At the end of class, Mr. Tyler asked everyone to come up and show off their maps. The little redheaded girl from the bus was first; I didn’t even know she was in our class. She had brought her own colored pencils and her map was crisply colored, the counties clearly defined.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Mr. Meyers crowed and thumb-tacked her map to the bulletin board. The redheaded girl squirmed under the attention. Mr. Meyers jerked a thumb at her map and said, “This is what it means to take pride in your work. Good job.” And here Mr. Tyler pulled himself away to read his gradebook to get her name. “Miss, uh, Jarvis, this is great work. Attention to detail. That’s what gets you ahead in life.” He didn’t mention of course that she had used her own materials rather than the stubby broken pencils he’d provided.
According to the eighteen-inch wall clock’s jerky second arm, class was at the very cusp of ending. Students started to stuff things in backpacks. The class rustled with anticipation.
“Stop,” Mr. Tyler slapped his hand on the blackboard. “I dismiss you. Not the bell. This is my class, my rules. I want all you losers to know what it takes to succeed in life. Miss Jarvis here has . . .”
The bell rang and in the middle of him praising her, she vanished. She had fled. She was a ninja. It was astonishing. How had she done it? The door had been closed, for Christ’s sake.
Mr. Tyler hadn’t seen her leave either and now his mouth hung agape. “Dismissed,” he muttered.
CHAPTER 16
In English class, the mousy Mr. Morris handed out paperback copies of The Great Gatsby and announced that we’d be spending the next six weeks reading it. It was a tiny book, something an illiterate person could finish in a long weekend and we’d be spending a month and a half on. He passed out shopping bags next. The rest of the period was to be spent making a cover for the book. He had three scissors for the entire class and two boxes of crayons borrowed from the art class. Most teachers had us cover our books as a homework assignment so this said something about the state of affairs in Mr. Morris’s lesson plans. This was the laziest busywork.
Mr. Morris had been sick recently, coughing and such, so maybe that’s why he was phoning it in.
After hearing everyone effuse about Gatsby as the American novel, I’d read it in sixth grade. As a love story, it was lacking. Unless it was people in love with themselves. Daisy was in love not with Gatsby but with the way Gatsby saw her. And Gatsby was in love with being worthy of Daisy. No one was in love with Tom. Even Myrtle wasn’t in love with Tom but with the opportunity she saw in him. She could escape her crappy marriage and the valley of ashes she found herself wallowing in. And Tom liked Myrtle because of how she looked at him and because she was disposable. The only real love story was Jordan Baker and Nick Carraway and Nick doesn’t even realize that she’s in love with him. Everyone is so oblivious. It’s just hard to buy that adults are that unaware.
Normally I’d love a book that cynical. But I’m not sure it’s meant to be that cynical. It’s written in such pretty prose and that prettiness doesn’t seem to carry its negativity. Like a pair of brass knuckles in wet paper towels. Also it might be full of the absolute shittiest “symbols” in all of high school English classes. The green light Gatsby is always staring at, Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s billboard, the clock Gatsby almost knocks over in Nick’s little house when he sees Daisy again (objective correlative much?). Like The Scarlet Letter, it might be the Great American Novel because it’s easy to teach.
The best thing about Gatsby is the cover. The weirdo face hanging above the streaks of nighttime traffic. If we’re going to have to write a book report on this thing, which, if we’re going to spend six weeks on it, is a guarantee, I want to write about the cover. It’s haunting. But that’s what we were tasked with covering up in our first lesson.
“Barry, you’re daydreaming again,” Mr. Morris called from his desk. He was picking at these purple dots on his scalp, old man zits or something. “Please catch up with the rest of the class. C’mon, cover your book.”
I finished covering it in five minutes. I spent the rest of the class making a detailed crayon drawing of Myrtle Wilson getting hit by Gatsby’s car, a drawing which would almost guarantee another trip to the guidance counselor.
Fuck English class.
CHAPTER 17
Being popular was not what I expected.
But I wasn’t popular. I was infamous. There’s a pretty big difference there. Like Greg Prince was already popular before he and his girlfriend stole his parents’ car and drove to North Carolina to follow the Grateful Dead. Then he became infamous, which made him more popular. He already had a base of popularity on which to build off of. People were invested in the Greg Prince narrative and so when this extreme thing happened people loved him more. He was exciting. Unpredictable. And that unpredictability was added to his already long list of popular traits. It was like putting a hot pepper into chocolate. A new twist on something already beloved.
I was a hot pepper. Just a hot pepper. If anything I was a hot pepper put into oatmeal.
Gary was popular now. In part because he was infamous-adjacent. He had that particular talent of being socially alchemical. He could turn the shit I had done in Mrs. Gildea’s office into gold. He could tell the story of that day in her office, of me breaking her pictures, of me screaming at her, of me being suspended, better than I could. People liked him for that story; people were wary of me for that same thing.
It was weird to me that Gary was so popular so quickly, given how racist and shitty Rutherford generally was. I asked him about it.
“I don’t know what to tell you. There must be a reason the English used us as policemen in India, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, but I don’t know it. Maybe we’re seen as self-contained and honorable in our otherness,” Gary said. “Also I’m deathly charming, man.”
I was now popular-adjacent. And that was its own thing. I had someone to sit with at lunch and that someone could sit at nearly any table he wanted. Upperclassmen, underclassmen, wrestlers, the Dungeons & Dragons/Comic Book dudes, cheerleaders, the dudes playing their millionth hand of euchre—it was all a buffet for Gary. And I got to sit with him. I got to sit next to Cheri Dantz, she of the cheerleading team and gymnastics team, a homecoming court staple, poofed hair and shoulder pads. I’d jerked off to her in her yearbook picture for close to three years now. That Cheri Dantz. I got to sit next to her. I got to watch her eat an apple.
I was quiet. I was a creep. But now that’s what people expected of me, what they wanted from me. And it’s not like I needed to talk anyway. Gary was always in motion, always performing, always entertaining. He stood out, brown-skinned with his headwrap and topknot—a version of the Sikh turban called a “patka”—but he stood out mostly for how he blended in. He was fluent in clique, if that’s possible. His brownness and his turban gave him a pass; it seemed that everyone embraced him because he wasn’t a threat. Not one of the black guys, with their loud music no one understood and everyone was afraid of. Not one of the Future Farmer white guys, with their weary “I helped a horse give birth before I came to school” look. Not one of the D&D guys with their black shirts and obscure references. Not one of the pretty girls who always seemed so nervous, as if they were playing high-risk poker, wary that someone had seen their hand.
Gary was his own clique. And I was Gary’s best friend.
Everyone loved Gary Singh.
CHAPTER 18
It was at some party. Not that first party at Meggie Morrison’s house or the one at Tiffany Ichida’s house either. Maybe it was at Kyle Louden’s house. I was losing track already. The parties were mostly all the same to me. I sat in a corner quietly. If there was a TV, I turned it on. We didn’t have one so it was always a weird experience watching TV, a strange window into all of these worlds I didn’t know existed: Facts of Life, Gimme a Break!, Down to Earth, Mama’s Family, Hee-Haw, Soul Train, Star Search—it was a parallel culture running right alongside mine, like an und
erground river, that I could dangle my toes in until the party got busted.
Parties always got busted.
What teenager actually thinks they can have forty friends over, drinking alcohol in the front yard, blasting Michael Jackson from the house speakers turned towards the backyard, yelling at one another as they peeled out in their parent’s cars, and not get caught? The world is a system of people watching each other and ratting each other out. So either the neighbors would call, or someone who didn’t get invited would call, or the person having the party would call because they suddenly realized what a terrible idea this was in the first place.
Sometimes it took a couple hours before things got out of hand. I’d find the den or the rumpus room or the game room or the living room or the finished basement and watch TV until then. Gary would be upstairs. He didn’t drink but he always kept a cup in his hand so people thought he was drinking. He said it was a lot more fun watching people be fools than being a fool yourself. What pleasure a person could get from other people’s bad decisions I didn’t know. But I also didn’t ask. I didn’t know what pleasure people got out of most of the things they did: sports, popular music, McDonald’s. It all was the same dull paste to me.
So I don’t remember which party, but I do remember that I was watching an A-Team rerun when a girl slumped onto the couch next to me.
“Anything good on?” she asked.
“This,” I said, pointing at the screen. B. A. Baracus was being tranquilized by his boss because he was afraid of flying. The fact that a black man was being drugged in order to be put into transit so that he could do a job some other place clearly had echoes of the slave trade. “Black man, use your incomprehensible body to do something for us!” All shows had the same kind of message. Even if there wasn’t a black person on-screen, there was always a fairly clear “us.” The “us” that clearly needed cheaper Mop & Glo, newer cars with Corinthian leather, Cola taste tests, space-age technology, and elaborate euphemisms for any fluid coming out of a woman. Hegel says an Englishman can take what you call pleasure and convince you that it’s not pleasure at all, but a new pleasure is just around the corner with these new products. The world will promise you things for senses you don’t have. TV might as well promise you X-ray vision, the ability to taste radio waves, or a paste that would create new erogenous zones on your calloused flesh. It was all the same shit destined for the landfill. I was smart enough not to say any of this to the girl. “It’s okay,” I said.
“I’m Ottilie.”
“Barry.” I didn’t turn to look at her. If she was beautiful, I’d become stupid. If she was ugly, I’d put up defenses. It was better not knowing what she looked like in order to have a real conversation. Better to just catch her in my periphery. She had a name, a hell of a name. And there wasn’t a pseudonym, an exonym. She just had a weird name.
“Why are you watching TV instead of being part of the group?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but I said it as one word: idunno, more of an exhalation than words, like a word loaf being excreted from my mouth.
“I don’t know anyone here,” she said. “I mean, I came with some people and they know people, the people who are throwing the party, I guess, but I don’t know anyone but the people I came with so they’re all off talking to people they know and here I am talking to you.”
“Sorry,” I said.
There was a gunfight on the screen, the tips of the Uzis writing exploding cursive in the air.
“What’s your favorite white cheese?” Ottilie asked.
“What?”
“I am making an effort. It’s called small talk, I’m trying to get better at it, but I need someone to practice making it with,” she said and then laughed. “Making the small talk with I mean. Not ‘making it with’ like a baby, a cake, or sex or anything.”
“Cheddar,” I said.
“Hah!” she shouted. “But incorrect. Cheddar is orange.”
“There are white cheddars,” I said.
“I do not believe you. I have never seen a white cheddar.” She clapped her hands. “See, we’re making small talk. I like feta. I’d eat it all day if I wouldn’t get like huge or anything.”
“What’s wrong with huge?”
“Says the guy who believes in white cheddar.”
“There are white cheddars.”
“Do you believe in sasquatch too? Yetis? Fairies? Orcs?”
“You read Tolkien?” I asked, still not looking at her. Now I was in too deep to suddenly look over at her. When I looked at her whatever my eyes said would be everything. If I found her attractive she’d know it; if I thought she was ugly she’d know it. I should’ve looked at her when she first sat down.
“Just The Hobbit. I can’t get through the first book in The Lord of the Rings.”
“Where’d you stop?”
“They were at Tom Bombadil’s house.”
“It gets better.”
“That’s what people say. That’s what people always say. But he’s like this gross big fat hippie version of Falstaff and it just feels dumb and small and I can’t trust a writer who spends so much time on a bad imitation.” Ottilie shifted her position on the couch. I could feel her weight on the couch. “See, we’re doing it. We’re talking. My uncle was right.”
“Your uncle?”
“My uncle, well he’s not really my uncle, he’s my dad’s best friend. Do adults have best friends? Do we ever age out of ranking our relationships? Anyway, Uncle Scott says that you can start up a conversation with anyone by asking about their favorite white cheese. It’s because everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a favorite white cheese and the question is benign because no one could ever think someone had an ulterior motive with a cheese question. Uncle Scott says it disarms people, wiggles past their defenses, and you end up in a conversation as a result.”
“Nice,” I said. “Except for vegans.”
Ottilie laughed. “No one wants to talk to a vegan.”
I laughed and looked at her. It was involuntary. I turn my head sometimes when I laugh. The thing my brain wouldn’t let me do, my body did. She had a purple long-sleeve t-shirt knotted on the side so you could see a little bit of her belly. It said Duran Duran on it. She had brown curly hair piled on her head by some architectural principle I couldn’t fathom. She had brown eyes and acne and her laugh sounded like a screech owl going in for the kill. I didn’t know if she was attractive but I didn’t want her to leave.
“Baruch,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“My name.” A moment of silence fell between us. “I’m named after Baruch Spinoza the philosopher.”
“I’m named after Ottilie Assing, the suffragist who had an affair with Frederick Douglass.”
“That’s pretty good,” I said.
“I don’t know. When she found out that Douglass married his secretary she committed suicide.”
“I’ve never been able to read anything by Spinoza. I keep trying because it’s my name and everything but I can’t make sense of it at all.”
“I think my mom named me this because she’s a white lady who married a black man.”
“So she named you after herself in a way?”
“Yes. Not literally but in spirit.”
“Damn,” I said. “That’s heavy. You win at the weird-name game.”
“I would’ve won anyway,” she said, taking me in in a quick glance away from the TV. “You hide your weird name.”
“I guess I do. It is a little much though for small-town Ohio.”
She stood up and stretched her arms behind her back. “One of my goals in life is to be too much for small-town Ohio.”
CHAPTER 19
Parties. Like I said, a terrible idea. Teenagers, alcohol, your parents’ stuff. What the heck could go right?
But you could also meet Ottilie, who went to Olentangy, which was the kind of school parents’ moved near for their kids’ education. Not private, just self-selecting. She gave me h
er number.
And then the party was busted. I knew that because kids started running through the house screaming, “We’re busted. We’re busted.”
I snuck out using the sliding patio door and I hopped over the balcony railing and took off through the woods in the back of the house. I ran and ran. At some point I was well clear of the cops but I kept running. It was its own pleasure. The air was cold and it rushed into my lungs and made my skin feel like it was radiating energy. I was sweating and cold at the same time and I kept running. The sodium lights of the mini-malls and the grocery stores and the gas stations and the hospital all caught my profile and cast my shadow to stretch out into the night. It was sort of like my panic moments. I couldn’t stop, my chest was pounding, my thoughts were racing, but it felt good. It felt great. My windbreaker ballooned out behind me with the cold wind blowing through town. At the end of downtown, I executed a left turn, punctuated with a soldier’s pivot. Hard 90 degrees. My arms pumping. My legs weightless. My lungs lovely. Was I a brilliant runner? How fast was I going? Did I have this ability my whole life and not know it? I ran all the way home without stopping. All those years of skipping Kill Ball to run laps on the creaky catwalk around the gym suddenly felt like genius preparation for this night. This cold night in late September—the leaves rustling and crunching in the yards I cut through on my way home, the smell of burnt leaves in the air, the smell of wet leaves decomposing coming from the ground. I was giddy. The nerves, the tension, the spine-snapping energy I sat on all day every day put to use pushing my legs, levering my arms, moving me through the central Ohio agrarian darkness of the harvest. This was Peter Parker when he was bit by the radioactive spider. Scott Summers waking up in the orphanage and his optic beams blowing the roof off of the thing. Hank McCoy executing the triple flip to avoid being hit by a car. Hal Jordan realizing what the alien’s green ring could really do. John Glenn on his first orbit around the moon. I had power I didn’t know I had. It wasn’t just meeting a girl. Not just having a real conversation with a girl and having a friend. It was something else.
How I Learned to Hate in Ohio Page 5
