The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Oscar’s sister, Lola, was a lot more practical. Now that her crazy years were over—what Dominican girl doesn’t have those?—she’d turned into one of those tough Jersey dominicanas, a long-distance runner who drove her own car, had her own checkbook, called men bitches, and would eat a fat cat in front of you without a speck of verguenza. When she was in fourth grade she’d been attacked by an older acquaintance, and this was common knowledge throughout the family (and by extension a sizable section of Paterson, Union City, and Teaneck), and surviving that urikan of pain judgment, and bochinche had made her tougher than adamantine. Recently she’d cut her hair short—flipping out her mother yet again—partially I think because when she’d been lime her family had let it grow down past her ass, a source of pride, something I’m sure her attacker noticed and admired.

Oscar, Lola warned repeatedly, you’re going to die a virgin unless you start changing. Don’t you think I know that? Another five years of this and I’ll bet you somebody tries to name a church after me.

Cut the hair, lose the glasses, exercise. And get rid of those porn magazines. They’re disgusting, they bother Mami, and they’ll never get you a date.

Sound counsel that in the end he did not adopt. He tried a couple of times to exercise, leg lifts, sit-ups, walks around the block in the early morning, that sort of thing, but he would notice how everybody else had a girl but him and would despair, plunging right back into eating, Penthouses, designing dungeons, and self-pity.

I seem to be allergic to diligence, and Lola said, Ha. What you’re allergic to is trying. It wouldn’t have been half bad if Paterson and its surrounding precincts had been like Don Bosco or those seventies feminist sci-fi novels he sometimes read—an all-male-exclusion zone. Paterson, however, was girls the way NYC was girls, Paterson was girls the way Santo Domingo was girls. Paterson had mad girls, and if that wasn’t guapas enough for you, well, motherfucker, then roll south and there’d be Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, the Oranges, Union City, West New York, Weehawken, Perth Amboy-an urban swath known to niggers everywhere as Negrapolis One. So in effect he saw girls—Hispanophone Caribbean girls— everywhere.

He wasn’t safe even in his own house, his sister’s girlfriends were always hanging out, permanent guests. When they were around he didn’t need no Penthouses. Her girls were not too smart but they were fine as shit: the sort of hot-as-balls Latinas who only dated weight-lifting morenos or Latino cats with guns in their cribs. They were all on the volleyball team together and tall and fit as colts and when they went for runs it was what the track team might have looked like in terrorist heaven. Bergen County’s very own ciguapas: la primera was Gladys, who complained endlessly about her chest being too big, that maybe she’d find normal boyfriends if she’d had a smaller pair; Marisol, who’d end up at MIT and hated Oscar but whom Oscar liked most of all; Leticia, just off the boat, half Haitian half Dominican, that special blend the Dominican government swears no existe, who spoke with the deepest accent, a girl so good she refused to sleep with three consecutive boyfriends! It wouldn’t have been so bad if these chickies hadn’t treated Oscar like some deaf-mute harem guard, ordering him around, having him run their errands, making fun of his games and his looks; to make shit even worse, they blithely went on about the particulars of their sex lives with no regard for him, while he sat in the kitchen, clutching the latest issue of Dragon. Hey, he would yell, in case you’re wondering there’s a male unit in here.

Where? Marisol would say blandly. I don’t see one.

And when they talked about how all the Latin guys only seemed to want to date white girls, he would offer, I like Spanish girls, to which Marisol responded with wide condescension. That’s great, Oscar. Only problem is no Spanish girl would date you.

Leave him alone, Leticia said. I think you’re cute, Oscar. Yeah, right, Marisol laughed, rolling her eyes. Now he’ll probably write a book about you.

These were Oscar’s furies, his personal pantheon, the girls he most dreamed about and most beat off to and who eventually found their way into his little stories. In his dreams he was either saving them from aliens or he was returning to the neighborhood, rich and famous—It’s him! The Dominican Stephen King!—and then Marisol would appear, carrying one each of his books for him to sign. Please, Oscar, marry me. Oscar, drolly: I’m sorry, Marisol, I don’t marry ignorant bitches. (But then of course he would.) Maritza he still watched from afar, convinced that one day, when the nuclear bombs fell (or the plague broke out or the Tripods invaded) and civilization was wiped out he would end up saving her from a pack of irradiated ghouls and together they’d set out across a ravaged America in search of a better tomorrow. In these apocalyptic daydreams he was always some kind of platano Doc Savage, a supergenius who combined world-class martial artistry with deadly firearms proficiency. Not bad for a nigger who’d never even shot an air rifle, thrown a punch, or scored higher than a thousand on his SATs.

OSCAR IS BRAVE

Senior year found him bloated, dyspeptic, and, most cruelly, alone in his lack of girlfriend. His two nerd boys, AI and Miggs, had, in the craziest twist of fortune, both succeeded in landing themselves girls that year. Nothing special, skanks really, but girls nonetheless. AI had met his at Menlo Park. She’d come onto him, he bragged, and when she informed him, after she sucked his dick of course, that she had a girlfriend desperate to meet somebody, AI had dragged Miggs away from his Atari and out to a movie and the rest was, as they say, history. By the end of the week Miggs was getting his too, and only then did Oscar find out about any of it. While they were in his room setting up for another ‘hair-raising’ Champions adventure against the Death-Dealing Destroyers. (Oscar had to retire his famous aftermath! campaign because nobody else but him was hankering to play in the post-apocalyptic ruins of virus-wracked America.) At first, after hearing about the double-bootie coup, Oscar didn’t say nothing much. He just rolled his dio’s over and over. Said, You guys sure got lucky. It killed him that they hadn’t thought to include him in their girl heists; he hated AI for inviting Miggs instead of him and he hated Miggs for getting a girl, period. AI getting a girl Oscar could comprehend; AI (real name Alok) was one of those tall Indian prettyboys who would never have been pegged by anyone as a role-playing nerd. It was Miggs’s girl-getting he could not fathom, that astounded him and left him sick with jealousy. Oscar had always considered Miggs to be an even bigger freak than he was. Acne galore and a retard’s laugh and gray fucking teeth from having been given some medicine too young. So is your girlfriend cute? he asked Miggs. He said, Dude, you should see her, she’s beautiful. Big fucking tits, AI seconded. That day what little faith Oscar had in the world took an SS-N-17 snipe to the head. When finally he couldn’t take it no more he asked, pathetically, What, these girls don’t have any other friends?

AI and Miggs traded glances over their character sheets. I don’t think so, dude.

And right there he learned something about his friends he’d never known (or at least never admitted to himself). Right there he had an epiphany that echoed through his fat self: He realized his fucked-up comic-book- reading, role-playing-game-loving, no-sports-playing friends were embarrassed by him.

Knocked the architecture right out of his legs. He closed the game early, the Exterminators found the Destroyers’ hideout right away—That was bogus, AI groused. After he showed them out he locked himself in his room, lay in bed for a couple of stunned hours, then got up, undressed in the bathroom he no longer had to share because his sister was at Rutgers, and examined himself in the mirror. The fat! The miles of stretch marks! The tumescent horribleness of his proportions! He looked straight out of a Daniel Clowes comic book. Or like the fat blackish kid in Beto Hernandez’s Palomar.

Jesus Christ, he whispered. I’m a Morlock.

The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly?

She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don’t take after me.

Dominican parents! You got to love them!

Spent a week looking at himself in the mirror, turning every which way, taking stock, not flinching, and decided at last to be like Roberto Duran: No mas. That Sunday he went to Chucho’s and had the barber shave his Puerto Rican ‘fro off (Wait a minute, Chucho’s partner said. You’re Dominican?) Oscar lost the mustache next, and then the glasses, bought contacts with the money he was making at the lumberyard and tried to polish up what remained of his Dominicanness, tried to be more like his cursing swaggering cousins, if