The Cake is a Lie (31 page)

“
It’s like the softest most
amazing skin you’ve ever felt. It’s like satin.” I spice up the
story with a little poetic license. The scandalizing detail is
based in reality, Asia’s skin was some of the softest I’d ever
felt. “What the f Asia, how is your skin so soft?” I’d asked her
while holding out her arm and petting it. “Black girls use a lot of
lotion,” Asia’d answered in-between hysterical laughs.

“
How many times?” Oakley
asked.

“
Uh, three times. It’s
whatev.”

We pulled up to a big ornamental iron
gate, Oakley leaned out and hit the speaker button. “Hey Colby,
it’s Oakley.”

The gate started to open, “Yo Oakley,
the front doors open.” Oakley slowly drove around the eerily smooth
pavement while I admired the roundabout’s big fountain centerpiece.
Landscaped trees and bushes growing out of huge marbled vases
veiled everything but the Palace’s stone stucco archway in secret
luster.

We pushed open one of the big doors to
receive a dazzling embrace from a double staircase holding a
crystal chandelier. Oak floors, gold framed painting and mounted
statues fill out the rest of the grand entrance. With all the
little things, like the Brazilian cherry banisters and designer
drapes, whose true value was infuriatingly lost on my
naivety.

“
I don’t know if I’ve ever
seen anything like this,” I whispered to Oakley. “What’s his dad
do?”

“
I know, it’s amazing right.
His dad’s a CEO. Colby said he’s by the kitchen.” I followed Oakley
with my hands tied gracefully behind my back. The air smelled like
a museum. Down a hallway we reached a kitchen with four stoves and
shining gold pans dangling down from a big center rack. We looked
around but it was empty.

“
He must have meant the
other kitchen,” Oakley laughed. We start to backtrack.

We found Colby in a half-room tucked
away in the back that was easily the most worked-in room in the
house. He was laying perpendicularly with his friend on a sectional
watching T.V. They didn’t get up to greet us, primarily focused on
their phones.

“
What up, Oakley, I told you
we weren’t doing shit.”

“
It’s ok, nothing else was
going on.”

“
What up, Marco?”

“
Just taking it all in.” I
said. “Your casa really is something.”

“
For real.” He forced out
the response for the zillionth time. Through his associations and
appearance I was 90% sure Colby was on oxy. In his current reclined
state he looked like he was living heavy breathe to heavy breathe.
Focused on whatever synthetic tickle of goodness was pulsating
through him—If he could still feel it, maybe he was just getting
high on hope and memories.

“
Yo man, can I look around
some more? Will you come with me Oakley?”

“
Uh, huh.” Colby’s vacant
stare was the only neglected thing in the whole house.

As we strolled I pretended to be super
classy and lingered a moment longer than Oakley at the artwork and
fancy furniture.

“
This is an impressionist
Oakley, look at all the dots.” Really I was just filled with a
bunch of socialist musings.

To gain so much off other’s labor is
disgusting. A CEO who can’t even motivate his own son off of
Oxycontin. Oakley went to the bathroom while I paced around until I
finally settled around an Arcadian landscape. The little figurine
people were all tranquilly going about their day amongst the forest
and garden.

“
If you haven’t seen the
bathrooms yet you gotta check it out.” Oakley said when she
returned.

“
No one should have all
this.” I finally let lose in a heated screech.

From my side Oakley responded very
coolly, “I want all of it.”

I got feverish but clamped down on my
mouth.

“
And more.” She drove the
dagger deeper.

You’re really surprised? I
mused. How long has Oakley had this dream? How long have you wanted
to be the great savior of your people? 4
^th
grade? Beware the dreams of
10 year olds.

Oakley’s black hair was tied up in a
bun at the very top of her head, how she always wore it up. My
parents had taught me not to be possessed by material things, but
they never said anything about love.

And then she was gone.

I went to community college after high
school. My dad gave me a huge budget because he felt bad for me.
But all the restaurants, clothes, movies, video games, bottled
sugar water and delivery pizzas in the world couldn’t make me
forget about Oakley, or get rid of my panic attacks. They couldn’t
make all my peers stop drinking and smoking all the time. Couldn’t
make me popular again.

Most downfalls, when you look back on
them, are gradual. I’d had a spectacular run for a while. But
slowly I started playing wrong card after wrong card. Reaching out
desperately and humiliatingly to old acquaintances on Facebook.
Buying girls I hardly knew $300 true religion jeans. Losing one
friend after the other. Watching my party friends who I’d worked so
hard to accumulate slowly fall off. No matter how many times I sat
in deep contemplation, trying to once again channel that magic,
promising myself I was going to get back, my slide continued. I’d
once been in the thick of it, almost everywhere I went I saw
someone I knew. People were always calling my phone. Now I was in
the thick of nothing.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom. I met
Emma and after 2 years of community college, with my 2.4 cumulative
G.P.A., the Washington state direct transfer agreement, and my sob
story, I got into the University of Washington for my Jr year of
college.

Ian, my roommate, and Jonsen surprised
me with my acceptance letter when I got home from
school.

“
As soon as we saw it was
big package we knew they accepted you!” They screamed. “One of us
made it to college!”

I jumped for joy around the whole
apartment and called my increasingly concerned family to give them
the fantastic news.

I’d picked the University of Washington
for one reason: Oakley Carter. I didn’t even apply to any other
easier schools. No backup plan.

The heavy rain fell on me but I wasn’t
even wearing a coat. I was in one of my deep contemplative moods,
but I liked it. It stung, but it was a normal sting. The kind of
distinction you can make when you know what a real storm
is.

The waving trees and rushing street
gutters were momentous omens urging me onward as I trenched through
the rain. I took this same path, on the outskirts of the stadium
parking lot, most days. On my way to the IMA, UW’s state of the art
athletic facility. The gigantic exclusive gym was my favorite part
about going to UW. But that night the path was flooded with people
all heading to the bball arena next to the IMA.

So many people…I contemplated. They
never told us growing up how many people there are, how
insignificant we all are. People wearing stupid fucking clothes
that don’t even know it, ignorant to their own shittyness. The ones
with snooty looks were the worst, the ones who actually thought
they were better than other people. Overweight, old, too much
makeup, wrinkles, plain. As they passed by I imagined they were all
either utterly happier than me or desperately miserable.

I wasn’t headed to the bball game so I
veered off, heading across the vast parking lot. My destination was
one high school sized bleacher surrounded by a big fence. Over the
fence you could make out the top half of the UW soccer field
scoreboard.

I felt like a dear entering
a prairie as I walked through the gate. What if I saw someone I
knew? What if
she
saw me? It was the last girls’ soccer home game of the season,
I’d meant to go to one all year—just one, only one. I kept my head
down until I found a suitable spot amongst the bleachers. Finally,
feeling comfortably inconspicuous, I began scanning the field for a
sight of her. It was hard to tell in their soccer uniforms with
their hair up. No matter how many times I convinced myself one of
the players might be her, it wasn’t.

“
You poor thing you’re
shivering.” The women sitting next to me bellowed. “George get out
that poncho we brought.” She directed to her husband.

“
Oh thank you, you don’t
have to…”

“
You see that defender
there?” She pointed to a burley girl with bulky arms and hips.
“That’s my daughter, Lisa. We’re from the Tri Cities but we haven’t
missed a game.”

“
Oh, way cool.” I winced in
anticipation of the bold woman making some attempt to set us
up.

Thank god for ugly people, I thought. I
want nothing from them. That sounds poetic, I’m going to write that
down. I pulled out my phone and jotted it down.

“
Who are you here to see?”
The women asked the dreaded question.

“
My
friend…Oakley…Carter.”

“
George, do you know an
Oakley Carter?”

“
Hey Alex, do you know an
Oakley Carter?” It was passed down the whole section.

“
Ya, she’s number 10, or 16.
On the bench.” Someone finally shouted back. “She played last year
some.”

I honed my eyes to the 12 girls sitting
on the bench across the field. After a while I was able to
determine that one of the specs was definitely her. A bubble of
suspense burst dizzily inside me. She didn’t even play? I thought
back to watching her in high school, when she could separate from
any defender and girls would stumble and wipe-out trying to keep up
with her.

A conversation I’d overheard her have
with another star player from another high school came to
mind.

“
What’s the point? Even if I
went professional I couldn’t make any money. Maybe 30,000 a year.”
She must have stopped trying, I concluded.

I watched the spec laugh with the other
players, she was def one of the most popular specs on the
bench.

In college, two social groups stood
alone a top the stratosphere of popularity: Student-athletes and
the Greek system. I’d had brief glimpses into both worlds. I had a
group of athlete neighbors in my apartment complex who called me a
“normy.” That’s what athletes called everyone that wasn’t an
athlete. The athletes live in their own world, especially those on
scholarship. They ate together and followed an intense structural
schedule during the week. It was a work-hard-play-hard thing though
because my neighbors stayed up all night on weekends getting fucked
up.

My first run in with the Greek system
had come when I was walking along Greek row to an appointment with
a transfer advisor. Groups of 30 girls spaced evenly out along the
sidewalk became too numerous to be a coincidence. I’d curiously
passed maybe ten of these groups when a loud horn went off. Then,
as if it’d been rehearsed, the sorority front doors all flung open
simultaneously, and sorority sisters began pluming out towards the
street in parallel lines. The synchronization of it, in combination
with the sisters’ best dresses and make up, gave it a stepford
wives feel. And yet it was spectacular. As an unnoticed fly caught
in it, I felt alive.

I’d watched one taller, apprehensive,
hairy Indian girl make her way through the line, greeting each
sister along the way. “‘Welcome to KapaKapa pledges.’ ‘Thank you
sister.’ ‘Welcome to KapaKapa pledges.’ ‘Thank you
sister.’”

One of the midfielders made a pass that
barely got broken up.

“
Good ball, Jenny.” George
yelled.

“
Hell of a ball, Jenny.”
Others echoed from the crowd.

I couldn’t help but yell too, “Good
ball, Jenny.”

One of my friends was in one of the
sororities. She’d told me that for initiation she had to recite the
most misogynistic degrading rap lyrics perfectly in front of the
sisters after drinking a bunch of tequila. Every time she made a
mistake the sisters cussed her out. She had to start from the
beginning until she got it perfect. Another time a frat had made
all her sorority’s pledges sit on newspaper in their underwear and
watch porn to see who would get the wettest. I’d heard at WSU, they
made every frat pledge go around to every sorority and dance naked
in front of all the sisters. It was all too horrible and great and
exciting to even fathom.

I’d gone to a sorority dance before.
Brandon’s cousins had asked us to be their dates. It was
incredible, the sorority had rented out part of Seattle’s Science
Center. We’d danced and then cooled off in the butterfly
conservatory.

I’d even slept with a sister,
immediately afterward she’d started getting dressed.

Laughingly I’d asked her, “Where are
you going?”

She’d answered, “I’m leaving, you want
me to leave right?” But her voice had cracked she said it with so
little conviction. While her face begged me to stop her I’d let her
get half way dressed, daring her to see how far she would really
take it.

“
This is how they trained
you huh? You greek kids think you’re so sophisticated.” I’d teased
her before tackling her back into bed.