Teen Angst? Naaah ... (9 page)

Jessica Green's True Power Martial Arts is like my high school's evil twin. Everything that I can do at Stuyvesant—concentrate, participate in class, keep my pants on—I can't manage in karate. I'm pretty anonymous at Stuy, but in karate, everyone knows my name.

Maybe the real reason that I go to karate class is because I need something to be bad at. I've always been good at school stuff: math, reading, tests, obedience. Until karate, my only problem was talking out of turn in class. Now I have something to be bad at twice a week, over and over, without hope of improvement. The humiliation is becoming addictive.

“A
re you a virgin?” she asked, speaking slowly and deliberately.

“Of course,” I said, nodding several times. Perfectly reasonable question.

“Well, I lost my virginity … ah … the summer between ninth and tenth grades. Don't lose it too soon.”

Oh, sure, that's a big problem of mine. Losing it too soon.

“How about, you know, getting to third base?
^*
Have you ever done that?”

“Uh, no,” I gulped.

“Uh-huh.”

She sipped her drink. There was silence. I saw what was coming: more questions.

“So you never got laid? Have you ever felt a girl's breasts?”

After each of these, I shook my head, and she looked even more stunned.

I stopped her with a speech. “Uh, I don't think you understand. I'm a nerd. See, what we do is”—I
counted on my fingers—“(1) go to school, (2) get good grades, (3) come home, (4) play Magic. I'm just not good with girls.”

She didn't give up. “Are your parents really overprotective or something?”

“Nope. They're great.”

“And no girls like you?”

“Maybe some do. I don't talk to them much. It's probably my crooked mouth.”

“Your mouth?
Noooo
. I don't think it's crooked. I think it's very sexy.”

Whoa. I was talking with Amy Sohn,
New York Press
columnist, at the paper's annual “Best of Manhattan” party.
^*
I had wanted to meet her all evening. She wrote some amazingly dirty things in a weekly newspaper read by a hundred thousand people.

I liked her. She was shorter than me, wearing something black. Stylish red glasses. Perfectly arched eyebrows. A childlike face. She reminded me of a fifth-grade teacher—not
my
fifth-grade teacher, a brown-toothed psychotic who had throttled my friend Ben
^**
during class—but a nice, normal teacher.

“Well …,” she said, more casually than before, as
I sipped my cola. “If you ever do want to lose your virginity, call me. I'll loan you my
body
.”
^*

My brain, which had churned out clever anecdotes just moments before, shut down. Was I being offered sexual favors by an older woman? Nah. Must have misheard.

“I'm sorry?” I squeaked.

“I said,” she moved in close, slowly mouthing each word, “I'll loan you my body.”

For a few moments, before cynicism kicked in, I was utterly thrilled. Blood rushed to my ears. I inhaled sharply.

“That's a kind offer, Amy,” was all I could say.

Images raced through my mind. Lisa, last year, wearing a dark bra under a see-through shirt, licking her lips at me during class, and then telling me later she was just messing with me. Rebecca, in fifth grade, staring at me and mouthing the words, “I want a vacuum”
^**
over and over. Girls liked to see me squirm. I guess Amy did, too.

“Don't forget,” she continued. “I'll call you. We can have lunch. Or you call me.”

“Okay,” I said dumbly before grabbing my backpack
^*
and running outside. The cool air cleared my mind.

She'd been joking, of course. Still, she'd told me to call her. I debated whether to do so for two days. It was nerve-racking to call a girl for anything but homework. Finally, I left a rambling message on her smarmy answering machine, asking when we could have lunch.

Later that night, while I was studying, the phone rang. It was Amy. She didn't waste time.

“Ned, about the other night—it was late, and I'd been talking to so many people, and I'd had a little too much to drink. I forget exactly what happened. Did I say I'd loan you my body?”

“Pretty much. You said that several times, actually.”

“Oh, Ned, I'm so sorry. I mean, when I said it at the party you seemed calm. But your message was so nervous. I wanted to make sure your invitation for lunch was just for lunch, you know?”

“Yeah. No problem.”

“I'm so sorry. Embarrassed, really.”

“That's okay.”

“As for lunch, I'm pretty busy now. How about we
set aside time next Saturday to get lunch and go to a movie?”

“Sounds cool.”

After I hung up, I folded my arms behind my head and smiled. It was an innocent party joke for Amy. But I got a sexual thrill, an ego-boosting apology, lunch, and a movie. For once, an adult had messed up and I had done everything right.

I
can't bargain. I'm awful at it. And bargaining isn't just some marginally useful secondary skill. It's an important part of successful living. My friend Ike never pays the asking price for anything. My brother Daniel is the same way: he'll haggle down a candy bar. But me? My bargaining always goes like this:

Me, at some sale, cupping an overpriced object: “Uh, how much for this?”

Shifty-eyed merchant: “Five bucks.”

“I'll give you three for it.”

“Five bucks.”

“How about three?”

“Five bucks.”

“Four?”

“No.”

So, it was pure lunacy for me to buy my family's Christmas presents at the local flea market. I went anyway, thinking I could improve my bargaining skills. (Besides, our family has a history of cheap, strange Christmas gifts. When I was one, Dad's big present for us was a TV—an RCA XL-100 with a busted antenna—that his friend John found on the
street. It worked, but barely; the reception was so bad that Dad sprang for cable. Fourteen years later, that RCA still sat in our living room, providing us with hours of slack-jawed peace.)

On a December Sunday, I headed for the playground at P.S. 321, the public school in my neighborhood. P.S. 321 hosts a weekend flea market, where capitalism runs wild and five bucks can net you a unique and demented gift.

In the past, I hadn't bought Christmas gifts for my family because I'd been too cheap, lazy, and young. But Mom had begun complaining that she never got anything from me. (“Well, it's not that I
want
a Christmas present, Ned, but it would be
nice
.”)

Pacing through the market with a pocketful of nineteen dollars and ten cents,
^*
I found that about 60 percent of the goods were made of china—the cheap, blue-on-white Dutch kind with pictures of windmills. It was among these that I found Mom's gift: a spoon holder.

You know when you stir coffee and pull out the spoon, and it has that little droplet on its convex side? Then, when you put the spoon on your countertop, it leaves that oh-so-small circular stain? The spoon holder fixes that. It's a block of china with a spoon-shaped
depression. When you finish stirring, you rest the spoon in its place; your countertop is spared. Mom's a practical lady, dangerously practical, actually—the kind of woman who'd rather get a spoon holder than a long-stemmed rose. I was sure she'd love it. Four dollars.

Dad was next. He likes books. Big, thick books with the phrase “World Civilizations” in the title. There weren't any of those at the flea market, but I did spot a ragged 1932 edition of
The Rubaiyat
, this Persian love poem written by Omar Khayyam around the turn of the twelfth century. I had studied it in school. The book was thin, but the language was imposing. Dad would appreciate it. Seven dollars.

Next, my sister Nora. Eight years old and partial to foreign coins. I stopped to see the coin man, who displayed his wares in a leather binder. I browsed. Every coin cost more than five bucks.

“Anything cheaper?” I asked. Timidly.

The coin man—little face, big chin, long cigarette—pulled out a shoe box full of pesos, lire, shillings, and Francs and plopped it on the table.

“Twenny-five censh easch,” he offered, cigarette drooping. He was trying to light up, but the wind was too strong.

I bought eight foreign coins—probably worth twenty-three cents—for two dollars. I made sure to
get the ones with queens on them. Nora liked queens and was angry that U.S. coins were so male.

I had six bucks left. I was debating who to spend it on. I considered my brother Daniel,
^*
but my present to him was not beating him up regularly. I chose to spend the money on Ike, who had introduced me to the flea market. I walked over to the army man's table.

The army man is big, with lots of skin tags. He sells patches, buttons, belts, canteens, bullets, knives, and shells. I decided to buy Ike a grenade (it wasn't a live one). The army man peddles them—spray-painted gold, complete with serial numbers—for six dollars each. I paid him, and he put the grenade in a paper bag, saying, “We don't need anybody seein' this and gettin' scared, heh, heh.”

I called Ike soon as I got home. “Hey, I got you a present.”

“Yeah? At the flea market?”

“Uh-huh. It's for Christmas. You want me to tell you what it is?”

“Well, if you don't, I might buy it myself.”

“It's a grenade.”

Silence.

“You don't like grenades?” I asked.

“Ned … I
love
grenades!”

“Yup, I bought gifts for my whole family, too. Except my brother. But we kind of have an understanding.”

“How much did you spend?”

“Nineteen bucks,” I said proudly.

“Too bad, man,” Ike sighed. “I could have gotten it all for ten.”

I
t's 10:30
P.M
., just before Christmas, and I'm exactly where I should be—sitting in a nearly empty subway car. My bass guitar is nestled between my legs, and my Magic cards are spread out on my lap. I'm sorting the cards; it keeps my hands and mind occupied. I'm in the back car. Unless I'm going to school, I ride in the back car—because I'm guaranteed a seat and because that's where the weirdos are.

Tonight there are two. One is a husky man, sitting across from me, drinking from a bottle in a bag. He has a bald head, huge sideburns, and big square sunglasses. Standing next to him, wobbling as he clings to a strap, is a lankier guy. He's wearing a yellow headband with a big red jewel pinned to it. They're talking about Jimi Hendrix.
^*

“Man, you have to understand,” Husky says reverently, pointing, “when Jimi was around, the electric guitar was just invented! Nobody knew what it was; nobody knew how to play it—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Lanky cuts in.

Husky continues, “But Jimi was a natural, see?
No schooling, nothin'. He was a natural. The sounds he made—nobody can make them anymore.”

“That's the one thing I wish—that I coulda seen Jimi play,” Lanky says, swinging sideways as the train takes a curve.

“You know how Jimi played?” Husky takes a swig from his bag to accentuate the question.

“How?”

Husky leans forward, almost whispering, “He played his guitar like he was doin' his mama.”

I laugh. Oedipus on the number two train. I laugh so hard, my Magic cards fall from my lap and I have to pick them one by one off the brown patterned floor. The two men glare at me.

“You've got a guitar right there,” Husky says, gesturing at my bass. “How are you gonna laugh? You ever heard Jimi play?”

“No.” My voice cracks.

“Well, if you were doin' your mama, how would you play?”

“I'm not sure,” I mumble.

“Well, there,” Lanky reasons, “you're not Jimi.”

I can't argue with that. The train pulls into Fourteenth Street; Husky rises and shuffles through the doors.

“Merry Christmas,” he tells Lanky. He turns to me. “Yeah, and you, too.”