I pull the door open, and step into a room bright with fluorescent light. To my left, a guy with more piercings than a pincushion stands behind a counter, staring at me.
“You browsing or you want tokens?” he asks me. I don’t have the first idea what tokens are, so I say, “Browsing?”
“Okay. Go on in,” he tells me.
“What?”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re not going to ID me?”
The guy laughs. “What, are you sixteen or something?”
He nailed it exactly, but I say, “No, I’m twenty.”
“Well, yeah. So that’s what I figured. Go ahead.”
And I’m thinking, Oh, my God. How hard can it f**king be to successfully use a fake ID in this town? This is ridiculous! I won’t stand for it. “No,” I say, forcefully. “ID me.”
“All right, man. If that’s what gets your maracas shakin’.” And then, real dramatically, he asks, “Can I see some ID, please?”
“You may,” I answer, and hand it to him. He glances at it, hands it back, and says, “Thanks, Ishmael.”
“You’re welcome,” I say, exasperated. And then I’m in a p**n store.
It’s kinda boring, actually. It looks like a regular store—shelves of DVDs and old VHS tapes and a rack of magazines, all under this harsh fluorescent glow. I mean, there are some differences from a regular video store, I guess, like A. At the regular video store, very few of the DVDs have the words guzzling or slut in them, whereas here the opposite seems to be the case, and also B. I’m pretty sure the regular video store doesn’t have any devices used for spanking, whereas this place has several. Also, C. There are very few items for sale at the regular video store that make you think, “I have no earthly idea what that is supposed to do or where it is supposed to do it.”
Other than Señor Muy Pierced, the place is empty, and I very much want to leave because this is possibly the most uncomfortable and unpleasant portion of what has heretofore been a pretty uncomfortable and unpleasant day. But the whole trip is completely worthless if I don’t get a memento to prove I was here. My goal is to find the item that will make for the funniest show-and-tell, the item that will make Tiny and Jane feel like I had a night of hilarity they can only glimpse, which is how I finally come to settle upon a Spanish-language magazine called Mano a Mano.
Chapter six
at this moment, i want to jump ahead in time. or, if that doesn’t work, i’ll settle for traveling back in time.
I want to jump ahead in time because in twenty hours i will be with isaac in chicago, and i am willing to skip everything in between in order to get to him faster. i don’t care if in ten hours i’m going to win the lottery, or if in twelve hours i’m going to get the chance to graduate early from high school. i don’t care if in fourteen hours i am going to be jerking off and have the most life-altering orgasm in all of unrecorded history. i would fast-forward past it all to be with isaac instead of having to settle for thinking about him.
as for traveling back in time, it’s really simple - i want to go back in time and kill the guy who invented math. why? because right now i’m at the lunch table and derek is saying
derek: aren’t you psyched for mathletes tomorrow?
with that simple word - mathletes - it’s like every ounce of anesthesia i’ve ever collected in my body wears off at once.
me: holy sweet f-ing a
there are four mathletes in our school. i am number four. derek and simon are numbers one and two, and in order to enter competitions they need at least four members. (number three is a freshman whose name i deliberately forget. his pencil has more personality than he does.)
simon: you do remember, right?
they’ve both put their meatburgers down (that’s what the cafeteria menu calls them - meatburgers), and they’re staring at me with looks so blank i swear i can see the computer screens reflected in their glasses.
me: i dunno. i’m not feeling very mathletic. maybe you should find a subset-stitute?
derek: that’s not funny.
me: ha ha! wasn’t meant to be!
simon: i’ve told you - you don’t have to do anything. in a mathletic competition, you enter as a team, but are judged as individuals.
me: you guys know i’m your biggest mathletic supporter. but, um, i kind-of made other plans for tomorrow.
derek: you can’t do that.
simon: you said you’d come.
derek: i promise it’ll be fun.
simon: nobody else will do it.
derek: we’ll have a good time.
I can tell derek’s upset because it looks like he’s considering having a slight emotional response to the informational stimuli being presented to him. maybe it’s too much, because he puts down his meatburger, picks up his tray, murmurs something about library fines, and leaves the table.
there’s no doubt in my mind that i’m going to bail on these guys. the only question is whether i can do it without feeling like shit. i guess it’s a sign of desperation, but i decide to tell simon something remotely resembling the truth.
me: look, you know that ordinarily i’d be all over mathletes. but this is like an emergency. i made like a - i guess you could call it a date. and i really, really have to see this person, who’s coming a long way to see me. and if there was any way to do it and go to the mathletic competition with you, i would. but i can’t. it’s like . . . if a train is traveling at ninety miles an hour and it needs to get from the mathletics competition to the middle of chicago in, like, two minutes for a date, it’s never going to make it in time. so i have to jump on the express, because ultimately the tracks that lead to the date are only being laid down this one time, and if i get on the wrong train, i’m going to be more miserable than any equation could ever account for.
It feels so strange to be telling someone this, especially simon.
simon: i don’t care. you said you’d be there and you have to be there. this is an instance where four minus one equals zero.
me: but simon . . .
simon: stop whining and find another warm body to get in mr. nadler’s car with us. or even a cold body if it can stay propped up for an hour. it would be a change of pace to have someone who can actually add, but i swear i won’t be choosy, you fart.
It’s amazing how i usually make it through the day without realizing i don’t have that many friends. i mean, once you get out of the top five you’ll find a lot more of the custodial staff than members of the student body. and while janitor jim doesn’t mind if i swipe a roll of toilet paper every now and then for ‘art projects,’ i have a feeling he wouldn’t be willing to forfeit his friday night for a trip with the calcsuckers and their faculty groupies.