So on we went to Medieval Times, but not before I insisted—pleaded, really, that I get one more taste before the Dinner & Tournament, which I did on the Jacuzzi cover beneath her uncle’s bedroom window—I swore I heard the mechanical screech of dental tools coming from the house as Maria sat on my face.
The institution still followed the… medieval practice of not permitting their patrons to reserve a spot in a specific knight’s section. Because of this operational folly, we were cast out to the margins, where we were expected to cheer for the least exciting knight of the lot. The Yellow Knight—yes, I suppose in my youth I stated I would’ve been content with this particular warrior’s section, but that was when I was young and impressionable and believed that women urinated out of their butts! A simpler time, maybe, but still, I was far from possessing any capacity to properly select a champion. I couldn’t think of a more boring, drab wielder o’ forged steel—“The most chivalrous of all the knights,” read the program. Chivalrous? What good would chivalry do when you had a battle-ax zooming toward your helm? Besides, I had tried my hands at haikus, odes, ballads, and limericks, and they all stunk. I didn’t give a shit about chivalry. Chivalry sent me pummeling facedown in a pile of mud and vomit. I was a heat-seeking, box-eating, goddamn Mongol who banged his girlfriend like he was off to the battlefield.
But I dared not allow Maria to witness my disappointment.
“Oh! Yellow! You like that one, right, Victor?! Right, my precious birthday boy, Victor Vicky, Vic, Vic, Vic?” she said while she fixed the piss-yellow paper crown atop my head.
Like? Like?! Of course, sweetheart, apple of my eye, light of my fire, life of my loins. The Yellow Knight shall make a fine champion. Yes, a fine champion indeed—I hadn’t shut up about my experience ten years ago when I witnessed the Black and White Knight’s greatness in the battle pit, but I’m assuming Maria—really, a tremendous sweet—would’ve said that about any of the six cavaliers.
Unlike the Black and White Knight’s fifty-yard line placement, the Yellow Knight’s cheering section was crammed into a corner (I’m quite aware the arena was in the shape of an oval), cast out in the margins of the pit, situated, mockingly, next to the gallant warrior who dons the white and black—I asked an eight-year-old comfortably seated in my true champion’s section if he wanted to trade knights with me before the tournament started; his father told him not to talk to strangers.
The king addressed the audience and welcomed them to his castle. The show started and I was a child again, bouncing on the balls of my feet, slurping my dragon soup. The falcon whizzed overhead, and I could hear Britney’s screech as if she were next to me. The contestants rode in to the pit and the Yellow Knight fared well in the ring lancing and javelin throw, and by the time we reached the one-on-one melee, I had stopped surreptitiously clapping for the Black and White Knight underneath the table and gave my heart to our designated warrior. That was until he laid the softest kiss on the head of a truncated rose and tossed it to Maria.
Make him suffer!
Maria caught the flower like it was a routine fly ball, and I thought I saw the two of them make eye contact and linger. I can’t assure you who it was that lingered longer, who, in fact, was the lingerer and who the lingeree, but the square-jawed, flowing blond-haired, chivalric defender of the realm resembled every single (white) player on that Sun Devils football team—like Pat Tillman with a lance.
I sank back into my seat and slurped my dragon soup as the Yellow Knight went on to win the tournament, tearing through the Blue Knight and Green Knight respectively—I never thought in the entirety of my existence that I would cheer on the vile knight in green, but jealously will do that to a man—until our so-called champion vanquished the dreaded Black Knight and his minions.
Back on West Road, my parents had found an excuse to leave the house so Maria and I could enjoy the confines of the basement undisturbed: “Hey, down there! Okay, you two, we’re gonna head out, go see a movie or something, maybe grab some… what? What’s that? Well, what’s playing, hun? Okay! We’ll see you later! We’ll use the front door, Vito!”
Maria sauntered out from the bathroom (the NO DUMPING sign still thumbtacked to the door) in jet-black, crisscrossing, strappy lingerie that climbed up her stomach and chest and wrapped around her neck like a chain—and I immediately wanted to try choking.
Not choking myself! I can still hear my mother’s voice as she poked her head into my bedroom: “Victor, when you masturbate, please don’t tie a belt around your neck. A boy in Caldwell killed himself doing that. Okay? Great. Dinner in ten.”
I credited my quick finish to the lingerie. I released my hands from her neck and fell onto the pullout mattress beside her.
“Rie?”
“Yeah, Victor?” she said, catching her breath, rubbing her fingers up and down her throat.
Maria’s departure to Arizona was on the horizon; it didn’t matter how much she put off packing. I started to feel queasy.
“We gonna be okay?”
“Victor… why would you ask me that? You’re supposed to be the tough one.”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry, Ria. But I’m… ya know… I’m nervous too, okay? I can’t be nervous too?” I was tough. I could take a blindsided blow from a Westside linebacker and pop back up and give him a smack on the shoulder pads and get back in the huddle. But women, beautiful women with talent and grace (the maiden’s chivalry: grace was not dead)—they didn’t hit like linebackers. So
