this, they might seem unassuming, but in the sack they will peel your dick like a fucking carrot if you’re not careful.” I think I just laughed at him because I didn’t really even know what that meant—if it was a good thing or not, having your dick peeled like a carrot.

  The rest of my female interaction was at work, where I got acquainted with the only two coworkers who weren’t men—Isabel and Monica—both of whom were around fifty and strangely missing teeth close enough to the front to notice every time they talked.

  So, comparatively speaking, Heather was the single hottest chick I had interacted with the entire time I had been at school. Because of this, and because our next meeting happened by chance, I know I attached way too much meaning to it. Like most people, I think, I saw it as some kind of sign or predestined event—whatever you want to call it—even though I know all of that is a complete load of crap. I was in the laundry room at McElvaney getting my stuff out of the washing machine so I could put it in the dryer, but all the dryers were stopped, full of various assholes’ crap that no one would come down to get for hours, making it impossible for other people to dry their clothes. So I picked the dryer closest to my washing machine and started taking the clothes out of it, piling them up on top.

  I assumed the clothes belonged to a chick, based on the amount of thong underwear I was pulling out of the thing. And, as luck would have it, I, of course, was holding just such a pair of thong underwear, and imagining the ass it belonged to, when Heather walked in.

  She said, “Oh, hey, Kyle, right?”

  “Yeah.” I pretended to vaguely remember her name, “Heather, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Um…are you thinking about like stealing my underwear or…”

  I realized I was still holding the underwear and I further realized it was hers. This is how completely retarded I was for this girl. At that exact moment I actually thought to myself that this would be a hilarious story to tell people later when we were married. If I could go back, I think I might just drop my pants and shit in her laundry. Instead, I said, “Oh, sorry, I was just, I was, you know, taking the stuff out of the dryer so I could use it.”

  She laughed. God, she was fucking cute. There she was, face-to-face with a guy who was basically a complete stranger holding a pair of her underwear, and she wasn’t pissed or creeped out or anything. She just laughed and took her underwear out of my hand, put it with the rest of her stuff that I had piled up on the dryer, put it all in a little pink laundry basket, and said, “So how have your first few weeks been?”

  I wanted to tell her I got the highest grade in my class on our thermochemistry mini-exam, but I held back. I couldn’t let her think I was a nerd. So I said, “Pretty good. Just kind of getting used to all the classes and everything. You know, a little different than high school. How about you?”

  “So far so good, I guess. Getting drunk way too much, as usual.” She laughed.

  I tried to make a joke, “Smash your skull into any more walls?” She stopped laughing and said, “Nope.”

  Then I said, “Cool.” I was pretty sure at that exact moment that I would never fuck this girl in a million years of trying. This would be a conversation she would go back and tell her roommate about to illustrate how utterly retarded guys are when they’re trying to pick up chicks. I was sure I was blowing it. But I wasn’t. I think a lot about that day in the laundry room, wondering if there was anything I could have said to make her never talk to me again.

  For some reason, far beyond my understanding at the time, she didn’t leave. For some reason that became clear to me later, but that I was too naive to see at that moment, she kept the conversation going. “So what’s your major? Have you figured it out yet?”

  “Yeah, biology. I’m hoping to go to med school and biology seems to be a pretty good way to go. How about you?”

  “Elementary education.”

  She could have told me she was majoring in shit-eating with a minor in injecting guys with AIDS blood while they slept, and I would have thought it was the greatest, most noble thing in the world.

  I said, “That’s really cool. This country needs mo
re good teachers.” Again, for reasons I couldn’t quite place at the time, she stuck around, kept talking to me.

  She said, “Yeah, I really think teaching is an important thing and, you’re right, there just aren’t enough teachers who really care about what they do in this country.”

  I should have fucking seen through her shit right then and there. She fucking agreed with me. But the vagina has some pretty extraordinary powers. In this case it chose to exercise its powers by performing a nonsurgical lobotomy on me. I didn’t care that she was lying to me—not literally lying to me, but faking that she had any interest in me at all. Not only did I not care, I didn’t even notice. I couldn’t separate what was really going on in that laundry room from the lies I was telling myself, which filled me with the overwhelming hope that this girl would somehow have sex with me, be my girlfriend…love me. She said, “How’s your roommate?”

  “Not bad. I found out he’s a born-again Christian, which is kind of weird.” Even as I was saying that, I remember hoping she wasn’t a born-again Christian, not because I didn’t want to offend her, but because if she was it would have been a deal-breaker for me. After all that’s happened now, it makes it even worse to know that it all could have been avoided if that cunt would have had the same delusional belief in a god as 95 percent of the backwards assholes in the world. Oh wait—she fucking did, but she hid it from me until she had me wrapped around her finger.

  She said, “Yeah, born-again Christians are about as weird as it gets.” I, being a pretty rational guy, took her response to mean that she thought all Christians were off their rockers, that she was at least agnostic if not an outright atheist like myself. I found out later, much later, that neither of these things were true.

  She said, “How’d you find out? Was he like praying over you at night and everything?”

  “No. It was actually way worse than that. He asked me if I wanted to go to a Rangers game with him and some of his friends last week, and I had nothing better to do so I went. It turned out the friends were his prayer group or something like that and in the middle of the game this one chick who was with us stood up as everyone was trying to watch the game and started singing, ‘God is good, he is the master of all creation’ or some shit. Then all the other people, my roommate included, joined in. It was fucking terrible.”

  That was the first time I said fuck in front of her. It just slipped out, but I was kind of interested in seeing her reaction. I always thought it was a good way to tell certain things about a person, to see how they react the first time you say fuck around them. If they don’t throw a shit or a crap or even a fuck of their own into the conversation after a few seconds, it seems like that person is probably a douchebag.

  Her next three words were, “That fucking sucks.” She was no douchebag.

  She said, “Well, if you ever need some place to chill for a few hours when you’ve had enough born-again bullshit, you can always come down to me and Annie’s room. We’re in two-twelve.”

  I didn’t want to sound too desperate or overexcited so I choked out, “Really?”

  She said, “Yeah. If we’re not out, we’re usually in our room smoking or drinking some beers. Don’t tell the RA.” She laughed again. “So you should come by.”

  Again, not wanting to sound too overexcited I said, “When?”

  She said, “What are you doing while your clothes dry?”

  “I was just going to go back to my room and read some biology stuff.”

  “Screw biology. Put your clothes in the dryer and let’s go smoke a bowl.”

  I had never smoked weed before in my life. It wasn’t because I had any moral opposition to it—quite the opposite. I was and still am a big supporter of legalizing all victimless crimes. The only “drug” I had done at all up to that point was booze, though. I had been drunk a few times in high school, probably under ten total, but at that moment I would have injected two metric tons of black tar heroin into my fucking eyeball if it gave me even the most remote chance to have sex with Heather.

  I said, “Okay, cool,” tossed my clothes in the dryer, and followed her to her room.

  chapter five

  I didn’t really know what was going to happen once he came to my room. Annie was gone when I went to do my laundry, but I didn’t know when she was coming back and, I mean, if she was there, probably nothing would happen. I couldn’t see us doing a double blowjob on him or anything—especially without E, and even though we were getting to be pretty good friends, if she was studying or something it wouldn’t have been cool to ask her to leave the room so I could try to have sex with Kyle. If Annie wasn’t there, though, I had a pretty good idea what would probably happen, but you can never tell with some guys, the weird guys, I mean. And Kyle was pretty weird. I mean the first time we met he didn’t even really have to put in any work to get me into his bed and he still didn’t try to have sex with me. Which was nice, I guess, but also pretty weird. I assumed since I was inviting him to my room this time he wouldn’t have whatever kind of mental hang-up he had that first time. But just in case, I’d get him high.

  At that point I think I had actually had sex with five guys and had probably blown like around twenty-five or thirty or around there, like total, high school and college. I only had anal sex once and it was with my first boyfriend who I loved. I was pretty sure I’d never do it again because it wasn’t really fun, it kind of hurt, and I thought I should keep something special about my first love that I would never do with any other guy. But I guess I’d probably do it with my husband every once in a while. So anal with my first love and then again with my true love.

  Most of the guys I had sex with or blew definitely came back for seconds if I let them. So I was pretty sure that if I could get Kyle to make a move on me I could turn it into a thing that lasted for a few weeks or a month or whatever until I got to hang out with Kyle and Brett together.

  Kyle was making weird, nervous jokes all the way back to my room and asking me if I played video games. I hate that video games have become so popular with guys now that I have to pretend to like them. I was like, “I play a few games, like Guitar Hero.” I think he was surprised I even knew what Guitar Hero was. I was actually kind of surprised, too. I think I had played it once, maybe twice at this party. It sucked, but I remember some drunk guy screaming, “I am the Guitar Hero god and I will shove my guitar up your ass if you challenge me,” over and over again while he played the game. That’s how I remembered what it was called.

  So once we got to my room, we walked in and Annie was gone. I couldn’t find my pipe so I took Annie’s and packed a bowl. I had no idea where mine was. That kind of bugged me. Then I offered Kyle the first hit. I could pretty much tell immediately that he had never smoked in his life just from the way he was holding it and everything. In some weird way that actually turned me on a little. Like he was so innocent or something and I was corrupting him a little bit. I had never been the more experienced person in any relationship when it came to drugs or sex or anything really. The guy had always been the one showing me how to do things, so it was kind of fun with Kyle.

  So I was like, “Have you ever smoked before?”

  He was like, “Honestly, not really all that much.”

  I was like, “Not really all that much or never?”

  He was like, “Never, I guess.”

  So I took the pipe from him and showed him how to do it. Then he tried and, of course, had a minor coughing fit and almost puked. But then he got the hang of it and after a few tries he was pretty baked, which also turned me on a little. It was like I was introducing him to a whole new thing, which was pretty cool. I’ll never forget the guy who smoked me out the first time. Greg Grubbs. He was kind of a chubby guy who was a few years older than me. He played football but didn’t start, but was still a sweet guy. He took me and my best friend at the time out behind his house at this party our sophomore year and got us seriously high. He wanted one of us to have sex with him and my friend ended up m
aking out with him, but that was all either one of us did with him. Then he ended up telling all of his friends on the football team that my friend gave him a blowjob and by the time it got back around to her so she could deny it, the whole school pretty much thought it was true. She was so pissed off.

  But the weird thing that happened when Kyle got high is that all of his nervous nerdiness kind of melted away and he was actually pretty cute. I was also really high so that might have had something to do with it, but whatever. I was, at least right at that moment, actually into him.

  He started talking about the nature of the universe and about M-theory or something or string theory. I don’t really remember, it was some nerd science stuff. I was just watching his mouth. I hadn’t noticed it until right then, but he had the slightest little snarl thing on the right side of his upper lip when he smiled. It was so subtle you had no chance of noticing it unless you really paid attention. But it was there and it made him even cuter to me for some reason. Like how sometimes a person’s flaws can make them seem even more interesting.

  So while he was talking about black holes or something I got up from Annie’s bed and went over to my bed, where he was sitting. I sat down next to him and just leaned in and kissed him. I figured he was never going to make the move on me so I had to do it if I ever wanted it to happen. He would have been happy to keep talking about the nature of existence and whatever else until I passed out from boredom.