The Hidden Lives of Virgins

by Chris Lewis Gibson

Virgins in Town

C H A P T E R

O N E

AILEEN FOSTER TRIED TO BRACE herself.
All that summer Martina had been going on about how things had to change and
how they would. Last week, after saving up all summer for her daughter’s warbrobe, Aileen
had said to her, “We’ll go shopping for your Back-To-School clothes on Sunday. After Mass.”
But Tina had shook her head and said, “I’ll go shopping. I saved some money up.”
This had perplexed Aileen, but she’d told Tina, “Well, I’ll just give you the money
and you can get what you want.”
“No, Mother. I don’t think so,” Tina shook her head. “It’s your money, and I’m
going to buy things I don’t think you’d like. Nothing slutty. Just... you’d hate it.”
Aileen opened her mouth to protest, but Tina had said, “Trust me, Mother.”
She didn’t say Mama with a winsome smile the way Ashley did. Martina’s tone was
all business and not open for debate. Trust me.
So the first time Aileen had braced herself was when Tina did come home with the
clothes.
“Where from?”
“Goodwill. And the Episcopalian church was having a bazaar.”
“Aileen reached into a bag and pulled out a white, frilled blouse that looked like it
had been donated by a pirate’s wench. Then she examined a leather vest.
“I certainly hope you plan on washing these before you wear them.”
“I do. See, Mother,” she said, gently taking the suede vest from the other woman’s
hands, “why I told you that I would spend my own money?”
“Well you can still have the money I saved for you,” Aileen said.
“Put it in my account. For when I really need it.”
“Like prom?”
Raising an eyebrow, Tina turned to her mother.
“You’re joking, right?” she;d said.

Aileen was standing in the kitchen combing out her long blond hair, whitish blond,
touched with honey brown. The kitchen was a mess. Tina would simply have to clean it
when she got home. Or one of the other kids. Kenzie maybe. Mackenzie pelted down the
steps.
“Is your sister finished yet?” Aileen demanded.
“No, Mom. Have a good day, Mom. Love you Mom.”
The door opened and swung shut behind him.
Aileen was not entirely sure what her fifteen year old looked liked anymore. She had
meant to ask him to clean the kitchen. At the table Ross began to twitch.
“Oh, honey, knock that off. You know I can’t take it right now.”
Ross Foster, unapologetic, twitched on.
Aileen looked from her son to the empty stairway leading down to the kitchen. The
footsteps were deliberate. Tina was about to make her appearance.
Last night, after dinner, Tina had announced the need to go see her grandmother.
Aileen, having grown up in Ida Lawry’s house, thought that sending her already crazed eldest
daughter down to the house on Windham Street with her mother and two aunts was like
sending Macbeth to the heath to have a chat with the three witches. Tina had returned late,
with a look of triumph on her face.
“Did your grandmother have anything to say to me?” Aileen asked. She was sitting in
the kitchen smoking a cigarette.
“No,” Tina said breezily, heading up the stairs with the bag of whatever Ida and her
sisters had given her.

“Martina Renee Foster,” Aileen pronounced the name as her daughter came into the
kitchen.
Ross stopped twitching and shouted out, “Goddamn motherfucker!” and then
clapped his hands over his mouth.
“Shit fuck!” he shouted again.
Aileen ignored him.
Tina’s lips, black with lipstick, smiled beatifically. She took out her Marlboro Reds
and lit one, taking a long drag and then blowing smoke out. She was shorter than her
mother. Her very long once luxuriantly blond hair was blue-black. She was wearing hip
hugger red felt bellbottoms and rainbow colored flip flops. She held a macrame hand bag in
one hand, her book bag in the other and was wearing the pirate blouse.
“How do I look?”
“Like you’re dressed to go to hell.”
It was then that Aileen realized that Tina was wearing a roasry around her neck.
“That’s exactly where I’m going,” Tina said, taking another drag, “but don’t worry. I
graduate from in June.”
“Well, they’ll never think you’re Ashley’s twin now,” Aileen said as her daughter
headed out the door.
Tina grinned as the storm door shut behind her and said, “That’s kind of what I was
looking for.”

WHEN MADELEINE FITZGERALD AND CLAUDIA Daniels saw Martina the first time,
the two Black girls had to look twice at the sight, and then a third time when they realized it
was their friend.
She parked the old red LTD in the place closest to the football field and then, seeing
the look on her friend’s faces, Tina started to shimmy toward them, blowing out smoke and
and shaking her titties.
“Oh, my God,” Madeleine said as Claudia offered a hand to Tina to help her climb
up the bleechers.
“What are we watching, ladies?” Tina said in her husky voice.
“Girl, you!” said Claudia. “You look crazy as hell.”
“I like it,” Madeleine said.
“You would,” Claudia told her cousin.
“Thank you, Maddy,” said Tina. “care for a morning ciggy?” she offered up her
Marlboros.
“It’s the only way to start the day.”
Coach Foster--Tina’s father, blew the whistle. Young men in white ran across the field
and pummeled a dummy. Tina blew out smoke.
“So how’s Rodder playing out there?” Tina asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Madeleine said.
“What I’m talking about, bitch,” Tina exhaled, “is why would we be out here
watching the football team practice--and at seven forty-five in the blessed fucking morning, if
you weren’t checking out Rodder Gonzales?”
Madeleine shook out her thick, black hair and said to her friend, “How do you know
I’m not looking at Bone Mc.Arthur?”
None of the girls could hold a straight face then.

Kevin blew the whistle again. His mind was not always with him recently. Aileen tended to
say it had never been with him. For a brief second he was caught up in what an amazing blue
the sky was this morning and... Why the hell were they practicing night and morning? And...
the girls on the bleechers. That weird one with the cigarette, crossing her legs.
If she were my daughter... Kevin thought and shouted, dropping the whistle from his
lips and clapping, “Rush! Rush!”
There were two assistant coaches and this year he’d left selection up to them, for
ethic’s sake. Ryan was a freshman, and Kevin couldn’t have selected his own son for his
team.
Ryan--right over there making fast friends with some of the older guys--would be one
hell of a quarterback, was build like a brick. He looked more liek Kevin’s brother, Todd, than
like Kevin. Kevin admtited that in high shcool he’d had brains and been a good athlete. He’d
managed to fuck that up by the time he was sixteen. In the house on :Logan Street, though,
all the gifts had been divided up among three boys. Mackenzie had been athletic, still was a
little, but had no interest in football. He was the brain and the heartbreaker--a little unfair.
Ryan would be the jock and a bit of a heartbreaker himself. Ryan had gotten the weirdness.
All he could do was twitch and stare. To make matters worse, Ryan was the only boy who
looked just like him. Ryan had his father’s sharp, elven features and his blue eyes. Kevin
would come downstairs in the morning to see his own image smirking at him--Ryan always
smirked--and sitting there saying ,”Look at me, Dad. I’m fucked up.”
Kevin blew the whistle. He seemed to be all there. No one knew he wasn’t. People
did not know that around the football coach’s head the world twirled very ,very slowly, and
tilted... just a little bit.

CEDRIC FITZGERALD OPENED HIS EYES TO THE MORNING. Through his open
window he could hear Kevin Foster’s whistle blowing on the football field. He lay in bed a
little longer before turning to the clock. It was not yet eight.
Of late Cedric’s joints were not saying kind things when they talked to him as he
rose. This morning to celebrate the departure of the children for another nine months he had
not made breakfast or gotten up on time.
Now he climbed out of bed naked as birth, reached for his Pall Malls, took one out
and lit it. He inhaled. And it was good.
Cedric stood at the window, watching the would be football players, white ants on
the green, chalk marked grass, watching Kevin Foster blow his whistle, wathcing the sun rise
behind the expanse of Jamnia High School.
“Goddamn,” he said, belching out white smoke and scratching his balls, “Another
day.”

For Vaughan William Alexander Fitzgerald, the last four years of school had been as much a
trial for him as pronouncing his name. Things had been fine up until about fifth grade. It
had begun in fourth grade when girls began to hate him for no apparent reason, and then he
had gone myopic and had to put on glasses, another downfall. And then the frequent trips to
the ice cream truck, paid for negligently by his father, had taken their toll. Not much of a toll,
but in childhood, any excuse to call another child a fatass will do.
And it did.
And he was bookish and uncoordinated. Life at Our Lady of Jamnia Catholic School
had been bearable at best, a misery on most days. To his credit, it had never driven him to
tears. Very little ever did.
And Vaughan had been blessed with a brain and so he didn’t have to work very hard.
Still, he wasn’t valedictorian of his class. That went to Mackenzie Foster who was handsome,
intelligent, kind, gentle, athletic, everything a boy should be, everything a girl could have a
crush on, everything you wanted in a friend.
He was Vaughan’s best friend.
Sometimes Vaughan hated his best friend.
Mackenzie had never been awkward or uncoordinated. He had never had to struggle
for attention. Girls talked about how hot he was--how could a thirteen year old be hot!--and all
the guys listened to whatever he said. When he was captain of teams in gym he was always
kind and picked his uncoordinated best friend first--which Vaughan was grateful for, and at
the same time heartily resentful, and when he wasn’t captain he was always first pick by
whoever was. And Vaughan languished until Mackenzie went up and whispered to whoever
was captain, and then Vaughan was called to that team.
The good thing about high school was that there was only one in town, and it was
public and most of the kids at Our Lady of Jamnia were going to be shipped across the river
to Indiana to attend either Saint Xavier for boys or Saint Mary’s for the girls. The families
with lots of money were going to send their kids to Uz, Ohio where there was, admittedly,
not much, but there was Saint Micheal’s Men’s College Prep and Saint Anne’s, run by the
Sisters of Notre Dame.
Out of the whole class of forty-eight it would be Vaughan, Mackenzie, Joe Patalca and
two very pimply faced girls who would go to Jamnia High School.
“I’m glad they’re out of our life,” Mackenzie said one afternoon in his bedroom.
“They were all a bunch of snobs,”
Vaughan thought his friend was incredibly naive.
“They loved you,” he told Mackenzie.
Mackenzie smiled sadly and turned his blue eyed gaze on his best friend, “Vaughan,
they didn’t love anybody.”
Then Mackenzie leapt up from the bed, shook his dorky friend by the shoulders and
told him, “Oh, Vaughan! High school will be so much better! It really will. You’ll see. It’ll be
the time!”
Vaughan had hoped a little bit that Mackenzie was right.
But only a little.
And freshman year had proven how wise that small hope had been.

Freshman year:
It had begun with insult added to injury. Cedric had never been solicitous of his
sons’ wardrobe. In fact he had never had to be since Vaughan was in Catholic school, but
now the boy was treated to all manner of taunts and ridicules. His jeans were not only the
wrong sort, they were rolled, which was hopelessly out of style. His shirts were ugly. His hair
was horrible. He talked like a book. Black people said he wasn’t Black enough. White people
agreed. He faced being stuffed in a locker once or twice. Football players made fun of him. So
did cheerleaders.
The only hope for him was to join the band--where everyone was a disgrace.
“I wish you would,” Mackenzie said.
“I can’t play an instrument.”
“You could do the triangle.”
Vaughan just looked at his friend through his glasses..
“I was actually serious,” Mackenzie said.
“I know.”
And Vaughan couldn’t figure our where Mackenzie had learned to play an instrument
either. What’s more, being on the band did not make him less popular though Coach Foster
was a little upset his son did not try out for the football team.
And then there was Coach Foster. It was not his fault that he was the gym teacher, it
was just that gym was even worse for Vaughan than math and it was dreadful to be under a
man who was his best friend’s father. Mercifully, Mackenzie was not in this class with
Vaughan. It all had to do with what times math and foreign language classes took place.
Mackenzie was taking French and he was in Algebra. Vaughan was in remedial math, taking
Latin. So they wouldn’t see each other much that year.
What Vaughan had was his sister, who was an outcast in a whole other way. Dating
the quarterback, beautiful and glamourous, Madeleine Fitzgerald was an outcast. He had
Claudia who had cast herself out and Tina who had done the same and seemed doomed to
live in the shadow of her sister.
Ashley was no outcast.
Nor was she worth talking about, and so they didn’t.
However, due to the advanced math class on Mackenize’s part, extreme loneliness on
the part of Vaughan, and learning how to cheat a little when it suited him, Vaughan learned
at the end of his freshman year that he had the highest GPA by far in his class. Some boy he
didn’t know was a distant second. Fourth place was held by Mackenzie.
“I’m so proud of you!” Mackenzie said, shaking his friend, which made Vaughan
ashamed for feeling triumphant.
The year came to an end with high school as bad as ever, Vaughan a laughing stock,
though a brilliant one, who’d narrowly missed being shut in lockers by basketball players. He
was sitting on the large front porch of the Fitzgerald house, Coke bottle glasses down his
nose, raspberry colored Argyle socks pulled up to his knees, and looking to his right, to the
high school across the field when he made a discovery. Vaughan at the age of fifteen learned
what most people never learned at all. It wasn’t high school or any other thing or place that
would change him or how people looked at him. It was all him.
And now he was about to change his image.

He and Mackenzie went with Tina that day to buy her wardrobe and after Tina had treated
herself to an assortment of oddities, they went to shop for Vaughan. As they drove away from
the Goodwill in the battered red LTD, Tina lowered her shades and said to Vaughan, “Do
you know what you’re looking for?”
“I know exactly what I’m looking for.”
“Should we go to Marshall Fields or--”
Vaughan shook his head. “We can get it all at Target.”
Tina lowered her glasses, smiled at Vaughan and said, “That’s why I love you.”
Vaughan marched into the store, picked up a red basket and made his way through
shaving and hygiene, and then picked up Hawaiian shirts, button down shirts, solid, brilliant
violent colors all of them. Slacks, cargo pants, he even bought underwear. The thong kind
because it looked cool and he was tired of these tired briefs. He bought shades, and then he
bought a thin glass frame, popped out his Coke bottles lenses and stuck them in those.
“How do I look?” he smiled.
“Triumphant,” Tina replied.
Mackenzie nodded.
Vaughan had already bought silk shirts out of style for thirty years and double
pocketed yellow and sky blue bowling shirts, one white shirt with blue blossoms running up
and down it at the rummage sale.
“What are you planning to do?” Mackenzie asked him as he stuffed that shirt into a
bag.
“Look like no one else will look.”
Mackenzie nodded. He had settled for looking like everyone else wanted to look.
After Target Vaughan bought two shirts with dragons running up and down their
lapels and one shirt with bright yellow bell peppers going up and down along the button
holes. Then, for added pizazz, bandannas: yellow, navy, bright blue, violent red.
“It’s like getting ready for a parade,” he said and smiled.
After he checked out, Tina told her brother and her friend to go to the car. She came
back a few minutes later with a smile and handed Vaughan a pack of Lucky Strikes.
“Tina!” Mackenzie protested., moving to snatch away the cigarettes. But Vaughan
beat him to the punch.
“The transformation’s just not complete unless you do,” she said. And to illustrate
she took a cigarette out and lit one herself.
She had been blond then.
Tina’s soft knock on Mackenzie’s door the night before school prompted a
whispered, “Come in,” from him.
In the opening and shutting of the door a line of light briefly crossed the room. Tina
came to sit on the bed smelling of Grandma Ida’s perfume and four different types of
cigarette smoke.
“Did I wake you?” Tina asked.
“No. I was just trying to sleep. No luck.”
“Wanna see?”
“See what?”
“The new me?”
“What?”
Tina reached over her brother and turned on the light.
“Oh my--” Mackenzie started, but Tina put a hand over his mouth.
When she had removed it he said, “Your hair!”
“I know,” Tina nodded smiling.
“What... the... I don’t,”
“Grandma gave me the dye. I told her and Aunt Meg and Aunt Annie I had to have
black hair.”
“But it was so pretty before.”
“But blond is so played out.”
“Thanks,” Mackenzie said wryly.
Tina smiled with equal sarcasm and said, “Except with you, Kenzie. Everything is
lovely on you.”
“I know.” Then he said, “This is so you can be totally different from Ash. Isn’t it?”
“This is so I can be totally different from everybody.”
“But especially from Ash.”
“Has it ever occured to you that Vaughan is doing the same thing?” Tina said.
“Vaughan just wants to change his image.”
“And be different from everybody else?”
“He already is.”
“And be different from you.”
“What?” Mackenzie sat up in bed.
“I can’t believe you didn’t even think about that. He decided to evolve in the
complete opposite direction that you did. You dress out of Abercrombie and Fitch magazines.
You wear Banana Republic to bed. You’re a catalogue for Aeropostale and American Eagle
Outfitters. You’re hip.”
The look on Mackenzie’s face was tragic.
“It’s no sin,” Tina said. “But for those of us who don’t carry off hip well... counter
hip is a hell of an option.”
Tina got up and flicked out the light.
“Good night, little brother,” she said.

So on the morning of the first day of their sophomore year Mackenzie rushed over to the
Fitzgeralds’ to see what Vaughan had turned up in.
“Oh, my God, you’re so cool!” he cried out, shaking his best friend. “You’re like New
York!”
“Only it’s Jamnia, Ohio” Vaughan said, grabbing his Lucky Strikes and slipping them
into the breast pocket of his black shirt.
“Let’s roll, Tonto,” said Vaughan, He closed the old door to the house and
Mackenzie turned around to straighten his shirt and pat down his hair, looking at his
reflection.
“Your gorgeous. As always, Abercrombie Boy,” Vaughan said.
“I wish you and Tina would stop saying stuff like that.”
“What?”
The two boys, completely unalike, plodded down the steps of the house and, heading
out the gate, turned right on Micheal Street.
“Like that I’m an Abercrombie-holic and that I’m trendy and pretty and stuff like
that.”
“And don’t forget popular,” Vaughan said in a tired voice.
“Vaughan!”
“What? There’s nothing wrong with being trendy and popular. You’ve always been
trendy and popular and I’ve always been... me.”
Mackeznie stopped, jamming his hands into the pockets of his white trousers.
“Kenzie,” Vaughan said.
“Do you hate me?”
“Because you’re so beautiful?”
Mackenzie went red and said, “No. Seriously. Do you-- not resent me. I mean, do
you... ever hate me?”
“No,” Vaughan said loudly, hoping Mackenzie would not pick up on how loud a
protest that was.
He didn’t.
“Good,” he smiled. It was a dazzling smile. You couldn’t hate him because it was
natural with him. “Because you’re my best friend. You know that don’t you?”
Vaughan pushed his glasses up his nose and nodded.
“Yes, Mackenzie. I know.”
What Mackenzie also needed to know is that Vaughan’s new tactic would work.
“What do you mean?” Vaughan said as they approached the long walkway to their
school. “I wanted to change. I wanted to be me. Now I am.”
“The new you?”
“No. The me that has been buried under Argyles and bad fashion, smoldering to
come out for fifteen years. I’m coming out today. Everyone has a You,” Vaughan said, “deep
inside that needs to come out.”
Mackenzie nodded and smiled.
“What’s the YOU in Mackenzie that hasn’t come out, yet?”
“Vaughan, you’re nuts. You know everything about me.”
“Nobody knows everything,” Vaughn differed. “Not even about themselves.”
Vaughan took out a cigarette and lit it, and Andrew Long--the basketball player that
had referred to him as a “Gay-ass-sissy” last year looked at him, shocked.
Vaughan grinned at him and asked, “What the fuck are you looking at, bitch?”
Andrew Long stared at him, screwed his mouth up to say something, and then,
confounded, turned his head went through the glass doors into school.
“Oh, my God,” Mackenzie said, “My heart was pounding cause I thought we going to
have to fight.”
“My heart was pounding cause I wanted to fight,” Vaughan discovered, smiling
brightly. Thne he took a reflective drag on his cigarette and murmured, “I’m so glad I
brought my switch blade.”
“Are you serious? You are serious,” Mackenzie realized.
Vaughan nodded.
“You’re also mental,” Mackenzie mumbled. Suddenly he knew that things were going
to be very different this year.

Sometimes Vaughan scares me when he talks. It’s like he says more than he’s saying and I
wonder if he knows more than he lets on. But then I remember he never plays games. He’s
one of the only people I know--except my sister--who doesn’t dance around stuff.
This is information not for public consumption: I don’t know I’m popular unless
people tell me, and when I am, I’m not comfortable with it. It doesn’t really mean anything. I
remember back in Catholic school, the kids who thought they were the stuff because people
told them they were. But how can you be something just because someone tells you you’re it?
How can you be “cool” or “not cool” just because a bunch of seventh graders tell you that you
are? So I could never believe it. I couldn’t beleive it then. Or now.
See, what Vaughan doesn’t know is that I’m more like him than he thinks. I don’t
turn my head at every compliment or insult people throw at me. And they do throw insults
sometimes.
Really, to tell the truth, the ones who really insult me are the ones I care about, the
ones that ought to know me. I know he doesn’t mean it, but when he says things about me
being pretty and trendy and all that stuff it hurts. It’s like he’s judging me cause I know he
could so the same thing but he always chose not too. And Tina does the same thing. She’s
Ashley’s identical twin, but sometimes I feel like I’m the one that’s like Ashley, wearing the
best clothes and all that. And I don’t feel like I should be guilty for liking clothes or even... or
even liking being liked, liking being popular. But sometimes I feel like they look down on me
for it. And then I also get mad.
Sometimes I want to say--Vaughan, you think you know everything! But what he
doesn’t know is that--really--he’s my only friend. Except for Tina. Vaughan’s like my brother
and Tina’s like my best friend. It’s weird. And they make me mad sometimes. But I know I
could tell them anything.
And I start to think that maybe I might have to tell them something...
Soon.

Mackenzie, proud of his friend’s new status, strutted behind him into the huge cafeteria.
“Um hum hum,” Ty Matthison, shook his wave capped head from a table full of
wave caps and sidecocked caps, “Thank he white, don’t he?”
Vaughan stopped on his way to the line, and turned around. Mackenzie made to
catch his arm, but Vaughan found the table, wedged himself between Stephen Brook and
Rashim Elwood and leaned across the table to Ty Matthison.
“Excuse me?” he said politely.
“What?” Ty sounded surly.
“I believe you said something to me.”
“Man I didn’t say nathan’.”
“Actually no you didn’t say nathan. What you said was something. Not sumthin;,
some thing about Me? What was it, exactly? I might have missed it.”
The table was quiet. Mackenzie swallowed all the words shooting up from the nerves
in his back.
Ty Matthison looked up at Mackenzie and then at Vaughan, “He yo bodygaurd?”
“Um hum,” said Vaughn. “Did you bring your’s.”
Ty looked amazed, then he sat back and tried to laugh it off, mumbling, “Dude, I
didn’t say nothin’. You trippin’. I didn’t say nothin’.”
“No,” Vaughan agreed. “You really didn’t.” He stood up.
“And by the way, the phrase is:“I didn’t say anything. You’re not in a ghetto, so don’t
act like you are.” Vaughan looked up and down the table full of black faces and smiled, “That
is all. Gentlemen. Ladies, have a good day.”
He raised his hands and left.
“They’re just as bad as those cheerleaders and football players over there,” Vaughan
muttered to his friend as they headed to the cafeteria line, “only they have credit cards and
SUVs and these tired niggahs don’t even have a pot to piss in!”
“Vaughan!” Madeleine was in line with Tina.
“Where y’all sitting? Or aren’t we good enough for you?”
“Well, we’re sitting at that corner table where we can malign everyone who walks in,”
Madeleine said. “And no--you’re not good enough for us--”
“But you can join us anyway,” Tina said.
“What about Leslie,” Mackenzie looked to the table full of happy blond people
Vaughan had just pointed at.
“Oh,” Tina looked at her little sister, who was throwing back her head and
laughing--Mackenzie’s own twin-- “that bitch can never sit with me. Not even at home.”

ON THE OPPOSITE END OF the cafeteria, a round faced pale boy who looked delicate and
guarded, but not unhandsome, was bringing his tray to a table. He was skinny and nervous
looking and had very intense blue eyes that often seemed like they would burn away the rest
of him. Roy Cane placed his tray on the table across from a boy who both like and unlike
him. This was his cousin, Ian Cane, darker complected and every bit as weedy and guarded
in some ways, but always angry about something and ever smelling of cigarette smoke. Roy
wanted to be Ian, and would die before he told his cousin that. Ian was scraggly with hairy
arms and legs. He liked to wear black shades. His eyes were so brown they were almost black,
and his hair was wild and spiky. Roy wanted the little little triangle of beard his cousin had
taken great pains to grow.
Ian didn’t wear underwear most of the time.
Just to be defiant.
Ian was currently looking across the cafeteria. Roy’s gaze followed his cousin’s.
Finally Roy said, “What are we watching?”
“Them.”
“Who?”
The guys in the corner on the other side of the cafeteria.”
Roy watched a little and bit into his apple. He frowned it was too waxy.
“Why are we watching them?”
“Because I have gone to this school for two years. This is my third, and I have never
seen anyone in here worth watching, and now they are worth watching.”
“Are they new?”
“No, not really. But the Black guy. I don’t remember him being... the way he is this
year. I wasn’t even sure who he was. But I think that’s Vaughan Fitzgerald.”
“Is he cool?”
“I think he is now. But not like clicuey cool. It’s a Don’t-Fuck-With-Me cool. Like the
girl with the black hair.”
“What about the other one?”
“I don’t know her, but I think she’s Vaughan’s sister--she should be popular.”
“What about the guy? He looks like a jock or something.”
“Oh,” Ian said, his voice losing all life. “That’s Mackenzie Foster.”
“Who.”
“Just a guy. I’m in band with him.”
“They look like a bunch of outcast. Except for the Mackenzie guy,” Roy said.
“They are,” said Ian. He thought, “They should be over here. Or we should be with
them! But this would give Roy a complex on his first day of school, doom him to be a loser.
“So,” Ian took his apple and polished it before biting into it--“how do you like high
school so far?”
Roy hung his head and said, “It sucks. Does it get better?”
Ian shook his head and crunched into the apple.
“Nope.” he said, and kept munching.

Mackenzie was at the head of the gossiping knot leaving the cafeteria.
“What’s up after school?” Vaughan said.
“Band, remember?” said Mackenzie.
“Oh shit.”
“Well that means you won’t be at the Linus Roache Fan Club meeting,” said
Vaughan.
“I’ll be late is all. You know--the band must play on and this is the year that Dad
wants to win the championship.”
“Whatever” muttered Tina.
“We always loose against Bashan,” Madeleine said, picking up a candy on the way
out of the cafeteria.
“We will have the same wonderful meeting.” Mackenzie insisted, “I’ll just be late.
And-- Oh--!” Mackenzie crashed into someone’s back.
It was Ian Cane.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into--you all.” Roy had turned around too.
“It’s alright,” said Ian.
“I’m really--”
Ian put out a hand.
“It’s alright. Come on, Roy,” he added darkly, and then they went down the hall.
Mackenzie took in a breath.
“One of my fellow band members.”
“He was weird as hell,”
“He hates me,” Mackenzie said.
Tina shrugged.
“Okay, probably not hates, but... I don’t think Ian Cane likes anyone.”
Before Tina could say anything, Mackenzie said, “Yes I know--who cares?”
“Exactly,” Tina nodded.

Sometimes I get the feeling someone’s looking at me? You know? The paranoia. But there’s
another paranoia, the one where you are afraid someone knows you looking at them.
That’s the way I feel about Ian Cane. I get this vibe from him that he knows I see him
in band, that he knows I see him in the cafeteria and that I wonder about him and that this is
why he is the way he is.
Vaughan would say, “And how is he?”
And I would answer that I don’t know. I just get this feeling--you know--how when
you see someone, and you’re like: ‘ This person would hate me’ or ‘this person hates
everybody.’ That’s the feeling I get from him. He’s a junior and he plays the trombone and
he smokes a lot and doesn’t have a lot of friends because I guess other people feel the same
way about him that I do. They’re afraid of him. He’s not big or vicious. He just looks like,
“Hey, I don’t have time for this shit.” like he would be friends with Vaughan.
And the thing is-- I don’t get why I care. I don’t get why I would devote time to this
person. I have made eye contact with Ian Cane--I think-- twice. And he’s one of those people
who--when they catch your eye they’ll turn away. Or he’ll turn away before he can look at you.
You know what? I’m the paranoid one. And I’m the obsessed one.
He doesn’t hate me.
He doesn’t even know I’m alive.
I get obsessed about a lot. I’m talking too much. Sometimes I space out. My sister or
Vaughan or my mtoher will tell me I blank out--the way my Dad does. I have his eyes, they
say. They get all blue and vacant and they sort of turn inward. my mind doesn’t blank
though. It starts racing. It starts thinking all of these things.
The thing my mind thinks a lot about lately is becoming a man.
Physically I am one. I don’t think anyone notices that, though. The thing I notice
about it more than anything , and don’t really tell to anyone is how in the old days it seems
like my mind would explode with desire. Just my mind. My thoughts would be wild and
weird. But pretty innocent. To me at least. Now It feels like my body’s going to burst, like all
of me is about to explode. I am not the man that I thought I’d turn out to be.
I wonder if Vaughan’s like that? I don’t know how to ask. I should. I don’t think he
is. I don’t see Vaughan with anyone... ever. I see myself... not alone. I couldnt’ be alone. I
don’t feel like the altar boy I am when I say that I’m going to need to have sex. My body feels
like that now, all on fire and electric.
When I see Ian in band, he’s actually the only person there I would like to know.
He’s got a little triangle of beard and these intense dark eyes and spiky black hair; and he
wears faded jeans that fit close. I don’t think he wears underwear. I heard that somewhere.
And I want to go up and ask him if he ever feels... the Crackle. I bet if anyone does he does.
And I bet if anyone shouldn’t I shouldn’t. Good old white bread, anal retentive, dress
up out of a catalogue altar-boy--- Mackenzie Allyn Foster.

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Helen,
I was going to link your site and James' to mine as soon as I heard from you guys, and then you told me you were putting me up on yours, so I was like... oh, well, isn't that fun? If you want a better looking version of the story then its at jamnia.blogspot.com.

P.S. I went to read superpsych and was going through the comments. I didn't know deleted_ COULD be reported. My friend came up to visit and was looking through his articles and she said, "He lives right here in Indiana. No, he lives near me in Indianapolis! Small world."

I know.... too small.

-- Chris

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