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Authors: Elisabeth de Mariaffi
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even been drinking.
I stood up on the bed.
You canât go home, Jamie said. Iâve got your keys.
You know what? I said. I donât want my keys.
What I wanted to do was be very hard-assed and silent, with just my open, waiting hand to make him feel guilty. But instead of that I started yelling.
Fucking take them out of your pants and wash them! I said. Iâm going home! I jumped up and down with both feet on the mattress. Jamie was on the ground in front of me, which made him shorter than usual. He ran backwards and forwards like he was a football player doing warm-up exercises. Come and get them! Come and get them! he kept saying. I was waving my arms like a crazy person and stomping his pillows. I wanted something dramatic and feathery to occur, but the pillows were Polyfill, so I had to be happy just making them flat.
Eventually Jamie gave up and handed me the keys and I backed down the driveway doing sixty. The squealing tires made it sound like I was still yelling.
I only ever had one boyfriend in high school, and it wasnât Jamie Nash. His name was Max Shapiro. It lasted about six weeks. Del used to call him Ponyboy, and asked me not to bring him into the store.
Max was like the captain of the football team for stoners. Everybody knew him. He had long black hair in a braid down his back and a brown suede jacket with fringe along the shoulders. He was twenty-one in grade thirteen. Everywhere he went, he said things like, Hey cat, got any bread?
People couldnât get enough of him.
Max was one of those guys that will do anything to get high, just anything. I once watched him carve a water pipe out of a little kidâs bath toy. Another time, at a party, he and his friends sat around in a circle eating chunks of raw nutmeg. What are you doing? I said. The nutmeg looked really chewy and they were forcing it down with lots of water.
Max said, You can totally get high off nutmeg.
They looked pretty pleased with themselves. For about five minutes. Then the vomiting began. The guy whose house it was ran around in circles trying to get them all to stop throwing up on his Momâs carpet. He had a roll of paper towel and he kept throwing sheets of it toward the floor so he wouldnât have to get too close. Jeez! he yelled. Jeez!
I never had a lot of luck getting high school boys to ask me out, so I really liked being Maxâs girlfriend. In grade eleven a boy named Spilios Roumeitis tutored me in algebra for free. That was the closest I got. We met in the school basement early in the morning and I sat on the concrete floor with the textbook open on my stretched-out legs. Or heâd pass me his notes in English class. The math wasnât too hard, as it turned out. The last thing I heard, Spilios Roumeitis had a lacrosse scholarship to the University of Michigan and was studying to become a neurosurgeon, so probably I should have acted dumber or giggled more or something. I donât know.
With Max, other girls would come up to me when I was trying to have a quiet smoke behind the athletics hut and say, Are you really going out with Max Shapiro? And if they meant, was I having terrible sex with him in other peopleâs basements, then yes sir, I was dating him. One time we were all over at Larissaâs house, baking potatoes in the fireplace and playing strip poker. Part of the trick with this game, if you were a girl, was that they never really wanted to teach you the rules of poker, so we had crafted a bylaw whereby if you were down to your underwear you could opt to do some jumping jacks instead of taking off your bra. Larissaâs brother came home and said, I missed the jumping jacks again? He was fifteen.
Max was usually pretty sharp with the cards but this time things werenât going so well for him. He went into the bathroom for a long time. When he came out he played a bad hand. Donât ask me what it was, I donât know anything about poker. He took off his
I stood up on the bed.
You canât go home, Jamie said. Iâve got your keys.
You know what? I said. I donât want my keys.
What I wanted to do was be very hard-assed and silent, with just my open, waiting hand to make him feel guilty. But instead of that I started yelling.
Fucking take them out of your pants and wash them! I said. Iâm going home! I jumped up and down with both feet on the mattress. Jamie was on the ground in front of me, which made him shorter than usual. He ran backwards and forwards like he was a football player doing warm-up exercises. Come and get them! Come and get them! he kept saying. I was waving my arms like a crazy person and stomping his pillows. I wanted something dramatic and feathery to occur, but the pillows were Polyfill, so I had to be happy just making them flat.
Eventually Jamie gave up and handed me the keys and I backed down the driveway doing sixty. The squealing tires made it sound like I was still yelling.
I only ever had one boyfriend in high school, and it wasnât Jamie Nash. His name was Max Shapiro. It lasted about six weeks. Del used to call him Ponyboy, and asked me not to bring him into the store.
Max was like the captain of the football team for stoners. Everybody knew him. He had long black hair in a braid down his back and a brown suede jacket with fringe along the shoulders. He was twenty-one in grade thirteen. Everywhere he went, he said things like, Hey cat, got any bread?
People couldnât get enough of him.
Max was one of those guys that will do anything to get high, just anything. I once watched him carve a water pipe out of a little kidâs bath toy. Another time, at a party, he and his friends sat around in a circle eating chunks of raw nutmeg. What are you doing? I said. The nutmeg looked really chewy and they were forcing it down with lots of water.
Max said, You can totally get high off nutmeg.
They looked pretty pleased with themselves. For about five minutes. Then the vomiting began. The guy whose house it was ran around in circles trying to get them all to stop throwing up on his Momâs carpet. He had a roll of paper towel and he kept throwing sheets of it toward the floor so he wouldnât have to get too close. Jeez! he yelled. Jeez!
I never had a lot of luck getting high school boys to ask me out, so I really liked being Maxâs girlfriend. In grade eleven a boy named Spilios Roumeitis tutored me in algebra for free. That was the closest I got. We met in the school basement early in the morning and I sat on the concrete floor with the textbook open on my stretched-out legs. Or heâd pass me his notes in English class. The math wasnât too hard, as it turned out. The last thing I heard, Spilios Roumeitis had a lacrosse scholarship to the University of Michigan and was studying to become a neurosurgeon, so probably I should have acted dumber or giggled more or something. I donât know.
With Max, other girls would come up to me when I was trying to have a quiet smoke behind the athletics hut and say, Are you really going out with Max Shapiro? And if they meant, was I having terrible sex with him in other peopleâs basements, then yes sir, I was dating him. One time we were all over at Larissaâs house, baking potatoes in the fireplace and playing strip poker. Part of the trick with this game, if you were a girl, was that they never really wanted to teach you the rules of poker, so we had crafted a bylaw whereby if you were down to your underwear you could opt to do some jumping jacks instead of taking off your bra. Larissaâs brother came home and said, I missed the jumping jacks again? He was fifteen.
Max was usually pretty sharp with the cards but this time things werenât going so well for him. He went into the bathroom for a long time. When he came out he played a bad hand. Donât ask me what it was, I donât know anything about poker. He took off his
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