“Nah, bro, it isn’t even that deep. It’s just a dry-snap,” she jeered, all lilting and tee-hee. But that’s Janet for you, you know?
She just didn’t get it. I mean, “it’s just a dry-snap?” Only a senior, and already it feels like her coffee should be sold to her at discount.
“I dry-snap losers all the time.”
I couldn’t hide how hard that hit. I mean, I didn’t cry or anything, but no one wants to be called a loser on the drive into school, right? Nah, deadass, and to be honest with you, when I told the story later to Jon and Joel they were both like, “oh, damn. ur sister’s bad as fuck.” Which wasn’t super helpful.
“Look,” I said, all faux brave and sincere, “I’m not a loser.”
“Of course not, sweetie,” she snapped her gum, and that would have grossed me out normally, except that I was still reeling from the word sweetie. Jesus, I thought, this bitch is aging fast as-f. She’ll be canning jam soon, or saying things like, Wow, this roast is delicious. Kill me. Kill her. At least she didn’t…
“Goddamnit, Janet!”
She fuckedmyhairuprealgood.
She laughed, and I sulked but in a funny-your-my-sister-haha way. Not like the sulking I was doing earlier on account of the dry-snap.
“I don’t get why you care so much?” She asked, making a quick right turn.
I scratched at my head abscently, a real fucking primate.
“Why would you waste your time being into someone if they aren’t into you?”
It was a good point.
“Also, wasn’t she dickriding you ‘till now?”
“Yeah, but that seems like…”
“Forever ago?”
I laughed a little, “I guess you’re not full grandma, yet.”
“Hey,” she said, all playful and then fuckedupmyhairagain.
She made another right and a couple more lefts and then this real long shot of just like straight on ‘till morning, except the lights are only green for about ten seconds and then it’s just, fuck you very much for being here. Even still we were getting close to school and I was no closer to understanding the socio-sexual significance of the ceiling snap.
“Aggravating,” I said, but only I said it outloud and not in my head, and probably too loudly, which was a shame.
“Jesus, Conrad! I’m sitting right here.”
I nervous chuckled and fuckedupmyownhair this time, and that set her to a smidge of haha. A reel wheel-slapper, snort snort and whatever.
“I know it’s tough.”
“For real?”
She went into this whole long thing about how hard it can be when someone’s value is comprised mostly of what other people think, say, or snap. And she was really into it too, like, here me Oh, Israel, the Lord your God… I mean, you know. She was right, and she knew she was right, and I knew she was right.
So amen and hallelujah.
“Look at this line of idiots,” she pointed lazily with her elbow at the cars out front.
We made chat for a minute about the line or cars, and if this line was particularly big or if it was just, you know, a regular type of line. But the real thing is that we got parked and when her door opened the radio clicked off. Oh, and the car has this great mahogany-teakwood clip that goes on the air vent, in case you were big into car smells.
Janet cat-walked everywhere like there was a scout from Balenciaga just about to scoop her up. Soon she sashayed herself right into the herd and out of sight. But just before she did, I heard some jerk-off say, “Man, I’d like to fuck her,” and then the kid he was with was real clever with, “right in the ass.”
I have to admit, it left me with a bummer image. I thought about standing up for my sister’s honor, cause you know, she isn’t just some object and all, but I really didn’t want to be just another man trying to solve the problems of women, how misogynistic? So I stayed quiet and real-woke. Thank Allah for me.
Plus, I was off to find Jon and Joel. They would know what to do.
---
“How do I even respond to this?” I ask as we walk through the halls together.
Jon is all lanky and wears these glasses with the plastic frames. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in anything but Converse. Which is fine, but it does tend to cause tension with Joel, who prefers diversification of social assets. He’s wearing a pair of threes today, and no one cares ‘cause they aren’t those threes. But still, threes.
“Maybe it’s not a-real-dry-snap,” Joel said, “Like an accident, woops, there’s some ceiling tiles for you,” he holds his hands up like he’s serving breakfast to a group of grumpy veterans.
I can’t even dignify his dumb with words.
“Bro, send her a picture of your dick,” Jon says, opening a NutriGrain bar. It’s blueberry and no one is jealous of that shit.
“First off,” I say, “I don’t think that’s a thing anymore.”
“Dick pics?” Jon’s astonishment borders on hurt.
Joel is buried in his phone, frantically searching, “No, man, they’re still a thing.” He holds up his phone for us and sure enough, still a thing.
“I mean, I don’t know if that’s right for me, or for Christina,” I am honest with them now.
“Oh, it’s right for Christina,” one says and the other kind of finds the lyric and joins at the end. It’s hilarious when it’s not happening to me.
“Common, ass-cakes! What should I do?”
“Dick Pic, DiCk pIc…”
We quickly round the hallway corner and Joel walks head first into Mrs. Allen’s tits. Like not to the side, but dead on, just a real bullseye. Mrs. Allen is like 50 or something terrible, and Joel is short and so it really was just amazing to think of the odds: Mrs. Allen’s 50 year-old-tits, and Joel’s stout face, metrically too short to even be sarcastic. But Mrs. Allen was pretty cool about the whole thing, ‘prolly ‘cause she wasn’t jonesing to write a referral in regard to her own tits:
He turned the corner and his head was just buried in my tits like a motorboat bogged down on first base.
“What did it feel like,” Jon asked without missing a beat.
“Heartbreaking,” I assume he’s talking to me.
“Fuck you and your snap, the tits bro, the tits?”
Joel was uploading the sensational new anatomical data into his skull-server, “Soft, I guess.”
“Squishy?” Jon clarified.
“No, I mean, not like hard or anything, but not squishysquishy. Maybe?”
“You want me to see if she’s down for round two?”
They laughed, but I was not having it because of them ignoring me about the snap.
“Common!” I’m nearly begging. It’s never a good look.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jon said, “But Joel just got a face full, so don’t be stupid.”
Who could argue? Under normal circumstances the Mrs. Allen Adventures would have been all we discussed for a week. Maybe more. And for as much as I wanted to revel in the awkwardness of it all, I just couldn’t help myself. “Should I just send the ceiling back?”
“Dude, just leave it on delivered,” Jon was fishing the last nub of NutriGrain out of the wrapper’s ass.
“Delivered is a good move,” Joel’s head still clearly in the soft of Mrs. Allen.
“About that…” I can’t even hold my head up.
“Tell me you fucking opened it!”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“I didn’t think, I just thought… you know…”
“Sure,” Jon admits, “Why wouldn’t you?”
“What about the 4th seat?” I ask, head still low.
Joel nearly ran Jon over when Jon pulled up short in the hallway, “What the actual hell are you talking about?”
Joel’s head was clear now, “We have Alisha on the schedule this week, we can’t ghost her just ‘cause you want to be insecure!”
“I’m not being insecure!” I said, being insecure.
Real quick, I should tell you, for as long as I can remember: Jon, Joel, and I have always had lunch together. We sat at the same table for years. Back corner of the south entrance of the cafeteria. Me with my back to the wall, Joel next to me, and Jon across the table. Other people came and went from the west end of the table, but the spot next to Jon was one we leased out week by week.
Over the years, the seat became this whole thing. We weren’t cool like it could sound. No one was standing on queue to date any of us, but the seat was a weird social currency. Almost everyone who is anyone sat there, or hoped to sit there. And to be honest with you, Alisha was kind of our biggest land. She was cool, pretty, smart, and had a wicked sense of humor. She was friends with Chistina. Maybe she could shed light on the ceiling tiles.
Some people would join us for their week all skittish and weird, hoping we wouldn’t ask probing questions about their down time or preferences in pornography or whatever terrible goofy-ass thing we could think of. Admittedly, it would be downright skank-ass-form to exclude Alisha with such short notice. Such was the Christina dry-snap mania. I had to get her to the fourth seat, and fast.
Joel continued, “I mean, we have been trying to get Alisha to sit for like two years, and now she’s finally in!”
“Yeah, bro, and from here we can invite whoever we want!”
---
I went to history, math, and this one class that’s supposed to be all like inspirational and moving or whatever, but mostly it’s just this dude clinging to what’s left of his prime. I’d feel bad for him, but who has the time?
The bell finally got to ringing and I was all kinds of hustle to get to my spot at the table. Alisha was already there and Jon and Joel were in line for pizza or whatever government slop the cafeteria man was slinging. I pushed my mom’s famous homemade PB&J down my pie-hole. Alisha was kind enough to look away, but when I started talking it was, you know, a little too quick and the roof of my mouth was peanut butter welded to my tongue and it came out a real jumble, and Alisha laughed like all demure with a hand over her mouth and so on. I wish you could have seen it.
Before I could get a word out, Jon and Joel were back. It was pizza, but Joel’s slice looked like it was hung on a line and left to be tortured. Joel didn’t care, and neither did anyone else. It was a center slice and that was big happy for anyone lucky enough, but like I need to tell you that. ‘Cause of course.
Alisha’s eyes were something shiny. Jesus. I mean, she’d look at you and it dug into your whole entire soul. She’d do this flip-her-hair-laugh-thing where she would really hold your gaze and it was kinda, like, if sexy had nothing to do for the day and just decided to go to the movies instead, but despite it not being a sexy advance it was like you totally wanted her to sexy advance on you. Take the beach! But you knew she wasn’t and instead it was like she loved you because it was you, maybe?
She was in the middle of being charming, or whatever, when I finally just blurted, “Christina dry-snapped her ceiling, and I don’t know what to send back, or should I even snap back, or just give up and die?”
Alisha laughed.
Which was disconcerting and super unhelpful so I did the only thing I could do: I laughed too. Haha and oh, yeah, now I get it. You know?
Joel was like, “See told you!”
And Jon was like, “Just what we said.”
But I couldn’t even slow my response, and just blurted “You told me to send her my dick,” and then I was a little embarrassed on account of saying my dick in front of Alisha.
She laughed again, and said, I think she said, “That would be hilarious.”
Normally I wouldn’t be so puritanical about a dick, happy to talk abstractly about dicks or even about specific dicks, but abstraction is my preference. Regretfully, in this case, we really did have a collected and shared image of my dick and I didn’t know what Alisha pictured, but I wasn’t loving the idea of my dick as comedy, but I guess any dick is comedy when it’s not yours or not being sent to you. Real big toothy laughs, right?
But Alisha could tell I was all kinds of bound up about the thing and then gave me this really great idea. And I was like, “That’s a really great idea.”
She was like, “Snap her back with a middle finger at the ceiling.”
Joel and Jon were like, “Oh, shit, good call.”
But now, I’m left figuring out, “Which ceiling?”
“Don’t be stupid, it’s just a snap.” They laughed and yucked and ate pizza and talked about milk in bags and then about tomorrow’s conversation at the table, which I can’t really remember about that just now, mostly ‘cause of the brutal need to find an appropriate ceiling that will communicate my love for Christina Lorenzo.
---
Janet brought me home, ‘cause that’s how it works, and I chatted her up about her day a little. She was super happy about something, cause her voice was a little higher, and she was all kinds of chirpy about it.
“Blah blah, and then Kirkwood, was like, chompy slomp mush, can you even imagine?”
I was only some listening, cause I don’t really big know Karen Kirkwood and so I just, like, nodded on cue and was super, “Mmmm, Hmmm,” and “Wow,” and even this one really well placed, “I can’t believe it!”
She seemed good with my effort, ‘cause when we pulled into the driveway she was like, “Taco Bell?”
And, so I gave her the three dollars I had, and this fistful of pennies and nickels and like that, and she scoffed a little, but was like, “Thanks, your usual?”
“Yup,” I said and I went into the house and she turned up the music in the car and really let the world know she was there, and moving again, and I thought about crunch wraps and went inside to get to the business of the ceiling.
I can’t even believe how hard it is to find a passable ceiling tile in this house. I mean, like, okay: we aren’t poor (I don’t think), but some of the tiles look like the buttercream on the cake is starting to crack and chip, real gross and cobwebs in corners, what the fuck, mom?
But then I see it.
You know?
Like, I really just see this glamorous parcel of ceiling.
Holy Jesus-Allah, and everything all lit up pretty, this is my spot!
So I put my middle finger up and chkt, but then I’m lingering in the preview like, She’ll hate me forever, but then also quite like, it is the story Jon and Joel would full piss themselves to hear.
Of course, then, this kinda splits the self all-down-the-middle, like “who am I” and everything because how could it not? If only I was about 6’10”, then I could just not even be into Christaina Lorenzo and instead I could be a real dick about things. And girls would love me!
I keep on chkt, chkt, and real extra about it, but also, and I hate to even tell you, I don’t really have great middle fingers it seems, on account of some hair and freckles on my knuckles. Not like braidable hair or freckles, not even that, but in a snap trying to, maybe be like, don’t worry about me; my middle finger says I’m over you, or something, don’t you think that the featured finger should at least be like: “Nice ass finger. I want it.”
That’s not the kind of fingers I have.
Super stupid, I start really chkt, chkting to the beat of my love for Christina Lorenzo. I’m an architect now. Really. I’m balancing my phone on this open book (to keep it level with that prime swatch of ceiling), but then, that book is balanced on a whole heap of other stuff. All the way to the floor, I shit you not. But the really surprising part is that when I go to check the preview but it’s not my middle finger!
What?
Yeah, I’m super hands on cheeks, big scream about it too, but that’s what happens when you tap the white arrow with your nose: it’s hard to see shit. And my love brain just sqat-shitted on my plan.
But what I do see on the screen is both thumbs pointing down with all the rest of the band like nesting dolls and it’s the shape of a heart. Except it’s uneven and maybe looks broken. Real sad: I’m practically Basquiet.
I hit send immediately.
She’ll understand my heartache and come running to me, ‘cause women most still want sensitive men, right?
---
The next morning, Janet has that foul adult look of it’s all too much cause it’s Tuesday. She’s funny when she’s like this, especially because she makes these sayings that are so gramma, except for she’s too young, and the tone isn’t right? Like she still needs a couple divorces to get it just so.
True to programming, she sips a sip and exhales all moldavite and quartz healing power, or whatever, and has this satisfied sheepish smile.
I jump right in with, “Girls want sensitive guys, right?” I must have been a little shucks-y about it, ‘cause she’s got this other gramma look, all head tilted and oh, honey.
Sensitivity is good. I feel certain about my information.
I shouldn’t have felt certain about my information.
Janet just really nearly dies from laughing. Hand on wheel, two fingers to her lips symbolically holding back the coffee she just slurped. Her eyes get so big, and then her face is all red and there is this vein in her forehead that I know better than to talk about.
She finally gathers her shit enough to actually say, “Oh, Honey!”
I’m in for it now. The dick-of-the-dog, you know?
“We say we want sensitive guys. Most of us really believe we do. But likeBut like, in the chest believe, you know?” She’s got an open palm pressed to her chest and her eyes aren’t as big but they have a profound misty rhetorical construction. Look how genuine she’s being, right?
I nod like, sure, of course, of course I know this.
“But really we want lots of things.”
“Like what?”
She scrunches her nose and lowers her eyebrows, like all kinds of detective, or private eye, or whatever is better.
“Like, I don’t know,” but she does know, it’s just this annoying thing she says. “Okay so for real, tall guys with bodies can be a lot less of almost everything than like, you know, the..” She took a glug of coffee cause, uh oh, she’s getting dangerously close to telling me about me.
“How tall?” I’m feeling okay, ‘cause it’s not like I’m you can’t go on the roller coaster short. So that’s good.
“6’0”.”
“And if you’re that tall then what can you get away with?” By the way I’m like 5’10” so this just sucks.
“Anything, if you’ve got a body and are hot.”
Slurp.
“What’s anything?” I ask for real, cause anything seems too broad to upload.
“He could be mean, moody, rude, never get back, text back, snap back, look back… whatever,” She says it like it’s been in scrolls for a whole-three-thousand-years, and how could I not know?
I didn’t know. I really didn’t, “How mean, or whatever, do you think I could be?”
She looks me over a bit, but I’m hugging my backpack and I can feel binder edges pressing into my arm.
“You could be occasionally forgetful, but…”
“Okay, okay. But why don’t you like sensitive guys?”
“We do, but we just want to mess around with hot guys, you know?”
I nodded.
I hate when things make sense but also don’t make any sense at all. This was one of those things, like calculus at the dining room table.
Also, it sucks that I’m too short to be an asshole.