Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms (8 page)

Since my first encounter with Mindie, I’d thought of her at least once daily. But I suddenly realized that since sexually assaulting that water bottle in the presence of the semi-nude Ms. Nuckeby, Mindie hadn’t even crossed my mind. Naked trampolining or otherwise. Not once! It was a startling revelation, and might have told me something significant were I more than just marginally sharper than Morgan.

“I think she’d be less interested in the convention than I would,” I said, not actually ‘thinking’—more ‘knowing full well’.

“Yeah,” he said, clearly irritated, but accepting the truth. Then he brightened a bit. “So, fine. Come without her.”

“No. I have to convince my grandfather I should come back to work.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Work. How many naked girls did you have to ‘work’ with today, Corky?”

“Just one. One was enough.”

Visions of Ms. Nuckeby danced in my head again. Before long I needed ice. I moved the anti-harassment tape to obscure things; unfortunately, Morgan noticed anyway.

“Dude,” he said, looking disgusted. “I hope that’s because of the zucchini bread and not me.”

“I’m straight!”

“I’ve seen the video.”

“You
took
the video!”

“Yeah. It was pretty funny. I can’t believe you bought it when I told you he was Mindie.” He glanced down. “Is that because I mentioned her?”

“No, it’s, um… ” I looked around nervously. “Something happened in the Garment Viewing Room. I…uh…I really can’t really talk about it, here. ”

Morgan looked surprised, then leaned toward me and whispered in a voice that sounded almost afraid. “Holy crap. Did you
really
fuck a water bottle?”

“No!” I lied and wondered if I looked as guilty as I felt. His smile said I did.

“Dude. I gotta hear this.”

I sagged and gave up. “Maybe I
shouldn’t
come in to work, tomorrow.”

“And maybe you
should
go to a comic book convention?”

Since you are undoubtedly noticing that our friendship seems a bit unlikely, this would be as good a place as any to explain how Morgan and I became friends.

The two of us met in high school. I was a student at Wellmsley, an all-male boarding school, and he was a student from a neighboring institution of the more public variety who had come through our institute of higher learning in order to steal things.

I was lying on the floor near my locker comparing tiles, moaning, and bleeding profusely after one of Wellmsley’s more exciting, semiregular, male-bonding events—one which involved some of the larger boys beating me severely about the head, groin, and torso. Theirs was a more-than-occasional act of camaraderie that centered, primarily, around the violent repositioning of my facial features, Mr. Potato Head-like, then racing off to bond further with other boys about how funny it all was. I’m not entirely sure why I always happened to be the focus of their affectionate ‘ribbing’. It was likely just a straightforward example of the stronger wolves culling out the weaker; following Darwin’s lame ideas of strengthening the pack or something. It’s the sort of thing the Nature Channel is always warning us about. Unfortunately for me, I usually watched
Room Raiders
on VH1.

It was at this particular low point in my adolescent struggle towards pseudo-manhood that Morgan happened to wander by with an armload of shiny, expensive-looking items of no real value. He looked down at me, saw the blood, and asked if I needed a Kleenex.

I told him I had a box in my locker if he wouldn’t mind opening it for me. I gave him the combination, and he did so, pulling several white tissues from a carton within, then dropping them near my head. As I daubed the raging flow of my life’s precious liquid, Morgan helped himself to some of the personal items he found behind my Kleenex—a pen, some cartoon character key rings, a picture of a naked girl I’d cut from one of father’s old Playboys—and slipped them into his pockets.

“Holy,
shit!
” he said, apparently stumbling across something of actual value in there.

“What?” I asked, almost as surprised as he was.

He pulled a plastic-covered comic from behind some of the textbooks—Incredible Hulk number 181—the first appearance of Wolverine, and right behind it—in my opinion the gold standard of modern superhero comics—Giant Sized X-Men number one by Dave Cockrum, Len Wein, and Chris Claremont—the first appearance of the current version of the X-Men, the ones who came to be the foundation for all the cartoons, toys, and movies. The total value of said comics was several thousand dollars when graded at 9.2 out of a possible 10, or higher. These were 9.8. Quite valuable and exceedingly rare at that grade level.

“Can I have these?” Morgan asked. I was surprised he even bothered to ask.

“I’m surprised you even bothered to ask.”

“Dude. I’m a fan. You don’t rip off another fan.”

He began replacing the items he’d stuffed in his pockets. He stopped short with the image of the girl from Playboy (Marianne Gravatte, October 1982. Quite a lovely girl with—I was sure if I ever met her—a darling personality to go with her large breasts), and repocketed it. Then he knelt on the tile and helped me up.

“So? Can I have ‘em?” he asked again.

“Sure,” I said. As long he wasn’t going to hit me, I felt he deserved
some
reward. “I’ve got more you know. Would you like to see?”

“Dude! Does Wolverine shit in the woods?”

“Not in any issue I’ve ever read.”

“He does
between
issues. They never show it, but he does. The guy’s an animal. He’ll crap anywhere and wipe his ass with leaves. Trust me. I wrote a fan-fic about it.”

“A what?”

“A fan-fic. Fan fiction. Online. People write all kinds of shit and post it on websites. Mostly it’s girls writing about Nightcrawler being all romantic and fucking Kitty Pryde. But some of us write Wolverine stories, and they’re cooler than the one’s that get printed. We don’t have censorship.”

“Marvel doesn’t get mad?”

“What are they gonna do? It’s the Internet! No one controls the Internet! It’s
Lord of The Flies
, man!”

“Wow.” I considered it, then blanched. “Lord of the Flies was kind of scary though.”

“
So’s the Internet!
But it’s all anomalous, so no one cares!”

“Anomalous?”

“Secret! People don’t know who you are! So you can pick on people and then pretend it wasn’t you!”

“Ah, anonymous. Though your description of ‘fan-fic’ sounds anomalous as well.”

“Oh, it totally is! You could even write some if you want.”

I immediately began thinking of a story where Wolverine massacres an entire school of snobs in one afternoon, then urinates on the bodies and sets them on fire. A morality tale. Very uplifting. With laser-like clarity, I finally understood the
real
value of the Internet.

“Are you a student here?” I asked.

“No.”

“That’s good.”

Morgan, and I continued talking as we walked out of the building and into a lasting friendship. Not exactly the first meeting of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but
our
epic tale nonetheless. And at least neither of us had been decreed by the gods to die. At least up till now.

Morgan and I bonded quickly, and we considered, for a time, becoming professional thieves. For my part, I would point Morgan in the direction of truly valuable items as opposed to the things he assumed were valuable because they were ‘gold-colored’ and ‘shiny’, and he would devise clever ways of removing them from their proper owners, usually by dangling from high ceilings like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. But since I was already fiendishly wealthy, and girls weren’t realistically interested in joining us, Bonnie and Clydelike in our never-ending run from the law, we decided to collect comics and write fan-fic instead. Which still makes you a social outcast, but at least you get to eat at home.

I became quite good at online storytelling, and even developed a following of sorts, which was anomalous in, and of itself. My fake screen-name of ‘Fool-Killer’ grew in popularity and notoriety among other fake screen-names, and given that I generally wrote to please Morgan, that meant lots of outrageous violence, nudity and sex among the heroes. Had I been a bit more astute, I might have worried about the people I was appealing to, but when you’re essentially a nonentity in the real world, you take your adoration and acceptance where you can get it—whatever the source.