I Suck at Girls (6 page)

Among my 2,500 classmates at Point Loma High School, I soon learned, there were popular people, unpopular people, and everybody else. Even just a couple weeks into high school, “everybody else” started to sound really good. Sure, maybe the popular kids were going to parties and getting hand jobs, but at least I wasn’t being tormented. The key to becoming “everybody else” was to draw as little attention to myself as possible. I ate lunch with a small group of friends every day in the lobby of the English building, while the cool kids ate in the quad and the nerds ate in the drama building. I was a good student, but not so good that people noticed, and I spoke in class so rarely that during my sophomore year my history teacher pulled me aside and asked me if I was fluent in English in that loud, deliberate way people speak to foreigners. Although I excelled as a pitcher on the baseball team, few of my classmates cared about high school baseball or attended the games. And when the weekend rolled around, instead of going to parties, I would get together with Aaron and a couple of our friends, order in pizza, and watch ’80s movies. By the start of my junior year, I had yet to go on a date, or even kiss a girl. But the older, popular kids had left me alone, and that was a tradeoff I was willing to accept.

The one person who wasn’t so satisfied with my pathetic social life was my father. “You two are staring at that TV like you want to screw it,” he said to me and Aaron one Friday night when he came across us watching
Die Hard
in his living room.

“Well … we don’t,” I replied, weakly.

“Thanks for clarifying that, chief,” he said. He walked to the mahogany liquor cabinet next to the TV and poured himself a couple fingers’ worth of bourbon. “I don’t personally give two shits, but all I’m saying is, going out and drinking a beer and feeling a tit ain’t the worst goddamn thing in the world.” Then he padded back to his bedroom.

I shoveled another slice of pizza into my mouth and refocused on Bruce Willis, who was pulling broken glass out of his feet.

“Your dad’s right. We need to go to parties,” Aaron said.

“We’re not invited to them,” I replied, grabbing the remote control and turning the volume up.

We’d had this argument many times before. Aaron and I were now in our junior year and neither of us had been to a party since that very first embarrassment in ninth grade. Every so often Aaron would push me to go to a party or a dance, but it was as if there was a little sign in my brain reading, “It’s been this many days since the last time you were humiliated,” and I was determined to keep that number moving in the right direction. I had seen what had happened to some of my nerdier classmates when they dared to venture into social situations where they weren’t welcome. One had been pinned down while someone drew penises all over his face in permanent marker. Another had been pantsed in front of the entire P.E. class. And since nothing like that had ever happened to me, I had talked myself into thinking that I was perfectly happy with the way things were.

In fact, I had done such a good job of it that when I turned sixteen, making me eligible for a driver’s license, my parents had to force me to make an appointment to take the test. Unlike most teenagers, who long for the day they can get behind the wheel and drive with their friends to parties—or park somewhere and make out with their dates—I was indifferent about the prospect of getting my license. I lived less than a mile from school, and even closer to my friends’ houses. With everywhere I went already within walking distance, a driver’s license seemed like an unnecessary goal that could only be reached through an unbearably taxing process.

Nevertheless, at my parents’ insistence, I looked up driving schools in the Yellow Pages and signed up for a course near my house that consisted of one two-hour lesson a week, for six weeks. My instructor was a skinny guy in his midtwenties who had a shaved head that was always peeling from sunburns and who could only have smelled more like marijuana if he’d been made of it. The training vehicle was a mid-’80s tan Nissan that had working brakes on the passenger side; he often got his jollies slamming them on for no reason and then between wheezing laughs saying, “You were all like ‘I’m in control of the car’ and then I hit the brakes and shit and you were all like ‘Whaaaat?’” During one lesson, he had me drive him to “a buddy’s house,” then disappeared inside for half an hour; when he emerged he was so high he couldn’t remember the way back to the driving school. We ended up driving around aimlessly for forty minutes while he told me about his life’s goal, which was to prove that humans and sea lions could coexist on the beach. His plan centered on “eating a bunch of fish in front of them, so that, you know, they can see that we like fish, too.”

Still, I managed to glean some driving knowledge from the course. So, one overcast Saturday morning in early October, I hopped into the passenger seat of my dad’s silver 1986 Oldsmobile Brougham and we headed for the Clairemont Mesa DMV to take my driver’s test.

“You excited?” my dad asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess? This is your independence right here. You get a license, you can take this car and never come back if you wanted.”

“I could do that without a license,” I said.

“No you couldn’t, because it’d be illegal.”

“Well, technically, so would taking your car and never coming back. That’s grand theft auto,” I said.

“Okay, let’s just both shut up until we get to the DMV.”

A few minutes later we pulled up to the tan one-story government building, which looked like the place where happiness went to die. Like most sensible Americans, my dad hates the DMV, and when we entered the lobby to find it packed to the gills with sweaty, tired, impatient people, he started nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot and biting his fingernails.

“Look at this fucking place. Everyone smells like dog shit, standing around like they’re in Russia waiting for a loaf of fucking bread. Why the fuck am I here? You’re the one taking the test.” A minute later: “That’s it. I can’t do this. You’re on your own,” and just like that he took off for the exit. Before I could even respond he was sitting on a bench outside, reading the paper.

After a few minutes in line, I was handed a number by a morbidly obese receptionist. I sat down in the waiting area, which was filled with teenagers and the oldest people I had ever seen in my life. Thirty minutes later my number was called.

When I returned to the administration desk, I was greeted by a tan Korean man in his late forties wearing a white lab coat.

“Halpern, Justin?” he said, reading off a chart.

“I prefer to go by Justin Halpern,” I joked.

He stared at me silently for a couple seconds. “This way,” he said, then walked out a set of double doors and into the parking lot.

When we got into the car I tensed up. I hadn’t been nervous before, but sitting in the driver’s seat of my dad’s Oldsmobile, without him in it, made me think for the first time about how exciting it would be if I were actually able to drive somewhere on my own. I could drive to movies, or school, or even on a date … and dates were where hand jobs happened. The array of opportunities flooded my mind, and I couldn’t focus on the DMV examiner’s nasal voice as he barked directions at me. I was gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles cramped, and every time he’d give me a direction, I repeated it back to him like we were doing an Abbott and Costello routine.

“Left here,” he said.

“Left here?”

“Yes. Left here.”

“Left here.”

“Stop that,” he snapped.

The low point of the test came when I tried to merge onto the freeway. In a panic, I drifted onto the shoulder, doing twenty-five miles an hour. “SPEED UP AND MERGE!” the examiner shouted. “OH MY GOD, SPEED UP AND MERGE.” I had a feeling I’d failed—a feeling confirmed when I pulled back into the DMV parking lot and my administrator could only manage to spit, “YOU ARE … FAIL.”

He got out of the car and slammed the door. I was mortified; any excitement I had about getting my driver’s license evaporated immediately, and I decided once again that getting my license didn’t really mean anything. After all, you don’t need a license to eat pizza and watch old movies.

“It’s not a big deal,” I told my dad in the parking lot. “Honestly, I don’t really even care. I’ll just take it again sometime.”

“Son, you’re the only sixteen-year-old I’ve ever met who doesn’t give a shit that he failed his driver’s test. What do you think that says about you?”

“I’m levelheaded.”

“That ain’t what it says,” he said, shaking his head.

In the days that followed, I didn’t tell any of my friends that I’d failed my test; it was still too sore a subject.

That Friday, as I sat next to Aaron while we copied each other’s answers before our first-period English class, a shadow fell on my desk. I looked up to see a classmate named Eduardo standing over me. I could count on one hand the number of times Eduardo had spoken to me in my life, but he’d made quite an impression. He was tall and thick, with slicked-back black hair that always looked like he’d just gotten out of a pool. He was also the only kid in our entire eleventh grade who had a real mustache. Those of us who were developed enough to even have facial hair grew the kinds of thin, wispy mustaches generally associated with child molesters. But Eduardo’s looked like a push broom, and it was terrifying. I only could assume he was there for one thing.

“Do you want to copy my homework?” I asked, handing him a piece of paper.

“What? Fuck nah. I do my homework on time. That’s racist, fool,” he said.

“Sorry, I was just trying to—”

“You know my cousin Jenny?” Eduardo interrupted.

“Jenny who?” I asked. There were lots of Jennys at our school, and I wanted to make sure I committed no further missteps in this conversation.

“Jenny Jiminez. She’s in your public speaking class, fool.”

“Jenny Jiminez is your cousin?” I was surprised. Jenny was sweet, and she had absolutely no facial hair.

“I’m Mexican. Everyone is my cousin.”

“Ha! Look who’s racist now …” I trailed off when Eduardo didn’t even crack a smile. “Yeah, I know her. She’s cool,” I added.

“She likes your gumpy ass,” he said.

And, with that, Eduardo retrieved from his pocket a small comb with a tiny wooden handle, ran it through his mustache exactly twice, then returned it to his pocket as he walked back to his seat.

“You should ask Jenny to homecoming,” Aaron said, once Eduardo was a safe distance away.

“Yeah, right. I’m not going to homecoming,” I said.

I hadn’t gone to one dance in my entire high school career. I was six foot tall and a hundred and twenty pounds. When I danced, I looked like a praying mantis on fire. And besides, I already had plans for the Friday night of homecoming weekend: I was going to have Aaron over to watch
Predator
and
Predator
2.

“Well, if you ask her, you guys can come with me and my date,” Aaron said.

“What?” I said in disbelief. “You have a date for homecoming? When did you do that?”

“I asked Michelle Porter a couple days ago in math class. She said okay.”

“I didn’t even know you liked Michelle Porter.”

“I’ve told you before that I thought she was nice and she has big titties,” he said.

“Dude. There is a
huge
difference between saying someone is nice and that they have big titties, and asking them to a dance without telling me, okay?” I snapped back.

“What is your problem? Why aren’t you happy for me?” he asked.

Aaron was right. I should have been happy for him and I knew it, but I felt angry and betrayed. His burgeoning social life was putting me to shame. Now, the thought of staying home and watching movies on the night of the homecoming dance made me feel like a total loser. I had to make a move.

“Fine. Then I’ll ask Jenny to the dance,” I said, in maybe the least confident way I have ever said anything.

“Well, if she says yes, then you guys can ride with us,” Aaron replied.

“I don’t want to ride in the back of your mom’s minivan with my date, dude.”

“Two seconds ago you didn’t even want to go! I was just trying to be nice ’cause you don’t have a license, asshole.”

“I’ll get my license. Also, I failed my first driver’s test last week, and I’m telling you that now because I tell you things because we’re friends and I don’t just spring stuff on you,” I spluttered.

As I walked home from school later that day, I realized I’d set myself two intimidating goals to accomplish in the next three weeks: asking a girl to a dance for the first time ever and passing my driver’s test. I decided to start with the less daunting of the two: getting my license. Unbeknownst to me, my dad had already put a lot of thought into the problem.

Around 3:30 that day, I walked in the door to find him home from work early, and in his “action” sweatpants, which he usually only breaks out when he’s trying to kill an animal in the backyard or perform some feat of strength around the house. They were grey, like most of his others, but they sported blue and yellow stripes down the sides and elastic around the ankles, presumably for aerodynamic purposes. As soon as I entered the living room, he stared me down.

“You, my friend, are going to learn how to drive because I am going to teach you how to drive,” he said, the veins in his neck already starting to bulge.

My dad approaches teaching like it’s a fight. He sees his students as opponents, and he pummels them with one piece of information after another until they’re thoroughly disoriented and confused. Once the fight starts, no tapping out is allowed. He ordered me to drop my backpack and follow him to my brother’s old GMC truck, parked in our driveway. He opened the passenger door for me like a very angry chauffeur, got behind the wheel himself, and nanoseconds later we were screeching up the street.

As he put the car into second gear, I made a troubling observation. “This is a stick shift,” I said.

“Well done.”

“But I don’t know how to drive a stick. I learned on an automatic,” I said, as he aggressively shifted gears.