To Feel Stuff (7 page)

I hovered on the curb, realizing that I had to come up with a goal. I needed somewhere to get to before I could feel okay about turning back. In under a second I thought of the V-Dub—all people talked about were the waffles there.

“You can make yourself waffles there,” said this girl who was admitted into the infirmary last year for never-ending bloody noses. She'd been bleeding through all her classes and dealing with it, mostly dripping onto linoleum floors and those cheap desk-chair combinations. But when her nose bled out onto this big decorative rug in the reading room at the John Hay Library, the university told her that her situation had gotten out of hand and forced her to take care of it.

Whenever a nurse practitioner offered her toast from the Ratty, she'd say, “I'd give anything to be eating a waffle from the V-Dub. You can make yourself waffles there. The stuff is like crack.”

I'd ask, “What, you heat them up yourself?”

Bloody Nose said, “No, there's a gigantic vat of batter and you use a Dixie Cup to pour it into the waffle iron, and then you set the timer on the machine. Lately, I've found that I have a better sense of knowing exactly when my waffle is ready than it does. I'm dying for a waffle. I wonder if the school puts something in the batter, and that's why I want it so bad.”

Health Services put Bloody Nose on prescription medication and soon she was Clean Nose. On the morning that she checked out of the infirmary, she told me, “You know where I'm going.”

I felt the inertia of my life strongly as she left. I'd liked Bloody Nose. She didn't care what anyone thought of her, and she would have gone on bleeding and sticking tissues up her nose except the university said it would consider her negligent if she didn't look into her problem. They made a phone call to her parents stating their intention to start billing them for damaged property unless she sought help. I could see myself having breakfast with Bloody, whether dripping or clean. I could picture the two of us in a corner, sharing a pitcher of syrup, and I thought I'd love it.

I stepped down into the street and crossed it, eager to make a waffle.

From The Desk of Chester Hunter III

 

From right outside the door, I heard David saying, “It's just a hole in the wall? I imagined a wing. This school has no sense of ceremony about it.”

Then he pushed open the door and looked at me. I was slumped in bed with my legs splayed out in front of me like two machine guns, the metal on the braces glinting in the light. I felt like I needed accompanying sound effects—
bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam.
David's eyes went straight down to my knees, of course, and I saw Marna peeking in over his shoulder, wanting to get her own glimpse.

“Oh, hi. I guess you've come to get a look at these,” I said, and I tried to make a sweeping gesture over my knees so we could just all take a moment and address the elephant in the room. I thought that was really the best thing to do, since beating around the bush has never been my personal style. Maybe you're doubtful of that because I was always more unstrung and roundabout with you than with anyone else I've ever met in my life, but you've got to know you're the exception. Anyway, I couldn't make that grand, sweeping gesture, because I wasn't able to bend forward far enough to sweep my hands over my knees. I count this as one of the first times I was conscious of not being able to do something that I'd willed.

David walked in, and I think he was relieved that the only proof of my bodily damage was hidden underneath metal. He seemed like he had been expecting to see something worse, like he thought there'd be lots of torn skin and gore. Marna came in right behind him wearing a smile that is best described as being of the yearbook variety.

“I can't believe it. Look at this. RoboCop.” David shook his head.

“David can't believe how great you look,” Marna stepped in. “But, hey, I have something for you.” She cut past David, came straight to the bed, and sat down next to the pillow that one of the guys from the ambulance had put under my shoulders. When I turned my head to try to look at her, all I could see was a whole bunch of her black skirt. It rustled as she squirmed out of her jacket and reached into one of the pockets. I watched her hand pulling out a folded piece of paper—I remember it was like that hand wasn't even attached to a person—and she gave it to me.

Opening the paper, I saw a faded chart with a whole bunch of dots plotted in its sectors.

“I went online and registered a star in your name,” Marna told me while reaching over to try to press the creases out of the chart. “This is just the printed receipt, because it takes two weeks for the real certificate to come. The real thing is much nicer and has colors.”

I said nothing.

“You didn't tell me you did that,” marveled David.

“It's not your star. Why would you need to know about it?”

“I would have gone in on the star. Chess, I would have gone in on the star.”

Marna shrugged and returned her attention to the chart. With her French manicured nail she pointed to an X in the upper left-hand corner of the paper. “Here, this one—this is your star. There's official documentation that says that is the Chess Hunter star, and that it has to be referred to as such.”

I'm glad you weren't in the room and didn't know about this until now, because I think, looking back, that I shifted into one of my most impressive asshole modes. I wasn't trying to be an asshole, though. My intentions were genuine, as I felt sincere about what I was saying. “Who's going to do that?” I asked.

“Do what?”

I pulled my body up by pressing down on the mattress and arranged myself into a better sitting position. I remember swinging my head slowly back and forth between David and Marna like a goat. “Who's going to worry about the name of a star?”

Marna started to open her mouth, but stayed silent when I lifted my finger to the ceiling and gazed up at the plaster like I was pretending to see God reaching down from the heavens to touch his digit to mine.

“Who's going to point up into the sky and say, ‘Baby, I'd love to talk about that star with you, but I don't know its official name.'”

Taking on the high pitch of a woman's voice, I answered myself. “Can't we just name it ourselves? Why don't we take our names and abbreviate them and put them together? I'm Becky, so we'll take the ‘c-k-y' from me, and you're Tom, so—”

Back in my lower register, I said, “Baby, I know my name.”

The woman's voice: “I know you do, lover. So we'll take ‘Tom' from yours.” Then I flapped my wrists, trying to indicate manic, girlish excitement. “I've got it. Keetom! That sounds sort of Native American, doesn't it?”

Lower: “Sounds Chinese to me, sweetheart.”

Then I shifted toward a new variation, a weak baritone. I had to lower my chin and really reach for it, making the final result croaky, like when I was a kid and I used to speak from the back of my throat to make my parents laugh. “Excuse me, sir. Miss. I am a park ranger, and I thought I saw you pointing up into the sky. Were you, perhaps, looking at the stars?”

My falsetto replied, “We were, actually.”

The park ranger: “Which one?”

Back at my normal level: “Why? Is there a problem?”

“I'm not sure yet. If you'd be so kind as to tell me which one, then I can advise you further.”

I tried to soften my body to portray the woman, which was a woman ridiculously unlike you. I actually thought that while I was doing the impression. I pulled my shoulders in and wilted my neck and used a hand to delicately tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear. Looking out from under my lashes, my woman sheepishly said, “We were talking about the bright one up there. The one that's in the middle of all those duller ones.”

In my baritone: “I thought so. What were you referring to it as?”

In my normal voice: “Well Becky here just named it Keetom.”

“That star has an official name, folks. You can't just go around naming stars and thinking that they're yours to play around with.”

“It has a name?” asked my woman, looking bewildered.

“Absolutely. That's the Chess Hunter star.”

I stopped there, only realizing how I sounded once I heard my own name. And I guess I just stared at my friends.

Marna's mouth was opened a little and her two front teeth were showing like they always did, even when she wasn't smiling or talking. The first time I met her I was walking around the top floor of our dorm, and, as I passed her room, I glanced in and saw her standing on a bed with a huge remote control in each hand. She was wearing a baby-blue negligee, and her hair was swept up like she was “Postsex Barbie.”

Tons of people were sitting on her carpet, watching, seriously, the biggest TV I'd ever seen outside of Circuit City. Marna also had two VCRs, a cable box, a surround-sound stereo system, and a DVD player. She noticed me standing in the doorway and invited me in.

The only place left to sit was on her bed, so I climbed over the bodies on the floor and made my way there. I ended up staying through
The Tonight Show
and then through
Late Night with Conan O'Brien,
and after
Conan
the people on the floor started to get up and make plans to snort coke in someone's room down the hall. Anyway, long story short, by three
A.M.
Marna and I were lying in bed together and talking about numerous things, especially how nervous she was about starting college. Her roommate was out at this Third World Center sleep-over, so we had the room to ourselves.

What I remember most strongly about that night was how concerned Marna was with my comfort. It's crazy because she had only just met me, and already she was going out of her way to treat me like I was the most important person in her life. We were sharing a pillow and she kept making sure that I had the bulk of it under my head, even though her head would sometimes slip off.

I feel the need to tell you all this now because I know I didn't before, because I unintentionally washed myself of a romantic past when I met you. Being in that infirmary was like getting amnesia, and around you, all I dealt with was what was in front of me. So just bear with me, even though you might not want to read this, and read this. It's important that you know all the things that I left out before, El.

So Marna and I stayed up all night with the lights on, and she confessed to me that she was completely scared she'd never make real friends again. Everyone so far seemed nice and polite, she said, but she couldn't figure out how things were supposed to proceed from there.

“I figure there's so much I'm going to have to go through with someone, and I haven't had to do that for about ten years. My friends in high school were there from a long time ago.” Marna slurred her words because she was so sleepy, but I could tell that she needed to have this conversation with me. “I wonder if I've forgotten how to do it. I can't even figure out how we'll ever have time to get to know each other, in between studying and taking classes and trying to be social.”

I told her something like ‘Part of being adult is knowing that everybody turns adult. We stepped into a force field here. It's as if we went to Japan and got off the plane with the latent ability to speak and understand Japanese. Maybe you just haven't gotten your tongue and ears used to it yet. You will. We all grow up and get there.”

“What can we do about that?” Marna asked. “I'm not sure I like it.”

“One day you'll like it.”

“I will?”

“It's like the changing of taste buds. You probably didn't like certain sauces when you were younger, either.” As I'm remembering all of this, I'm hating myself. I can see that I was kind of a prick, but learning that is part of this process, so I'll have to face it.

Unbelievably, Marna accepted what I was telling her. “I guess that makes me feel a little better, that you think relationships are just going to be different and not worse. Yesterday was apples, today is oranges.”

“
Que sera, sera.
Right,” I said.

Then she wanted us to promise that we would be there for each other throughout everything, which I was okay with, was willing to agree to.

“Even if, in a few weeks or semesters, we find out that we don't like each other,” she said, “then we'll still be there for each other anyway. We'll have to like each other.”

“Why wouldn't I like you? I like you,” I told her.

“I like you, too.”

“Good. It's settled.”

“One more thing; I promise.”

I promised. That's how it went down between us. We kissed and she became my first college girlfriend, except we never made it long enough to say “I love you,” or share toothbrushes. But, and this is key, the great thing is that we ended up being really, really tight friends, and I think that our relationship is better now than when we were technically in a relationship. Once I asked Marna what she liked about me, why she stuck with me, and she said, “Being with you is like making a right decision. Around you, I know everything's going to be okay.”

I don't think she felt that way when she came to visit me in the infirmary, and I know I should have been better to her. But when I was staring at her from my bed, all of a sudden there was this difference I was seeing between the two of us. She was filmy, ethereal. And I know this sounds dramatic, but I was so solid that I'd been cracked, El. Then there was David, near my feet, David who seriously writes his name with a dash in between the ‘v' and the ‘d' because he says that's his way of illustrating ‘that certain men are gods.'”

“What a dickhead,” David said about me.

In hindsight, I should have agreed and told them I was sorry, but instead I said, “Neither of you came to my performance last night.”