Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp (3 page)

I asked Mom at dinner if she really liked Jerry. Her reply: “That’s none of your damn business!” After five minutes of angry silence, she went on: “Jerry is OK. You should try to be nicer to him. How many men do you think there are who’d be interested in a 41-year-old woman with two kids, no money, and stretch marks? He’s no Cary Grant, but he’s better than nothing.”

Mom is a realist about everything except her age. She’s 43.

THURSDAY, August 9
— Lefty and I went for a hike up in the hills above the UC campus. This is not like me, but even my body requires some exercise occasionally. Lefty wanted to get out of the house. He made the mistake of telling Martha he disliked her Joe Cocker album, and now she plays it incessantly.

It was sunny and mild, with a few fleecy white clouds floating like becalmed zeppelins above the azure bay. (I may save that sentence for recycling in a future novel.) Rounding Inspiration Point, we were startled to spy in a secluded clearing down the ravine a naked couple making love. Naturally, we crept closer for a better look. Finally, those Cub Scout forest skills were starting to pay off! If only I’d thought to bring my binoculars. They looked like Cal students—a cute Asian coed and her honkie jock boyfriend, happily humping away in the brown grass. They climaxed, rested for a bit, then hopped to it again—while Lefty and I looked on in breathless silence.

After the show, we lurched off to find our own secluded spot for some manual hydraulic relief. My explosive discharge felled a mature eucalyptus grove. Lefty’s dislodged a dozen three-ton boulders. Yet afterwards we both
agreed crazed teen horniness locked us ever tighter in its torrid embrace. My body is broadcasting a desperate signal: It needs it bad. Very bad.

SUNDAY, August 12
— Another fun-filled Sunday in Marin with Dad and Lacey. One of the tragic consequences of divorce is that the kids are legally obligated by the courts to spend a fixed amount of time with their dads. In normal families, dads and children happily ignore each other.

It was a killer hot day. Even though the air conditioning in Dad’s Beamer was on the fritz, he made us ride over with the windows up so the other motorists wouldn’t think he didn’t have any. The only compensation was an outrageously sexy bead of sweat the stifling heat brought out on Lacey’s upper lip. I longed to daub it off—with my tongue.

Once in Kentfield, Dad said he would take me to buy some school clothes if I washed his car. I agreed and got totally fried by the sun while de-griming the fine German steel. Dad watched me like a hawk lest I drop the sponge and pick up some paint-marring grit. (We both suffer from extreme blemish anxiety.)

After lunch (at McDanold’s) we went clothes shopping in the shiny Beamer—to the Sebastopol Flea Market! I got three shirts, two pairs of pants, a jacket, and a belt—for a miserly total of $8.65. Dad was prepared to spend more, but I drew the line at previously owned shoes. This fall I shall be going to school dressed in the height of fashion—for the year 1973.

Lacey had on a groin-swelling yellow polka-dot sunsuit and alien invader’s sunglasses. She flirted with all the bikers selling motorcycle parts and even knew two of the most criminal-looking by name. Dad was extremely jealous and did a lot of inward seething. He looks like heart-attack material to me; I just hope he’s adequately insured.

Dad sprang for hot dogs at the flea market, so he didn’t feel dinner was called for later. I took my hunger and new wardrobe back to Oakland. (But I am not going to let him weasel out of the promised birthday dinner!)

While I was cooking up some frozen french fries (I feel the link between fried foods and acne has not yet been positively established), the sailor dropped by with two of his buddies looking for Jerry. It seems the Chevy went only 17 miles before the engine blew up. They also found evidence of a banana in the transmission. When I told them Jerry was out of town, they looked quite crestfallen and promised to return. They also left the dead Chevy in the driveway. Across the camouflaged hood someone had spray-painted, “Pay up or die!”

MONDAY, August 13
— Millie Filbert is getting married! To Willis, the alleged father of her alleged child. She’s 15 and he’s 20. Martha heard about it
on the grapevine and woke up Lefty this morning with the news. He exclaimed, “This is a day that will live in infamy!” Just kidding. Actually, his precise words were “Great fucking balls ache!”

Lefty came over immediately for some peer counseling. I told him Millie was a cheap tart and he was well rid of her. He agreed and said he hoped she had a long and difficult marriage to an inveterate wife-beater. He said if he’d known she was such an easy lay, he definitely would have gotten up the nerve to ask her out. Instead, he wasted all those years worshipping her from afar. Then, for emotional closure, I had him tear up the
Penthouse
Millie-look-alike Pet. Lefty said he was feeling better, so we had a morale-boosting whack-off session. Even though he has been sneaking extra doses of his vitamins, he still looks as crooked as ever. Millie will never know what she missed.

I think the sunburn helped my acne. So I am trying to spend more time outdoors. Even if I die of melanoma in 20 years, I feel it will have been worth it. I asked Mom for some money to buy sunglasses, but instead she gave me her old pair. It took me 45 minutes to chisel out the rhinestones. That accomplished, they still don’t look like a style Tom Cruise would wear.

Like an early-morning erection, the sailor came back. (I am trying to introduce more similes into my prose.) This time Mom had the pleasure of chatting with him. The sailor demanded she write him a check! She explained that was impossible, but said she would try to contact Jerry. While the sailor waited, seething nautically, she called Jerry’s dispatcher, who gave her the number of a motel in Iowa City. When she called the motel and asked for Jerry’s room, a woman answered! The woman said Jerry was in the shower and could she take a message? Mom turned red, hung up, and told the sailor she would get him his $900. Even if it was the last thing she ever did.

TUESDAY, August 14
— Mom found my Polaroid of Lacey! She claimed she discovered it “while putting away some clean socks.” Yeah, like I always keep my argyles hidden in the back of my bottom desk drawer. With the parental Gestapo on patrol around here, privacy stops at the bathroom door. And even that sanctuary is hardly inviolable.

Mom really hit the roof when I told her the well-proportioned semi-nudist was Dad’s latest girlfriend. She stared in horror at the photo, her face contorted by revulsion and envy. Then I got a 25-minute grilling about Lacey. Mom takes a morbid interest in Dad’s love life (don’t we all?), so I don’t mind inventing a few details here and there to watch her boil. To cope with my torrid revelations, Mom chain-smoked throughout the interrogation.

I told her no, Lacey did not appear to live with Dad, but she did hang her bra and panties in his bathroom. I said I didn’t know if it was serious, but they
spent a lot of time in the bedroom taking naps. I revealed that Lacey liked to sit on Dad’s lap during
Masterpiece Theatre
and blow into his ear. (I made that up.) I said she called him “Thunder Rod” and he called her “Sugar Puss.” (True, believe it or not.) I told her Lacey liked fast cars, knew bikers by their first names, and carried a small flask of brandy in her décolletage. (All true.) I said she came from a prominent San Francisco family, graduated from Stanford at 19, had an IQ of 163, and did secret work for the government involving hair. (More or less lacking a factual basis.) Finally, I said Lacey was fun to be with, had a good sense of humor despite being such an intellectual, and had a mature outlook on the beauty and wholesomeness of the human body. Therefore, I wanted her photo back.

Mom snorted, “That’s what you think, buster.” She said she was keeping the Polaroid for evidence and had half a mind to have Lacey prosecuted for corrupting a minor. “You’re still a child,” lectured Mom, taking multiple deep drags on her cigarette. “You should be out playing sports. Not looking at disgusting pictures of naked harlots.”

I replied that Millie Filbert had played softball for years, but that hadn’t stopped her from getting knocked up.

Mom told me to get my mind out of the gutter. So much for trying to reason with a woman.

WEDNESDAY, August 15
— A sunny day, so I put on my sunglasses and my
I’M SINGLE, LET’S MINGLE
tee shirt and walked all the way downtown to the library. We live about three miles up from the center of town—in the nervous zone between the affluent hills and the seething flats. Seeded baguettes in one direction, barbecue in the other—it’s a short trip either way.

Because of the heat, the library smelled even worse than usual. I wish some wealthy philanthropist would endow a foundation to distribute Right Guard to the homeless. In the library bathroom a bookish-looking gentleman about 30 glanced at my sunglasses and asked me if I wanted to go out for coffee. I said no, I was too young for dating. He seemed disappointed. I’m glad that in spite of my zits and incipient baldness at least one person in this world finds me attractive. If only he were a cute 16-year-old girl. But then what would she be doing loitering in the men’s room?

I sat in the periodicals room for a few hours reading computer magazines. This always fills me with extreme hardware lust. Unrequited, of course, like all my other passions. My bankroll is down to $72 and falling fast. At the opposite end of the table a short fat girl about my age was reading Atari magazines. She kept looking over at me. Finally, she got her fat composed in a friendly expression and asked me if I had a computer. I didn’t want to encourage
her, but out of politeness I said yes I had an IBM AT clone. She said she had an Atari ST and loved its color graphics for games and drawing. I said I used my IBM mostly for word processing and “other serious tasks.” That took the starch out of her sails. She was going to reply, but fortunately a librarian shushed for quiet. When Ms. Atari got up to get another magazine, I sneaked out.

After dinner tonight, we heard a semi-tractor hiss to a stop out front. It was the assless Don Juan back from his Iowa assignations. Jerry pretended nothing was amiss and feigned surprise when my mother lit into him. He disavowed any knowledge of the incident and said if a woman answered his phone (which he doubted) it must have been the maid bringing more toilet paper. What a feeble and transparent liar! To my shock, Mom bought it. She even kissed him!

As Mom fixed Jerry a much better dinner than she had served me, she asked him what he intended to do about the deceased camouflaged hulk in the driveway. Jerry viewed the matter with cool detachment. He said as much as he would like to move the car, he could not—because, of course, it was someone else’s private property. He suggested Mom call the city and have it towed.

What about the angry sailor and his $900?

Jerry said if the sailor came back, Mom should simply remind him he had purchased the car with Jerry’s standard guarantee: “Thirty days or thirty feet. Whichever comes first.”

“I’m in the right,” announced Jerry, carving his steak. “That $900 is already invested in my new car. I pick it up tomorrow.”

“What did you get this time, honey?” asked Mom.

“A slab-sided Lincoln,” said Jerry. “A cherry ’62 convertible. Like the one Kennedy was shot in. Only this one’s white instead of black.”

With Jerry, that stands to reason.

THURSDAY, August 16
— When I got up, the big tractor truck was still parked outside. Thinking it would be fun to have extra guests for breakfast, I sneaked downstairs and called the sailor in Alameda (I found the number in Mom’s purse). He was very happy to hear Jerry was back.

At 8:12 we had three sailors at the front door and two at the back door. When the doorbell rang, Jerry was slumped in a kitchen chair trying to wake up enough to swallow coffee. He perked right up when Mom yelled the fleet was in. He turned white, hissed at Mom to get rid of them, and ran upstairs. The sailors cornered him in Joanie’s closet. (They hadn’t stopped to chat with Mom.) When they grabbed him, Jerry went limp like a house cat caught with the missing family hamster. Two big guys with bad haircuts held him off the
ground while the erstwhile Chevy owner went through his pockets. They found $63 and change. Jerry said that was his entire life savings. The sailor poked him hard in the beer gut. Mom whimpered, “Don’t hurt him!” I was shaking with excitement. The sailors were breathing hard. Jerry looked like he was trying to climb out of his body.

“Honest, guys,” said Jerry, “that’s all I got!” The sailor hit him again. Jerry lost his coffee down the front of his shirt. Mom screamed. I felt like screaming. Jerry started to cry. They carried him downstairs and dragged him outside to go through the cab of the truck. Mom yelled at me to call 911, but one of the sailors said, “Touch that phone, kid, and I’ll slice your balls off.” I didn’t have to be warned twice. In the truck they found Jerry’s jacket with his credit cards and bankbook. So all five sailors and the rumpled truck driver piled into a Navy van (“For Official Use Only”) and drove off to wait for the bank to open.

Mom didn’t go to work. She spent the morning crying in the kitchen. I feel terrible for ratting on Jerry. But what a stimulating way to start your day!

1:30
P.M
. No sign of Jerry. Mom is frantic. The big question: if they murdered him, am I an accessory?

3:20 P.M. Jerry pulled up in his big white Lincoln. He had put the top down, changed into his nice (for him) clothes, and was smiling from ear to ear. He took us for a ride. What a beautiful car! The interior is as cherry as the outside—all chrome, plush carpet, and white leather seats.

Driving down to the bay, Jerry told us how he had outsmarted the U.S. Navy. In the bank, when they found out he didn’t have any money in his account, the sailors made him get a cash advance of $836.72 on his Visa card. Jerry agreed, but asked the teller for a cashier’s check instead of cash. The sailor was pissed, but took it anyway since it was a bank-guaranteed check. Then, when the sailors let him go, Jerry called up Visa and reported his credit card had been stolen. The night before! “Boy,” chuckled Jerry, “is that dumb sailor going to get a surprise when he tries to cash that check!”