Just large, silent tears pouring out of my eyes, landing in the open book in my lap, so subtle I hadn’t even noticed them till I saw the fuzzy dark circles they made on the page when they started to absorb into the paper. Some stuff dripped out of my nose and landed on the book, too. Revolting. I shook the thoughts out of my head, in that way I have, and forced myself to get a grip and get back to examining the book.
There wasn’t a whole lot of information, though. Besides
“CEH 1960” and “tit lib friday,” there were a few other scribbled words I couldn’t make out, a lot of numbers, and what looked like part of a date: 3/something/63. The day was smudged and faded and stained and impossible to make out; the month was also not too clear, but it did seem like it probably was a three. No significance to that date jumped out at me, though by my calculations he would have been about my age in March of 1963. The stains could have been anything: food, coffee, wine, beer, blood. Blood? Uh, yeah. Calm down, now, Columbo. The
There was only one underlined passage, as it turns out. It was the scene where this girl called Jane Gallagher gives Holden Caulfield a back rub at the movies. Why would he have underlined that particular paragraph and no other? It didn’t seem quotable or inspiring or meaningful in any way, just more blather in Holden Caulfield’s annoying
Then something else hit me: maybe there were other CEH books down there. I scrambled back to the box area 50
and spent the rest of the day going through them all, book by book, setting aside those marked CEH. It took around three and a half hours. By the end, there was very little light coming through the window on the aboveground downhill side of the basement wall, and I had twelve CEH books, including the
“CH” with no date. It looked like the same handwriting, but it was hard to tell.
They sat in a little stack on the basement floor, a crooked, dusty treasure.
Little Big Tom came down and noticed me pawing through the books. He flipped on the light and said, “How about a little light on the subject?”
Then he said, “It’s a classic!” And of course I knew without glancing up that he was tilting to one side and looking at
LOVE, F OR WANT OF A B ETTE R WOR D
It seems as if I am always horny.
That’s bad because the chances that I will ever get to express that horniness in the context of a fulfilling relationship with an actual other person have always seemed pretty slim.
It’s a thing you have to live with. In fact, before October 1 of this year, I had never even touched a girl in “that way.” And even then—but I’ll explain all that soon enough.
In youth-oriented movies and books, the guy like me often has a huge crush on a specific blond cheerleader who doesn’t know he exists and would never stoop to talking to him. Or maybe she is kind of mean to him even though she’s 51
friends with him and asks him for advice on how to get the football guy to make out with her, which drives him crazy, and so forth. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely that guy. But there isn’t any one particular girl that fits that formula, and the idea that someone like that would ever be friendly with me in any sense, even as a device to dramatize my own pain and loneliness, is rather preposterous.
But of course I do have this mousy but cute female sidekick who has been right under my nose all along, only I won’t realize how great she is till I’ve learned a few painful lessons about commitment and responsibility and what’s important in life.
Just kidding; I don’t have one of those, either. Pretty much all the girls in school are cruel and unattainable, and the great majority are also beautiful and sexy and desirable in at least some way. None are at all interested in or available to me, and why would they be? When I dream of how it would be if I were suddenly transformed into the kind of guy that does not repulse the females of our species, I don’t necessarily think of any particular girl. Pick any one; it doesn’t matter.
This whole topic is so in the realm of pure theory that we might as well call her x. Or rather xi, “i” denoting “imaginary.”
Conceivable in theory, but unrecorded by history and impossible in nature. An imaginary girl.
If it makes it easier to visualize, though, let’s say xi is, hmm, how about Kyrsten Blakeney? She’s blond and wears really short skirts. I don’t know if she’s actually a cheerleader, but she looks the part. Real foxy. Looks great poolside, chewing on an eraser, leaning over to buckle her shoe, riding a bike, eating a banana. Looks great paying a late fine at the library, taking out the recycling, buying a newspaper, playing with dogs, whatever. Nice rack. Sagittarius. Birthstone: yellow topaz.
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I find myself thinking of how I’d like to express my horniness in the context of Kyrsten Blakeney fairly often. So does practically everybody who has ever seen her—students, teachers, janitorial staff, etc.
In all the movies and books, the guy like me is totally in love with Kyrsten Blakeney and only Kyrsten Blakeney. If you forget the quaint adherence to monogamy in the realm of pure ideas, and depending on how much you want to quib-ble over fine shades of meaning in the word “love,” that’s pretty accurate and true to life. And it would be quite true, in the strictest sense, to say she is not aware of my existence.
Which is a mercy: I can’t see that I would have anything to gain from her knowledge of my existence.
In real life, I admire her from afar and quietly celebrate her beauty, just as I would do if I were playing my character in the finest, most typical teen movie or young-adult novel our civilization has to offer.
In this movie, Kyrsten Blakeney somehow discovers my hidden depths, decides she likes my eyes, smells my phero-mones, and goes crazy for my body. She decides to risk everything and shock God and country by becoming
