“Hi.”
“Hey.”
I stood there wanting to love her, but I was empty-handed—a knight without a rose to give, let alone a kiss.
“So… do you want to kiss me, Vic?” I sat on the toilet. Outside I heard my name slung about the party, lodged between incoherent yelps and yawps of the amorous youth: “Atta boy, Ferraro! buzz buzz buzz buzz Get some, Vic! bizz bizz bizz bizz.” But I knew I wouldn’t kiss her. “Do you want to… touch me, Vic?” I knew I wouldn’t touch her either. It wasn’t a sense of confusion or anything like that. I liked girls, a lot—especially girls who looked like Jenna. If I can be completely honest, I would’ve put her even higher on that list. But I was a budding—struggling, but budding nevertheless—romantic, and being shoved into the bathroom like we were the last two members of our species couldn’t even get me hard enough to masturbate.
“What’s your favorite flower?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Flowers? Like, roses, tulips, lilies, snapdragons…”
“I know. I don’t have a favorite.”
“Oh…” I looked around the bathroom for flowers, but there was only a glass dish of potpourri. I picked up one of the shriveled orange leaves that looked like a kettle-cooked sweet potato chip. “Here.”
“Oh, uh, thanks. That’s actually sweet. Don’t change, Vic. Don’t turn into the other guys.”
How could she not have a favorite flower? I pictured Andrius’s mom, back on her ice throne in Lithuania, wearing a crown of welded blue winter roses. I pictured the Black and White Knight kissing the heads of red roses and tossing them to young dames and damsels seated in his cheering section, almost spilling their dragon soup as they lunged for the flower. But all I had was potpourri.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try not to.” Jenna walked over to me, seated back on the toilet, and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I like you, you know,” I said. “I’m not confused or anything like that.”
Her lips were thin and pink and I couldn’t help but think—I almost started to giggle—how strange it was that we even used lips for kissing. And by the sixth grade I was expected to not just use lips, but incorporate my tongue, my filthy tongue, into this pinnacle of romantic expression. How primitive! I shouldn’t be ashamed of my thick coat of arm hair; I’m nothing but a beast.
“I’ll see you outside, Vic.”
She ran her hand over my shoulder, walked to the door, and left.
I met Tank on the fringes of a group surrounding John. I figured he was probably displaying his seven-inch penis to garner that much attention, like Silas at his birthday party back in Glenwood. But they were just discussing the perfect shape of Stephanie Hinkle’s ass.
I was tired of standing on the fringes and peeking over shoulders, or doing whatever it took to get as close to John Thompson as humanly possible—I swear Paxton would sit on John’s lap if he could. I just wanted to go back to West Road and play video games with Karl in the basement; I hadn’t seen my champion for eons. I aired my grievances to Tank, who, barely reaching five feet, was similarly tired of having to stand on his tippy-toes to get noticed.
Tank’s mother was supposed to pick us up, or at least that’s what my mom thought, but I knew Ms. Canazzaro was in Fort Lauderdale with her boyfriend, Roger. So we called Carina to get one of her older friends to come pick us up. But before we could swim through the ever-expanding amorphous crowd of the Jew Crew speckled with WASPs to reach the stairs, Pierce Stone appeared in front of us as if he had found a secret passage hidden in the wall.
“Hey Ferraro, are you a fag? It’s okay if you are. Mitch Farber’s dad is a fag.”
“No, he isn’t,” shot Tank, speaking for me.
Tank was short, but he was the strongest kid I knew and could’ve easily barreled right over Pierce Stone. But before I could defend my sexual orientation, the guys started to form the prestigious semicircle around me, as if I were displaying my seven-inch penis.
I hated it. I didn’t feel like Caesar surrounded by the Senate, or a king and his lords. I felt like a monkey on a chain or a court jester, dodging clobbering questions and observations like they were heads of lettuce.
“What, he can’t speak for himself?” asked Pierce Stone.
“You know Vic isn’t a fag,” started Paxton. “He was just in the bathroom with Jenna.”
“Yeah, I know, and he wouldn’t kiss her.” I looked at Jenna, who was watching the fiasco—it wasn’t my fault the Rosenblatts didn’t have a single rose in their mansion. “She even was going to let him get to second base and he wouldn’t do that either.”
“Wait, really? Why not, Vic?” asked Tank.
Et tu, Tank?
I scanned the semicircle for any weak links, a break in the chain—no escape. I felt dizzy and wet, like I was trying to breathe underwater. What language is that? Their jabbering sounded muffled, as if I were trying to listen to a conversation on the other side of a motel wall. They were closing in—Glassman, Farber, Rosenblatt, Weischelbaum surrounded me and I feared they would seize the opportunity to seek vengeance on my ancestors’ siege of Masada. Perhaps this was Hell, where you suffocate slowly while the walls close in and you can’t understand a single thing the demons spit. Then they began to talk as if I weren’t there anymore—vanished, prayers answered, praise be to God.
“So if you don’t want to kiss a girl that makes you a fag?”
“What if you don’t find her attractive?”
“But what if she is attractive?”
“Attractive to whom?”
“Is ‘whom’ used like that?”
“That’s how my father uses it.”
“Wait, what did you call my father?”
I slowly backed away from the semicircle like osmosis and snuck up the
