GREG
UUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRGGGG
MOM
think you can “urrrg” your way out of this one, buster, you can think again, nuh-uh, no way, you
There was nothing to be done. I had to call Rachel. You can’t fight Mom’s unstoppable move. It’s probably how Mom got to be boss of a nonprofit: Nonprofits are all about persuading people to do stuff by talking at them. It’s like Will Carruthers talking you into giving him your Doritos “one time,” except that the nonprofit doesn’t have the additional persuasive advantage of you worrying that later the nonprofit is going to jump you in the locker room and whip your naked buttocks with a towel.
So yeah, I had to call Rachel again.
“What do you want.”
“Hi please don’t hang up.”
“I said, what do you want.”
“I want to hang out with you. Come on.”
“. . .”
“Rachel?”
“So you ignore me in school, and then you want to hang out after school.”
Well, this was true. Rachel and I had a few classes together, including calculus, where we sat right next to each other, and yeah, I made no effort to talk to her during any of that time. But I mean, that’s just what I did in school. I didn’t make an effort to talk to anyone. No friends, no enemies. That was the whole point.
If you think I had any idea of how to say this on the phone, though, you have not really been paying attention. I am about as good of a communicator as Cat Stevens, and only a little less likely to bite you.
“No, I wasn’t ignoring you.”
“Yeah, you were.”
“I thought you were ignoring me.”
“. . .”
“So, yeah.”
“You always used to ignore me, though.”
“Uh.”
“I always figured you just didn’t want to be friends with me.”
“Uhhh.”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“Greg?”
“The thing is, you broke my heart.”
I’m smart in some ways—pretty good vocabulary, solid at math—but I am definitely the stupidest smart person there is.
“I broke your heart.”
“Well, sort of.”
“How did I ‘sort of’ break your heart.”
“Uh . . . Remember Josh?”
“Josh Metzger?”
“In Hebrew school I thought you were in love with Josh.”
“Why did you think that?”
“I thought everyone in our class was in love with Josh.”
“Josh was depressed all the time.”
“No, he was all sullen and, uh . . . and dreamy.”
“Greg, it sounds like you’re in love with Josh.”
“Harf!”
This was unexpected. It had never happened before. Rachel had made me laugh. I mean, what she said wasn’t that funny, but I just really wasn’t expecting it, which is why instead of a normal laugh I made a sound like harf. Anyway, that’s when I knew I was in.
“You really thought I was in love with Josh.”
“Yeah.”
“And that broke your heart?”
“Of course it did.”
“Well, you should’ve said something.”
“Yeah, I was being really stupid about it.”
One of my few effective conversational tactics is to throw previous versions of myself under the bus. Twelve-year-old Greg was a jerk to you, you say? He was a jerk to everyone. And he had like thirty stuffed animals in his room! What a loser.
“Greg, I’m sorry.”
“No! No, no, no. It’s my fault.”
“Well, what are you doing right now?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
“You can come over if you want.”
Mission accomplished. I just had to call Earl.
“Hey, Earl?”
“Sup, ike.”
“Ike” is a good sign. It’s slang for “dude,” and when Earl uses it, that means he’s in a good mood, which is rare.
“Hey, Earl, I can’t watch Alphaville today.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I’m sorry, man, I have to hang out with this girl from, uh—this girl from synagogue.”
“Wha-a-at.”
“She’s—”
“Are you gonna eat her pussy?”
Earl can be sort of profane sometimes. He’s actually mellowed out a lot since his middle school days, believe it or not. Back in middle school he would have asked this in a much more violent and horrible way.
“Yeah, Earl, I’m going to eat her pussy.”
“Heh.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you even know how to eat pussy?”
“Uh, not really.”
“Papa Gaines never sat you down, said, Son, one day you’re gonna have to eat the pussy.”
“No. But he did teach me how to eat a butthole.”
When Earl is in full-on Gross-Out Mode, you have to play along or you’ll feel stupid.
“God bless that man.”
“Yup.”
“I would teach you some pussy-eating technique, but it’s a little complicated.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I would need some diagrams and whatnot.”
“Well, tonight maybe you can draw some up.”
“Son, I don’t have time for that. I got like twenty pussies over here that I need to eat.”
“Is that right.”
“I’m on pussy deadline.”
“You’ve got twenty vaginas, all lined up in a row.”
“Aw, what the hell. What the hell. No one’s talkin bout vaginas. Greg, what the hell is wrong with you. Man, that’s nasty.”
Earl likes to mix it up sometimes by pretending that you’re being gross and he is not, when he’s clearly being much grosser. This is a classic humor move that he has perfected over the years.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Man, you’re sick. You’re perverted.”
“Yeah, that was really out of line.”
“I’m talkin bout pussy. I got a little honey mustard over here, a little Heinz 57, and a whole lotta pussy.”
“Yeah, that’s not gross. What I said was gross, but not what you just said.”
“Got some Grey Poupon up in this. Got some Hellmann’s.”
Gross-Out Mode can last indefinitely and sometimes you just have to change the subject without warning if you actually have a message to convey.
“So yeah, sorry I can’t watch Godard tonight.”
“So you wanna watch it tomorrow?”
“Yeah, let’s do it tomorrow.”
“After school. Try to get some of them little steak tips.”
“OK, but I don’t think Mom is making beef tips tonight.”
“Steak. Tips. Give Ma and Pa Gaines some love for me, ike.”
Earl and I are friends. Sort of. Actually, Earl and I are more like coworkers.
The first thing to know about Earl Jackson is that if you mention his height, he will windmill-kick you in the head. Short people are often extremely athletic. Earl is technically the size of a ten-year-old, but he can kick any object within seven feet of the ground. Additionally, Earl’s default mood is Pissed, and his backup default mood is Mega-Pissed.
It’s not just that he’s short, either. He looks really young. He has a sort of round bug-eyed Yoda-esque face that makes girls go all motherly and start cooing. Grown-ups don’t really take him seriously, especially teachers. They have trouble talking to him as though he’s a normal human being. They bend down way too far and speak in this ridiculous up-and-down singsong: “Hel-lo Ear-rul!” It’s like he gives off an invisible force field that makes people stupid.
The worst part is that his whole family is taller than him—all of his brothers and half brothers, his stepsisters, his cousins, his aunts and uncles, his stepdad, even his mom. It’s not really fair. At family barbecues, he gets his head playfully rubbed by someone about every ninety seconds, and it’s not always someone older than him, either. He is constantly being pushed out of the way by people who don’t even realize they’re pushing him out of the way. He can’t wander out into the open; if he does, his brothers take turns running up and leapfrogging over his head. You would be perpetually angry at the world, too, if this was your life.