The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

God. Domini. Dog. Canis.

Hail, Dominicanis.

I guess I should have fucking known. Dude used to say he was cursed, used to say this a lot, and if I’d really been old-school Dominican I would have (a) listened to the idiot, and then (b) run the other way. My family are surenos, from Azua, and if we surenos from Azua know anything it’s about fucking curses. I mean, Jesus, have you ever seen Azua? My mom wouldn’t even have listened, would have just run. She didn’t fuck with fuku’s or guanguas, no way no how. But I wasn’t as old-school as I am now, just real fucking dumb, assumed keeping an eye on somebody like Oscar wouldn’t be no Herculean chore. I mean, shit, I was a weight lifter, picked up bigger fucking piles than him every damn day.

You can start the laugh track anytime you want.

He seemed like the same to me. Still massive—Biggie Smalls minus the smalls—and still lost. Still writing ten, fifteen, twenty pages a day. Still obsessed with his fanboy madness. Do you know what sign fool put up on our dorm door? Speak, friend, and enter. In fucking Elvish! (Please don’t ask me how I knew this. Please.) When I saw that I said: de Leon, you gotta be kidding. Elvish?

Actually, he coughed, it’s Sindarin.

Actually, Melvin said, it’s gay-hay-hay.

Despite my promises to Lola to watch out, those first couple weeks I didn’t have much to do with him. I mean, what can I say? I was busy. What state school player isn’t? I had my job and the gym and my boys and my novia and of course I had my slutties.

Out so much that first month that what I saw of O was mostly a big dormant hump crashed out under a sheet. Only thing that kept his nerd ass up late were his role-playing games and his Japanese animation, especially Akira, which I think he must have watched at least a thousand times that year. I can’t tell you how many nights I came home and caught him parked in front of that movie. I’d bark: You watching this shit again? And Oscar would say, almost as if apologizing for his existence: It’s almost over. It’s always almost over, I complained. I didn’t mind it, though. I liked shit like Akira, even if I couldn’t always stay awake for it. I’d lay back on my bed while Kaneda screamed Tetsuo and the next thing I knew Oscar was standing timidly over me, saying, Yunior, the movie is finis and I would sit up, say, Fuck!

Wasn’t half as bad as I made it out to be later. For all of his nerdiness, dude was a pretty considerate roommate. I never got stupid little notes from him like the last fucknuts I lived with, and he always paid for his half of shit and if I ever came in during one of his Dungeons & Dragons games he’d relocate to the lounge without even having to be asked. Akira I could handle, Queen of the Demonweb Pits I could not.

Made my little gestures, of course. A meal once a week. Picked up his writings, five books to date, and tried to read some. Wasn’t my cup of tea —Drop the phaser, Arthurus Prime— but even I could tell he had chops. Could write dialogue, crack snappy exposition, keep the narrative moving. Showed him some of my fiction too, all robberies and drug deals and Fuck you, Nando, and BLAU! BLAU! BLAU! He gave me four pages of comments for an eight-page story.

Did I try to help him with his girl situation? Share some of my playerly wisdom?

Of course I did. Problem was, when it came to the mujeres my roommate was like no one on the planet. On the one hand, he had the worst case of no-toto-itis I’d ever seen. The last person to even come close was this poor Salvadoran kid I knew in high school who was burned all over his face, couldn’t get no girls ever because he looked like the Phantom of the Opera. Well: Oscar had it worse than him. At least Jeffrey could claim an honest medical condition. What could Oscar claim? That it was Sauron’s fault? Dude weighed 307 pounds, for fuck’s sake! Talked like a Star Trek computer! The real irony was that you never met a kid who wanted a girl so fucking bad. I mean, shit, I thought I was into females, but no one, and I mean no one, was into them the way Oscar was. To him they were the beginning and end, the Alpha and the Omega, the DC and the Marvel. Homes had it bad; couldn’t so much as see a cute girl without breaking into shakes. Developed crushes out of nothing—must have had at least two dozen high-level ones that first semester alone. Not that any of these shits ever came to anything. How could they? Oscar’s idea of G was to talk about role-playing games! How fucking crazy is that? (My favorite was the day on the E bus when he informed some hot morena, If you were in my game I would give you an eighteen Charisma!)

I tried to give advice, I really did. Nothing too complicated. Like, Stop hollering at strange girls on the street, and don’t bring up the Beyonder any more than necessary. Did he listen? Of course not! Trying to talk sense to Oscar about girls was like trying to throw rocks at Unus the Untouchable. Dude was impenetrable. He’d hear me out and then shrug. Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself.

But your yourself sucks!

It is, lamentably, all I have.

But my favorite conversation:

Yunior?

What?

Are you awake?

If it’s about Star Trek

It’s not about Star Trek…He coughed. I have heard from a reliable source that no Dominican male has ever died a virgin. You who have experience in these matters—do you think this is true?

I sat up. Dude was peering at me in the dark, dead serious.

0, it’s against the laws of nature for a dominicano to die without fucking at least once.

That, he sighed, is what worries me.

So what happens at the beginning of October? What always happens to playboys like me.

I got bopped.

No surprise, given how balls-out I was living. Wasn’t just any bop either. My girl Suriyan found out I was messing with one of hermanas. Players: never never never fuck with a bitch named Awilda. Because when she awildas out on your ass you’ll know pain for real. The Awilda in question dimed me for fuck knows what reason, actually taped one of my calls to her and before you could say Oh shit everybody knew. Homegirl must have played that thing like five hundred times. Second time I’d been caught in two years, a record even for me. Suriyan went absolutely nuts. Attacked me on the E bus. The boys laughing and running, and me pretending like I hadn’t done anything. Suddenly I was in the dorm a lot. Taking a stab at a story or two. Watching some movies with Oscar. This Island Earth. Appleseed. Project A. Casting around for a lifeline.

What I should have done was check myself into Bootie Rehab. But if you thought I was going to do that, then you don’t know Dominican men. Instead of focusing on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive.

Out of nowhere, and not in the least influenced by my own shitty state—of course not!—I decided that I was going to fix Oscar’s life. One night while he was moaning on about his sorry existence I said: Do you really want to change it?

Of course I do, he said, but nothing I’ve tried has been ameliorative. I’ll change your life.

Really? The look he gave me—still breaks my heart, even after all these years.

Really. You have to listen to me, though.

Oscar scrambled to his feet. Placed his hand over his heart.

I swear an oath of obedience, my lord. When do we start?

You’ll see.

The next morning, six a.m., I kicked Oscar’s bed.

What is it? he cried out.

Nothing much, I said, throwing his sneakers on his stomach. Just the first day of your life.

I really must have been in a dangle over Suriyan—which is why I threw myself something serious into Project Oscar. Those first weeks, while I waited for Suriyan to forgive me, I had fatboy like Master Killer in Shaolin Temple. Was on his ass 24?7. Got him to swear off the walking up to strange girls with his I-