Madison Zaftig - Excerpt

Madison Zaftig is a novel by Abram Sauer. Interested publishers or readers can email abesauer@yahoo.com for more information. Below is an excerpt.

The deer are dying. Today they shot 50, maybe 60. They say they have a goal for the summer to kill like, 100,000. Nobody knows why…why they’re dying.

But deer don’t matter because I’m a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and am currently seated on a pile of shoes inside a small, dark closet. It’s not my closet; the closest isn’t a euphemism. It’s just a closet that doesn’t happen to be in my room. It’s just a place to hide from the keg; from Urban Outfitters, condoms and thong underwear. A place to hide from lower back tattoos. A place to hide from Bucky Badger and the football team’s season opening win against Indiana.

I’d describe the bedroom but it was dark when I came in. It’s the room of a college student in a three bedroom shared place.

Outside my closet I hear the door to the bedroom open and quickly shut. It clicks. Locked? Now, even if I wanted to sneak out I can’t. It appears I’m going to be here for a while, which is fine with me. Hushed voices of a boy and a girl. Big surprise there. Even without seeing them I can hear their awkwardness. They aren’t strangers though. Their giggles and whispers are broken by moans. Well, her moans. They’re kissing.

(Oh yeah, I remember the sheets were kinda’ mod purple blob dots.)

“Everyone’s just in the next room.” (Her.)

“So what. I locked the door. C’mon, I haven’t seen you in days,” (Him.)

“Whose fault is that?” (Her.)

“Bucky’s.” (Him.)

They both laugh and I can hear them struggling to stand as clothing is peeled off. “No. We can’t take this off. I’ll never be able to get it back on.” (Him.)

“I don’t know if I can…with you in that.” (Her.) (?)

“C’mon, you’ve never wanted to do it with Bucky?” They laugh again. The girl’s laugh makes me feel sorry for her. I can tell this isn’t her idea. “I can get only these down.”

Chuckle. “How many… What’s up with the top… Your… I think your bra is made by Masterlock.” (Him.)

There is a lull in the conversation and I can only make out the sounds of movement. I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on and in less than a second my dick is rock hard. I shouldn’t, but it’s my erection and the HAND that crack the closet door open.

Everyone talks about how much their lives changed when they went from home to college. They talk about the huge changes with how much more freedom they had. They talked about all the new ideas (bullshit) and new people they were exposed to. There are a lot of reason but the theme is all the same: “My life changed, huge.” And all those reasons are great and all and are probably retrospectively fitting. But the biggest change is TV. Either you’re watching a lot more of it, or a lot less. I didn’t have a TV so it was a lot less. A lot. Thanks to internet porn though this didn’t matter.

What the fuck did guys do my age before online porn? I have no idea. I have an easier idea imagining what people did before electricity than I do relating to guys who didn’t have online porn. I’ve heard the old jokes about Sears catalogs and smuggling dad’s basement stash. But… I just can’t understand. To be able to pull up ten, twenty, thirty minutes of some girl riding the crap out of a guy. I’m only 18 and I’ve already developed a liking for the more realistic amateur vids with the girls with small boobs and a little bit of belly or whatever. Anyway, not the implanted cyborg girls sent to the past by Cyberdyne systems to fuck me.

By my sophomore year I was probably watching about 30 minutes of online porn a night. It doesn’t even sound like that much. I worked all day or had class so that was out. And, I assume because of how little I was eating, coming made me really sleepy so I reserved it for them just before I went to bed. So I didn’t really need more than half hour. Even then I actually only needed about ten minutes but it took me the half hour to find something really good. Or at least something different. Suck. Suck. Top. Bottom. Doggy. Facial gets old to anyone after a while and that’s what most everything is.

Some people who say they can remember some particular event from when they were three years old or younger. That’s bullshit. Or at least I think so. I can’t remember anything specific from that age.

“How are your classes?” My mom asks from the driver’s side of the Ford Taurus – one of three my family has.

“Fine.”

“What are you taking again?”

I remind her. Though maybe I am telling her for the first time. I don’t remember if I’ve ever told her what classes I’m taking this year. She nods her head, though I’m not sure if she heard me. My mom drives with an intense concentration owing to a bad accident she had in a VW beetle during her twenties. I’m told that I was in the car at the time, along with my grandmother, whose head went through the windshield, but I don’t remember it. Both of her hands grip the wheel tight so that you see the area around her knuckles turn white. Her head points straight ahead. Her eyes are wide, searching the highway for danger. When the bog rigs boom by on our left I feel the warning vibrations under the tire of being too far onto the shoulder. I begin to tell her about the class I am taking in…

“Dad’s watching the game, of course,” she says in her manner, which implies the slightest hostility. The game is the Badgers’ second game, against Northwestern. It’s an away game. “He’s got some stones to lay in the garden that you can help with after.”

“Ok.”

I don’t come home every weekend. But since it is only an hour from Madison I try to make it as often as possible. I do laundry. I watch TV. I see my grandfather. It’s not because I miss my parents. I don’t. This isn’t to say that I don’t love my parents or that my parents don’t love me. Although I can’t remember a time when either of us has every actually said the words, I’ve never felt that they wouldn’t do anything for me. And I’ve always tried to be there when I was required to be. I have always had a sort of detachment from my parents and them from me. They weren’t strict, but they also never bought me beer. They didn’t ask any questions, but not just about where I was or what I’d been doing but about where I was going or what my plans were. When I got into minor trouble they never punished me or acted disappointed and when I came home with an “A” or did well they never expressed any praise. Throughout my life – or at least my conscious adolescence – I always got the feeling that we regarded each other with the analytical curiosity and affection that a chimp and a scientist might develop over years of research. In some ways I wish that I had more interesting – or interested – parents, but I don’t. So I don’t fit into any mold as a child in terms of having an abusive or protective parent. Dad didn’t give me a credit card with my name on it any more than he whipped me with his belt.

My mom enjoys picking me up to bring me home because it gives her an excuse to go to the Salvation Army store. When I got in I noticed the back of the wagon was filled with plastic bags from random unheard-of stores – a sign that she’s been there. When we get home I’ll help her carry the bag-fulls of stuff nobody else wanted – stuff they gave away for free like old Scrabble games with missing pieces and fake antique vases – into the house and dad will huff and roll his eyes. Mom always has a reason for this stuff. She says that she’ll use it in her classroom or that it’s a great gift. But more often than not the sole reason she gives is that it was a “great deal.” She has gotten better. When I was younger she would bring back a new piece of five-dollar furniture a week, saying that all it needed was a little reupholstry. Me and my brother would move it into the green shed and then we’d all forget about it. Now nobody goes into the depths of the green shed, a long, rectangle old grainery which sits rotting at the edge of the swamp as the slime rises each year and closes in on it. Who knows what’s in there.

I drop the bags of stuff on the refinished wood floor in dining room and, with the stroll of familiarity, wander into the living room to find Dad on the couch. I watch the game for two minutes before asking, “Who’s winning?”

“Ah, it’s the same old thing. They just don’t come out to win. They have one of the best teams this year…”

“What are they ranked?”

“…and they just expect things to happen for them. Here they go out and beat Indiana, one of the best teams in the Big Ten and then they’re gonna’ lose to Northwestern. They don’t pick up and start playing until the second half and by then it’s too late. They lollygag through the first quarter like it’s already in the bag…when it isn’t at all. Even a team like this…like Northwestern…can come out and hurt you if you aren’t prepared when you go onto the field. They think because they beat a ranked team last week that Northwestern is going to lay down for them. What are they thinking? They’ve given up two touchdowns already because of what? Because of lazy defense. Sure they’ll beat the big teams but what does that matter if they drop to the little ones? And at the end of the season they’ll pay for it. They just aren’t looking into the future. They don’t understand how a little loss here and a little loss there will end up meaning that they end the season with a just a respectable record. Then everyone will say that had a good season but if they look back they’ll realize that they could have had a great season. Their heads aren’t screwed on right when it comes to games like this. They’re makin’ the little mistakes and for that they’re going to lose the game. Alverez is a great coach but his assistants just don’t seem to know how to coordinate the team as a whole…how to put some fire into their asses.”

Dad never used to swear. The only time I had ever heard his use a dirty word was when he was changing a tire along the side of the road and the jack flew out and hit him in the face. Standing behind him that day I must have been six or seven. I remember the jack flying out toward us and us both flinching quick. Then there was his face, turned away from the car, toward me, with a sticky dark crimson river of blood running out of his mouth. “God damn it! Shit!” He said. He didn’t yell it; just said it deep and violent like a rage that had come from somewhere else about someone else. He had stood up instantly, one hand on his mouth, mumbling something I never heard. He walked in little circles around and around and around next to the rear tire while his free hand pumped tight at his side, arcing at the elbow – out and then back to his hip and then out and then back and then out and then down and then out and then back. Having never seen my father so upset about anything, I was frightened beyond description. Though I stood still, I felt my body pull in tight, my arms at my side. I felt my penis suck into my body.

He ended up getting two of his front teeth capped. He had two root canals. But in retrospect what he had been swearing about was not the pain. Before that, and after that, I had seen him endure physical pain that I cannot, to this day, think about in terms of my own experience. Physical pain for my father, while unwelcome, was transitory. During fixer-uppers he put nails through his palms. He got stepped on by a horse. A pitchfork fell and went through his foot, leaving him with four toes. In each instance he endured stoically, like some kind of movie star who has only been flesh-wounded by a bullet. Who knows, maybe he even enjoyed the pain in some sick way; maybe he though in simple terms about it, telling himself that the sharp ache was a reminder that he was alive. And that day he was swearing not at the pain, but at the car, at the jack, at the situation. He was swearing at having been bloodied and defeated.

Dad is a farmer turned accountant. He’s an avid reader, chewing through more books than I can ever imagine reading myself. He’s a sufferer of chronic arthritis and, of late, a golfer. But most of all he’s a sports-enthusiast. Hockey, basketball, baseball, football, golf – he watches them all with a reserved gusto that is only obvious in his green eyes.

The last ten minutes of the game are a nail-biter. Down by two, Madison has the ball on their own 30 yard line with two minutes left. The drive begins with a completed twenty yard pass. The receiver – my dad knows his name – runs out of bounds and stops the clock. Another ten yard pass into the flats is a first down, putting them almost within field goal range. The next run gets stuffed.

“Oh c’mon,” Dad says, one part admonishment one part exhalation. He sets down his beer next to the others. He never used to drink either. “Northwestern’s secondary isn’t any good. So what if they expect the pass, they can’t defend against it.” Another timeout and the announcers begin talking. “Yeah, yeah, Phil Brown. Jeez. Gotta’ fill the dead space don’t you? You know, these guys talk and talk and talk because they can’t stand to have anybody watch the game in peace and quiet. They explain it to us like we’re idiots. I mean, ‘that was a bad play’…Oh, really? I mean, we all saw that was a bad play you know?” He isn’t asking me. “They go on and on and on like if they don’t keep talking they’re going to lose their jobs or something. Pointing out the most obvious junk. They tell us the snap was awkward. They say the back got off late. Jeez! We know the back got off late. We all saw it. You only show it to us three thousand times in replay. Jeez!” His hand lifts toward me. “How’s school?”

“I’m doing Ok.” I begin to tell him about the class…

“And now we get a commercial. Jeez.” McDonald’s has a new Johnsonville brat meal deal named after some Green Bay Packer. “This will go on and on. And then they’ll go back to the game and we’ll have to hear Phil Brown ramble on again about Lord-knows-what and then there’ll be more commercials. And then back and another time out and then more commercials. There’s less than two minutes left in the game but it’ll take half an hour.” Another commercial. It’s for a car. Dodge I think. After a few seconds of silent viewing: “What a great song. But for a car commercial? C’mon! The Who played that song about apartheid in South Africa. I don’t think anyone even remembers that anymore.” Without moving his body on the couch, his head bends over toward me. “You know that period…the late 60s early 70s. We had all sorts of songs like that. But now they’re forgotten. You hear one today and it’s so fresh. But back then they were like a dime a dozen.” Dad takes a forceful chug on his beer. “There’s so many songs like that one that nobody even remembers.” The game comes back on. “Alright guys, what’re you going to do?”

The Badgers win.

Mom comes into the room. “I’m going to take a bath.” For the last few years mom has been taking marathon baths. She’ll go into the bathroom at 8:00 and won’t come out until the 10:00 news. Then watch Seinfeld and go to bed. She has her own bathroom now. After the renovation and the addition of an upstairs bathroom, she had me and my bother come home on weekend and move and antique bathtub into the downstairs bathroom. It was white with claw feet and weighed probably 800 pounds. After that the bathroom became hers. Us men know not to shit in there anymore. “You should go see grandpa before it gets too late.” Yes, I probably should.

What’s real? What’s forever. Marriages are annulled. Fake breasts are removed. Tattoos are lasered off. Singers craft heartfelt love songs but love nobody. Campaign promises are reneged. “No Fear” is all about fear. Lesbians decide they’re straight. Mortgages are walked way from, because... The love is gone. Wars are apologized for. Apologies are accepted. So what lasts? Why care? Why become part? Everything changes tomorrow and you’re shit out of luck.

They’ve only ever lived a quarter mile away from me. When my mom was going to night school grandma half raised me and my brother. I drive mom’s minivan up the winding driveway and park next to the flagpole. Looking at the house I see a window shade fall shut. I wonder if he’ll know who I am.

Parked in front of house is a black SUV with chrome trim. It is one of those “off road” vehicles for those who have never been, nor will ever be, off road – literally or figuratively. Aunt Erma drives a red Ford; maybe a Mercury. Betty a blue Oldsmobile. Aunt May pilots an enormous Ford land boat and Aunt and Uncle Blandford have a blue Ford F150. I do not know this vehicle.

The spring on the screen door groans arthritically as I enter. The slim door banging closed behind me. I step up into the kitchen. A man at the table with my grandmother turns to me and smiles. He is about my dad’s age, dressed in a blue sport jacket with grey slacks. I have never seen him before in my life.

“Well hello young man. How are you today?” He says. I notice the papers spread out all over the table. Many are in the white-pink-yellow triplicate of legality; of “I have read the above and understand.” My grandmother, looks up at me and smiles.

“That’s my eldest.”

“Son? Well, I knew you were on the young side Mrs. Fikchon, but…”

My grandma laughs at the flattery, willing to let it pass. “Grandson,” she says. “My eldest’s eldest.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you young man,” the SUV man says extending his hand. I shake it without thinking. “I’ve just been going over some paperwork with your grandmother here.” My grandmother’s face becomes quickly agitated.

“Nothing he needs to worry ‘bout,” she quickly chimes in, getting up from her chair. “Did you eat yet?” I answer yes. “Well, Aunt Erma brought over some of these cookies. You should have some. You might even remember when you had helped her make a batch for Christmas one year.” Grandma wobbles to the pantry, pulling her moo moo down. As her grey afro of hyper-tight curlers disappears into the tight hallway, my attention turns back to SUV man.

“So what are you helping my grandma with?” I ask. The question, albeit barbed, not meant to be anything other than curiosity.

“Oh, well, I just needed to come and talk to her about a few business things.”

“What kind.”

“Well, we updated our computers and we’ve been working with her a while and wanted to make sure that she was going to understand everything new that’s going on.”

“Like what?”

“Well, it’s complicated. But In have a pretty good feeling that she understands it all. Your grandmother is a pretty smart cookie.” He flashes a smile. His hair is perfectly coiffed. His goatee manicured down to the last hair. His polo shirt that he wears underneath his navy blazer is buttoned up to the top. “So, are you a football fan?”

“No. Not really.”

“Well, you look like you could be a football player.” I was very used to this comment but hated it all the same. It was the only athletic compliment somebody could safely give me outside of “sumo wrestler.” But it meant either that the complimenter was stupid or that that he or she thought the complimentee was stupid. Even if you don’t follow football you’ve seen football players and even the fattest out of shape lineman looked like a male model next to me. But what were people going to say? I obviously could never be a soccer player or a basketball player or a tennis player. I knew kids who pretended to be.

Pudgy boys under the influence of the ultimate glory of youth, athleticism. They would lie to everyone about having been a star lineman on the football team. These boys were always most obvious at any get together of youth because they, above all others, we interested in relating anecdotes about games lost and won; about the toughness they demonstrated on the line. I met one boy once, not long after starting at the University of Madison, who was fond of saying that he was so large because he was trying to “bulk up” because the football team had showed some interest in him. He talked about how he didn’t like being as large as he was and how he had been slimmer just six months ago before he started lifting everyday and eating six heavy meals in the hope of putting on enough pounds to be able to make the team. More amazing than his lie was that people around him, women, actually seemed to believe it. Anyway, I believed that SUV man figured I was in the latter category of the stupid, easily flattered, complimentee.

“How about those deer?” My grandmother walked back into the room with a Ziplock bag full of brown, lumpy cookies. From the table it looked like a bag of shit. She opened it and set the bag on the table. A sweet stench of still-soft chocolate and butter filled the room, like some diGerharttic’s scented candle.

“Yeah, well, isn’t that a thing?” Said SUV, polo shirt man. “You know I read something today about another guy they found who had that same thing happen to him.” He paused, remembering the story. Or maybe making it up. “They say he started drawing some kind of mathematical equations on the floor with a Sharpie marker just before keeling over.” SUV Man shrugged as if to say “but what’re’ya gonna’ do?” Then he rose. “Well, Mrs. Fikchon should be getting going. I hope that you understand all of this that I’ve been talking about.”

“Well, I guess. Most of it, but, I’ve gotta’ say…” Grandma’s thoughts seemed to drag out a bit as she tried to compose her thoughts.

“Well, you just give me a call if you have any more questions. I’ll see to it when I get back that you get a mailing of all the documents I talked about here. Especially the Resolution of Contract and New Interim Contract on Finalization. As I said, you just make sure that you sign then and get them back to us. Remember to keep a copy for yourself as well.”

“I will.”

“Well, goodbye young Mr. Fikchon.” I couldn’t remember ever having been called “Mr.” before, but it had probably happened. “You take care of this young lady.” SUV Man picked up his leather satchel and stuffed a few things into it. He also took out his cell phone and pressed a few buttons. “Well, look at that. I guess not everywhere gets mobile phone coverage yet. Maybe there’s hope for us yet, “ he said, clapping my lightly with his hand on my shoulder.

“Well, we don’t have much use for them. You know, a few Christmases ago, my daughter in Fort Worth tried to get us one…” Grandma’s words trailed off as SUV Man entered the foyer to leave. He said his goodbyes which were returned by me and Grandma and he was gone, easing the screen door closed behind him so it didn’t bang.

I look up at Grandma and she immediately knows my question. “Oh, he was just here about Grandpa’s arrangements.” We wander back into the kitchen and she holds the Ziplock bag up to me. I decline and she starts gathering all the papers together into a pile. “You know those computers. Well, they’ve started doing everything by computer now and well, you know your Grandma, I lived this long without one and I don’t mean to be getting one now. So, there are special arrangements that they have to make with people who don’t have computers.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, well, not that much. Your Grandma just needs to deal with a new person now. That’s the man you met, Mr. Field. And there’s some more paperwork to be signed. Always more paperwork. And then there’s a few extra charges that aren’t really a big deal. You know your Grandma. I might’ve found for an extra nickel off toilet paper years ago but now I’m just happy to pay what I need to to make it easier.”

“Are you going to have Dad look at those?” I ask, pointing to the rather large pile of small-printed papers now heaped before her.

“Well, maybe. We’ll see how busy your father is.” She puts the papers on the unused corner of the large dining room table where stacks of recent doings are allowed to accumulate because they only ever use the end to eat on. “You should go see Grampa before it gets too late.” I suppose I should.

He sits in the corner of a living upon a throne before which all that visit bow and pay their respects. A king. A patriarch. An insane old man. He inhabits the Lazy-Boy as if he has been poured into it, at once looking conformable and awkward. His chin has grown much more close to his waist than I remember, but not so close as to be any great surprise from the last time. Slumped down, the top of his head points up toward me and I can only see his nose, spider-webbed with red veins poking out. He breaths are audible, like a giant in a cave.

“Grandpa!” She yells from behind me in her nasal scold. “Grandpa! Look who’s here!” I know that his hearing is almost completely gone and that to make out any speech he must be yelled at, but I will never get used to it. “Grandpa! Do you know who this?”

Standing before him I look him directly in the eyes as long as I can. His brows furrow. His head tilts to the side. I don’t know why I smile. Maybe a smiling person is easier to recognize than a person who doesn’t.

“Grandpa! Who is that?”

An old dog. Confused because not only does it not remember this trick, but it doesn’t remember it knew this trick.

“Grandpa! C’mon grandpa, who’s that?”

His glance shifts away from me to her. Obviously I cannot know what he is thinking. Or if he is thinking at all. But if I had to guess, it would be that he’s thinking that if he could get up from that damn Lazy-Boy, he’d smash her in the face.

“Grandpa! C’mon, think hard! Who’s this?”

His suspenders are designed to look like rulers, marked off in black against yellow for every inch. They bend out around his belly. I watch his bottom lip quiver. It’s spastic, twitching on the verge of speech. Then it slams back into his top lip tight as he swallows hard. Then open again and quivering. An epileptic sex toy.

Why do I think things like that about my grandfather?

“C’mon grandpa!” This time her yell startles me and I give a little jump. Immediately, I am deeply embarrassed. Even if my grandfather doesn’t realize it, I’m pained to look at him this way. Even if I don’t know why I should be.

The nail had gone clean though the hand. I know because I had seen it. On the third rung of the ladder I saw his hand wrapped around the rung and a grayish brown spike emerge from the back of his palm, just above the index finger knuckle. For a brief flash of time it was like a special effect, but then blood obscured my view. Blood ran out smoothly, Zen like. No spurts or pumping, just a slow flow that covered more and more hand.

Clenched teeth and no sound. Looking at the hand, studying it for a second, he looked almost curious. Or maybe pissed off. He slowly slid the hand back and off the nail, his teeth clenched tighter. Taking his white handkerchief from his pocket he tied it around his hand two times and then made a tight knot, using his teeth to hold one end of the fabric. Realizing that me and my brother were there, he looked at us and then at his hand and smiled, actually smiled. Grandpa never asked us for help.

“That ain’t too good,” he said. “Let’s go, get that pail.”

I’ll tell this story forever. I’ll tell this story to people I want to impress. I’ll tell this story for cred. I’ll tell this story in the hope that it might contribute in some way to me having sex. Though it never will.

With a hole in his hand I watched this man, now broken in front of me being yelled at, carry a five-gallon bucket, with his injured hand, more than 300 yards to finish the night chores. After that, my brother and I could not think of him as anything but indestructible.

“Grandpa!”

But we had never saw the hole put through his head. A single rotting fissure, taking with it all of him.

His lip quivered faster. “T...Thomas?”

“No! It’s Gerhart! Gerhart!”

His faced mashed into confusion.

This was always the worst. I didn’t mind that he didn’t know who I was. I understood that it wasn’t his fault. His memory was being slowly wiped out. Time was his enemy and it was merciless. If it couldn’t get all of him right now, it was going to get all that mattered.

His eyes told me that he knew he should know me. His eyes told me that he was sorry that he didn’t know me. And, for a second, I actually thought that maybe he knew, he actually knew, what was happening to him.

“Grandpa! Gerhart! You know Gerhart! It’s Gerhart! Nat’s brother!”

I was overweight with no neck and an un-concealable gut like a trash bag begging to be taken out to the curb. But at the start of my junior year I met Trisha, who had moved to my town from Minnesota and in the incestuous environment of our small town, desperate to make new friends and fit in. She was a freshman and short, maybe five-foot and despite her sickly-skinny frame had enormous breasts which she attempted to conceal with oversize Minnesota Golden Gophers sweatshirts. She had dark limp hair and her face was not altogether unattractive, though it could be counted on that if anyone was talking about her, either boys or girls, the topic would be her breasts. The third thing we ever talked about was the fact that she was sick and would not live to be twenty-one.

I wish I could remember the details, but somehow I ended up giving her a ride home from school one day which ended up with me touring around her basement den looking at pre-pubescent pictures of her – tennis team, Grand Canyon, her real father. In the corner of the was what looked like an emergency generator, but was really a drainage machine for her heart. Every night, no matter what, for a half hour she had to be hooked up to this contraption while it heaved and choked and made a thunderous mechanical noise. Only later would I see the small tube that stuck out of her rib cage just under the soft curved undershelf of her large left breast. Her heart’s sewer system. To keep it from sticking out through her clothing she would tape it down to her side with medical adhesives every morning. Very romantic.

But even after I knew about that; even after I had sat and held her hand, our movie paused, both of us slightly embarrassed by the un-high-schoolish reality of the tube coming out from under her lifted sweatshirt into the clattering, gurgling machine; even after seeing the yellow puss disappear through the translucent tube from beneath her breast into the bowels of the vibrating metal box – even after that, what I saw that first night remains burned into my memory to this day. A sight that, after the sight of my penis in her mouth, is still in the top three memories that I jerk off to.

After the tour of pictures, Trisha and I were talking by the pool table when I commented on how skinny she was. Proudly demonstrating that she was even skinnier than she appeared, she proceeded to slightly lift her sweatshirt and - revealing her tiny bellybutton - tighten her belt on her jeans even further. The bottom of her belly exposed, the tightening of her belt to such an insane degree resulted in the front of her jeans billowing out and giving me, from my vantage point on high, an unobstructed view straight down across the frosted-smoothness of her soft pelvis to the beginning tufts of her pubic hair. I am sure she did not realize her exposure as she held the belt tight for at least a five count.

A week later, I invited her to a family Labor Day picnic where – again details fail me – somehow I ended up fingering her underneath her Umbro shorts in my grandparents’ bedroom. Her vagina felt soft against my fingertips and inside, as far as I could get, she was moist and spongy. A week after that I bought a condom in a gas station vending machine and we had intercourse on the carpet in the basement while her step-dad watched the Packer / Bears game upstairs. And even though we only had sex a handful of times after that, we established a pattern. We would kiss – make out – then I’d lick her nipples on my way down to eating her out. Then she would suck me off, which I would always stop after thirty seconds so as not to come. Then she would sit on top of me and ride me until I came. My silent orgasm would always be the end. Once, during her period, she let me come in her mouth, but I felt guilty because she had remained fully clothed and it all seemed rather one-sided and unfair.

While Trisha always got naked, my shirt stayed on. I knew I was fat. My girth was also the reason I was never on top. Not that I feel a need for defense, but in mine, I will say that I was always conscious enough to go down on her first, hoping to make sure that she also came. I guess I never knew if she did. And though I have little to compare it to, her vagina was sweet and, vertically end to end, very, very petit.

At nineteen, Trisha has not yet died. In fact, last I heard, doctors have said that she’ll probably live to be fifty. Soon she will start studying psychology at some university upstate. After me, Trisha’s popularity somehow soared and she started dating one of the football players. After it was over between us, we never had any more communication other than limited and quickly-broken eye contact in the hallways. As I mentioned earlier, if I had known that I would not touch another woman sexually for two years, eleven months and eight days, I would have tried to remember it better.

I am still overweight with no neck and an un-concealable gut like a trash bag begging to be taken out to the curb.

I have always been a chubby kid. But during senior year my body exceeded all expectations for weight gain. Going into my final semester, my immensity weighed in at three hundred pounds. My gut was a vast expanse of fleshy pink blubber hanging down over my size 48 Levis. My tits squished out of the sides of my t-shirts like cupcake tops, forming small rolls and lifting my arms slightly off my body. When I sat on the couch, my gut would lie on the tops of my thighs and the waistband of my jeans would roll over into a pinching crease. And as I mentioned, I had no neck. The sides of my head went straight down into the middles of my shoulders. From the side, my chin went straight down to my chest, bowing out into an over-inflated tire whenever I looked down. Lumpy creases rippled on the back of my neck. I was a whale, and was reminded of it everyday at school.

In particular one man found my heft notable, or at least temporarily interesting, and made it his mission to make sure that everyone else did too. Brad. Brad never called me names. That would have been too simple for him. He excelled at complicated humiliation. I didn’t know what the word meant then, but when I finally found out, I knew that Brad was a misogynist. A favorite act of his was to wait until there were a group of girls hanging around him and then say to me in the loudest voice possible: “How do you find your dick under that?” Or, upon seeing me at lunch time: “Shit. We’d better get up there before there’s none left.” Once he even hid behind the corner while several women he had prepped got me to complain vocally about him. Then he stepped around to confront me about the negative things I had just said. The son of a renowned local alcoholic, Brad was a tall boy with a face strangely oval and angular at the same time. He had brown, flat hair that seemed to hold no identifiable style and he was lithe and, without really ever putting any effort into it, excelled on the track, court and field.

He also excelled at drinking, getting into trouble and fingering girls at parties or in the backseat of some buddy’s car on the way to nearby Beaver Dam to cruise the strip on Saturday nights. A terrible student and better-than-average athlete, Brad somehow became the mascot of my high school. He never scored the most points or ran the fastest. He was the MC at prom, not the king. He wasn’t the most popular or the best. Yet, he had what today is referred to as charisma, the term used to define our inexplicable idolization of talentlessness.

By no means was I his only target. Brad cowed geeky freshman into getting him lunch, forcing them to drive thirty minutes to the closest Burger King which inevitably made them late for their next class. Once as a junior, when our P.E. classes had to be combined for lack of students, I witnessed Brad make two boys touch each other’s dicks. The two boys were freshmen who had fallen behind and were still in the locker room when we arrived. Brad cornered the fourteen-year-olds, who were unlucky enough to only be half dressed. Addressing one of the boys he said simply: “Touch his,” and then turned back to all of us with a giant smile. Louder he said, “C’mon! Touch his!” And then again turned back to us for approval and said, “You wanna’ see these two faggots be faggots?” Everyone laughed and clapped. Brad: “Yeah?” The yelling swelled to a riot as everyone continued to change for class and be entertained by Brad. Then Brad threatened: “Touch it or I’ll fucking kick your ass.” I couldn’t even believe what I saw. The one boy closed his eyes and reached out his hand, blindly. The other boy looked away as well, his arms helplessly at his sides. The finger tapped the penis and withdrew immediately. Immediately Brad barked, “That’s not a fucking touch! You didn’t even do it!” Again turning back to the rest of us: “Was that a touch?” Everyone yelled no. Some of them not even paying attention anymore. I got the vibe that some people were beginning to get uncomfortable. But nobody said shit. Brad’s face got inches from the boy’s: “Fucking grab it you faggot or I swear to God I will fucking get medieval on your fucking ass.” Again, closed and averted eyes, the boy’s hand clasped onto his friend’s penis and then let go. “That’s better” was all Brad said before going back to get changed. I was the last one out of the locker room and when I left the boys were still both crying but quietly. I recognized one of them as my younger brother’s best friend. This is what was worst of all about Brad, he was a master recruiter. Through fear of becoming his next target, everyone joined his studio audience, laughing when he wanted them to. When he graduated a year ahead of me I thought it would be over, but it wasn’t. Due to popular demand, Brad had an encore for me.

In December of my senior year, I turned the corner to find Brad and half the football team hanging out in the hallway. Determined not to go easily, I put up as mean a fight as I could. It didn’t matter. They hustled me to the girls locker room where they stripped my clothes, ripping my t-shirt off me when I refused to lift my arms. Naked except for my briefs, they used two rolls of athletic tape to bind my hands and my feet around the bench. This could not have been easy as I mentioned I weighed nearly 300 pounds.

On the naked, exposed parts of my body they rubbed icy hot gel. After posing victoriously over me for photos, I was left there to be found by the girls’ sophomore class when they returned from playing softball. Two days later, the pictures appeared on the Internet. In the background of the photo I could see the boys’ high school P.E. teacher smiling and giving the camera two thumbs up. Why does shit like this, and like what happened to the other two freshmen at Brad’s hand, always happen to boys in locker rooms? I suspect that it isn’t a recent phenomenon. I suspect that boys have been getting the shit beat out of them, embarrassed beyond their imaginations, in these underground tiled cubes of hell for generations. If everyone has a bully story like they claim to, and if so many of those bully stories are like Brad’s, then why don’t the majority of people grow up to be adults and remembering this and do something about fucking locker rooms? Either many people are lying about how they got bullied, which is what I suspect, or because adults are fucking completely worthless. I suspect the former but it could be wither really.

Brad. That fucker. Every night I went home and stood in front of the mirror, my shirt off, and prayed for two things, a flat stomach and his death. I looked at the fat that hung off my front, pointing at itself like a God damn finger. I looked at my tits.

I looked at my pear-shaped ridiculousness and imagined the ways in which he could die. A drunk driving accident seemed likely, though it would be a shame if he were killed instantly. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted to see him gurgling on his own blood. Plus, the local paper would run some sob story about him and I’d have to hear all the girls whine about how it was such a tragedy. Even the girls he finger raped when they were drunk.

Not long after the locker room thing I had a dream about killing Brad. I didn’t really pay attention to it at the time.

I turned back to wave to them in the window as I drove mom’s minivan down their long driveway into the black hole that exists between houses in the Wisconsin countryside on account of no streetlights. The gravel crunched under the tires as I slowed to a halt at the road. I pointed right. Toward home. But I didn’t want t go home. Not yet. Guns-n-Roses “Don’t Cry” came on the radio and the minivan’s front tires spun out and I was heading left. Three miles later I was in town.

The town is dead at night. Even on weekends. In 1904 it was booming. Growing by 50 people a year. By the 1920s the population had reached 1,200. Then the depression hit and it never recovered. Today the glow-green village limits sign reads 850. If it could it would add “and falling.”

Two streets dissect the town, but I only ever travel one. There is only one road worth me going down. It leads uphill, past the mill, to the community of houses by the lake. It leads past her house. Trisha’s house. I make the turn in and park across the street just down the road. Her room light’s on. It might be her sister’s room now though.

In my heart I know I am being dramatic about this whole fucking thing. I am indulging the theater of youth. I’m allowing my hormones an upstaging performance. I’m letting the music and the loneliness and the self-disgust sink in and rule the moment. Self pity is emotional programming for the lowest common denominator. “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Bad Company comes on and I cry. If I was gone would it matter? Would anyone care? Besides my parents of course. They don’t count.

In high school a boy from a class below me rolled his truck going too fast around a turn. One of his fellow classmen had been behind him, a popular kid from the football team named Danny. They say when Danny made it to truck the boy was still alive. They, Danny, said that underneath the truck, bent in half under a ton of steel, his last words were, “Get this fucking thing off me.”

The boy was not popular. Less so than even me in fact. A skinny transplant from California, he had never been accepted. But after his death he was mourned by every pretty girl who never gave him the time of day before. School was closed for the day and everyone attended his funeral. The girls wept. The boys stood reverent and quiet, almost looking respectable in the double breasted black suits they had borrowed from their uncles and fathers.

And Danny. I hated him for being the one to be there first. While not the worst guy, he’d never made the boy’s life easy. To impress others he had joined everyone in mocking and deriding him in front of everybody. I hated him because now he spoke of how deep the impact was in finding him under the truck. Simply because of his place in the motor vehicle caravan that night he now had a three-dimensional personality. He was a kid with speed, pecs and depth. They say that he got two blowjobs on the very night of the funeral from two senior girls.

My foot eased off the brake and I rolled slowly down to another house of significance. Trisha forgotten, my chest suddenly burned with a visual scenario in which I stormed from the minivan and into the house. I would be screaming. My arms would be flexed and full of bulging muscles. My rippling chest would be a canvas of rage. Though I had never been in it, I would go through the house straight to Brad’s room, grabbing him by the hair and dragging him out of his house and…and…

He would be so scared. Crying. Blubbering coming from his mouth and snot leaking cowardly out of his nose. Screams of pain. Pain from me.

The moment passed. The music didn’t match anymore. The truth about intensity is that, as great as it is, it can’t be maintained. I turned the headlights back on and the minivan rolled forward and home.

When everyone goes to bed I eat. I eat anything. I eat everything. At night, when I’m at home and everyone is disappeared, I become a wild animal, consuming anything I find. I go through the refrigerator. The salad drawer. I go through all of the cupboards, slowing taking out the packages of dried noodles and spices and baking chocolate in the front and stacking it neatly below on the counter. I mine each space, going all the way into the depths of the back. Under the sink. In the pantry I get high on my toes to peer back behind the wall of canned tomatoes for anything. I always find what I’m looking for because I’m looking for anything.

I eat crackers, cereal, cookies, chips. I disappear entire boxes of cereal (without milk if there is none). It doesn’t even matter if it tastes good. I eat an entire pack Kraft cheese slices with two-thirds of a loaf of sliced bread.

Once I get started, once I get the taste, there is no stopping me. I eat biscotti and entire jars of peanut butter. I eat M&Ms by the handful, my cheeks puffing out as entire halves of peanuts in chocolate shells stagnate between my cheek and gum, pushed down by the load that followed them. I don’t know where it goes but I keep swallowing. Find some Diet Rite of my mothers and pour two full cans into a giant glass with ice. I find an entire quart of mint ice cream.

I drag my cellophane and plastic and ZipLocks and buckets and pails and a spoon down the steps into the den in the basement. Each step creaks beneath me not because I am fat but because it is old. A few years ago, after I left the house, my father out a large-screen TV there. The old dial-tuner box with the rabbit ears is still down there, but now in the corner sits a sleek black behemoth, its slick screen looking wet in the half-light.

I carefully pile my haul next to the old sofa covered with random quilts which my mother has accumulated over the years of shopping at Goodwill. I have at least ten different things I have found to eat. Some small bricks of cheese, others large boxes of Wheat Thins. And, of course the Eady’s mint ice cream. I turn on the TV and watch the last half hour of Saturday Night Live and then a rerun of ER. Before the last commercial break the food is all gone. I have stuffed all of the empty packages into one empty bag of honey roasted pretzels. I flip the channel and Braveheart is on. He’s being tortured and requested, begged by his friends, to ask for mercy. I lay my hand on my massive belly’s plateau. Never small by any means, it is now standing upright and massive, despite me lying on my back. My hands feel its tightness. I look at Mel Gibson’s taught arm rising up, rag in hand, a single, attracting, straight vein cutting down his bicep. I look at how much I ate. I should be ill. I maybe should be dead. How could my body hold…all of that? “Freedom!” Mel cries out in the background.

My eyes tear up. Melodrama and feelings of sweet hopelessness overtake me. “Fuck you. Fuck all of you,” I say under my breath. To who, I don’t know. I want to be dead. And for the first time I don’t see that line. That line where I know I’m not serious. I don’t find this remarkable though because I have already moved on to masturbating. I close my eyes. Years have dulled the sharpness of the memory, of the image, but I can almost make out Trisha, bent over me with nothing but a bra on, her limp hair rising and falling on my massive gut. Inhalation comes hard through my nose and I cum in the pretzel bag.

When I wake up I always have to go back to school.

I had gone to freshman orientation, my heart full of hope. Freshman orientation was a wonderful thing, a great opportunity for a guy like me. It was like having a blank sheet of paper and you are allowed to write anything on it that you want. If you were a geek in high school, or a dumb jock or a slut you could fix that at Freshman orientation. If you were a loser, and I know you were, then you could, with a few simple lies, be a winner. The opportunities were endless. The people at orientation did not know me. None of them knew who I had been in the last four years. None of them knew that I didn’t go by my middle name instead of my first name. None of them knew that I hadn’t grown up traveling around the world with my parents. None of them knew that I hadn’t really drunk twelve body shots one night, stolen a police car and drove to Chicago where I hung out with The Smashing Pumpkins smoking pot. None of them knew that about me. But after Freshman orientation they did. For a creative person with an ability to lie and lie bigger when challenged about the first lie, orientation was a goldmine of opportunity. And it all seemed fair. I was owed. I didn’t feel that I wasn’t taking back anything that wrongfully had already been taken from me. I just wanted a fair start. A good foundation. I didn’t want to be at the top of the heap. I didn’t want to amaze anybody. I just wanted to have an equal start with them.

I left Freshman orientation literally a new person. I felt good. In fact, I didn’t even feel like myself. I felt like Erik, Dan, Chad, Chad B., Matt and Goose. I felt like a little bit of all of the popular kids from high school whose lives I had stolen bit by bit. Sure, I was overweight with no neck and an un-concealable gut like a trash bag begging to be taken out, but I had been a football player, had traveled all around the U.S. and the world, had lost my virginity to a 23-year-old Spanish woman from the Basque region whose father was a separatist and had, as mentioned, stolen stuff and driven it out of state which landed me in trouble with the FBI. A few girls even waved at me during room switches. One of whom had the most beautiful breasts my mind had ever undressed. The mouth on those breasts had even asked me if I would be going to the student blood drive on Thursday. Of course I told those breasts that I would go to check it out, but that I wasn’t allowed to give blood “because I had tried heroin in Thailand less than a year ago.”

Who knows how many of those freshman were doing the exact same thing I was. My guess would be more than half. Girls who had sucked off whole football teams in the back of the away-game bus became Madonnas. Jocks became aspiring musicians and trailer-park trash was recycled as lawyers’ sons and daughters. None of us were any more real than was the information that the school fed us about “dorm life.” In two days consisting of a two hour morning session and a three hour afternoon session I had fixed everything about myself that I had ever wanted to fix. Well, almost everything.

I lived in the twin towers. Ogg hall. Ogg west and Ogg east were two identically bland towers of tiny rooms. They had a proximity to nothing but the gym and better-than-shitty parking. Ogg’s claim to fame was that it was the location of a water balloon incident three years earlier that resulting in the bolted closing of all university dorm windows. Surely drunk, a couple of guys had thrown a water balloon out of their ninth story window onto a girl one night. They were expelled. She was paralyzed. It is surprising to know how many of the university’s policy changes came about as a result of lawsuits.

Despite increasingly grandiose stories about myself I had made little headway since orientation. I was especially surprised when the story about drinking snake’s blood in Taiwan’s Snake Alley during an earthquake was blown off in favor of some guy’s comment: “Did you know that U2 is going to be here in April and Lenny Kravitz is going to open for them?” U2? Who gives a fuck about U2? We’re talking real snakes’ blood here!

Then my slow but steady social climb, having begun at orientation, came screeching to a halt.

The effort to keep all of my stories straight, complete with dates and all, was no small task. In fact, it was an amazing act. Once I told, adopted, co-opted a story or an experience I somehow managed to catalog it, details and all, so that it could be recounted verbatim to others in the presence of those who had heard it. I was vigilant about this because I knew the exposure of one lie would be the seed of doubt that would invalidate everything. It was an immense fear that all of us freshman lived with, being found out. Being found out meant estrangement. Though everyone did it, there was nothing worse than being discovered. Once discovered, one became shamefully “unreal.” One became fake. An entire university population involved in drugs, sex, binge drinking and general irresponsibility set its standards for respect the maxims of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. Everyone subscribed to the notion that there was nothing shameful in being who one really was. The entire university spoke of staying genuine to one’s self, as if, within the official university map’s highlighted yellow lines of campus, the tendencies of society somehow didn’t apply. And though everyone did it, there was nothing more shameful than being found out.

It was my own fault. I slipped up. All I had ever wanted was for college to not be like high school.

On the way back from lasagna and Coca-Cola at the cafeteria a guy from my floor said hello to me. It just so happened that I was standing next to a guy who had known me in high school.

“Hey Dylan, what’s the scoop?” That’s what the guy from my floor said.

“Dylan? Did he just call you Dylan? Dude, what’s up with the Dylan shit?” That’s what the guy who had known me in high-school said.

“Whatdya’ mean? Dylan. That’s his name man.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Dylan? Who told you his name was Dylan?”

“He did.”

“He did?”

“Yeah.”

“No way?”

My floor-mate now looked confused. I don’t know what I looked like. And I didn’t want to know.

My acquaintance from high-school continued, “His name’s not Dylan. His name’s Gerhart.” He laughed and looked at me. I knew that he immediately knew what I had tried to do.

I had to jump in. I had to do something. I stood next to my high-school acquaintance and grimaced, blanking for a solution. There exists a level of embarrassment so extreme that it is worse than any physical pain. It is the pain of being caught. Adulterous men know this and it is why they will tell the most grandiose of lies and spend any amount to free themselves from discovery. It is the personal shame one feels, not from the act of cheating on one’s girlfriend, but on the act of being caught. When I watch criminals on TV deny all allegations regardless of how good the evidence is against them, I secretly understand. This embarrassment triggers a reaction deep within us to deny everything with any excuse possible. Every man who has been caught by his girlfriend in a less-than-admirable action instinctively minimizes the damage, telling only as much as is necessary to appear honest. Every woman who has gotten drunk and acted in a less-than-virtuous fashion will play it down to future boyfriends. Cheating on her five times becomes one time. Four one-night stands become one. Intercourse becomes heavy petting. Nineteen becomes eleven becomes nine becomes five. There is probably even a great psych doctoral thesis in the mathematical formula of it all. Often, our denial reaction is so extreme that we will stick to a story, no matter how implausible, all the way to the bottom of the deep, wet harbor. I have done it. You have done it. We all have done it and we will all do it again and again for the rest of our lives. If we have even the slightest belief that we will get away with it, we will lie, mislead, underplay and diminish. Except that, now, I knew there was no way I could get away with it. There was no story good enough to save me and in the pit of my stomach I felt grossly nauseous.

Since orientation I had been telling everyone that, all my life, I had been going by my middle name, Dylan. Of course it wasn’t true. I had chosen Dylan because it was much cooler than my first name and, by being named Dylan, I could be named after the poet who everyone knew for burning against the light. I did not know this high-school “friend” well enough to whisper the need for a massive face-saving favor, but at the same time, revealing myself to the Ogg-mate would surely mean that the story would get around. My churning anticipation of social death was evident in my flaming cheeks. My hands gripped tight in raw anger and helplessness, I said the only thing I could think of, “Hey did you guys hear that U2 might be coming in April and Lenny Kravitz might be opening for them?”

“He told me,” said the Ogg floor-mate pointing at me matter-of-factly and ignoring my comment. I wanted to leave. I wondered what the hell was keeping me standing there. I could have walked away and let it all happen in abstention, the end result being the same. Yet, I stood and watched, a helpless voyeur watching a sick sort of self-sparked emulation.

“He told you his name was Dylan?” My friend seemed very amused. Maybe he didn’t get enough humor in his life because he wasn’t letting this joke die. There are those times in life when somebody catches you in a lie, or in an embarrassing situation and instead of publicly acknowledging the revelation the person-in-the-know just hints to you that they know. Instead of embarrassing you in front of everyone, the person just winks at you, or nods, letting you know that they are going to keep your secret but that you owe them one. This wasn’t one of those times.

“Dylan.” My high school friend, no, ex-friend, said again and again as if it were a foreign word he had never heard before and was trying to pronounce properly. “Dylan.” He said, mockingly. “Dylan.” He said it in a manner that told me if I didn’t kill him right there on the spot, bludgeoning him in the skull with my bag of frozen bagels, that it would be about 20 minutes before all of my high school classmates knew about that stupid shit that “Dylan” was getting up to in college. Maybe 25 minutes if he ran into that girl on the way back to his dorm that he had the crush on, the short one that played soccer with the blonde hair and the penchant for too many tequilas and too little clothes. Then she would know too. She would know that a guy she had never met whose real name was Gerhart was pathetically going around telling everyone that his name was Dylan because he wanted to sound cooler. I could almost see her well-worn lips forming the words: “Pitiful.”

All those good lies down the drain.

And that was freshman year. Being a jerk can have its benefits. A jerk still gets women, though they may complain to their friends about how you don’t call. A jerk has a reputation but it’s a reputation that men speak of reverently and women speak of in intrigue. A jerk has a following, just look at Rush Limbaugh or Russell Crowe. But a pathetic loser is just. Just. He’s a punch line. He’s the punch line. He’s not even worthy of pity. Or if he is, it’s not the kind that includes pity sex. It’s the sort reserved for the grotesquely obese, which I also was. And I meant to change that.

But that would take another reinvention. And laxatives.

A transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of deer, elk (wapiti), and moose caused by unusual infectious agent known as prions. First recognized as a clinical "wasting" syndrome in 1967. It has spread to a dozen states and two Canadian provinces. Most cases of CWD occur in adult animals. The most obvious and consistent clinical sign of CWD is weight loss over time. Behavioral changes also occur in the majority of cases, including decreased interactions with other animals, listlessness, lowering of the head, blank facial expression, and repetitive walking in set patterns. It is typified by chronic weight loss leading to death.

The disease is progressive and always fatal.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years I got a sublet room for the in the Delta Upsilon fraternity on the lake.

One night the fraternity brothers held a party with a stripper. The afternoon of the party one of the guys came to my room:

Asshole: “Hey man, don’t know if you heard but we’re having a party here tonight.”

Me: “I saw the board in the kitchen.”

Asshole: “Yeah, well, the thing is that it’s only for members. We’d really like to have you around but you know we have these rules and… I know it’s a totally dick thing to ask, but, you think you could find another place to stay tonight?”

I did. But I came back later and sat on the big rock across by the docks and watched. Though I didn’t see anything.

The other thing was that I started working out. I started running the path along the lake. I’d like to think it was four miles or something but it was probably more like one. Anyway, it was exactly the length of both sides of a Violent Femmes tape. It wasn’t easy, that’s all I’ll say.

I also started eating only rice. Three giant bowlfuls a day flavored with salt.

The deer are dying. Today they shot 87 confirmed. The DNR says the goal for the summer is to kill 25,000. Nobody knows why…why they’re dying…but every night on TV the slutty-blonde anchor and shiny-tan Dan (with the hidden anchor tattoo that only his wife knows about) call it chronic wasting disease – CWD. Bambis prancing one minute; ripped through their bloody venison guts the next by a high-caliber high-velocity shell gifted them by obese Schlitz drinkers in Department of Natural Resources helicopters. Bambis lie on the low-level-drought brown grass twitching, pools of blood seeping into the whites of their large deer eyes. “There’s no way to properly dispose of the corpses,” says tan Dan. “Because of next year’s budget crisis. One billion dollars.”

No way to dispose of them.

“So they’re going to dissolve them in chemicals,” says the slut.

I bet she lets her boyfriend or husband come on her tits. Not always. But a few times. Because her job is to keep him happy. “To keep us happy.”

Then I found the anit-porn. There was this girl who was going to lose her virginity over the Internet. Live. It seemed like an original enough concept. First time sex is so awkward that having the entire world watching wouldn’t change much. The hesitation when he switches positions, the time lapse as he tries to get it inside, stabbing again and again in the general area of the wetness, the embarrassment of how poorly things transition when taking off pants and underwear, as if you are not really part of what is going on but are watching from around a dark corner outside the window. That was always the worst part for me. At least for the few times I had done it. If I had never seen a Hollywood sex scene then maybe, just maybe, I would not have thought anything uncomfortable when I had to get up off her to pull off her tight, stone-wash denims, a blast of cool air coming between us, a slap reminding us exactly what the hell it was that we were up to. It made me understand the strategic sensibility of crotchless panties.

In the movies there is an embarrassment-free, smooth transition from passionate face-sucking to full-on naked grinding away. One minute Hunk is setting free Starlet’s $500,000-per-scene-per breasts. The next minute his hairless ass is flexing between her naked thighs. I always wonder where the scene went when they untangled their legs and took their pants off. And when sex in Hollywood gets real it gets too real for sixteen-year-olds. The lines between aggressive consent and rape are too blurry for a “right to say no” MTV bombarded mind. No means no except when you’re Michael Douglas ripping the bra and panties off Ben Stiller’s wife in Basic Instinct. That was real sex. I think.

At first I thought it had to be a porn site. But something about it was off. It wasn’t clunky with thumbnails or extra links. It was almost like it was a webpage from the mid 90s..

The couple on ourfirsttime.org looked really good. Really. They were a really good looking people. There are two things wrong with this in my mind. The first is obvious. People who look that good, especially guys in high school, are rarely still virgins by the time they reach the age of 18. Unless they’re gay. And even then. The hormonal imbalance at that age is just much too lopsided. There are simply too many opportunities. There are cheerleaders. There are cheap-beer sluts. There are teachers in their late twenties who are twice as smart as you. There are friend’s sisters in town from college. I wondered if maybe there wasn’t something this never-done-it couple weren’t telling each other. Was this one of those “recovering” virgins? Looking closely there was a chance they were porn actors. But to what end? There were no links, no vids, no anything. Porn only exists to make money so what would be the point? Also, there was no nudity at all. Just Glamour Pics and some candid stuff. She didn’t wear mumus but there was not even a single hard nipple to be seen. And I looked. .

The second notable thing (somewhat related to the first) was that high-schoolers this good looking, this attractive, never come up with alternative, cutting-edge ideas like ourfirsttime.org. There’s no motivation. The only people I ever knew in high school who could have thought up something this different were not children anywhere near having sex. They were kids who defined themselves not by letters on jackets or drinking stories or whose pussy they had managed to stick their fingers into (and how many), but by all of the things that they had not accomplished in high school. They were kids that drag down the national teen-pregnancy average. They were kids that, I am quite sure, as adults will have not had any sexual contact with anything not attached to them.

It was quite possible that some really overweight kid, between bags of Doritos and picking out the fried bagel chips in the Sargento Snack Mix, had brainstormed this idea and then farmed it out to others. It is also quite possible that he got these good looking people involved in his cool idea so that he would have some social contact. Maybe he hoped that this trollop the almost-certainly-g-stringed-ass would recognize his genius and decide instead to lose it to him in an online-from-behind wet-dream jerk-off fantasy. That would be nice.

There was no subscription required even thought the language seemed to indicate that these two attractive people intended to have their first time live online. That didn’t make any sense for about a thousand reasons. Why become a porn star if you’re not getting paid? Why become a social pariah if not for money? Why risk the almost certain possibility that a couple of your male relatives will not be able to help themselves and wank one to you if not for money? But there is was, “join us” alongside that digitally down-clicking clock. Nine months. Crichton, King, Spielberg don’t have shit on making stuff this dramatically compelling.

I also started wondering where the couple planned on putting the camera. Would we get a close-up of her face wincing from the pain? Would we get to see his butt from behind banging away like A flesh piston, each up-thrust revealing exactly how unappealing the inside crack of a man’s ass can be? Would we get a nice post-card view of him on top, snuggling her and telling her everything was going to be all right, her face relaxed and pleasant until her eyes popped wide a millisecond before tightening LIKE Wynona Ryder in Mermaids? Would they make some cash on the product placement of the condom that they used? I thought that there should definitely be a part of their site where the audience got to vote on where the camera would be positioned. Of course, we can’t vote on the position itself because, as everyone should know we all lose our virginity in the missionary. I would vote for the “His Butt From The Top With Her Legs Pretzeled Inside His Elbows” angle. That way we would get to see if they were really doing the deed or not.

Eventually I made a habit of checking the site every night to see what was going on. Nothing ever was but I checked anyway. The clock ticket down but nothing else changed. I took a great amount of inspiration from the site. Unfortunately, I had already had sex once. Unfortunately because it had happened two years ago and I think it was a fluke. It was like hitting an inside-the-park home run because some infielder had misplayed your single. You get credited for the Home Run when you should have only gotten to first or second. It should not have happened.

**

The Badgers beat Michigan State and are undefeated after four games. Langdon Street and State are a riot of studentry. The KK, Kollege Klub, bar across the street is barfing people. We sit on top of the small stone co-op wall and watch. Some people are making jokes. With Tom reading off the names of the most recently killed US troops. He always does that whenever there’s a group around. He actually memorizes the names. Who knows where he gets the info. He doesn’t have a TV.

Next week we play Penn State.

In 1969 Le Chateau Co-op was established at 636 Langdon St., right on fraternity row. An elegant old brick manse and former sorority, the house soon because a headquarters for community activism. In its earliest days co-op members led a fight against the building of the Roundhouse Apartments next door. According to reports, co-op members formed a human circle around the site in attempt to levitate the building away.

At my first pledge meeting for Le Chateu, I stood outside the house’s fairytale entryway and looked up at the towering round apartment building next door. The levitation had failed.

From the closet crack I see her on her back on the bed. On her back on the bed lies a girl naked from the waist down. She’s slim, maybe 118, 120, and from what I can tell has a figure. Above her stands Bucky Badger. Bucky Fucking Badger. Atop the oversized mascot body and red and white striped sweatered torso, Bucky’s massive cartoon head.

I risk opening the door a bit more to see her face, but it’s obscured by Bucky’s giant badger head placed on the bed between us. Bucky’s brown furry legs fall to the floor to reveal pink human ones and a straight and upturned erection. He sleds down onto her.

I cannot hear her words but I hear his: “But you’re on the pill right.” And then a hesitant last-chance pause, the nervousness, recklessness. Her naked legs lift and wrap around his waist made ridiculously small and trim by proportion. His pink human butt drives down and then back up and then back down. I throb. I hear her moan a few times and then it seems to be done. They stop moving and I hear her wonderful laugh again. It sounds more nervous now, embarrassed.

I only need to touch myself and I come. With my thumb plugging the head I ponder what to do. Feeling only slightly bad, I remove my thumb and shoot into one of the tennis shoes and stuff it back beneath me. The music gets loud and then muted by wood and I know they’ve left.

The door opens again suddenly. I near break my still hard dick stuffing it into my jeans as a roll as far back into the closet as I can. I hear Michelle’s slurred yell, “Gerhart! Gerhart?”

“Nope. He’s not in here.” Then another woman: “He probably went home.” The door closes.

Somehow I became completely soft in those ten seconds. Not sure how that happened.

Even to me, sitting here with some kind of wool jacket hanging in my face, the most obvious question is why am I hiding in a dark closet when my merry peers are all in the kitchen.

Much more is dying than the deer though. Wisconsin is dying. Madison is dying. I am dying. A grandfather and his Alzheimer’s is out-dying all of this. But if everything is dying then where’s the life? It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that life is nothing more than a sort of fantasy-based paranoia with its highs and lows yet no outcome; like a teenage pregnancy scare.

Rachel would change everything. But I didn’t know that when, one night at three a.m., I saw the male mannequin at The Gap wearing the pink thong.