Out of Whack (25 page)

* * *

       “Welcome to The Heather Show! Today we have a special guest, Percy Atkins, who has been scientifically determined to be the stupidest person on earth. Thank you for being here, Percy.”

       “The pleasure is all mine,” replied Travis/Percy, using an upper class British accent.

       “So, to start off, could you tell us what it’s like being the stupidest person in the world?”

       “First off, I should clarify something. Technically I’m only the second stupidest person, but the stupidest person was struck by a car and is currently in a coma. If he pulls through I’ll be asked to relinquish my title.”

       “Oh, I see. I guess that being the second stupidest person still makes you pretty dim, right?”

       “I would think so, yes.”

       “Good. Tell me, how do people treat you when they find out who you are?”

       “Very poorly indeed, as you might expect. There’s a great deal of mockery, and you’d be amazed how many people will refuse to even
attempt
to have an intelligent conversation with me. I can’t even read a simple book without hearing some sort of disparaging comment.”

       “You can read?”

       “Certainly,” Percy replied. “Why do you ask?”

       Heather shrugged. “It just seems that as the stupidest person in the world, reading would be a bit out of your grasp.”

       “I think a basic skill such as reading is more dependent on quality of education than any inherent mental abilities.”

       “Maybe you’re right. What do you read?”

       “Currently I’m finishing
The Communist Manifesto,
a fascinating book by that great thinker Karl Marx. Of course, due to my limited mental state, some of the more complicated themes are proving a tad problematic for me to fully comprehend.”

       Heather seemed uncomfortable. “Ummmm...you know, you really don’t seem all that stupid to me. I mean, you’re no genius, but you’re hardly the stupidest person in the world.”

       “One can’t argue with the results of an IQ test. With all the research that goes into developing one, it seems foolish to attempt to contradict the results.”

       “Are you sure you weren’t just tired that day?”

       Percy shook his head. “No, no, I was wide awake.”

       “Maybe you were putting your answers in the wrong section of the answer sheet.”

       Percy was silent for a moment. “Listen...I have a confession to make. I cheated.”

       “You purposely put down wrong answers?”

       “Of course not. I stole an answer key, but it turned out to be the wrong one.”

       Heather sighed. “So you’re not really the stupidest person in the world.”

       “Yes I am. Stealing the wrong answer key is a very stupid thing to do.”

       “I think this interview is over.”

       “No! I am stupid! I’ll prove it to you. Ask me any math question and I’ll get it wrong.”

       “What’s three plus three?”

       “Seven. See how stupid I am?”

       “If you were truly stupid, you wouldn’t know you got it wrong.”

       “Ask me another one.”

       “No. Get off my show.”

       “Look at this stupid expression on my face,” said Percy, putting a very stupid expression on his face. Travis did this frighteningly well.

       “You’re not fooling anyone,” Heather told him.

       “See? I’m too stupid to fool anyone!”

       “Listen to me, you’re not stupid and that’s all there is to it.”

       “I’m not even a little stupid?” whined Percy.

       “Maybe you’re a little stupid,” Heather conceded, “but I brought you here because I thought you were the stupidest person in the world. Even when I thought you were the second stupidest person, I was satisfied. But give me one good reason why I should interview a common dullard.”

       “I’m cute.”

       “You’re not cute.”

       “So would you say I’m the ugliest person in the world?” Percy asked, hopefully.

       “No.”

       “Please?”

       “No. Get off my show.”

       “What if I took off my clothes? You could interview the most naked man in the world!”

       “Absolutely not.”

       “You wouldn’t have to look.”

       “Get out of here!” said Heather. “You’re annoying everyone, and no, you’re not the most annoying person in the world.”

       “What if I—?”

       At this point, I actually played a small role, one that I couldn’t screw up. I was to go on stage, whack Travis over the head with a fake club, then drag him away as Laura spoke her final lines.

       “Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen. There’s a dentist with a tongue fetish who also wanted to be interviewed tonight, but I’m not in the mood anymore. I’m Heather, and this has been The Heather Show! Adios!”

       “What do you think?” I asked.

       “I think we’ve got ourselves an act,” said Laura.

“The Path To Wherever”

       We practiced for about two hours, reading through the scripts, blocking our movements, asking Travis to please dip his chocolate in another room, and getting the timing down. Travis and Laura had a great comedic chemistry together. I suspect that even if my scripts hadn’t been awesomely brilliant pieces of wit, they would have come off as funny just from the performances.

       No, now that I think about it, actual jokes were probably necessary for their performances to be funny. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that they did a good job.

       “I guess that about does it,” said Laura, placing her scripts on her desk. I noted with envy that even though those scripts contained a total of eleven pages, the desk didn’t strain under the weight, like ours would have. “Okay, here are our tasks. Travis and I will learn our lines. The
correct
lines, Travis. I’ll call Laugh Attack and try to get us a slot on amateur night. Travis, you find a suit that you could get married in without people wanting to hurt you with their rice. I’ll find a veil. Seth, write some more stuff. Are we missing anything?”

       “I think we should come up with a secret Out of Whack handshake,” Travis suggested.

       “Shut up, Travis.” Laura had a natural talent for saying that, but I had to admit she was getting even better with practice.

       Travis gathered his script pages. “If you’re vetoing the handshake idea, I figure we can head back to home, fetid home.”

       “I’ll see you later, Travis,” said Laura. “Seth and I need to talk, but I’ll make certain he gets back to you safely.”

       Okay, I should have known that last night wouldn’t get buried quite so easily. I’d kind of hoped that we could both feign amnesia and live our merry little lives without ever mentioning it again, but apparently that wasn’t going to be the case. Great. I almost wished she hadn’t promised to get me back safely, since having her beat the crap out of me seemed easier than discussing my behavior.

       Travis shot me a look that said how much pleasure he derived from the fact that he hadn’t been born Seth Trexler, then said his good-byes (his good-bye to me was more solemn than I was comfortable with), and left, shutting the door behind him.

       Laura turned to me. “Tell the truth. Aren’t you glad now that Out of Whack is still going?”

       “I’m very glad,” I said. “I was a jerk last night, and I promise it will never happen again.”

       “As a male, there’s no way you can promise that,” Laura told me. “But I need to take some of the blame, too. I should have been a little more...how should I say this?...
understanding
last night. No offense, but I assume you don’t have much experience with women, and I’m guessing that it took a lot more courage to tell me that you loved me than I gave you credit for. Am I right?”

       “Yeah, you’re right.” It wasn’t like I could convince her that my alias was Ramrod, King of the Stud Muffins.

       “So I should have been gentler, maybe. I mean, you don’t need Mommy to take you by the hand anymore, but it’s not like you’ve been through this before.”

       Now I was getting confused. I checked my forehead for a sign reading “No Love Experience.” I didn’t find one, but a thought occurred to me. “Did Travis say anything to you during my bathroom break?”

       “Nothing much.”

       “What did he say?”

       “He said you were sorry about last night.”

       “Uh-huh. Get to the good part of the nothing much.”

       “It wasn’t anything major. He just said that you had very little experience with members of the opposite sex, that’s all.”

       Yep, Travis was getting an anvil dropped on his head. I was demonstrating my own inexperience well enough on my own without him blabbing it to people.

       “That was very nice of him,” I said, gnashing my teeth. “Oh, I can’t wait to get back to the dorm and show him exactly how nice I think it was.”

       “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” Laura said. “He was just trying to help smooth things over.”

       “His head will be very smooth the next time you see him.”

       “Look, Seth, you don’t exactly exude waves of confidence. How many girls have you kissed in your life?”

       I assumed Barbie didn’t count, and wasn’t going to share that brief indiscretion from my childhood anyway. “I don’t remember.”

       “Come on, you can tell me.” Laura sat down on her bed and patted the area next to her. “I’m curious.”

       “Thank you, but I don’t care to express what a loser I am in such concrete terms.” I did, however, want to sit next to her on the bed.

       “It’s called opening up to your friends,” said Laura. “I promise I won’t make fun of you. Sit down.”

       I sat down. Our bodies didn’t touch, but that didn’t keep my legs from trembling. The traitorous appendages were determined to show off how nervous I was.

       “How many?” she repeated. “Three?”

       “I’m not getting into this.”

       “Two?”

       “I’m not talking about it.”

       “One?”

       “None,” I said. “Not a single one. Have I quenched your thirst for knowledge?”

       “You haven’t had your first kiss yet?”

       “No, I haven’t. I am so deeply lame that I have yet to kiss a girl.”

       “So you’re a virgin?”

       “Yes, I’m a virgin! Would you care to add anything else to the insecurity list?”

       Laura considered that for a moment. “You’re eighteen, right? That’s not so unusual. The kiss thing is, I think, but not the virginity.”

       “You’re loving every second of this conversation, aren’t you?”

       “There’s nothing wrong with not having kissed anyone,” said Laura in a tender voice. “It makes you special.”

       “It does not. It makes me a female-phobic wimp.”

       “Have you ever asked a girl if you could kiss her?”

       “Laura, I’ve had one date in my life, and that was four years ago, and it ended with a six car pile-up on the freeway! The emergency room didn’t seem like quite the place to ask for some face sucking, and I haven’t gone out with anybody since.”

       “Wow.”

       “You’re not doing much to make this conversation more comfortable,” I pointed out.

       “Do you want to hear the story of my first kiss?” she asked.

       “Sure.”

       “I was fourteen, and I was going on a date with a guy I had this incredible crush on. I must have brushed my teeth twenty times before we went out. We went to a movie, had a great time, and he walked me back to my house. I knew I was going to let him kiss me, so I was chewing three pieces of mint gum to keep my breath from knocking him out. And I was so nervous that I forgot to spit it out when he leaned forward for the kiss! The smooch itself wasn’t anything great, since he hadn’t learned the difference between passion and slobber, but then my gum got stuck all over both our faces! When we tried to pull apart, big blobs of gum stretched between us, and then he started to gag, and the gum got all over my new sweater, and my mother looked out the window and started to absolutely freak out because she thought we were foaming at the mouth, and the whole night ended as a disaster.”

       “Gee, now I can’t
wait
for my first kiss,” I remarked.

       Laura looked me in the eye. “Would you like to have it? Now?”

       “Excuse me?”

       “I could help you get it over with, so you won’t have to worry about it any more. I’ve never given anybody their first kiss—I think it would be a wonderful experience.”