82
Seventy-inch flat-screen TV; Oriental rugs; garage-kept brand-new Mercedes-Benz, which he never even drives; professionally landscaped yard; in-ground sprinkler system; original Norman Rockwell painting in the hallway—you get the picture.
83
If you took away all his wrinkles and rogue white hair, he’d look like a seasoned George Clooney.
84
He’s talking about my Bogart hat, which is too big and even covers my eyebrows. It’s kind of ridiculous.
85
Maybe you’re wondering why a teenager in 2011 likes watching Bogart films with an old man? Good question. At first, it was just something to do, somewhere to be where I felt wanted, because Walt’s pretty lonely. But I really grew to get, understand, and love Bogart Hollywood land. Walt says the movies were for men who came home from World War II disoriented, trying to make sense of the new postwar world, trying to relearn how to be men in a new domesticated life with women. There were no women around during the fighting overseas, just men supporting men, which is the reason for the Lauren Bacall-type femme fatales. During the war, men forgot how to interact with and trust women. And I like the fact that Walt takes me to a place none of my classmates even know exists. I admire Bogart because he does what’s right regardless of consequences—even when the consequences are stacked high against him—unlike just about everyone else in my life.
86
Turtleneck sweater. Missing-tooth smile. Bowl cut. Cute kid.
87
Who is, ironically, dying.
88
Like Linda, who claims to LOVE LOVE LOVE designing clothing but never misses a chance to complain about and stress over her work. How can she love something that makes her so unhappy—that keeps her away from her only son? Maybe being stressed about work and complaining all the time are a welcome respite from being Leonard Peacock’s mom? I don’t know. But thinking about that makes me sad. Especially since she became a fashion designer right after I tried to tell her about the bad stuff that happened with Asher. It was like my failed confession drove her away from me—made me repugnant.
89
Who probably screws hundreds of other women behind your back, because he’s a powerful player in the fashion business, so he definitely can. And people who value fashion first and foremost are not usually humanitarians or Nobel Peace Prize candidates, after all.
90
Herr Silverman said that the Jewish women in the Nazi death camps were often forced to have sex with Nazi officers (maybe like the one who owned my P-38?) just to stay alive and get privileges for themselves and family members. And hearing that made me wonder if Linda has to perform sex acts for Jean-Luc to keep her fashion career alive. (Herr Silverman also said that some sex slaves were teenage kids just like us.)
91
Interesting that businesses in the city have security guards but my high school doesn’t. Maybe it will after today. But why protect adults and not children?
92
All adults.
93
Answering machine in 2011? What? Sad but true. Linda doesn’t like to give out her cell number to “non-industry people,” like the office workers at my high school, because she thinks she’s Donatella Versace.
94
How does a teenage boy know the word camisoles? Three words: Fashion designer mother.
95
There were a few kids who looked just as sickened as I was by the übermorons’ behavior but they didn’t let Asher see their disgust. No one wanted to be the next target, and that’s just how übermorons like it—the secret to their power.
96
Untethered from my awful future.
97
I try to imagine being married to Mrs. Shanahan, eating root beer lollipops for every meal. Having a guidance counselor for a wife—she’d probably take good emotional care of me, or maybe she’d be so tired of taking care of people all day that when she came home from work she’d just be a selfish bitch. I can’t decide which I believe. Probably the latter, I think.
98
Herr Silverman is forever experimenting with facial hair. Last week he had an ill-advised Abraham Lincoln beard going. Students make comments about his various facial-hair stylings, but he never gets mad. He returns their digs with this smile that is more like a wink. It’s like he’s immune to the comments of other people, which I think is admirable.
99
That’s basically the mantra of Herr Silverman’s teaching—think for yourself and do what’s right for you, but let others do the same.
100
This is probably the standard answer that would score you the top mark on the essay portion of the SAT.
101
You may think that lynching is a means to an end if I wish to die, and I do, but being ripped apart limb by limb by übermoronic classmates is hardly a picturesque way to go. Death by übermorons is überunappealing.
102
You should read about all of those killers. They all have a lot in common. I bet they felt lonely in many ways, helpless, FORGOTTEN, ignored, alienated, irrelevant, cynical, and sad. Read about them. You really should. You can learn a lot. More than I can explain here.
103
Most teachers refuse to close the door when they are alone with a student, saying it’s against the law or something, which is pretty stupid. It’s like everyone thinks teenagers are about to get raped every second of the day and that an open door can protect you. (It can’t. How could it?) But Herr Silverman closes the door, which makes me trust him. He doesn’t play by their rules; he plays by the right rules.
104
Of course I’ve already written these letters, but just haven’t shown Herr Silverman because the words are too intense and personal and insane—and maybe not what he wanted me to write. And yet, I feel like the letters are really important. I’m just not sure why and so I don’t want to risk ruining the words. If Herr Silverman said the letters were wrong, I don’t think I could handle it. Especially because he keeps saying the letters can save me, which means he believes I definitely need saving.
105
Asher and I had that in common—oblivious mothers.
106
I was already weird back then, and people were starting to notice more and more. Asher had lots of friends, but I really only had Asher.
107
Why is it that we love surprising people? Is it because we like to know something they don’t? Does it give us a sense of power over others? Was I happy because I was controlling Asher? Or was I simply just trying to do something nice?
108
My dad was always in a good mood when he was about to gamble.
109
Kids are like blind passengers—they just don’t see what’s coming down the road.
110
Did you ever think about all of the nights you lived through and can’t remember at all? The ones that were so mundane your brain just didn’t bother to record them. Hundreds, maybe thousands of nights come and go without being preserved by our memory. Does that ever freak you out? Like maybe your mind recorded all the wrong nights?
111
What I noticed first was that she didn’t look anything like the other girls in my high school. She was cat-faced and throwback-looking, like the old classic type of girls you see in Bogart films. More sophisticated. Mysterious. Dangerous. Femme fatales. The type that makes you risk being murdered by her enemies just so that you will eventually be able to kiss her as the string music cranks up and she’s about to faint. The kind of girl for whom you happily lose your mind. She wasn’t like the 1970s sunglasses femme fatale I had followed in Philadelphia to an unfortunate ending, I could tell. She seemed less manic, happier, brighter, kissable.
112
The scenario is complete bullshit, because the girl he’s “parking” with keeps feeling his inner thigh, and he keeps pushing her hand away. No way a teenage boy pushes some girl’s hand away from his crotch when he thinks she’s attractive. Also, everyone knows Jesus drank wine with his buddies, so why would he be disappointed in a beer drinker?
113
If you can believe it, this was the first time I had ever been to a church service other than funerals.
114
Beautiful women make any situation bearable.
115
Weird what we remember and what we don’t.
116
It was strange how I wanted her to be both a sexy Bacall-type figure and I also wanted her to be a kid at the same time, because those states are pretty much opposites, so she couldn’t be both simultaneously.
117
Why is it that people only like it when you ask questions that they have answered a million times and hate you for stumping them? I love questions that stump me. I really enjoy thinking about possible answers to those types of questions for days and days. Does anyone else like to ponder anymore, or am I just a total freak?
118
Religious pun?
119
I looked up the origin of that “reaching the end of my rope” expression. The Internet told me that people used to say “at the end of my tether.” And tether referred to the leashes of horses or dogs. So I guess the phrase is supposed to evoke the image of a dog running for a squirrel or something and then suddenly being jerked back by the rope tied around its neck. It’s reached the end. It can’t go any farther. So I guess I’m beyond Linda’s reach now. Her tether is too short. Like she’s told me over and over again. I wonder what the hell she’s tethered to? NYC? Fashion? Jean-Luc? Take your pick. Lauren is tethered to religion.
120
I know it’s weird to crush on homely and old-ladyish, but mostly I just like the fact that Lauren looks nothing like the girls in my school. She looks one-of-a-kind pretty. She also looks like she needs to be rescued. Like she’s helpless on her own. So pathetic. Maybe the only person more pathetic than me.
121
I read on the Internet that the US military employs euphemism to make it easier to kill people. Military men and women shoot “targets,” not people, and blow up “targets,” not buildings full of women and children. So I employ that little bit of wisdom here. I will shoot a “target” and not a former friend/current classmate. You might think using euphemism is dumb, but you’d be surprised how much it helps to calm the nerves and ease the conscience. It really works.
122
For completely different reasons.
123
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot—full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” That’s William Shakespeare on the type of nothing I DON’T want. I gleaned that little nugget of anti-life-affirming wisdom from last year’s English class, when I had to memorize Macbeth’s soliloquy. Public school can be a real shot of lithium, let me tell you. It’s crazy the pessimistic shit we’re made to memorize in school and then carry around in our skulls for the rest of our lives.
124
Maybe a better word is oblivious. She was mentally absent in a way that might be perceived as enlightened or transcendent maybe to the untrained eye, but really she had this disguised sham blind-eye head-in-the-clouds type of defense mechanism at work, which maybe fostered Asher’s sense of entitlement and general disregard for the emotional well-being of others—even his best friend at the time. Like one time we were in a T.G.I. Fridays–type restaurant and Asher kept pouring his soda into the huge clay pot of a palm tree close to our table and then raising his glass in the air and demanding endless refills from the waitress, yelling, “More soda!” across the joint. And even though Mrs. Beal must have seen him pouring the soda into the palm tree pot—everyone in the restaurant did, I know because people were shaking their heads by the end of our meal—Asher’s mom didn’t tell him to knock it off or even acknowledge what he was doing in any way at all. She just let him abuse the waitress, who was young and too busy (and maybe too dumb) to argue or do anything but bring Asher endless Cokes. He seemed to delight in abusing the waitress. He smiled and smiled like a boy king, and I hated him on that day even more than I usually hated him back then in junior high. When he turned evil, he really turned evil. It was like something inside him broke and could never be repaired again. He never used to be like that when we were in elementary school, before what happened began and changed everything.
125
Other than what I’ve heard on elevators.
126
It’s funny how much I simultaneously like and hate the fact that Mrs. Beal sings, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.
127
Which just may mute her singing forever.
128
This might sound weird, but watching Mrs. Beal sing reminds me of the Dickens Christmas Carol display they put up in the city every December. You walk through Victorian England peeping through the windows of miniature houses on fake cobblestone streets lit with gas lamps—and I’m pretty sure the little wooden people sing at some point—as you follow around the three ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future through the life of the miserly miserable Scrooge until he has his change of heart and it’s all Merry Christmas and huge-ass turkeys and God bless us every one. My dad took me to Dickens Village once when I was in junior high and therefore too old for such a kid-ish father-son event. He was too high to notice that all the other sons and daughters there were less than four feet tall. He was also too high to notice that he was kind of staggering bleary-eyed and everyone was staring at him. Ironically, my dad was a big fan of Christmas. It always got the bastard feeling sentimental, which forced him to do even more drugs and drink—two of his favorite activities.
129
Why is it that great guys almost always let you down just as soon as you start to believe in them? Is that a rule of the universe or something? WTF?
130
The trigger reminds me of a frozen snake’s tongue.
131
This is what used to happen when I was alone with Asher in his bedroom too—I’d just sort of detach and float above as what happened happened. And for a while that was enough to protect me from feeling too bad. It was like what was happening was happening to someone else, while I floated safely with my back against the ceiling and my eyes closed.
132
The news world will make me instantly famous for sure, and what is fame if it isn’t power and popularity?
133
I remember that happening suddenly. I do. It’s a real memory. Where did it come from?
134
Mostly because I’d be too afraid of what people would say about me if they deduced just who it was that took the photo and then, therefore, would know I was watching Asher through his bedroom window. “Why?” they’d ask me. Explaining the reason to übermorons would be worse than death any day. And Asher would definitely incriminate me if that picture ever got out. He’d drag me down with him for sure. Offer me up to the übermorons like a sacrifice. They’d believe whatever he said too, because he’s more like them than I am.
135
It makes me think about how Hamlet had the chance to kill Claudius while he was praying, but didn’t since Claudius had just made peace with god, asked for god’s forgiveness, and therefore was eligible for entrance into heaven, as Lauren will tell you. So Hamlet waited for a time when Claudius was sinning. Would Hamlet have killed Claudius if he had found him jerking off like Asher? For some reason, I don’t think so, which makes me feel better. Who could kill someone while they were jerking off? It seems impossible. I bet Hamlet would have laughed if he found his father’s murderer rubbing one out. How could you not laugh?
136
And given what public school teachers are paid, this is really saying something.
137
It sounds so weird to be saying the word kill to my Holocaust teacher—admitting that I actually attempted to kill a classmate. Allowing the words to exist in the two or so feet between Herr Silverman and me—it feels surreal. It makes me realize how crazy I was earlier—how crazy I’ve been. I’m simultaneously freaked out and relieved. Fucked but freed, if that makes any sense at all. Reminds me of what Herr Silverman says about doubling in his Holocaust class.
138
It’s funny because we never used Bogart hats before yesterday, but somehow I understand that his putting the hat on is symbolic—a sign that we are about to talk in code. Walt and I have something going on that’s hard to explain. We understand each other. We just do. And I love that so much. Good-guy pheromones.