Teen Angst? Naaah ... (21 page)

Judith didn't care. She wanted to dance, and she continued dragging me to clubs. I developed a method to keep from vomiting: I'd hum Led Zeppelin tunes. Led Zeppelin is the ultimate alpha-male band. When you hum their songs, you're tapping into an underlying male world energy, and it helps you through tough situations. I would be dancing like mad with Judith, lips moving a mile a minute, mouthing the lyrics to “Black Dog” or “Whole Lotta Love.”
^**

At the prom, however, I found another way to beat my dancing phobia:
waxed floors
. When Judith took me up to groove, I noticed immediately how slippery the floor was. I could slide back and forth on my toes like James Brown! I got so into it that I forgot about how dumb I looked and just danced, which is what you're supposed to do at a prom.

“I love you,” Judith whispered. I whispered the
same back and meant it. I also told her she looked gorgeous. She did. She was the best-looking girl in the building.

• • •

By 11:30, the prom was over and the after-prom began. Our crew—Judith, Alexis, Lisa, Katy, Michaela, Girl Number Six, me, Charlie, Harris, and Guys Number Four through Six—piled into the limo and drove off to a dance club called Metropolis. Harris and Michaela were fuming, and it was clear that Charlie and Guys Number Four through Six had gotten their hands on some mind-altering substances.

“Yo, man, my effin' dog, his name is Jake! And I got this effin' other dog, his name is Jake, too! What the eff kind of effin' idiot people do I live with, to name both dogs the same thing? You call one dog, the other one comes—”

That was Charlie. He had me in stitches the whole night.

“I'm not talking to her. I got nothin' to say to her.” That was Harris, in one corner of the limo, glaring at Michaela, in the opposite corner. “I have nothing to say to you either,
thankyouverymuch!
” she snapped.

“Yo,” Guy Number Five said. “Let's tear it up.” The limo was stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The cars were moving at about three
miles per hour. This gave Guy Number Five the idea of throwing open the limo door, jumping out, running around in traffic, and peeing on an abandoned car. Guy Number Four, Guy Number Six, and Charlie followed.

We got to Metropolis at 1:00
A.M
.
^*
It was huge, a refurbished warehouse with a giant neon sign and a snaking line out front. Somehow (Guy Number Five had a connection), we bypassed the line and got into the club.

Pulsing music, bright lights, body heat—dance clubs always made me think of rats, and the experiments scientists do to put them into sensory overload. Our group quickly split up, with Charlie and Guys Number Four through Six pinpointing the beer. I stayed close to Judith. The nasty thing about these places was that unless you stayed with your girlfriend at all times, guys would randomly touch her, and then you'd have to start a fight which, despite those years at True Power Martial Arts, I was not equipped to do.

“Buy me a drink?” Judith asked. This was her thing: ask for a drink and then drink one-quarter of it. She didn't like alcohol—she liked the appearance of a glass in her hand.

“I'm out of money,” I said casually.

“What?”

I figured she couldn't hear me over the dance music. “I said I'm
out of money
.”

“I can hear you, you idiot! Why the
hell
are you out of money?!”

“Well, it's all gone: tux, corsage, paying the limo guy.”

“Ned! You were supposed to bring money
in addition
to all that stuff!”

“Oh, geez, well, I'm sorry.”

“This night is
not over!
This is my
prom!
I'm staying out until eight in the morning. So you had better find some money.”

Judith stormed off. I sat by myself at the side of the club, my worst fears confirmed. Judith wanted her prom to be like the movies; she wanted me to come over, pick her up, and whisk her through the night with everything taken care of, no complications. And if I had been the right kind of guy, the kind who goes to the bank and says, “Damn, it's my girlfriend, who I love, let me take out a bunch of cash,” I could have made her prom as good as she'd imagined. Instead, I was a disaster.

I'd been sitting there ten minutes when Judith came back. Smiling.

“Someone bought me a drink,” she said coyly.

“Really?”

“That's right. Some
guy
bought me a drink. And it
wasn't
you.” She pointed at my nose.

“Well, why don't you go dance with the guy, then?” I offered.

“Nope.” She sat in my lap.

“Why not?”

“Because I'd rather be here with you.” She wasn't drunk. Judith never got drunk. She had just
changed moods
. Like I'd seen her do so many times before.

“C'mon, kiss me, it's my prom,” she said. I thanked whatever god was responsible and kissed her as well as I could.

• • •

We were at Metropolis until around 3:30; things blurred from there. The limo drove us to not one, but two diners, where I borrowed money to pay for Judith's food. I started drifting asleep around 5:00
A.M.
, while we were still driving around. Judith reacted to this by flirting with some other guy (“Oh yeah, that's my boyfriend, the one
asleep
back there”). Guys Number Four through Six disappeared; I don't know where they went; Harris and Michaela never settled things. Charlie kept talking nonstop, using the
eff-word more and more frequently, hitting strides where he was able to make every noun, verb, adjective, and adverb an eff-derivative. Then he passed out on the floor of the limo. I just held Judith and kept my mouth shut. I had nothing to say.

At 7:30
A.M.
, the limo dropped us off at her house. I couldn't tip the guy, but I'm sure the other people tipped him enough.

“You want to come up?” Judith asked. I was holding her hand, crossing her street, approaching her apartment building. I nodded.

Her parents were still asleep, so we went to Judith's room. I took off her shoes and rubbed her feet. I rubbed her back, her arms, her legs, her hands. She was sore from all the dancing. She lay down in her bed and I rubbed her neck and told her I loved her. I kissed her cheeks and her arms … and I realized how wrong I'd been.

Contractual obligation? Nah. This girl, who'd come into my life like a whirlwind—not caring that I was six feet, one hundred
forty-three
pounds—didn't think of her prom as a contractual obligation. She'd sealed me up for it early on because she wanted it perfect, like in the movies, and I'd nearly ruined it. In fact, I had ruined it. She'd brought it back from the dead by smiling at me.

So shut up, Ned. Shut up and think about someone else for a change. Shut up and rub the girl's back and try—I know it's hard—to make her prom as important in your mind as it is in hers. Try not to be such a cynical eff.

I
n the summer after senior year, I took my last cheap East Coast vacation with my family. This time, we had a van with
three
backseats (two just wasn't enough for Daniel, Nora, and me), and we found ourselves in Charleston, West Virginia.

“Here we go, folks, ‘Entering Charleston,' ” Dad said, reading the road sign. He already loved West Virginia because the posted speed limit was seventy miles per hour, which meant he could do his usual ninety with less anxiety.

“You kids should know some things about West Virginia,” Mom proclaimed from the passenger seat, twisting around to face us.

“What should we know about West Virginia, dear?” my father asked sarcastically as he zoomed past a truck.

“You shush,” Mom said. “I'm talking to the kids.”

“Yes, well, I guess I'll just keep on driving silently. Sorry, dear.”

My mother sighed. “You see what he does to me? He's the king of patronizing, your father.”

Dad began reciting a poem very loudly, gesturing wildly with both hands as he hit the gas.

“Ignore him,” Mom said. “Now, West Virginia is the poorest state in the country; I mean, it has the lowest average income. The main industry is still coal—”

“Whoa!” My fourteen-year-old brother saw it first.

At the side of the road was a billboard for Hooters.

“Hooters!” Daniel yelled. “Oh my gosh! Look, it's only fifteen miles away! Dad, can we go to Hooters? Can we? Can we?”

The billboard showed a blonde with immense breasts.
^*
It said simply: “Hooters—The Cure for the Common Restaurant.”

Now, I've always admired Hooters. Some backwoods mountain kid probably started it on a bet, and it's become a multimillion-dollar franchise, with restaurants in New York, L.A., Fargo, Albuquerque. Plus, it advertises young, buxom, pretty waitresses in short shorts and tight shirts. I chimed in with Daniel: “Yeah, Dad, can we go to Hooters?”

“Uh,” Dad slowed down for a turn; the speedometer dipped under seventy. “I don't think your mother would approve …”

“Oh please, Jim,” she waved a hand at him. “It's local color. Of course you can go. I don't care one whit.”

Two hours later, after checking into our hotel, Dad, Daniel, and I rolled into Hooters. Mom and Nora stayed behind to watch a romantic comedy on Pay-Per-View.

“Dad, you cannot wear that,” I pleaded for the twentieth time as we entered the Hooters parking lot. My father had on his best blazer and tie.

“When I eat dinner, I get properly dressed for it,” he retorted. “Just because we're going to this par
ti
cular establishment doesn't mean we have to dress badly.”

“Please,” I begged, looking into Hooters from the van. The patrons were wearing jeans and lumberjack shirts. “Dad, c'mon. You look like a pretentious idiot. Just drop the blazer.”

Reluctantly, he draped it over the driver's seat.

We hopped out of the van and strolled into the restaurant. It was like a gigantic log cabin. The ceiling was about twenty feet high, holding industrial-strength lights
^*
and fans. The walls were wood grain, with pictures of bikini-clad girls and humorous posters. (“Caution: Blondes Thinking!” Ha ha.)

A blonde came up to us. She was pretty in a scary, done-up way. She wore about a half-inch of makeup, and I wondered how she kept it from melting under the Hooters glare. Carrying that steamy, greasy food must be murder on eyeliner. Her name tag said, “Crystal H.” I wondered if there was a “Crystal G.”

“Three?” Crystal H. asked us with a tight Southern twang.

“Yes,” Dad answered. His voice was about three octaves below hers.

“Okay!” She led us to our table. We were surrounded by TVs; Hooters had eleven or twelve of the largest televisions I'd ever seen, blaring baseball on ESPN and football on ESPN2.

Crystal took our drink orders. “Hello and welcome to Hooters. You should know we have a very large selection of beers: Amstel, Budweiser …” She listed brands alphabetically for nearly a minute. I thought it was a real feat of memory until I noticed she was reading from a list.

“Do you have Rolling Rock?” Dad asked.

“Ooh, no, sorry!”

“Becks?”

“Oh, sir, you keep naming beers we don't have!”

“Heineken?”

“Yes, we have that. And for you two?”

“Coke,” Daniel and I said in unison.

Crystal folded up her pad. “Y'all aren't from around here, are you?”

“No, we're from Brooklyn, actually,” I said.

“Oh, wow! I thought so. Are you Italian? You look Italian.”

“Yes,” Dad said.

“And how old are you?” Crystal asked Daniel and me, cocking her head.

“Eighteen,” I answered.

“Fourteen,” Daniel mumbled. He was watching “Thirty Years of the Detroit Lions” on ESPN2.

“Eighteen?”
Crystal gasped at me. “My gosh, I thought you were
fifteen
. You look so
young
. Do you Italians always look that
young?
”

“Uh …” I didn't know what to say.

“I mean, I'm
nineteen
,”
^*
Crystal continued. “You really don't look eighteen. I thought you were about fifteen, really.”