Anyway, in sixth grade, it was time to throw some game at Leah Katzenberg. In order to win her over—get ready for record-setting stupidity—I decided that I would try to make her jealous. Specifically, by flirting with Rachel Kushner, an average-looking girl with big teeth and hair even frizzier than Josh Metzger’s. Rachel Kushner was also not especially exciting to talk to, because she talked really slowly and never seemed to have anything to say.
The one thing going for her was that she thought I was the funniest guy in the entire world. I could make her laugh by doing literally anything: impressions of teachers, going cross-eyed, Dance of the Pigeon Man. This was awesome for my self-esteem. Unfortunately, it was not awesome for my chances with Leah Katzenberg, who rapidly came to think that Rachel and I were a cute couple, and one day after Hebrew school told us exactly that.
Suddenly, I had a girlfriend. And it was not the girlfriend I wanted.
In the words of Nizar, the surliest and least-English-speaking of Benson’s ESL kids, “Fuck dick shit ass.”
The next day, I informed Rachel over the phone that I wanted to be Just Friends.
“That’s fine,” she said.
“Great,” I said.
“Do you want to come over?” she asked.
“Uh,” I said. “My foot is stuck in the toaster.” It was idiotic, but needless to say, this got a huge laugh from her.
“Seriously, do you want to come over,” she asked again, after literally thirty seconds of helpless giggling.
“I have to sort out this toaster thing first,” I said. Then, knowing that there was no going forward with that conversation, I hung up.
This joke went on for days, then weeks. Sometimes when she called, I said I was glued to the fridge; other times I had accidentally welded myself to a police car. I started branching out to animals: “I have to fight some angry tigers,” or “I’m digesting an entire wombat right now.” It didn’t even make any sense. And eventually, Rachel stopped thinking this was so funny. “Greg, seriously,” she started saying. “Greg, if you don’t want to hang out, just tell me.” But I wasn’t able to tell her for some reason. I would have felt too mean. The stupid part was, what I was doing was way more mean. But I didn’t realize this at the time.
I just punched my own eyeball.
Hebrew school became incredibly awkward. Rachel stopped wanting to talk to me, but this didn’t help things with Leah at all. I mean, obviously. She thought I was a huge jerk. Actually, I may have helped convince her that all boys were jerks, because she became a lesbian not long after the whole Rachel fiasco.
Failed Girl Tactic #4: The Boob Compliment. In seventh grade, Mara LaBastille had a terrific pair of boobs. But it’s just never a good idea to compliment a girl’s boobs. I had to learn this the hard way. Also, it’s somehow worse to draw attention to the fact that there are two boobs. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true. “You have nice boobs.” Bad. “You have two nice boobs.” Worse. “Two boobs? Perfect.” F minus.
Failed Girl Tactic #5: The Gentleman. Mariah Epps’s family moved to Pittsburgh in eighth grade. When she was introduced to us on the first day of school, I was so fired up. She was cute, she seemed smart, and best of all, she was completely unaware of my history of dickhead behavior around girls. I knew I had to move quickly. That night, I broke down and asked Mom what girls really wanted.
“Girls like gentlemen,” she said. She was being kind of loud. “A girl likes to get flowers every so often.” She was glaring at Dad. It was the day after her birthday or something.
So the second day of school, I wore a suit and brought an actual rose to school, which I gave to Mariah before first period.
“I would be honoured and delighted to escort you to an ice-cream parlour this week-end,” I said, in a British accent.
“Would you,” she said.
“Greg, you look like a fruit,” said Will Carruthers, a nearby jock.
But it worked. Unbelievable! We actually went on a date. We met at a place in Oakland, and I bought us some ice cream, and we sat down, and I thought, from now on, this is how my life is going to be, and that kicks ass.
That’s when The Talking began.
My God, that girl could talk. She could go for miles. Invariably it was about her friends back in Minnesota, whom I didn’t know. It was all she wanted to talk about. I heard hundreds of hours’ worth of stories about these people, and because I was being a gentleman, I wasn’t allowed to say, “This is boring,” or “I already heard that one.”
And so the problem became that the gentleman tactic worked too well. The expectations were ridiculous. I had to wear my nicest clothes to school every day, pay for stuff constantly, spend hours on the phone every night, etc. And for what? Definitely not sex. Gentlemen don’t get to fool around. Not that I really knew, back then, what fooling around was. Plus I had to keep talking in that stupid British accent, and everyone thought I was brain-damaged.
So I had to put a stop to it. But how? It obviously wasn’t an option to be honest and say, “Mariah, if spending time with you means paying lots of money and listening to you talk, then it’s not worth it.” I considered a campaign of freaking her out by suddenly only talking about dinosaurs, or maybe even pretending to be a dinosaur, but I didn’t have the courage to do those, either. It was a major quandary.
Then, out of the blue, Aaron Winer saved the day. He took her to some movie and made out with her in the back row. The next day at school, they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Bam! Problem solved. I pretended to be bitter about this, but in fact I was so relieved that I started laughing hysterically in history class and had to be excused to go to the nurse.
And that was that. During high school I didn’t even bother with girls or girl tactics. Frankly, the Mariah thing completely cured me of wanting to have a girlfriend. If it was going to be like that, then screw it.
Cameron “Cammie” Marshall is now captain of the Math League. She still has a Hello Kitty backpack, which might not be ironic. She is definitely not the hottest girl in her class anymore, although I think that does not really bother her all that much.
Madison Hartner is smokin’ hot and probably dates one of the Pittsburgh Steelers or something.
Leah Katzenberg has a shaved head and a bunch of metal embedded in various parts of her face, and four out of five Benson English teachers have given up trying to make her read books written by men.
Mara LaBastille and her two equally phenomenal boobs went to a different high school.
Mariah Epps is a theater girl now. She has a posse of 100 percent gay male sidekicks, including Justin Howell, and holy shit, do they do a lot of talking.
Rachel Kushner got acute myelogenous leukemia our senior year.
I found out about Rachel’s leukemia pretty much as soon as I got home.
So, just to repeat, the first day of senior year had been, if not awesome, then unexpectedly non-horrible. Everyone, from wealthy designer-nosed Olivia Ryan to Nizar the Surly Syrian, thought I was OK, and no one was actively plotting my downfall. This was unprecedented. Plus, in general things were a lot less stressful, now that there weren’t upperclassmen who could squirt mustard packets at my head or backpack. That is what being a senior is all about. My teachers were talking a lot of trash about how hard class was going to be, but by senior year, you realize that all teachers say that every year, and they are always lying.