Charmed Thirds (2 page)

I just tried Marcus on my cell. Topher, one of his “cottage-mates,” told me he was out “cleansing.” He told me this the way other roommates at other schools would say someone is out getting shitfaced. Marcus’s world is so foreign to me that I can’t help but feel that the person who inhabits it is a stranger. I love when I reach Marcus on the phone and as he says hello, I can hear the music he’s listening to in the background. That music is the sound of him without me. How he surrounds himself when I’m not there, which is almost all the time.

And will be for three more years.

the seventh

I’m sitting in the room that was my bedroom for the first eighteen years of my life. It’s still called my room but it really isn’t my room anymore despite all the evidence to the contrary. The John Hughes movie posters are curling up at the corners yet are still mostly stuck to the bruise-colored walls. The plaques and trophies with my name inscribed in celebratory script still topple over one another on the shelves. And the framed mosaic of Hope and me—made by the artist herself and given to me on the day she moved, eighteen days before my sixteenth birthday—is still in its showcase spot over my bed. When packing for college, I intentionally left these things behind in Pineville, just so I could return to someplace that felt like home.

But after nine months at school, I’m seeing this room and its contents as through a haze of psychological, if not actual, dust. It’s like examining the artifacts found at an archaeological dig, where I can study the CD player on which Jessica Darling once listened to Morrissey, or the desk at which she once completed her college applications. The carpet on which she once failed to twist herself into impossible positions during her brief flirtation with yoga, or the skinny bed on which she once succeeded in twisting herself into the very quietest of possible sexual positions with her boyfriend while her parents sat downstairs on opposite sides of the ultrasuede couch watching a Tom Hanks movie.

And yet, my dorm room, which was decorated in much the same way, isn’t my room anymore either. I’m a refugee, one seeking asylum from my niece Marin’s first birthday party.

Make that her
second
first birthday party. My parents insisted on throwing a soiree for Marin’s “New Jersey friends.” Bethany and G-Money failed to persuade any city folk to come out to our “house in the country,” a seventies bilevel in a bilevel/split-level subdivision that my mom describes as possessing “a retro charm, with every modern amenity” when talking it up to her real estate associates. That means the architectural ugliness is redeemed only by new wood siding, extensive landscaping, and upgraded kitchen and baths.

But Jersey being Jersey, nothing could lure the New York City hipocracy that make up B&G’s social circle, not even their offer to charter a luxury bus equipped with TVs for every seat, all tuned to Nick Jr. (They could afford such an extravagance now that they’re conspicuously rich again, as five new Papa D’s Donuts/Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe drive-throughs are already in the black. Not that they were ever
poor,
even after a dot-bomb comeuppance.) They ended up hosting a party last weekend for Marin’s “New York friends,” one dozen Benetton babies from Brooklyn’s hippest family-friendly neighborhoods, all dressed in miniature versions of their parents’ outfits. Girls: Lilly Pulitzer sundresses. Boys: seersucker suits worn “ironically” with tiny Che Guevara T-shirts. In her first year of life, Marin has somehow managed to acquire more friends than I have in nineteen.

Equally disturbing was Marin’s insistence on having a Pinky the Poodle theme party, inspired by her favorite television program. Not only has this sunshine-blond, deep-dimpled one-year-old developed a definite preference for one cartoon character over another, but she can clearly express her love by screeching,
“PEE! POO! PEE! POO!”
The thought of this picture-perfect child embarrassing her mommy with these seemingly scatological outbursts makes me weep fewer tears about my losing battle to improve my niece’s intellectual fate.

In keeping with the theme, her grandparents (my parents) hired a neighborhood kid to dress up as the shopping-and-shoes-obsessed canine. The costume can be best described as a fifty-pound fur ball. It’s ninety-five degrees and chunky with humidity, so who can blame the kid for not showing up for this humiliation? And take one guess who’s the only one who fits into this fuzzy pink prison? Suffice it to say that Pinky’s trademark tap routine to her theme song (“I’m the Prettiest Quadruped!”) was less inspired than usual. Try as I might, I just couldn’t lift my weighty paws high enough.

“Do the kicks, Jessie—I mean Pinky!” my mother shouted from the sidelines. “One, two, three!”

“Boooooooooooooooooooooo!” the anklebiters wailed as they pelted me with Jelly Bellies.

“No! No! No!” Bethany chastised the toddlers with a wag of her finger. “We are
not
unkind to animals!”

Oh thank you, Bethany. Thank you.

Then she turned to me. “Come on, Pinky! Shake that tail of yours!” She twitched her juicy peach of an ass, almost obscenely perfect in a denim miniskirt. Often mistaken for Marin’s au pair, my sister is the textbook definition of a
MILF
. If I had it in me to lift my hind leg, I would’ve pissed on her.

My father was the only one who seemed concerned for my health. “Take it easy on her,” he said. “Jessie’s not in the peak physical condition she used to be, back when she was a serious athlete.” Christ. It’s been two years since I gave up competitive running, and he still can’t resist any opportunity to remind everyone of my deteriorating muscle mass. Of course, he himself was still spandexed and sweaty from a ninety-minute bike ride because dangerous weather is never a deterrent for one of his yellow-jersey jaunts around town.

And so, I wasn’t driven to my room (which doesn’t feel like my room) by the heckling or heat exhaustion or even anaphylactic shock from an allergy to synthetic poodle fur. I’m here because I had forgotten just how much I can simultaneously love and hate these people called my family. When I was at school, I kind of missed them. Not as actual people, but for their comfortable predictability. My dad always asks if I’m still wasting my time with my Psychology major or if I get bored clocking seven-minute miles around Columbia’s one-tenth of a mile indoor track. My mom always asks if every girl at school dresses like a lesbian. Bethany always asks if I’ve gone to some invitation-only velvet-roped club. G-Money always ignores me because he’s too busy coming up with new and creative ways to profit from the recession-proof futures market of American obesity.

I’ve gotten so used to these and similar familial annoyances that I wouldn’t know how to react if my family members didn’t play their parts. Plus, I’m always more forgiving of their flaws when I’m still in the thrall of the hygienic and nutritional comforts of home. Here, I not only have unlimited access to a washer and dryer but a willing laundress who skillfully separates the darks from the whites and folds them up for me when they’re finished. Here, the cabinets are stocked with genuine Cap’n Crunch—not the generic Colonel Crunchies bought by the ton at SaveCo. Here, the fridge overflows with Coke Classic.

But now that I’ve enjoyed a few weeks’ worth of April freshness and a steady intake of vitamins and minerals, it’s getting more difficult to overlook the tension created by what has been the most controversial subject in the household. Rather, it’s a nontopic, one so taboo that it never gets brought up at all, as is customary in the Darling household.

Only once Marin had been scooped up by her doting Granny Darling and swept across to the other side of the yard did Bethany break the silence.

“I’ve been dying to ask you,” Bethany said, flipping her golden hair, puckering and unpuckering her glossy lips. Sometimes I wonder if she realizes that she’s flirting with her own sister. “Did you win the money?”

That’s her way of asking if Marcus and I are still together. Only Bethany is brave enough to ask That Which Can’t Be Asked. And even she waits until my mom is out of earshot and hides behind a euphemism referring to the money up for grabs in the Breakup Pool. Since I didn’t document this (or anything else) for myself this year, I will explain the rules of said pool.

I was one of a few lucky first years to score a sunny, spacious single in Furnald, which is arguably the most beautiful, most conveniently located dorm on campus. Built in 1913, it was renovated less than ten years ago, so it’s both traditional (with its granite façade and soaring, crystal-chandeliered oak entry hall) and state-of-the-art (air-conditioned!). It’s got views of the campus action on one side and of Broadway’s hustle on the other. Furnald is also known as a bit of a party dorm, with each floor boasting an expansive lounge that lures even the most antisocial A-types away from their rooms with ample afternoon sunlight, cushy furniture, and free cable TV.

On my floor, there were fifteen first years and ten sophomores. It was quickly discovered that most of the first years on my floor were still involved in high school relationships. It wasn’t difficult to figure out who the ten were, as they (okay, by “they” I really mean “we” but I hate to admit to this type of behavior) often began sentences with the phrase, “My boyfriend/girlfriend . . .” As in “My boyfriend loves Coldplay, too!” Or “My boyfriend has a sweater like that, too!” Or “My boyfriend eats and sleeps and excretes waste, too!” Since no upperclassman would ever, ever,
ever
put a confining label like “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” on the person she/he was hooking up with on a semiregular basis, it was obvious that anyone making such a bold declaration of commitment was referring to a youthful union forged in the halls of her/his former high school.

The world-weary sophomores all looked at us with contempt. “You won’t make it through fall break,” they said. “And if you do, you’re just doing it to prove us wrong.”

Of course, we of the High School True Love Society were outraged. “We’re different!” we all said. “We’re not like the rest of them!”

Thus, the Breakup Pool was born. I can’t remember who came up with it first, but F-Unit perfected it. F-Unit is a group of guys all enrolled in the Fu School of Engineering, who want to break the stereotype that all engineering students are nerds. Of course, F-Unit’s gangsta engineers spend an inordinate amount of time on projects like the Breakup Pool because they don’t have girlfriends themselves, which does little to thwart the nerd stereotype.

Rules of the Breakup Pool

1. Participants in the Breakup Pool are restricted to those residing on the fifth floor of Furnald during the 2002-2003 school year. Couples comprised of a First-Year student and a High School Beloved (
HSB
) are referred to as Daters. Single First Years and Sophomores participating in the Breakup Pool are referred to as Haters.

2. After paying a $25 entry fee, bettors are asked to predict which of the ten couples will last the longest, thereby winning the title The Couple That Outlasted All Others and Showed the Haters Who Said That High School Relationships Don’t Last.

3. Daters cannot bet on themselves. (A rule designed to prevent Daters who have grown to detest their boyfriend/girlfriend from sticking it out just for the cash.) However, any mercenary Dater doubtful of the strength of his/her own relationship can pay a $25 fee to bet on another couple’s union outlasting his/hers.

4. Daters in the Breakup Pool are asked to operate on the Honor System, by which it is the Dater’s responsibility to report any breakups or hookups with anyone other than the
HSB
. (Second-person eyewitness testimony will also suffice.) For the purposes of the Breakup Pool, the term “hookup” refers to activities including, but not limited to, kissing, oral and manual stimulation, intercourse, and any other physical activity that is generally considered to be more than platonic.

5. If only one bettor puts money on the last couple standing, he/she wins it all. Should more than one bettor choose correctly, they split the take. In both cases, The Couple That Outlasted All Others and Showed the Haters Who Said That High School Relationships Don’t Last doesn’t win any money, but proudly wears said title.

6. If
no one
bets on The Couple That Outlasted All Others and Showed the Haters Who Said That High School Relationships Don’t Last, the winning Dater keeps
all
the cash, but only when his/her relationship makes it to the end of the 2002-2003 school year. (Otherwise, all bettors get their money back.) Likewise, if there is
more than one
Dater still in the running at the end of the spring semester, the money is split evenly among the remaining couples. (These rules seemingly contradict Rules #3 and #5, but it is widely accepted that any Dater desperate enough to stick with a detested girlfriend/boyfriend an entire year deserves a piece of the prize.)

Once the rules were established, F-Unit created odds using ancillary data, such as geographical distance between Dater and
HSB
and length of the relationship before separation. (They wanted to include other variables that could help determine the probability that one would be led astray, but “Hotness” and “Horniness” were too difficult to quantify.) The odds wouldn’t affect the payout but were devised merely to enhance the gaming experience.

Marcus was my first love and my first sex partner. I was his first love and his forty-somethingth sex partner. We were together only two weeks before he left for California. I have done one tab of ecstasy and attend one of the most acclaimed universities in the world. He has smoked enough pot to be put in the High Times Hall of Fame and is attending Gakkai College, an unaccredited Buddhist school at which it is possible to major in Chanting and Purification. He was best friends with my best friend Hope’s brother, Heath, whose heroin overdose was the tragic catalyst for her parents’ sudden defection to Tennessee on the eve of Y2K. Our convoluted courtship was rife with his contradictions: He made out with his girlfriend but kept his eyes on me as I passed them in the hallway. He wrote seductive poetry but claimed he didn’t want to sleep with me. He acted as Cyrano for his best friend, Len, telling him exactly what he should do and say to win me over, but shed a single tear when I obliged. He confessed that I was the woman who changed his life but chose to go as far away from me as he possibly could within the continental United States.