How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (13 page)

So once again I'm forced to break out the “F” encyclopedia and try to commit to memory football's seemingly arbitrary rules. Despite an ability to memorize pages of iambic pentameter, I still can't seem to understand what a “down” is, so I ask Doug to come over and give me a few pointers. The prospect of tossing a football around my yard feels very masculine and autumnal to me, and I even go out and buy a football jersey at a sporting goods store to get into character. What's more, I'm pleased to see that some of my dancing skills can be transferred to the language of sports.

“How am I doing?” I shout as I
jeté
through space to catch the ball.

“Looks more like fag football when you do it,” he says.

I flinch reflexively at the sound of the other “f” word, but Doug just smiles his satyr's grin at me and I think perhaps all is well with the world. I charge toward him like I'm a fullback who just got the ball (See? Look how much I learned), and manage to knock him over. I straddle his waist and try to pin him down, but he's too strong for me and he flips me over and climbs on top of me, which is, of course, exactly what I'd hoped he'd do.

“Unsportsmanlike conduct,” I yell. “Fifteen yards! Fifteen yards!” and Doug laughs. I love making him laugh.

We're interrupted by the sound of the back door banging open.

“Tsat is enough!” Dagmar yells. “I cannot verk vit such noise. Go avay! Go avay, boys!”

Dagmar's fetish for silence is working my last nerve. Claiming that music irritates her, she actually asked me to refrain from humming, whistling, or singing in my own home. She's like Julie Andrews's evil twin.

“We were just leaving, anyway,” I say, then fake like I'm going to throw the ball at her. Bitch.

I stop going into the city to take classes,
but I do continue choreographing
Anything Goes
because Kelly and I are getting paid. Our usual method of working together is that I'm in charge of telling people where to go and Kelly is responsible for the actual steps. But I'm totally distracted, so Kelly practically takes over. I'm relieved to see she's good at it, much more inventive and commanding than I gave her credit for, and the cast really likes her. She's patient and understanding, even after somebody's tap shoe comes flying off during a number and nails her right in the gut. She'll do well in the dance program at Bennington.

Me, I've got other tasks to attend to.

My first job is as a parking valet at an expensive but tacky Mafia-run Italian restaurant in Cramptown. It's easy work plus I get tips and the opportunity to drive some really nice cars, which suits my self-image. But then I lock the keys in someone's Jaguar while the motor's running and the owner of the car insists I be fired on the spot. It seems to me that someone who could afford a Jaguar could also afford to be a little more generous of spirit.

I'm okay with losing that job anyway because I immediately get hired as a delivery driver for Petals Plus, a local florist. This is a terrific gig. First off, you get to be around flowers all day, and what's not to like about that? Secondly, when you're delivering flowers everyone is always really happy to see you unless, of course, you're delivering to a funeral. Or if you happen to back the delivery van into someone's BMW, which I do on my third and final day of work.

Kathleen says I'm subconsciously taking out my aggressions against my father by sabotaging luxury cars, but just to prove her wrong I purposely seek out another driving job delivering pizzas. Once again, this is a situation where everyone is always really happy to see you. I mean, it's not like anyone's ever going to say, “Shit! The pizza guy's here. Quick, turn out the lights and maybe he'll go away.” And this time the accident is with a Honda Civic, so there goes Kathleen's theory.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lucas and I work on finding the perfect classical monologue for my audition. We try Mercutio's death scene from
Romeo and Juliet,
mostly as an exercise connecting with pain because Mr. Lucas says I'm too much of a clown. “No! No! No!” he bellows before I'm even finished. “Mercutio's suffering from a flesh wound, Mr. Zanni, not gastritis. Try it again, but this time use the sense memory of an actual wound you've had.”

Having avoided any kind of physical activity that might cause a wound, I concentrate on the only injury I've ever had: Father Groovy's fall off the back of Al's Midlife Crisis. I stagger about, wincing as I grip my tailbone like Mercutio has been stabbed in the butt. I know I must look strange, but I try to compensate with a dramatic, Charlton Heston-y, talking-through-clenched-teeth kind of delivery.

“That's perfect,” Mr. Lucas says when I finish. “Now if you just rang a bell you could play Quasimodo.”

Exeunt Mercutio.

I'm actually bold enough to suggest one of Hamlet's soliloquies, “Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt” to be specific. Sure, it's the greatest role in the entire theatrical canon, but I am
so
like Hamlet; as far as I can see, he's just another sulky teenager with shitty parents. I mean, here's a speech where I really can connect with the pain by substituting Hamlet's mother with my evil stepmonster. I try it for Mr. Lucas one afternoon and must say I'm quite pleased with how my voice throbs when I say the last line about the breaking heart.

“Congratulations, Mr. Zanni,” he says. “You've put the ham back in
Hamlet.”

Exeunt Hamlet.

Mr. Lucas suggests I try Edmund in
King Lear
because he, too, is enraged with his father. But rage seems to be all I can play these days and the whole soliloquy becomes too one-note. Mr. Lucas gives me all kinds of exercises to find the other colors (“Do it like you're waiting for a bus,” “Do it like you've just discovered penicillin,” that kind of thing), but frankly, the more I work at it, the worse it gets. I know I'm in trouble when I see him take off his glasses and rub his eyes. “That's enough, Edward,” he says. “Your acting is hurting me.”

Exeunt Edmund.

We're running out of time.

My next job is as a busboy at a steakhouse, although I prefer to think of myself more as a “waiter's assistant.” But then I assist a plate of baby back ribs right onto some poor woman's lap and once again find myself looking for work. Honestly, people get so touchy about the tiniest mistakes. I mean, one little flesh wound to a Pekingese is all it takes to get fired as a dog groomer, even if you artfully arrange its hair so the scar doesn't show. And when I take a job delivering newspapers, the customers get frigging crazy just because a couple of times I deliver their morning papers in the evening. I'm sure if these people slept in once in a while, they wouldn't be so grouchy.

Sure, I'm bummed at losing all the jobs, but I view my ineptitude for the working world as a sure sign that I'm best suited for a life in the arts.

Meanwhile, back at the House of Floor Wax, Al and I can't seem to agree on anything anymore; the moment either of us brings up the subject of college it immediately escalates into yet another finger-wagging, door-slamming, yelling-at-the-top-of-our-lungs battle. I can hardly breathe when I'm in the house. I feel like Antigone: condemned by an unjust tyrant to be walled alive inside a tomb. With hardwood floors.

God, I miss my mother.

But it's thinking about Antigone that finally inspires me to find the right monologue: Haemon's speech to his father. I can't believe I haven't thought of it before. I am so like Haemon. We're both sensitive, misunderstood souls with petty despots for fathers. Here at last is a dramatic monologue where I can connect to the pain. It says everything I want to say to Al, and I practice it loudly around the house just to piss off Dagmar and maybe, just maybe, to get through to my father, who grows more distant, like someone on a faraway shore.

(That's right, Al, you son of a bitch bastard.)

(Yeah, and you'll be sorry when I don't thank you in my Oscar speech.)

(Hello-o?)

(These are called metaphors, get it?)

(Please, please, please, please, please.)

Still, the misery that is phys ed continues to wear on me and I finally lose it during flag football when, after having made the simple error of tearing the flags off someone on my own team, I'm publicly berated by Darren O'Boyle, Duncan's younger brother and an obvious future wife-beater. Darren has the same nasty rodentlike features as his brother and you can tell in an instant that he's mean in that steal-your-lunch-box-on-the-playground-in-the-third-grade kind of way. For a month now he's been relishing the sadistic pleasure of being able to show how tough he is by humiliating an upperclassman. I'm sick of it. What's worse, soon we're going to switch to basketball, another game I cannot remotely begin to understand, and one in which we're submitted to the additional humiliation of having to play shirts and skins. I discuss the matter with Ziba over lunch at her favorite restaurant, La Provençal. So far, no one in the attendance office has noticed that she and I always leave school at the same time for faux doctor's appointments, during which we enjoy leisurely lunches in the Continental manner.

“Why don't you just take a hammer and break something?” she suggests, using her water glass as a finger bowl. “Something little you don't really need, like a finger or a toe.”

“I don't know,” I say. “I'm not sure I've got the guts.”

“Oh, I'll do it for you, darling,” she says like she's offering to feed my cat.

“You would?”

“But of course. You're an oasis for me in this cultural desert. You and Nathan are the only true gentlemen in this school. All the rest are hormonally imbalanced thugs whose idea of romance is to drag you into a dark room and hump you like a dog. Breaking your finger is the least I can do.”

“Uh, thanks?”

“Don't mention it.”

Rather than resort to self-mutilation I turn to Natie for advice, who, despite his more irritating qualities, can be as dependable as a Japanese car in these circumstances and twice as efficient. His solution is characteristically simple and insane.

“We'll just break into the school and change the sign-up sheets,” he says.

“How do you plan on doing that?” I ask.

“It's easy. We'll cross your name off of basketball and add it to the list for one of the blow-off sports. You can tell Burro that one of your friends signed you up.”

“No,” I say. “I meant how do you plan on breaking into the school?”

Natie jingles his keys which, in an effort to uphold his reputation as a total cheesehead, he keeps on his belt. “Having keys to the school is just one of the privileges and responsibilities of running the stage crew.”

Natie.

“So you see,” he says, “it's not really breaking and entering; it's unlocking and entering which, as far as I know, is not a punishable offense.”

“But even if I add my name to the list, do you really think Burro's going to buy that line about someone else signing me up?”

Natie scrunches his doughy little face. “Pleeeease,” he says, “if she were that smart, do you think she'd be teaching
gym
?”

It may not be the best idea he's ever had, but it's worth a try.

N
ow in case you ever decide to unlock
and enter your local high school, let me tell you that it's not as easy as you'd think. You can't just open the front door and wander in. And for reasons I still don't understand, Natie's key only allows him access to the boiler room in the basement. It's like the setting of some slasher movie, all sweaty, mossy pipes, inexplicable banging noises, and that dingy caged area lit by a bare bulb where you expect the crazed serial killer will do in the unsuspecting night watchman. From there, you have to crawl up a flight of stairs on your hands and knees so you don't set off a motion detector. The deftness with which the normally unathletic Natie accomplishes this task leads me to believe he's done it before.