Spanking Shakespeare (5 page)

DECEMBER

So I’m currently working on the thirteenth draft of my real college essay. That’s not an exaggeration. I told you my parents are crazy.

I’m also working on the twenty-sixth draft of a poem for Celeste. That is an exaggeration, but not by much. I’m crazy, too.

I never imagined going out with a girl would be so much trouble. Three weeks after our first kiss, I bring Celeste to the table where Neil, Katie, and I eat lunch every day. What a disaster! Celeste goes on and on, explaining the need for more diverse representation in the literary canon. Five minutes into it, I glance at Katie, who looks about ready to punch her in the face if she doesn’t shut up.

Neil and Katie corner me later in the day by my locker.

“What’s up with Celeste?” Neil asks. “Does she always talk like that?”

I shrug. “I guess. To be honest, half the time I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

“She better give unbelievable blow jobs for you to put up with that shit,” Katie says.

“I wouldn’t know,” I say, feeling sheepish. “All we’ve done so far is kiss.”

Katie stares at me in disbelief.

“We’re just taking it slow,” I say. I don’t want to admit that every time I’ve tried to do more, Celeste has pulled away. I’m nervous that if I keep pushing, she’ll dump me and file a restraining order.

“You’ve got to be the most pathetic person I know,” Katie says.

“Whatever,” Neil says. “At least you’re getting something.” He looks at Katie. “That’s more than either of us can say.”

Katie sneers. “You want to see what you’re missing?” She takes Neil’s head between her hands and kisses him long and hard on the mouth. Then she pushes him away.

“Wow,” I say.

Neil is too stunned to move or speak.

“No big deal,” she says, though her tone is softer and she seems to be trying to suppress a smile.

What I’m hoping is that if I write something for Celeste that she loves, she might be more open to my advances. So I started reading up on famous writers and jotting down funny observations about each one. Then I got bored and just started making things up. Twenty-six drafts later, here’s what I have:

This poem, I do hope, is not an intrusion

I mean it to please, not disillusion.

I know of your deep love for literature

So forgive me for being a bit immature.

We can start way, way back with the epic bard Homer

Who wrote about Helen while nursing a boner.

And even though Homer was totally blind

He was blessed with something beyond a sharp mind.

Shakespeare (the first) while writing King Lear

Got totally hammered guzzling beer.

And in between poems, word has it that Keats

Liked to cavort betwixt oft-soiled sheets.

Milton himself was a mischievous louse

Whose favorite hobby was to egg Shakespeare’s house.

And with whom did Milton engage in this fun?

Sometimes Ben Jonson, sometimes John Donne.

Dante’s Inferno housed souls hot and sweaty,

But his own hell was worse after too much spaghetti.

Every great writer needs inspiration—

Dante’s came from acute constipation.

Not many folks know that George Bernard Shaw

Could often be found wearing a bra.

And rumor has it that E. Allan Poe

Took a trip out to Walden to visit Thoreau.

Emerson looked on norms with defiance

While alone in his room he pursued self-reliance.

And many years later, there followed Ayn Rand

Who did more than write with that self-absorbed hand.

I don’t know much philosophy, but I know that Descartes

Was renowned in his day for the way he could fart.

But even Descartes was not nearly as smelly

As that malodorous scoundrel Percy Bys she Shelley.

I heard a recording of the brilliant James Joyce—

Did you know that the man had a real girly voice?

But Melville was manly, his neck was real thick,

He had hair on his back, and of course Moby-Dick.

In her great depression, Sylvia Plath

Neglected to take either shower or bath.

And while Spenser revised his great Faerie Queene

He failed to maintain good oral hygiene.

Dorothy Parker caused quite a stir

When her agent came over looking for her.

“Go away,” she called out, “I’m fucking busy

And vice versa,” she moaned in a delirious tizzy.

I thought I might take some time to peruse

A few books that were written by my fellow Jews.

I knew after reading Portnoy’s Complaint,

Roth may be a Jew, but kosher he ain’t.

And what about Isaac Bashevis Singer?

He didn’t eat pork, but he sure was as winger.

As a young man of twenty he shunned other Jews

And partied all night with his man Langston Hughes.

Winter nights in New Hampshire you could find Robert Frost

At the local saloon, where he liked to get sauced.

And in his spare time, old Joseph Heller

Liked making up jokes about Helen Keller.

Not many folks know that the great Norman Mailer

Grew up in Kentucky in the back of a trailer.

And while in Connecticut touring Mark Twain’s,

I looked in his closet, saw handcuffs and chains.

I’m still trying to figure out how to end this thing. Maybe the reason it’s so hard is that once I finish I know I will actually have to give it to Celeste, and I have no idea how she will react. Neil says if she doesn’t like it, she’s not worth dating in the first place. Katie says even if she does like it, she’s not worth dating.

It’s funny. The person I’ve been thinking who would really appreciate this poem is Charlotte White. We’ve become friendlier over the past month, though with Charlotte it’s hard to get too close. She comes to school late a lot, sometimes arriving during our morning math class, and always keeps herself at a bit of a distance from everything going on around her. Ms. Rigby has held her after class a few times, and she’s seemed upset when she’s come out, but when I’ve asked her about it, she’s said it’s nothing, just some work she owes.

One day I ask her to come sit with us at lunch. When I bring her to the table, Neil and Katie shoot me disbelieving looks and are uncharacteristically quiet throughout the meal. Charlotte does not seem to notice the stretches of silence, and she rarely speaks unless I address her point-blank. Several minutes before lunch ends, she excuses herself and slips out of the cafeteria.

“That girl freaks me out,” Katie says.

“Why?” For some reason it feels important to me that Neil and Katie approve of her. “She’s really nice,” I say.

Katie shakes her head. “I don’t know. She’s better than your douche-bag girlfriend, but there’s something off about her.”

“How do you even know her?” Neil asks.

“She’s in my math class, and we had English together last year.”

“Does she have any friends?” Katie asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Katie picks up her tray and gives her leftovers to Neil. “Well, the next time you want to eat with her, do it somewhere else.”

The next day on the way out of math class I ask Charlotte if she’ll read something I’ve written.

“Sure,” she says. “What is it?”

“I’ll show you. Are you going to lunch?”

We walk to the cafeteria, get our gray hamburger patties, and find an empty table.

“Okay,” I say, handing her the poem. “How would you react if someone gave you this? It’s not finished, but you’ll get the idea.”

To my relief, she doesn’t ask me who it’s for or why I wrote it. She just accepts the paper and begins to read, and as she reads she begins to smile, and when she smiles I think to myself that she is actually rather attractive, not as obviously pretty as Celeste perhaps, but with a face that lights up unexpectedly and catches you by surprise.

“I’m shocked and offended,” she says when she has finished, and we both laugh.

Then she says, “I think it’s great.”

I take the paper back. “Can I ask you something maybe a little bit personal?”

She takes on a guarded look.

“You don’t have to answer,” I say quickly. “I’m just wondering why you come late to school so much.”

It takes a moment for her to relax, and even when she does, she still seems troubled. “I have to help out at home,” she says at last, and even though I am consumed with curiosity, I know better than to press her.

Between thinking about Charlotte, playing boyfriend to Celeste, trying to finish my poem, arguing with my parents about college applications, and working on my memoir, I somehow manage to miss the moment when Neil and Katie move from being friends to being friends with benefits.

“Is something up with you and Katie?” I ask Neil as we walk out of school one day to catch the bus home.

Neil seems a bit uncomfortable. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You guys have just been acting a little weird lately.”

Neil doesn’t answer, and I feel a pit in my stomach.

“Tell me you’re not sleeping with Katie.”

“I’m not sleeping with Katie,” Neil says quickly. His face is red.

“But you are doing other stuff.” It’s not so much a question as an accusation.

Neil does not say anything.

“You and Katie?” I am having trouble wrapping my mind around the concept.

“Well, you’ve been hanging out with Celeste so much.”

“Not really. I have lunch with you guys almost every day.”

Neil stops and faces me. “Are you angry?”

“No,” I say angrily. “I just can’t believe you’ve been doing it behind my back.”

I don’t know why this is all so upsetting to me. Am I jealous? Why should I be when I have a girlfriend already? Am I worried about being the odd man out? Is it that I always imagined that if Katie ever went out with one of us it would be with me? Or is it just the shock of discovering that in the blink of an eye your whole sense of the universe can be turned upside down?

We get on the bus and take an empty seat near the back. “So how did all this happen?” I ask.

“You have to promise not to tell Katie I told you,” Neil says. “She said if I tell anyone, she’ll cut my balls off.”

I promise, and Neil recounts how the day after that kiss in the cafeteria, they were hanging out at Katie’s house, and Katie pulled out a bottle of vodka and they got drunk and then they just started kissing. “Since then, we’ve hooked up a few times, but Katie always wants to get drunk first.”

When I get home, my brother and his girlfriend are in his bedroom with the door closed. I know they are in there, because I hear talking and giggling, and then Meredith’s voice saying, “You first.”

I hurry into my room, close the door, pull out the poem I have written for Celeste, read it over, and furiously compose a final verse:

These lines, I do hope, have been a diversion

And shown you more clearly my taste for perversion.

I wrote you this poem because I’m afraid

To come out and tell you I want to get laid.

I take a deep breath. I can’t give her this. I cross it out, lie down on my bed, and close my eyes. I replay the experience of kissing Celeste for the first time. In my imagination, she takes my hand and leads me into her bedroom. We sit on her bed and kiss some more. I move my hand up her chest and she does not stop me. “Take off your pants,” I whisper.

She looks at me and blushes. “You first.”

I return to my poem and write a final verse.

Take pity, Celeste, on a struggling bard

My mind might be soft, but my pencil is hard.

My pen has been leaking all over my hand

Please be my paper; that would be grand.

On the day before Christmas vacation, Neil and Katie come to school hungover, Charlotte White does not come at all, and I come completely undone.

We are in Mr. Parke’s class, and we have just submitted the next sections of our memoirs. Celeste has written about her political and ideological awakening, and I have written about getting caught in math class with a pornographic magazine.

“I wrote you something,” I say at the end of class. I pull a folder from my book bag and hand her the poem.

I expect her to smile or to thank me or even to throw her arms around me and give me a kiss. Instead, she just stands motionless, not looking at the poem, but looking deeply troubled. “Shakespeare,” she says at last, “we have to talk.”