But Maria, in all her grace and goodness and gratitude—I was a catchy tune, a power ballad, a hit single, perhaps, but she was music itself—forgave this sorry excuse of a boyfriend. Truly, she was so far evolved in the art of forgiveness, I should’ve replaced my Saint Anthony locket dangling from my neck with a cropped picture of Her.
But I didn’t just express adoration for my girlfriend in rhyme, prose, or verse. I got on my knees and I sought out her box like a heat-seeking missile—with tongue, with lips, with teeth.
And then it would be my beloved Maria on the receiving end of lingual pleasuring in the back seat of her SUV, reclined with her legs wrapped around my neck as her hands combed through my peroxide-blond hair.
As I watched her pull into our driveway, I felt like a child again, rushing down the basement steps on Christmas morning with a flutter in my stomach.
“Ohh, Victor…” Splish! Splash! I was like a kid in a puddle. “Victor…” I peeked up from my fleshy shackles to see Maria smiling, eyes closed, chin to the ceiling of the truck. “Are you excited for your birthday surprise? Ya know, I’ve never been to Medieval Times.”
Slish! Slosh! “Mmmhmmmm.”
Although sweet Rie had disclosed to me during a blowout that my birthday present was a trip to that institution in Lyndhurst (Yeah?!?! Well all I WANTED was to take you to Medieval Times!!), she continued to refer to the trip as a “surprise,” as if living in the past.
So on we went to Medieval Times, but not before I insisted—pleaded, really, that I get one more taste before the Dinner & Tournament, which I did on the Jacuzzi cover beneath her uncle’s bedroom window—I swore I heard the mechanical screech of dental tools coming from the house as Maria sat on my face.
The institution still followed the… medieval practice of not permitting their patrons to reserve a spot in a specific knight’s section. Because of this operational folly, we were cast out to the margins, where we were expected to cheer for the least exciting knight of the lot. The Yellow Knight—yes, I suppose in my youth I stated I would’ve been content with this particular warrior’s section, but that was when I was young and impressionable and believed that women urinated out of their butts! A simpler time, maybe, but still, I was far from possessing any capacity to properly select a champion. I couldn’t think of a more boring, drab wielder o’ forged steel—“The most chivalrous of all the knights,” read the program. Chivalrous? What good would chivalry do when you had a battle-ax zooming toward your helm? Besides, I had tried my hands at haikus, odes, ballads, and limericks, and they all stunk. I didn’t give a shit about chivalry. Chivalry sent me pummeling facedown in a pile of mud and vomit. I was a heat-seeking, box-eating, goddamn Mongol who banged his girlfriend like he was off to the battlefield.
But I dared not allow Maria to witness my disappointment.
“Oh! Yellow! You like that one, right, Victor?! Right, my precious birthday boy, Victor Vicky, Vic, Vic, Vic?” she said while she fixed the piss-yellow paper crown atop my head.
Like? Like?! Of course, sweetheart, apple of my eye, light of my fire, life of my loins. The Yellow Knight shall make a fine champion. Yes, a fine champion indeed—I hadn’t shut up about my experience ten years ago when I witnessed the Black and White Knight’s greatness in the battle pit, but I’m assuming Maria—really, a tremendous sweet—would’ve said that about any of the six cavaliers.
Unlike the Black and White Knight’s fifty-yard line placement, the Yellow Knight’s cheering section was crammed into a corner (I’m quite aware the arena was in the shape of an oval), cast out in the margins of the pit, situated, mockingly, next to the gallant warrior who dons the white and black—I asked an eight-year-old comfortably seated in my true champion’s section if he wanted to trade knights with me before the tournament started; his father told him not to talk to strangers.
The king addressed the audience and welcomed them to his castle. The show started and I was a child again, bouncing on the balls of my feet, slurping my dragon soup. The falcon whizzed overhead, and I could hear Britney’s screech as if she were next to me. The contestants rode in to the pit and the Yellow Knight fared well in the ring lancing and javelin throw, and by the time we reached the one-on-one melee, I had stopped surreptitiously clapping for the Black and White Knight underneath the table and gave my heart to our designated warrior. That was until he laid the softest kiss on the head of a truncated rose and tossed it to Maria.
Make him suffer!
Maria caught the flower like it was a routine fly ball, and I thought I saw the two of them make eye contact and linger. I can’t assure you who it was that lingered longer, who, in fact, was the lingerer and who the lingeree, but the square-jawed, flowing blond-haired, chivalric defender of the realm resembled every single (white) player on that Sun Devils football team—like Pat Tillman with a lance.
I sank back into my seat and slurped my dragon soup as the Yellow Knight went on to win the tournament, tearing through the Blue Knight and Green Knight respectively—I never thought in the entirety of my existence that I would cheer on the vile knight in green, but jealously will do that to a man—until our so-called champion vanquished the dreaded Black Knight and his minions.
Back on West Road, my parents had found an excuse to leave the house so Maria and I could enjoy the confines of the basement undisturbed: “Hey, down there! Okay, you two, we’re gonna head out, go see a movie or something, maybe grab some… what? What’s that? Well, what’s playing, hun? Okay! We’ll see you later! We’ll use the front door, Vito!”
Maria sauntered out from the bathroom (the NO DUMPING sign still thumbtacked to the door) in jet-black, crisscrossing, strappy lingerie that climbed up her stomach and chest and wrapped around her neck like a chain—and I immediately wanted to try choking.
Not choking myself! I can still hear my mother’s voice as she poked her head into my bedroom: “Victor, when you masturbate, please don’t tie a belt around your neck. A boy in Caldwell killed himself doing that. Okay? Great. Dinner in ten.”
I credited my quick finish to the lingerie. I released my hands from her neck and fell onto the pullout mattress beside her.
“Rie?”
“Yeah, Victor?” she said, catching her breath, rubbing her fingers up and down her throat.
Maria’s departure to Arizona was on the horizon; it didn’t matter how much she put off packing. I started to feel queasy.
“We gonna be okay?”
“Victor… why would you ask me that? You’re supposed to be the tough one.”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry, Ria. But I’m… ya know… I’m nervous too, okay? I can’t be nervous too?” I was tough. I could take a blindsided blow from a Westside linebacker and pop back up and give him a smack on the shoulder pads and get back in the huddle. But women, beautiful women with talent and grace (the maiden’s chivalry: grace was not dead)—they didn’t hit like linebackers. So when Maria started to cry in the basement darkness, illuminated only by the mounted flat-screen television—Dad finally caved and got rid of that huge cracked cube—I broke. I’ll admit it—I, too, bleed.
Maria cried every night for the rest of the summer. On her last night in Short Hills, I had to force her, sobbing and snotting, out of my garage and into her SUV—she did feel like a linebacker then. She backed down and pulled out onto West Road, stopping at the bottom of the driveway as if she had forgotten which way was “home.” When her headlights vanished in the night, I was left looking out the basement window, my eyes following the faint glow of the lightning bugs patrolling the front lawn, a wetness building in my mouth, my stomach turning.
I rushed to the basement bathroom to vomit; I could still hear her pleas as if they were an echo bouncing off the bathroom walls: “I’ll transfer! I can always transfer, right, Vic? I’ll transfer to Villanova or Rutgers or… or Fordham!”
But we both knew Maria was going to forever remain a Sun D
evil, like her father and uncles and the next crop of DiMonica athletes.
I spit out the last bits of puke and wiped my hairy forearm across my lips and chin. I stumbled over to my laptop and googled Arizona State football team, and clicked Roster. I sorted the list of names into position and clicked Tyreek Jackson, the sophomore QB phenom from California and costar of the photograph Maria had posted during her official visit—the fodder that ignited the biggest blowout of the Victor-Maria era.
I got sick thinking about the picture, and looking at his picture—his bright white heart-melting smile sliced across his chocolate milk complexion that belonged on a Hollywood billboard—and thinking about the scheduled parties the softball team had with the football team (and baseball team and basketball team), let alone any random bump-into occurrences that begin in all films taking place on sun-drenched campuses in these United States.
I methodically checked Facebook and clicked on Maria DiMonica in the section that showed the world she was in a relationship with Victor “Vito” Ferraro—a burning, shimmering, warning to the world and freshman ASU baseball players like a firecracker, like a Roman candle.
But soon I wouldn’t even have that one granule of solace, for Maria’s coach, a big dyke stereotype of a softball coach, had forbidden her team from having Facebook profiles after a picture of the star pitcher fellating a bottle of Hayman’s whiskey had been posted from an anonymous account and she was subsequently banned from the NCAA tournament—as if the cogs of Arizona State were conspiring against me.
“Victor?” My mother tapped on the wood while standing in the doorway. “Oh, Maria already left? Why don’t you go take a nice hot shower, hmm? You’ll feel better, my prince.”
Ahh, yes, my mother believed that the scalding hot water from our shower tap melted away all aches, pains, moans, groans, sicknesses, viruses, illnesses, and depressions, as if we had installed into our split-level a panacean fountain from the jungles of El Dorado.
I walked past her and up into the shower, where I wept, and then to my bed, where I wept, and back down the basement steps and into the pullout bed, where I wept as I flipped to a fiery sermon by Tom Jones Cleaver before puking and weeping in the basement bathroom until I didn’t have anything left in my stomach.
I crashed on the pullout bed and gave myself a pep talk.
I won’t lose her. I’ll be perfect. When she needs me I’ll be there for her, and when she needs space I’ll give her that too. I’ll send her cute texts in the morning and before she goes to bed. I’ll be the chivalrous knight she can brag to her friends about (how hard could it be to learn Petrachan sonnets or canzones? It’s in my blood!) and I’ll be the Mongol when she comes home for break—she can brag to her friends about that, too. I’ll work out more and send her pics of my abs and arms, something to look forward to. And when we webcam, we can talk about our day and blow each other kisses—it’ll be like she never left!
I changed the channel; I didn’t want the pastor’s sermon to ruin my (absolutely surprising) buzz, and instead listened to the jingle of Three’s Company, a sitcom that held a special place in my heart.
Text from Maria <3 <3: I miss you already.
I didn’t do any of that shit. Maria and I fought immediately, every day, as if we were on a schedule:
Text to Maria <3 <3: Have fun.
Text from Maria <3 <3: … sarcasm?
Text to Maria <3 <3: No seriously.
Text from Maria <3 <3: Mhmmm
Come on, Victor! How much trouble would it’ve saved you to just put a :) at the end of your damn text!
I know, but as they say: “Hindsight is a real fuckin’ asshole.”
When we webcammed for the first time, it was I, the Mongol, who had to throw his face out of the screen to hide the tears. I’d lift up my sleeveless t-shirt to show my abs and she’d fellate a banana in her thong as I cracked one off, but it wasn’t as if she never left, it was nothing like the real thing. It was empty and pathetic and far from satiating—I needed flesh and throat and black lingerie. I hadn’t even masturbated once we started having consistent sex—I abdicated, I suppose, because Maria didn’t want me watching porn: “I’m your pornography,” she’d say. But this, this tug of desperation squeezed between her workout sessions forced me—yeah, yeah, forced me—to sneak back onto those sites I had last visited in 2006 like an addict crumbling into relapse.
It was during one of these dry yanks that I saw the little pale blue light emanating from Maria’s phone on the corner of her bed.
“Who’s that?”
“Hhmmm?”
“Someone is texting you,” I said as I pointed with my free hand.
“Oh…” said Maria, as she popped the cavendish out of her mouth.
“Who is it?” She stared at the phone as if it was a foreign object, then flipped it open and mashed a few buttons.
“Rie?”
“Just… Lindsey, no worries.”
“Why would I worry?” She got back on her knees and searched for the fruit. “It’s on the bed. Why would I worry?”
“Nuh-thing, Victor. Just… just… are you almost finished? I have to go to study group.”
“… why would I worry?”
“Jesus, Vic! Forget it. I gotta go.”
“Don’t you…”
And she crawled over to her computer and the screen went black.
I erupted with a barrage of angry texts (only after an equally formidable barrage of angry phone calls, each one followed by just… just… a filthy, nasty barrage of angry voicemails).
Text to Maria <3 <3: HOW DARE YOU HANG UP ON ME
Text to Maria <3 <3: YOU BETTER CALL ME BACK RIGHT NOW
Text to Maria <3 <3: IF YOU DON’T CALL ME BACK I’M NOT TALKING TO YOU FOR A WEEK!
In my fit of rage I had failed to raise my pants and stood in the middle of the SEGA room more erect than I had been when we were simulating with fruit. Whenever my parents knew I was webcamming with Maria, they treated me like a quarantined infectious patient and remained upstairs.
To spite my girlfriend, I plopped back into my chair and typed www.pornacopia.com into the search bar and waited as the categories slowly loaded onto the screen.
Welcome back! You might enjoy these clips in RUSSIAN based on a previous search.
Crap. I had forgotten to clear my browser history from my last crack-off—when I hurried home after Maria and I watched Hitman and I had taken a lusting to lead actress Olga Kurylenko—yes, I’m aware that she’s from the Ukraine, but I suppose “Ukrainian mail-order bride” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Last time I forgot, after a seventh-grade Friday when I saw Julie Fischer’s and Jenna Tisch’s thongs creep up their lower backs in 20th Century History class, I was up until midnight on a less secure, more rudimentary pornacopia.com that left a colorful popup the next morning when my mom booted up the computer. I could hear her scream as I was head-deep in the refrigerator, shuffling through the translucent packages of salami and gabagool. I had to explain to her it was a bad joke in an email from Paxton—really missing an opportunity to smear Pierce Stone. But my mother worked with computers (I never did find out what she did) and I don’t think she believed me, but she let it slide that time.
I scribbled “CBH” on a loose notecard with a red Sharpie to remind myself to clear my browsing history after I cracked off. I clicked on RUSSIAN and scrolled down the waterfall of all the pretty blondes and picked up my phone and called Maria: voicemail.
Text to Maria <3 <3: I SWEAR IF YOU’RE EVEN TALKING TO ANOTHER GUY!
Two Russian Babes Go DEEP With American Dick. Click.
The two blondes were pale like they had been locked up away from the sun their whole lives. They sat together, bare-naked without the frills and straps of expensive lingerie, and when they undid the belt of the rich American, they did it robotically, passionless, and resembled nothing of
Maria.
Text to Maria <3 <3: You better call me now!
I fast-forwarded to the sections of the clips shot from the American’s point of view, where the camera hovered above bobbing blonde heads, and I thought that could’ve been me, the two girls, freshmen at Miami, UT, or USC. But I couldn’t even touch those schools anymore—they’d probably escort me off the campus for violating the schools’ rule: failing to live up to potential—oh, what a feeling it is to realize you peaked at sixteen!
Text to Maria <3 <3: WTF RIE?!?! ANSWER ME
One of the pretty blondes peeked up at the camera as the mushroom cap popped out from her lips—Ivanka?—bearing a striking resemblance to a freshman who’d grabbed my attention ever since I saw her leaving Little Moscow, crossing Millburn Ave.
The melodious beauty of Meat Loaf’s vocals snapped me from my pornographic gaze.
Incoming Call: Maria <3 <3
“Ria.”
“VICTOR.” Knives. “What the HELL are you doing? I’m at study group.”
“You couldn’t text me? Huh? Huh?!”
“No! We have a no-phones rule.”
“Oh, that’s convenient.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you? You’re being a…”
“Who’s in the study group? What sport do they play? Year? Position?” I felt like the Grand Inquisitor sniffing out Jewish blood.
“What the… fuck… Does it matter, Vic?”
“Then who was texting you during our webcam date?”
“Oh my God, Victor. OK!” She paused for a moment. “Victor… Okay, it was…”
“It was Tyreek, wasn’t it?”
“What? No. I, like, never see Tyreek. It was Mikey DeAngelis.”
Mikey DeAngelis. Click: New tab. Click: Favorites. Scroll, click: 2008–09 Arizona State Sun Devils Football Roster. Click: Alphabetize. Nothing.
Ha! The fanook didn’t even make the roster.
Lunchmeat Page 21
