The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

from East Brick City who lived up in the Spanish section. First hardcore goth I’d ever met—in 1990 us niggers were having trouble wrapping our heads around goths, period—but a Puerto Rican goth, that was as strange to us as a black Nazi. Jenni was her real name, but all her little goth buddies called her La Jablesse, and every standard a dude like me had, this diabla short-circuited. Girl was luminous. Beautiful jibara skin, diamond-sharp features, wore her hair in this super-black Egypto-cut, her eyes caked in eyeliner, her lips painted black, had the biggest roundest tits you’ve ever seen. Every day Halloween for this girl, and on actual Halloween she dressed up as—you guessed it—a dominatrix, had one of the gay guys in the music section on a leash. Never seen a body like that, though. Even I was hot for Jenni first semester, but the one time I’d tried to mack on her at the Douglass Library she laughed at me, and when I said, Don’t laugh at me, she asked: Why not?

Fucking bitch.

So, anyway, guess who decided that she was the love of his life? Who fell head over heels for her because he heard her playing Joy Division up in her room and, surprise, he loved Joy Division too? Oscar, of course. At first, dude just stared at her from afar and moaned about her ‘ineffable perfection’. Out of your league, I snarked, but he shrugged, talked to the computer screen: Everybody’s out of my league. Didn’t think nothing of it until a week later when I caught him putting a move on her in Brower Commons! I was with the boys, listening to them grouse about the Knicks, watching Oscar and La Jablesse on the hot-food line, waiting for the moment she told him off, figured if I’d gotten roasted she was going to vaporize his ass. Of course he was full on, doing his usual Battle of the Planets routine, talking a mile a minute, sweat running down his face, and homegirl was holding her tray and looking at him askance—not many girls can do askance and keep their cheese fries from plunging off their trays, but this was why niggers were crazy about La Jablesse. She started walking away and Oscar yelled out superloud, We’ll talk anon! And she shot back a Sure, all larded with sarcasm.

I waved him over. So how’d it go, Romeo?

He looked down at his hands. I think I may be in love.

How can you be in love? You just met the bitch.

Don’t call her a bitch, he said darkly.

Yeah, Melvin imitated, don’t call her a bitch.

You have to give it to Oscar. He didn’t let up. He just kept hitting on her with absolutely no regard for self. In the halls, in front of the bathroom door, in the dining hall, on the buses, dude became ubiquitous. Pinned comic books to her door, for Christ’s sake.

In my universe, when a dork like Oscar pushes up on a girl like Jenni, he usually gets bounced faster than your tia Daisy’s rent checks, but Jenni must have had brain damage or been really into fat loser nerdboys, because by the end of February she was actually treating him all civil and shit. Before I could wrap my brain around that one I saw them hanging out together! In public! I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes. And then came the day when I returned from my creative-writing class and found La Jablesse and Oscar sitting in our room. They were just talking, about Alice Walker, but still. Oscar looking like he’d just been asked to join the Jedi Order; Jenni smiling beautiful. And me? I was speechless. Jenni remembered me, all right. Looked at me with her cute smirking eyes and said, You want me to get off your bed? Her Jersey accent enough to knock the guff clean out of me. Nah, I said. Picked up my gym bag and bolted like a bitch. When I got back from the weight room Oscar was at his computer—on page a billion of his new novel.

I said, So, what’s up with you and Scarypants?

Nothing.

What the hell you two talk about?

Items of litle note. Something about his tone made me realize that he knew about her scorching me. The fucker. I said, Well, good luck, Wao. I just hope she doesn’t sacrifice you to Beelzebub or anything.

All March they hung out. I tried not to pay attention, but we were all in the same dorm so it was hard not to. Later, Lola would tell me that the two of them even started going to movies together. They saw Ghost and this other terrible piece of ass called Hardware. Went to Franklin Diner afterward, where Oscar tried his best not to eat for three. I wasn’t around for most of this nonsense; I was out chasing the pussy and delivering pool tables and out with the boys on the weekends. Did it kill me that he was spending time with such a fly bitch? Of course it did. I always thought of myself as the Kaneda of our dyad, but here I was playing Tetsuo.

Jenni really put it on for Oscar. Liked to walk arm in arm with him, and hug him every chance she got. Oscar’s adoration like the light of a new sun. Being the center of a universe something that suited her. She read him all her poetry (Thou art the muse of the muses, I heard him say) and showed him her little dumb sketches (which he fucking hung on our door) and told him all about her life (which he dutifully noted in his journal). Living with an aunt because her mom moved to Puerto Rico to be with her new husband when she was seven. Spent from eleven on up making runs into the Village. Lived in a squat the year before she came to college, the Crystal Palace, it was called.

Was I really reading my roommate’s journal behind his back? Of course I was.

Oh, but you should have seen the O. He was like I’d never seen him, love the transformer. Started dressing up more, ironing his shirts every morning. Dug this wooden samurai sword out of his closet and in the early morning stood out on the lawn of Demarest, bare-chested, slicing down a billion imaginary foes. Even started running again! Well, jogging. Oh, now you can run, I carped, and he saluted me with a brisk upsweep of his hand as he struggled past.

I should have been happy for the Wao. I mean, honestly, who was I to begrudge Oscar a little action? Me, who was fucking with not one, not two, but three fine-ass bitches at the same time and that wasn’t even counting the side-sluts I scooped at the parties and the clubs; me, who had pussy coming out my ears? But of course I begrudged the motherfucker. A heart like mine, which never got any kind of affection growing up, is terrible above all things. Was then, is now. Instead of encouraging him, I scowled when I saw him with La Jablesse; instead of sharing my women wisdom I told him to watch himself—in other words I was a player- hater.

Me, the biggest player of them all.

I shouldn’t have wasted the energy. Jenni always had boys after her. Oscar only a lull in the action, and one day I saw her out on the Demarest lawn talking to the tall punk kid who used to hang around Demarest, wasn’t a resident, crashed with whatever girl would let him. Thin as Lou Reed, and as arrogant. He was showing her a yoga thing and she was laughing. Not two days later I found Oscar in his bed crying. Yo, homes, I said, fingering my weight belt. What the hell is the matter with you?

Leave me alone, he lowed.

Did she diss you? She dissed you, didn’t she?

Leave me alone, he yelled. LEAVE. ME. ALONE.

Figured it would be like always. A week of mooning and then back to the writing. The thing that carried him. But it wasn’t like always. I knew something was wrong when he stopped writing. Oscar never stopped writing— loved writing the way I loved cheating—just lay in bed and stared at the SDF-I. Ten days of him all fucked up, of him saying shit like, I dream about oblivion like other people dream of good sex, got me a little worried. So I copied his sister’s number in Madrid and called her on the sly. Took me like a half-dozen tries and two million vales before I got through.

What do you want?

Don’t hang up, Lola. It’s about Oscar.

She called him that night, asked him what was going on, and of course he told her. Even though I was sitting right there.

Mister, she commanded, you need to let it go.

I can’t, he whimpered. My heart is overthrown.

You have to, and so on, until at the end of two hours he promised her that he would try. Come on, Oscar, I said after giving him twenty minutes to stew. Let’s go play some video games. He shook his head, unmoved. I will play Street Fighter no more.

Well? I said to Lola later on the phone.

I don’t know, she said. He gets like this sometimes.