Chapter 13

LABOR DAY 1996:

Tug… Tug… Tingle… Tingle…

I lay on my bed and “pulled the pud” as they say… For the 6^th time that Labor Day…

Late summer afternoon light pierced the periphery of my shade. Noon o’clock and I had already climaxed five times (ten times a day was nothing for a young buck/cuck like me!) The next morning, I would start the first day of my Sophomore year and so I made sure to make the masturbatory most of my idle idylls. School meant six hours a day of not jerking off – the horror! (though, on the other hand, the sluttish girls who walked through the pheromone-saturated hallways were the best source of fantasy fodder.)

A wave of fresh anxiety coursed through my body. I shook my left leg, twirled my right hand, and rolled my head back and forth against the pillow (as if I were the little girl from “The Exorcist” – “your mother sucks cocks in Hell!”)

Oh, the first day of school… (scarier, in many ways, than shaking my tush on the catwalk!) Stomach-churn, stomach-churn.

“Gulurp.”

A burp of stomach acid bathed my throat but fell short of my molars.

But this year will be different. Jahn taught me how to be confident and look how much I kicked ass at the showcase. And the photoshoot. Even though Anais didn’t want me, the cunt!

Well, fuck that anorexic bitch! Tomorrow I will see my first crop of Freshman girls. Maybe I’ll end up fucking one of them. Or going out with one of them. I don’t just want to fuck. I’m like L.L. Cool J – I need love. I want to love them and fuck them. I will use what Jahn taught me and I will be strong and confident enough to get a girl! Maybe a Freshman girl. Ooh, Freshman girls…

The cum shot from my pee-hole like Evel Knievel from the mouth of a cannon (by #10 there would be little more than a watery drip, a teardrop of semen peeking its head out like a timid groundhog not yet ready for Spring.)

“Ah, Freshman girls,” I whispered.

            Sigh…

Bulurrr… Bulurrr… Bulurrr…

My phone purred-bulurred, the artificial sound of a robotic cheetah. A call for me! And what perfect timing!

I sat up, wiped the cum on my bedsheets, pulled up my shorts, half-stepped to my desk, and picked up the plastic receiver.

“Hello?”

“What’s up, nigger?”

Dustin said “what’s up, nigger?” in a shrill, high-pitched voice, a parody of general wiggerdom.

“Nothin’ much, nigger. What are you up to?”

“Oh, I just have some news I would like to share with you.”

“What’s that?”

“Amanda Goldstein is back in town.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes, I’m looking out my window and watching her right now.”

Dustin lived next door to Amanda’s mother and stepfather. Their proto-McMansion angled toward Dustin’s much humbler abode – and coquettishly so – at about a 90-degree angle. The monstrosity towered over the tip of the cul-de-sac like a stern father over a brood of cowed children. The imposing Roman columns might as well have been a Sci-Fi forcefield, an impenetrable barrier designed to keep the riff-raff (like me) from the unimaginable glory that lived behind the front double doors.

“Is she still hot?”

“Yeah. She’s even hotter than she was the last time I saw her. She straightened her hair and cut it really short. She’s wearing a tank top and jean shorts.”

“Oh, she’s the most beautiful girl in the world!”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that, but she is hot. You haven’t seen too many girls outside of Wall Township.”

“I don’t care! She’s the most beautiful girl to me! You know what we have to do, right?”

“No, we’re not doing it! I already told you that we won’t be able to see anything from over here. The way the house is angled it’s almost impossible to look through any of the windows from my place.”

“I will find a way! I’m an expert at spying on people! I’ll get us a view right through her bedroom window – I promise!”

“All right! If you want to waste your time, you can sleep over here and try, but I’m telling you that you won’t see anything!”

Amanda Goldstein had returned from the Sunshine State! She would once again sleep in the pristine palace on the Pilgrim Street cul-de-sac (next to Dustin’s house!), a Sleeping Beauty guarded by her fire-breathing Jew stepfather (though he looked more like the yuppie nerd from Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love” video: 

We would have to be careful Peeping Toms. According to Dustin, her stepfather was not the sort of forgiving guy who would roll his eyes, snicker, and draw the Venetian blinds against our hormonal-driven ocular intrusion. Nah, he was a “dick” – a white collar pencil neck – and he would call the police if he looked out his window and noticed the nearby glint of a binocular lens.

But it would be worth the risk.

I would somehow insinuate myself into her life. Whether through looking in her window or – gasp – attempting to initiate a conversation with her. A conversation with Amanda Goldstein, of all people? That would be like Peter McNeely’s gutsy yet insane decision to fight toe to toe with Mike Tyson! Amanda was not just another girl – not an Alisa, not a skeeza – but one of if not the ultimate girl (of a different ass, caste, and class.) A first move with Amanda would require a courage beyond even what I learned from Team Model, Jahn’s martial deconstruction and reconstruction of my entire being notwithstanding. Though if she made the approach I would, thanks to the lessons learned from Team Model, probably hold my own (and at least not vomit on my shoes.)

Whether I had the huevos to foment any kind of relationship with Amanda or not, her very return to Yankee Candle cozy New Jersey opened a horizon of thrilling possibilities.

I flopped back on my bed and dedicated numbers 7 through 10 to Amanda.

But, my dear readers, let’s not be too vulgar and sex-crazed as we close this tidy chapter (blame my current use of the OCD-busting but libido-killing Anafranil for my rediscovered authorial gentleness!) Amanda was the Mary to my Ben Stiller and there was just something about her (and that something was so much more than sucking and fucking.) I dare ask: did I love her, or did I love the way she made me feel about myself? She was an ideal: the hot girl. Even her house looked like a hot girl’s house; clean; central air-conditioning (box units were for poor people); a pool in the backyard for the pleasure of her and her hot friends.

Amanda was Danielle, but closer to my age; the hot girl (sorry I’m using the word “hot” so much, but that’s what we called hot girls) from the 80s teen movie who eventually falls in love with the nerd (and that nerd, of course, would hopefully be me!)

She also represented a world that was already dying: a pre-Grunge culture; an innocent, suburban, collective evaluation of what’s good, right, noble, and non-decadent – a taking of life-affirmation at face value. 

Scary movies on Halloween. Holding hands under the table on Thanksgiving (after watching “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.”) Attending midnight mass on Christmas Eve (Amanda was half-Italian and I had heard rumors that she had been spotted in the pews of St. Rose.)

Let’s burn a pumpkin-scented candle, cuddle, watch “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors” and then make love (but almost as an afterthought.)

Sophomore year was already looking good.