Chapter 14
Life is confusing sometimes. Like with Magnolia. Tom Cruise doesn’t have a buzz cut in the movie. He has long hair. He has a fucking ponytail, but Dick says we’re not Tom Cruise.
So I did it, Vail. I shaved my fucking head.
You don’t know it, because we’re on a break.
I send you to voicemail every time you call, and it’s not easy; it’s fucking hell.
I haven’t listened to any of your voicemails, and Dick is right.
Talk is cheap. This is a long road. As the man, I have to show you that I’m worth it.
Teach you to respect me as I transform and begin to look like I respect me.
I’m not buff. Not yet. It’s only been five days.
And it goes without saying that lifting weights is not my thing.
It’s also not easy with Mooney and his cheap shots—You look like a skinhead who wandered out of Auschwitz—but Dick says that pain is the way you know you’re doing it right.
Soft and snuggly is why you ditched me. Hard as a rock is why I’ll get you back.
“Excuse me.”
Customer on the floor. A woman. This is practice, so I make like Dick. No eye contact. Let her look at me. “What do you need?”
“Do you know the Amelia Bedelia books?”
It hurts. You know the Amelia Bedelia books, but I push you outta my head and laugh at her like she’s dumb. “Sure thing, whatever.”
She tucks her hair behind her left ear. “I mean, thank you.”
Dick says you girls like to be spit on, so I bolt to Kids without checking if this chick is with me—she is—and I don’t elaborate when she asks how I like working here.
I swear, Vail…It’s not like I don’t feel guilty being such an ass (I do!), but it makes sense when Dick explains it.
It’s not your fault that I taught you that I think I’m not good enough.
I’m the one who messed up and brought you to Angus’s fucking house, so now I gotta get strong so I can teach you that I am good enough.
I am growing a set, Vail. You want me? You know where to find me. The end.
In Kids, I flex what will soon be my pecs under my new tight white T-shirt. Hanes…for men. The customer bats her eyelashes the way girls do for Dick. “I don’t want to bother you,” she says. “But I can’t reach it. Do you mind?”
Unreal, truly. She’s at least five seven—she can reach the fucking book—and the rules of Seduce and Destroy are legit.
Here I am, being a total dick, and here is this woman wanting more more more…
how do you like it…how do you like it? I pick up the Amelia Bedelias, and my customer covers her mouth with her hand.
Dick says that’s how we know you’re in heat, when you touch yourselves.
I don’t want her, Vail. But Dick says that you’re all connected.
He says that if you sense a little competition, you’ll throw yourself at me.
The woman looks at me. I mean, she fucking looks at me. “You’re a godsend, Joe.”
I laugh at her, and she laughs at herself, and her pelvis tilts my way. Dick is a genius, he is. I ring her up, and you do it again. You call me.
I do it again. I send you to voicemail. You need to show me your face.
Dick has my back, and it’s hard, pushing you away, especially when you didn’t leave a voicemail for me this time. I sneak outside to call him like I’m an addict, like he’s my sponsor.
“This is good,” he says. “She’s mixing it up. You’re getting in her head.”
“Or she’s forgetting about me once and for all….”
“Drop and give me twenty, you fucking pussy.”
He’s not an asshole. He doesn’t really expect me to do push-ups on the sidewalk, but it’s his way of telling me to hang in there.
It’s a new word in my vocabulary. Negging.
According to Dick, I didn’t neg you, which meant that you didn’t get to feel daffy and silly.
Pretty. He goes to NYU part-time and he’s a film producer and he knows so many people.
I’m lucky that he has my back. And he’s right. Magnolia is genius.
“Later, Dick.”
“Later, Goldschl?ger.”
And that’s it. Another day without you comes to an end. I hit the gym. I joined Crunch; Schlitz had an in. This is where I punch things. Bags that let me pound them, bags that come back for more. I lift things up and put things down, and then I go in the locker room.
A few days ago, I did almost quit.
Dick was on a tangent about how girls are sharks and we are killer whales and Valentine’s Day is open season on sharks. Then, out of nowhere, he pulled a black case out of his locker. I gave him shit, the way guys do. “You putting on your makeup there, buddy?”
“Nah,” he said. “I’m playing with my makeup. The chemistry in here.”
He pointed at his chest, and then it was fast. Bam kind of fast, where you can tell he’s done this every day for a lot of days.
He pulled a needle and jammed it into a little bottle and then he yanked his boxers and jammed the needle in his ass.
And nobody reacted! I mean, it’s fucking steroids, but Dick laughed at me.
“It’s just some juice, Goldballs. Chill.”
I was sort of staring, but watching him stab himself made me long for you.
Life is simpler with you. Plus I think the poor guy might be getting ripped off.
You’ve seen him, Vail. He’s not Mr. Universe or anything.
And the gym isn’t a bodybuilding Rocky kinda complex.
It’s fucking Crunch. They have dance classes!
He must’ve been able to feel me talking shit in my head, and he slammed his locker. “Laugh all you want, Goldboy. By this time next week, you’ll be bugging me for a source.”
It’s pretty obvious that this “source” isn’t a mystery. It’s fucking Schlitz. And Schlitz is a twig! But then he slapped me. Guy to guy style. Like the way they do in war movies.
“Life is war, son. When you swim with the sharks, when you go to the club or pitch a big investor, you take a bump. You put you first. My brother was high as a kite when they raided Iraq. This country, every girl I bang, no guy slays an apex predator without a little bump of something. It’s the American way.
You do whatever it takes to get what you fucking want. ”
Sometimes things just make sense, Vail. And I’m luckier than Dick in the sense that I don’t need drugs. It was the first time that I initiated the high five and it felt good.
“Bitches and pitches,” he said. “Bitches and pitches all the livelong life.”
I wouldn’t use the B-word when it comes to you or any girl—I’ll always be a little part Mister Softee—but the gym is good for me.
It’s easier to push bad thoughts away. You get kinda high, kind of above it all where you could crunch the living daylights out of anyone who fucks with you.
Angus is calling all the time and do I give a fuck?
No. I send that bitch to voicemail. My shoulders are squaring up and do you remember when you said you liked that I wasn’t a gym rat?
I get it now. That wasn’t you at your best because that wasn’t me at my best. That was just you trying to fight your own nature.
Dick is right. Women want hard men. I see the girls in the gym, the way they glance and turn red.
And a strong body is the home of a strong fucking mind.
I don’t snap a rubber band when you pop into my head anymore. I punch a bag. I sweat.
I’m still me. I miss you like crazy when I retire to my cardboard box and pull on my Portnoy.
I come on your scarf and turn off my phone and fight the night.
I toss and turn over things I want to tell you, things I’d never tell Dick, how strange I feel in my skin, how I tried to eat Indian again but got the runs even worse, how I miss my hair, your hands in my hair, how I might die of wanting to call you.
And then the morning hits me like a sucker punch and it’s fuck that namby-pamby shit.
Let’s do this. I turn my stupid phone on and I shower and I shave.
I ignore Dumb and Dumber when they call me G.I.
Joe. Fuck them and their astrology sluts.
The astrology sluts are different now. They touch their hair when I walk into the kitchen, bare-chested in boxers.
They adjust their bra straps and ask if I’m seeing anyone.
I drink milk on Dumb’s dime out of the fucking carton and shrug. Am I seeing you, Vail?
On the street, I turn on my Motorola.
ONE NEW VOICEMAIL…from Mr. fucking Mooney. I hit Play.
“Christ Almighty, Joseph, I don’t understand the point of that thing if it’s never on. Do better. Alas, you have a visitor. A very pushy visitor. So, you best get here now. As in right now.”
It’s the best voicemail of my life. The reason God invented cell phones.
You did it! You came to the shop. I can’t get there fast enough, and I don’t have to wait long.
Valentine’s Day is coming and Dick did say girls get antsy this time of year.
Horny. I pick up the pace. I wonder if you’re wearing a skirt.
I wonder if you cried, if the people on your sitcom know that you couldn’t take it anymore, the yearning.
I should be cool, make you wait, but I’m in the best shape of my life and you need to see me. You miss me. You want me.
I yank the door of the shop, and Angus Kaplan blocks me in my tracks.
“So, how was your first summer in Maine, Jimbo?”
—
It’s a little ironic, Vail, and I’d be laughing if I weren’t so totally fucking fucked.
I’m jacked for the first time ever. I could kick Angus Kaplan’s bony ass six ways to Sunday, but we’re stuck in the back seat of his fucking limo, and his fucking driver could be a body double for the Incredible Fucking Hulk. Fuck.
Angus bites his Ray-Bans. They crack. Why? “It’s a felony, Jimmy. I looked it up.”
“I really am working on it, Angus.”
He tosses his sunglasses out the window. “So where’s my book?”