Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (2 page)

No author this time. Not helpful.

I took
French Pianism
with me (we’d grown close; I couldn’t leave her) and went to the information desk, where the guy sitting there looked like someone had slipped a few lithium into his Coke Zero.

“I’m looking for
Fat Hoochie Prom Queen
,” I declared.

He did not respond.

“It’s a book,” I said. “Not a person.”

Nope. Nothing.

“At the very least, can you tell me the author?”

He looked at his computer, as if it had some way to speak to me without any typing on his part.

“Are you wearing headphones that I can’t see?” I asked.

He scratched at the inside of his elbow.

“Do you know me?” I persisted. “Did I grind you to a pulp in kindergarten, and are you now getting sadistic pleasure from this petty revenge? Stephen Little, is that you? Is it? I was much younger then, and foolish to have nearly drowned you in that water fountain. In my defense, your prior destruction of my book report was a completely unwarranted act of aggression.”

Finally, a response. The information desk clerk shook his shaggy head.

“No?” I said.

“I am not allowed to disclose the location of
Fat Hoochie Prom Queen
,” he explained. “Not to you. Not to anyone. And while I am not Stephen Little, you should be ashamed of what you did to him.
Ashamed
.”

Okay, this was going to be harder than I’d thought. I tried to load Amazon onto my phone for a quick check—but there was no service anywhere in the store. I figured
Fat Hoochie Prom
Queen
was unlikely to be nonfiction (would that it were!), so I went to the literature section and began to scan the shelves. This proving fruitless, I remembered the teen literature section upstairs and went there straightaway. I skipped over any spine that didn’t possess an inkling of pink. All my instincts told me
Fat Hoochie Prom Queen
would at the very least be dappled by pink. And lo and behold—I got to the
M
section, and there it was.

I turned to pages 64 and 119 and found:

going to

I turned the page of the Moleskine.

Very resourceful
.

Now that you’ve found this in the teen section
,
I must ask you:
Are you a teenage boy?

If yes, please turn the page
.
If no, please return this to where you found it
.

I was sixteen and equipped with the appropriate genitalia, so I cleared that hurdle nicely.

Next page.

3. The Joy of Gay Sex

(third edition!)
66/12/5
181/18/7

Well, there wasn’t any doubt which section
that
would be in. So it was down to the Sex & Sexuality shelves, where the glances were alternately furtive and defiant. Personally, the notion of buying a used sex manual (of any sexuality) was a bit sketchy to me. Perhaps that was why there were four copies of
The Joy of Gay Sex
on the shelves. I turned to page 66, scanned down to line 12, word 5, and found:

cock

I recounted. Rechecked.

Are you going to cock?

Perhaps, I thought,
cock
was being used as a verb (e.g.,
Please cock that pistol for me before you leave the vestibule
).

I moved to page 181, not without some trepidation.

Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano—fine for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results
.

I’d never thought a single sentence could turn me off so decisively from both making love
and
playing the piano, but there it was.

No illustration accompanied the text, mercifully. And I had my seventh word:

playing

Which left me with:

Are you going to cock playing

That didn’t seem right. Fundamentally, as a matter of grammar, it didn’t seem right.

I looked back at the page in the journal and resisted the urge to turn forward. Scrutinizing the girlish scrawl, I realized I had mistaken a 5 for a 6. It was page 65 (not the junior version of the devil’s number) that I was after.

be

Much more sensical.

Are you going to be playing—

“Dash?”

I turned to find Priya, this girl from my school, somewhere between a friend and acquaintance—a
frequaintance
, as it were. She had been friends with my ex-girlfriend, Sofia, who was now in Spain. (Not because of me.) Priya had no personality traits that I could discern, although in all fairness, I had never looked very hard.

“Hi, Priya,” I said.

She looked at the books I was holding—a red Moleskine,
French Pianism, Fat Hoochie Prom Queen
, and, open to a rather graphic drawing of two men doing something I had heretofore not known to be possible,
The Joy of Gay Sex
(third edition).

Apprising the situation, I figured some explanation was in order.

“It’s for a paper I’m doing,” I said, my voice rife with fake intellectual assurance. “On French pianism and its effects. You’d be amazed at how far-reaching French pianism is.”

Priya, bless her, looked like she regretted ever saying my name.

“Are you around for break?” she asked.

If I’d admitted I was, she might have been forthcoming with an invitation to an eggnog party or a group excursion to the holiday film
Gramma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
, featuring a black comedian playing all of the roles, except for that of a female Rudolph, who was, one assumed, the love interest. Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventative prevarication—in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.

“I leave tomorrow for Sweden,” I replied.

“Sweden?”

I did not (and do not) look in any way Swedish, so a family holiday was out of the question. By way of explanation, I simply said, “I love Sweden in December. The days are short … the nights are long … and the design completely lacks ornament.”

Priya nodded. “Sounds fun.”

We stood there. I knew that according to the rules of conversation, it was now my turn. But I also knew that refusal to conform to these rules might result in Priya’s departure, which I very much wanted.

After thirty seconds, she could stand it no longer.

“Well, I gotta go,” she said.

“Happy Hanukkah,” I said. Because I always liked to say the wrong holiday, just to see how the other person would react.

Priya took it in stride. “Have fun in Sweden,” she said. And was gone.

I rearranged my books so the red journal was on top again. I turned to the next page.

The fact that you are willing to stand there
in the Strand with The Joy of Gay Sex
bodes well for our future
.
However, if you already own this book
or would find it useful in your life
,
I am afraid our time together
must end here
.
This girl can only go boy-girl
,
so if you’re into

boy-boy, I completely support that
,
but don’t see where I’d fit into the picture
.

Now, one last book
.
4. What the Living Do, by Marie Howe
23/1/8
24/5/9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

I headed immediately to the poetry section, completely intrigued. Who was this strange reader of Marie Howe who’d summoned me? It seemed too convenient that we should both know about the same poet. Really, most people in my circle didn’t know any poets at all. I tried to remember talking about Marie Howe with someone—anyone—but came up blank. Only Sofia, probably, and this wasn’t Sofia’s handwriting. (Plus, she was in Spain.)

I checked the
H
s. Nothing. I went through the whole poetry section. Nothing. I was about to scream in frustration when I saw it—at the very top of the bookshelf, at least twelve feet from the floor. A slight corner peeking out—but I knew from its slimness and dark plum color that it was the book I was looking for. I pulled over a ladder and made the perilous climb. It was a dusty ascent, the out-of-reach heights clouded with disinterest, making the air harder to breathe. Finally, I had the volume in my hand. I couldn’t wait—I quickly turned to pages 23 and 24 and found the seven words I needed.

for the pure thrill of unreluctant desire

I nearly fell off the ladder.

Are you going to be playing for the pure thrill of unreluctant desire?

I was, to put it mildly, aroused by the phrasing.

Carefully, I stepped back down. When I hit the floor again, I retrieved the red Moleskine and turned the page.

So here we are
.
Now it’s up to you
,
what we do (or don’t) do
.

If you are interested in continuing this conversation
,
please choose a book, any book, and
leave a slip of paper with your email address inside of it
.
Give it to Mark, at the information desk
.

If you ask Mark any questions about me
,
he will not pass on your book
.
So no questions
.

Once you have given your book to Mark
,
please return this book to the shelf
where you found it
.

If you do all these things
,
you very well might hear from me
.
Thank you
.
Lily

Suddenly, for the first time that I could recall, I was looking forward to winter break, and I was relieved that I was not, in fact, being shipped out to Sweden the next morning.

I didn’t want to think too hard about which book to leave—if I started to second-guess, it would only lead to third-guessing and fourth-guessing, and I would never leave the Strand. So I chose a book rather impulsively, and instead of leaving my email address inside, I decided to leave something else. I figured it would take a little time for Mark (my new friend at the information desk) to give the book to Lily, so I would have a slight head start. I handed it to him without a word; he nodded and put it in a drawer.

I knew the next step was for me to return the red notebook, to give someone else a chance of finding it. Instead, I kept it. And, furthermore, I moved to the register to buy the copies of
French Pianism
and
Fat Hoochie Prom Queen
currently in my hands.

Two, I decided, could play this game.

two
(Lily)

December 21st

I love Christmas.

I love everything about it: the lights, the cheer, the big family gatherings, the cookies, the presents piled high around the tree, the
goodwill to all
. I know it’s technically
goodwill to all men
, but in my mind, I drop the
men
because that feels segregationist/elitist/sexist/generally bad
ist
.
Goodwill
shouldn’t be just for men. It should also apply to women and children, and all animals, even the yucky ones like subway rats. I’d even extend the goodwill not just to living creatures but to the dearly departed, and if we include them, we might as well include the undead, those supposedly mythic beings like vampires, and if they’re in, then so are elves, fairies, and gnomes. Heck, since we’re already being so generous in our big group hug, why not also embrace those supposedly inanimate objects like dolls and stuffed animals (special shout-out to my Ariel mermaid, who presides over the shabby chic flower power pillow on my bed—love you, girl!). I’m sure Santa would agree.
Goodwill to all
.

I love Christmas so much that this year I’ve organized my own caroling society. Just because I live in the gentrified bohemia of the East Village does not mean I consider myself too cool and sophisticated for caroling. To the contrary. I feel so strongly about it that when
my own family members
chose to disband our caroling group this year because everyone was “traveling” or was “too busy” or “has a life” or “thought you would have grown out of it by now, Lily,” I did some old-fashioned problem solving. I made my own flyer and put it up in cafés around my street.