A Fair Trade

I can’t remember his name, but he looked like a peach. He always wore a pastel sweater, the guy who taught English class in the morning. He was balding at the top and round at the bottom. Mr. Peach. I thought he was gay, but knew he had a wife. Well, in Minnesota, that doesn’t mean much. Lots of closets to hide in.

On this particular day, I’m seventeen years old, my hair is a little shorter than it is now, and I was just getting over an insta-perm I woke up with when I was sixteen. Yes, I woke up, and my hair had gone curly. At it’s current length, that means I woke up with an afro. Kids at school asked me what the hell I did with my hair and I said, “I don’t know, I just woke up this way.” Only a few of them believed me. I tried everything. Cutting it al off; it just grew out curly again. I’d comb it and comb it and comb it. Nothing. So, finally, I let it grow out, hoping the length would straighten it out. It was a slow process, and it meant my hair was frizzy all the time. Not exactly the best way to pick up girls; having a big, blond afro. Well, at this point, it looked more like a mullet. But, remember, this is 1986, and I’m listening to Rush, Black Sabbath, Triumph, and ELP.

So there I am, in Mr. Peach’s English class, sitting in the same class as the most beautiful girls in the school. There’s Lara, who will wear a white lace dress to prom that clings to every curve and makes every girl squeeze her date’s hand a little harder. And Lissa, who is captain of the cheerleading squad, captain of the gymnast team, class president, and has no qualms at all showing off exactly how nimble she is at every opportunity. Then, there’s Tonya, whom I’m convinced commissioned Michelangelo himself to make her body. They’re the Big Three. There are other beauties who grace our hallways, no doubt, but these three are the Holy Trinity of Hotness in our little Minnesota school.

I make friends with Tonya, but don’t pursue her because my best friend Joe’s crush on her is so complete that he writes poetry to her that he never sends. Yeah, that kind of poetry. High school poetry. What the kids today call “emo.” Full of half-baked, mixed metaphors and rhyming schemes that look about as coherent as VCR instructions. Instead, I went after Lara.

I wrote her little notes full of subtle erotic suggestions. She thinks they’re from her boyfriend, hoping to make up for something awful he did last week. Tonya delivers them for me with a wry smile. Tonya thinks I’m great: a smart, clever lad who helps her with her homework. She even asks me to go dancing with her once; something I do on the sly so my buddy Joe won’t get too upset. Afterwards, she asks me to go swimming. I tell her, “I didn’t bring a suit.” She says, “That’s fine.” That’s when I decline. After all, this is Joe’s girl, and there’s a Big Rule about Best Friends: you don’t go after your best friend’s girl; even if she isn’t his girl yet. That doesn’t matter. If it got back to Joe that I made the hookup with T, it’d break his heart. Best friends are more important than sex. That’s the Big Rule in high school. You break that rule, and you’re a pariah for the rest of your years.

Friends are more important than sex. Remember that. It’ll be on the quiz later.

Meanwhile, I’m still passing those subtle erotic suggestions to Lara through Tonya who thinks its funny to watch her best friend get hot and bothered about the wrong guy. But, I know how this is gonna turn out. I’ve read Cyrano de Bergerac. I’m making her boyfriend an unknowing Christophe, getting him the best sex he’ll ever have, and he doesn’t even know who to thank. And at this moment, I know exactly how Cyrano feels. Later, when I play him in college, I’ll draw on this memory. When Lara finds out he wasn’t the one writing the letters, all hell breaks loose. Fortunately, Tonya keeps my secret safe. Even after turning her down for a skinny dip in her pool. That’s because she knows the Big Rule, too.

Friends are more important than sex.

That Halloween, I’m working the door for another beauty’s Halloween party. You know that movie Say Anything, with the guy holding everybody’s keys? That’s me. I’m the guy who doesn’t drink, so I make sure nobody leaves drunk.

So there I am, standing at the door, when the Queen comes up to me, a Budweiser in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her eyes are red and her words are like oatmeal.

“You’re so cute,” she tells me, a smile on her face. Her voice smells like old beer. “And I can’t do anything about it because you’re not popular.”

That stuns me for a second, but I quickly recover. “Well,” I tell her, leaning in close, whispering in her ear. “Nobody’s looking.”

She looks around, sees the captain of the football team passed out on a couch. She grins, her eyelids thin. “You’re right,” she says. “Let’s go.”

Sex with a drunken high school girl can be one of two things: absolutely boring or absolutely amazing. For the record, I’ll go with amazing, just to spare what’s left of her reputation. After all, that’s the noble thing to do, and I’m the guy who does noble things, remember?

Later that year, she’s having a fight with her boyfriend and she tells him that sex with that John guy was ten times better than sex with him ever was. The next thing I know, I’m cornered by five football guys in a very small corner of the school with threats flying in my face.

“Did you fuck her?!?” he’s screaming at me.

“What the –?”

“DID YOU FUCK HER!?!”

He’s saying “fuck” like it’s a dirty thing. It isn’t. It’s a beautiful, marvelous th—wait. I’m getting off topic. Let’s get back to the fighting part.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I did.”

He’s steamed. Like I’m his best friend or something. I didn’t break any rules. I got to fuck the prom queen. How many guys get to say that?

Wait – don’t answer that question. I don’t wanna know.

Anyway, he’s taking off his jacket, and I start talking, because talking is what I’m good at.

“You wanna fight?” I ask him. “Fine. We’ll fight. And you’re gonna win. No doubt about that.”

“Damn right,” he says. His jacket’s off and he’s ready.

“But I’m gonna warn you,” I tell him, putting up my hands, palms out. “I’m gonna break your ankle.”

He looks confused. “What?”

I point down at his right foot. “I’m gonna break your ankle. Break it in such a way that you’ll never walk right again. You’ll never play football again. Your college scholarship? Gone. You’ll be working at your dad’s plumbing business for the rest of your life. Because here, right here, right now, I broke your ankle. And, if I’m lucky, I’ll break the other one, too.”

He’s pausing. There’s a flicker in his eyes. I know that flicker because it’s been in my eyes a thousand times.

“You may win this fight,” I tell him, “but there is no way in hell you’re walking away from it.”

He pauses… thinks about it…

… then, he grabs his jacket and walks away. I collapse in that tiny corner and just try to breathe.

I wasn’t bluffing, by the way. I would have broken his ankle. I did it before in Georgia when I had to fight this guy because I was dating a girl. Not his girl. A black girl. That’s for another time.

Lara, Tonya, and Lissa. The Big Three. And I’ve got them all in my morning English class. But right now, they’re not the one I’m waiting for. No. I’m waiting for someone else. The one who’s walking through the door… right now.

She’s wearing a blue sweater, her hair falling down over her shoulders. It’s the same color as mine. Her eyes are laughing while she’s talking to a friend. Her eyes, the same color as mine. Funny, that. If we were seen together, someone might think we were brother and sister.

She sits down next to me and says hello. I say hello back. I’m nervous today. The Peach is talking about our reading assignment: Harrison Bergeron.

(Yes, in 1986, we read Harrison Bergeron, too. I’m not that old.)

The class goes slowly. So slowly. The clock hangs on the wall, the second hand torturing me. I’ve thought about it all night. The best way to do this. The best time to do this. I’ll do it the moment the bell rings. That way, she doesn’t have to feel awkward all through class, sitting next to me. Of course, I don’t consider that she’ll feel awkward all the rest of the day – I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. I’m blinded by what I think is… nah. Don’t say that word. Not yet. I don’t know what that word is yet. I’m just a high school kid with a bad, bad crush.

And it isn’t like there’s no precedence for what I’m about to do. We’ve talked a lot. Talked before class, talked after class. I never get to see her other than that. We run with different crowds. Mine plays D&D on the weekends. Hers goes to house parties. But for the few moments when we get to talk, it’s like the two of us talking in a private room. There’s nothing else there, nobody else around. We talk about books. I suggest things for her to read, she reads them, and then we talk. Scattered moments at a time. The fleeting minutes before and after class. That’s all the time we’ve got.

But those scarce seconds are precious to me. Honestly, they’re the only reason I come to school. I sit and wait for her to arrive. In Mr. Peach’s morning English class and Mr. Monroe’s afternoon Psychology class. Those are the moments we’ve got together. And I wonder just how important they are to her, because they’re everything to me.

So, the minutes click and I’m sitting in my own sweat, wearing my blue jean jacket, blue jean slacks, my frizzy hair long down my shoulders, big glasses on my face. I’m listening to Mr. Peach do his thing, but I already know all the answers. I read Harrison long before this class. I’ve read everything with Vonnegut’s name on the cover. He knows this, and that’s why he never calls on me unless he has to.

Finally, the bell rings. We’re already ready. It’s Friday, after all. Big weekends planned. We all get up from our chairs and I see the opportunity slipping away.

Let it, I tell myself. Just let it. You’re gonna make a fool of me.

I notice that I don’t hear myself say, You’re gonna make of fool of yourself. I say, a fool of me. I’ve always remembered that.

Just as she’s leaving, I reach into my bag and take out the tape. “Here,” I tell her.

She looks at me, her eyes confused. “John, what’s this?” she asks.

“It’s for you,” I tell her. “I made it for you.”

“Cool!” she tells me. “I’ll listen to it over the weekend.”

She doesn’t suspect a thing. Or, maybe she does. I don’t know. I’m too nervous to tell. I’m too nervous to even see. She walks out, catches a friend by the arm, and in that moment, the crowd of the hall swallows her and she’s gone from my sight.

I’m still standing there for a moment. I’ve got Chemistry next. It’s just down the hall. I don’t have far to go.

I don’t have far to –

“Good luck.”

The words pull my chin up and I turn around. Standing there in his pastel sweater vest is Mr. Peach. He’s smiling.

“What?” I ask.

“You gave her a poem, didn’t you?” he asks.

My mouth is as dry as a summer creek bed. “Yeah,” I tell him.

“Good luck,” he says again. Then, he goes back to whatever it was he was doing.

I step out of his classroom, my feet pushed by my embarrassment. I walk down the hall to Chemistry, not talking to anyone.

* * *

His name is Mr. Fort. And he’s built like one.

Small, square and balding, he always wears a bowtie. He’s got a baby face and a friendly smile, but he’s square like a brick. I don’t do well in Chemistry. My mind isn’t on the game. He notices. He calls me on it, in fact.

“And, in the back of the class is Mr. Wick who doesn’t need to listen today because he knows everything there is to know about mercury.”

I listen up for the rest of it, but my heart is pounding ten times a second. Now, the class goes by fast. Too fast. Because I know I’m gonna see her again in Mr. Monroe’s Psych class.

What if she reads the poem I put in the tape case?

At the end of the class, my feet carry me by instinct out toward the door. Mr. Fort’s voice stops me. “John?” he asks.

I stop and turn. He holds up a paperback book. “It’s Friday,” he says.

I slap my head. “Damn,” I say. “I forgot.”

I walk up to the front of the classroom, reaching into my bag. I pull a paperback book out and we trade. See, Mr. Fort is the advisor for the science fiction club. I’m the president. Every Friday, we trade paperbacks. Then, on Monday, we give them back. This Friday, I’m giving him The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadathi. He gives me Time Enough For Love.

“This is huge!” I tell him.

“You’ll finish it by Monday,” he tells me. “You read faster than anyone I’ve ever known.”

I don’t know if he’s right… at least this weekend.

“Fair trade?” he asks.

“Fair trade,” I tell him.

I head out of his class with his goodbyes at my back. I hear it as “Good luck.”

* * *

Mr. Monroe is someone’s favorite uncle. He has brown hair, fair skin, a big smile, and you know that if someone fucked with you, he’d kick their ass so hard, their grand kids would feel it.

I don’t sit next to her in Monroe’s class, we sit across from each other. But right now, I’m sitting there, and her chair is empty. She’s not there.

The class goes by slowly. Monroe’s talking about Jung and dreams. Like the rest of my classes, I’m not listening. But, I am writing. I’m writing all of this down. I’ll use it again someday, I tell myself. For when I write my memoirs.

I’m convinced of my own importance, even in high school.

When class is over, my buddy Joe finds me at my locker. “What are you doing this weekend?” he asks me. I show him Time Enough for Love. All eight hundred pages of it.

“Wow,” he says. “Long weekend.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I tell him.

We walk out to the parking lot; him climbing in his old truck, me in my old Ford. His starts up like a dream. He’s a farm boy who knows how to fix things. Mine argues with me until I beat it into turning over. I’m no farm boy and I don’t know how to fix anything. All I know how to do is break things.

* * *

Monday comes around and I’ve got Heinlein in my bag. I read it in one night. Of course, I slept all through the next day, but I’ve learned everything Lazarus Long had to teach me. I just haven’t figured it out yet. But, I will soon enough. I’ll learn that being a bad boy is how you get the girls to notice you. Being the white knight – like I am now – only gets you their friendship.

That’s not what I want. I’m tired of being everybody’s friend. The guy they trust. The guy they run to when their boyfriends are jerks. The guy they tell, “Oh, I can’t date you. You’re my best friend!”

Yeah. Right. Translate that to, “I’d rather fuck this guy who treats me like shit, takes me for granted, drags me to vomit parties and cheats on me.”

They don’t stop there. “Oh, John,” they say, “You’re the nice one. The one I trust. The one I can talk to. The one who knows me better than anyone else.”

Here’s the kicker: “Why would I want to date you?”

I always wondered why a girl like that would want to date a guy who treats them that way.

It wouldn’t be much, much later that I would ask myself the real question:

Why am I chasing girls who want a guy like that?

I pull up into the parking lot and my car rumbles to a stop. Then, it gurgles and burps. I’m a little late for class. I run across the parking lot, up to the big, front doors, rush down the hallway, and stumble through the door of Mr. Peach’s class.

“You’re late,” he tells me. As if I didn’t know that already.

I’m hot. It’s cold outside and I’m wearing about ten layers of clothing. Running in the winter is bad for you. I’m coughing up something wet, my hair still frozen to my head from the icy sweat. I sit down in my chair.

And she’s there, just to my left.

We don’t say anything to each other. We both keep our eyes straight forward, looking at Mr. Peach talking about Ray Bradbury’s The Sound of Thunder. I’ve already read it.

The class ticks by… Mr. Peach talking about dinosaurs, time travel, and the consequences of the tiniest mistake.

And the consequences of the tiniest mistake.

“Killing a butterfly ten million years ago can change everything in the present,” he tells us. “We have to be careful with what we do. That’s the theme of the story. Not time travel or dinosaurs, or fascist dictatorships that spring up because a butterfly was trampled into pre-historic mud.”

That’s when he looks at me.

“What we do now. Everything we do. It matters. The choices we make will echo down the corridors of time. Forever.”

He smiles.

“So don’t do anything stupid.”

The bell rings.

“All right,” he says. “Tomorrows reading is Hemmingway’s The Hills Like White Elephants.” He pauses. “It’s not what you think it’s about. And the real truth of the story isn’t in the words. You have to read between the words. And you’ll have to go back to the beginning when you’re done. There’s something there you’ll need to read to understand the ending. It’s one line, so look carefully. Then, you’ll see what the story is really about.”

I stand up. She’s there, right next to me. Without a word, she puts something in my hand. Then, she walks away.

It’s a folded piece of paper. I can see the blue ink on the inside. I look up and the hallway crowd has swallowed her. I look at the folded piece of paper and open it. I’ve got time. Biology is right down the hall.

I sit down and unfold it.

“Good luck.”

I look up. Mr. Peach is there. He isn’t smiling.

“And don’t do anything stupid.”

I read what’s inside. It’s the kind of thing kids today would call “emo.” It’s bad high school poetry. But it’s better than what I gave her.

 

Polarize me
Sensitize me
Criticize me
Civilize me
Compensate me
Animate me
Complicate me
Elevate me

Goddess in my garden
Sister in my soul
Angel in my armor
Actress in my role

Daughter of a demon lover
Empress of the hidden face
Priestess of the pagan mother
Ancient queen of inner space

Spirit in my psyche
Double in my role
Alter in my image
Struggle for control

Mistress of the dark unconscious
Mermaid of the lunar sea
Daughter of the great enchantress
Sister to the boy inside of me

My counterpart, my foolish heart
A man must learn to rule his tender part
A warming trend, a gentle friend
A man must build a fortress to defend
A secret face, a touch of grace
A man must learn to give a little space
A peaceful state, a submissive trait
A man must learn to gently dominate

Polarize me
Sensitize me
Criticize me
Civilize me
Compensate me
Animate me
Complicate me
Elevate me

(N. Peart)