In Persuasion Nation (3 page)

Back
in the time of which I am speaking, due to our Coordinators had
mandated us, we had all seen that educational video of
It's Yours
to Do With What You Like!
in which teens like ourselfs speak on
the healthy benefits of getting off by oneself and doing what one
feels like in terms of self-touching, which what we learned from that
video was, there is nothing wrong with self-touching, because love is
a mystery but the mechanics of love need not be, so go off alone, see
what is up, with you and your relation to your own gonads, and the
main thing is, just have fun, feeling no shame!

And
then nightfall would fall and our facility would fill with the sounds
of quiet fast breathing from inside our Privacy Tarps as we all
experimented per the techniques taught us in
It's Yours to Do With
What You Like!
and what do you suspect, you had better make sure
that that little gap between the main wall and the sliding wall that
slides out to make your Gender Areas is like really really small.

Which
guess what, it wasn't.

That
is all what I am saying.

Also
all what I am saying is, who could blame Josh for noting that gap and
squeezing through it snakelike in just his Old Navy boxers that Old
Navy gave us to wear for gratis, plus who could blame Ruthie for
leaving her Velcro knowingly un-Velcroed? Which soon all the rest of
us heard them doing what the rest of us so badly wanted to be doing,
only we, being more mindful of the rules than them, just laid there
doing the self-stuff from the video, listening to Ruth and Josh
really doing it for real, which believe me, even that was pretty fun.

And
when Josh came back next morning so happy he was crying, that was a
further blow to our morality, because why did our Coördinators
not catch him on their supposedly nighttime monitors? In all of our
hearts was the thought of, O.K., we thought you said no boy-and-girl
stuff, and yet here is Josh, with his Old Navy boxers and a hickey on
his waist, and none of you guys is even saying boo?

Because
I for one wanted to do right, I did not want to sneak through that
gap, I wanted to wed someone when old enough (I will soon tell who)
and relocate to the appropriate facility in terms of demographics,
namely Young Marrieds, such as Scranton, PA, or Mobile, AL, and then
along comes Josh doing Ruthie with imperity, and no one is punished,
and soon the miracle of birth results and all our Coördinators,
even Mr. Delacourt, are bringing Baby Amber stuffed animals? At which
point every cell or chromosome or whatever it was in my gonads that
had been holding their breaths was suddenly like, Dude, slide through
that gap no matter how bad it hurts, squat outside Carolyn's Privacy
Tarp whispering, Carolyn, it's me, please un-Velcro your Privacy
opening!

Then
came the final straw that broke the back of my saying no to my
gonads, which was I dreamed I was that black dude on MTV's
Hot and
Spicy Christmas
(around like Location Indicator 34412, if you
want to check it out) and Carolyn was the oiled-up white chick, and
we were trying to earn the Island Vacation by miming through the ten
Hot 'n' Nasty Positions before the end of "We Three Kings,"
only then, sadly, during Her on Top, Thumb in Mouth, her Elf Cap fell
off, and as the Loser Buzzer sounded she bent low to me, saying, Oh,
Jon, I wish we did not have to do this for fake in front of hundreds
of kids on Spring Break doing the wave but instead could do it for
real with just each other in private.

And
then she kissed me with a kiss I can only describe as melting.

So
imagine that is you, you are a healthy young dude who has been
self-practicing all those months, and you wake from that dream of a
hot chick giving you a melting kiss, and that same hot chick is
laying or lying just on the other side of the sliding wall, and
meanwhile in the very next Privacy Tarp is that sleeping dude Josh,
who a few weeks before a baby was born to the girl he had recently
did it with, and nothing bad happened to them, except now Mr. Slippen
sometimes let them sleep in.

What
would you do?

Well,
you would do what I did, you would slip through, and when Carolyn
un-Velcroed that Velcro wearing her blue Guess kimono, whispering, Oh
my God, I thought you'd never ask, that would be the most romantic
thing you had ever underwent.

And
though I had many times seen LI 34321 for Honey Grahams, where the
stream of milk and the stream of honey enjoin to make that river of
sweet-tasting goodness, I did not know that, upon making love, one
person may become like the milk and the other like the honey, and
soon they cannot even remember who started out the milk and who the
honey, they just become one fluid, this like honey/ milk combo.

Well,
that is what happened to us.

Which
is why soon I had to go to Mr. Slippen hat in hand and say, Sir, Baby
Amber will be having a little playmate if that is O.K. with you, to
which he just rolled his eyes and crushed the plastic cup in his hand
and threw it at my chest, saying, What are we running in here, Randy,
a freaking playschool?

Then
he said, Well, Christ, what am I supposed to do, lose two valuable
team members because of this silliness? All right all right, how soon
will Baby Amber be out of that crib or do I have to order your kid a
whole new one?

Which
I was so happy, because soon I would be a father and would not even
lose my job.

A few
days later, like how it was with Ruthie and Josh, Mr. Delacourt's
brother the minister came in and married us, and afterward barbecue
beef was catered, and we danced at our window while outside pink and
purple balloons were released, and all the other kids were like, Rock
on, you guys, have a nice baby and all!

It was
the best day of our lifes thus far for sure.

But I
guess it is true what they say at LI 11006 about life throwing us not
only curves and sliders but sometimes even worse, as Dodger pitcher
Hector Jones throws from behind his back a grand piano for Allstate,
because soon here came that incident with Baby Amber, which made
everybody just loony.

Which
that incident was, Baby Amber died.

Sometimes
it was just nice and gave one a fresh springtime feeling to sit in
the much coveted window seat, finalizing one's Summary while gazing
out at our foliage strip, which sometimes slinking through it would
be a cat from Rustic Village Apartments, looking so cute that one
wished to pet or even smell it, with wishful petting being the
feeling I was undergoing on the sad day of which I am telling, such
as even giving the cat a tuna chunk and a sip of my Diet Coke! If
cats even like soda. That I do not know.

And
then Baby Amber toddled by, making this funny noise in her throat of
not being very happy, and upon reaching the Snack Cart she like
seized up and tumped over, giving off this sort of shriek.

At
first we all just looked at her, like going, Baby Amber, if that is
some sort of new game, we do not exactly get it, plus come on, we
have a lot of Assessments to get through this morning, such as a
First-Taste Session for Diet GingerCoke, plus a very critical First
View of Dean Witter's Preliminary Clip Reel for their campaign of
"Whose Ass Are You Kicking Today?"

But
then she did not get up.

We
dropped our Summaries and raced to the Observation Window and began
pounding, due to we loved her so much, her being the first baby we
had ever witnessed living day after day, and soon the paramedics came
and took her away, with one of them saying, Jesus, how stupid are you
kids, anyway, this baby is burning up, she is like 107 with
meningitis.

And
maybe we were stupid, but also, I would like to see them paramedics
do that many Assessments and still act smart, as we had a lot of
stress on our plate at that time.

So
next morning there was Carolyn all freaked out with her little baby
belly, watching Amber's crib being dismantled by Physical Plant, who
wiped all facility surfaces with Handi Wipes in case the meningitis
was viral, and there was the rest of us, just like thrashing around
the place kicking things down, going like, This sucks, this is
totally fucked up!

Looking
back, I commend Mr. Slippen for what he did next, which was he said,
Christ, folks, all our hearts are broken, it is not just yours, do
you or do you not think I have Observed this baby from the time she
was born, do you or do you not think that I, too, feel like kicking
things down while shouting, This sucks, this is totally fucked up?
Only what would that accomplish, would that bring Baby Amber back? I
am at a loss, in terms of how can we best support Ruth and Josh in
this sad tragic time, is it via feeling blue and cranky, or via
feeling refreshed and hopeful and thus better able to respond to
their needs?

So
that was a non-brainer, and we all voted to accept Mr. Slippen's
Facility Morale Initiative, and soon were getting our Aurabon
^®
twice a day instead of once, plus it seemed like better stuff, and I
for one had never felt so glad or stress-free, and my Assessments
became very nuanced, and I spent many hours doing and enjoying them
and then redoing and reenjoying them, and it was during this period
that we won the McDorland Prize for Excellence in Assessing in the
Midwest Region in our demographic category of White Teens.

The
only one who failed to become gladder was Carolyn, who due to her
condition of pregnant could not join us at the place in the wall
where we hooked in for our Aurabon
^®
. And now whenever
the rest of us hooked in she would come over and say such negative
things as, Wake up and smell the coffee, you feel bad because a baby
died, how about honoring that by continuing to feel bad, which is
only natural, because a goddam baby died, you guys?

At
night in our shared double Privacy Tarp in Conference Room 11, which
our Coordinators had gave us so we would feel more married, I would
be like, Honey, look, your attitude only sucks because you can't hook
in, once baby comes all will be fine, due to you'll be able to hook
in again, right? But she always blew me off, like she would say she
was thinking of never hooking in again and why was I always pushing
her to hook in and she just didn't know who to trust anymore, and one
night when the baby kicked she said to her abdomen, Don't worry,
angel, Mommy is going to get you Out.

Which
my feeling was: Out? Hello? My feeling was: Hold on, I like what I
have achieved, and when I thought of descending Out to somewhere with
no hope of meeting luminaries such as actress Lily Farrell-Garesh or
Mark Belay, chairperson of Thatscool.com, descending Out to, say,
some lumberyard like at LI 77656 for Midol, merely piling lumber as
cars rushed past, cars with no luminaries inside, only plain regular
people who did not know me from Adam, who, upon seeing me, saw just
some mere guy stacking lumber having such humdrum thoughts as
thinking, Hey, I wonder what's for lunch, duh—I got a cold flat
feeling in my gut, because I did not want to undergo it.

Plus
furthermore (and I said this to Carolyn) what will it be like for us
when all has been taken from us? Of what will we speak of? I do not
want to only speak of my love in grunts! If I wish to compare my love
to a love I have previous knowledge of, I do not want to stand there
in the wind casting about for my metaphor! If I want to say like,
Carolyn, remember that RE/MAX one where as the redhead kid falls
asleep holding that Teddy bear rescued from the trash, the bear comes
alive and winks, and the announcer goes, Home is the place where you
find yourself suddenly no longer longing for home (LI 34451)—if
I want to say to Carolyn, Carolyn, LI 34451, check it out, that is
how I feel about you—well, then, I want to say it! I want to
possess all the articulate I can, because otherwise there we will be,
in non-designer clothes, no longer even on TrendSetters &
TasteMakers gum cards with our photos on them, and I will turn to her
and say, Honey, uh, honey, there is a certain feeling but I cannot
name it and cannot cite a precedent-type feeling, but trust me,
dearest, wow, do I ever feel it for you, right now. And what will
that be like, that stupid standing there, just a man and a woman and
the wind, and nobody knowing what nobody is meaning?

Just
then the baby kicked my hand, which at that time was on Carolyn's
stomach.

And
Carolyn was like, You are either with me or agin me.

Which
was so funny, because she was proving my point! Because you are
either with me or agin me is what the Lysol bottle at LI 12009 says
to the scrubbing sponge as they approach the grease stain together,
which is making at them a threatening fist while wearing a sort of
Mexican bandolera!

When I
pointed this out, she removed my hand from her belly.

I love
you, I said.

Prove
it, she said.

So
next day Carolyn and I came up to Mr. Slippen and said, Please, Mr.
Slippen, we hereby Request that you supply us with the

appropriate
Exit Paperwork.

To
which Mr. Slippen said, Guys, folks, tell me this is a joke by you on
me.

And
Carolyn said softly, because she had always liked Mr. Slippen, who
had taught her to ride a bike when small in the Fitness Area, It's no
joke.

And
Slippen said, Holy smokes, you guys are possessed of the fruits of
the labors of hundreds of thousands of talented passionate men and
women, some of whom are now gone from us, they poured forth these
visions in the prime of their lives, reacting spontaneously to the
beauty and energy of the world around them, which is why these
stories and images are such an unforgettable testimony to who we are
as a nation! And you have it all within you! I can only imagine how
thrilling that must be. And now, to give it all up? For what?
Carolyn, for what?