Spanking Shakespeare (17 page)

“Hold on,” I say. “I’m falling off the seat.” I pull myself up and we sit there, catching our breath and laughing.

“Your hair’s all messed up,” she says, running her hand back and forth across it and messing it up even more.

“Look at your dress,” I say, pointing to a tear in the hemline.

She fingers the rip. “Whoever made this thing needs to learn how to sew.”

I close my eyes and begin to pat Charlotte all over her body. “Where are you?” I say frantically. “I’ve gone blind.”

“I’m down here,” she says, dragging me off the seat. We collapse on the floor, laughing hysterically.

When we get to the beach, we find it overrun. Everywhere we look, there are people drinking beer, making noise, and camping out on blankets. We take off our shoes and walk down to the water. I give Charlotte my jacket because it is so cold. We don’t have anything to sit on, so we stand, and my feet become caked with wet sand. Fifty feet away, a group of our classmates is singing very loudly and very off-key.

“This was a good idea, don’t you think?” she says.

“It was a great idea. Do you think there are any crabs here?” I try to make it sound like a joke.

She laughs and takes my hand and we look out at the water. I know I should feel something deep or spiritual, and I try to clear my head and let my mind roam free. The waves, I think. Look how the water rushes in and then flows back out. The ocean. There’s a whole world underneath the surface. It’s so big. As far as the eye can see. I need to pee. Where am I going to pee?

“What are you thinking?” Charlotte asks.

“Nothing, really. It’s just nice to look at the water.”

“Mom used to love to look at the ocean,” she says, as much to herself as to me. “I remember she used to stand on the beach looking out, almost like she was hypnotized. Then she would run straight into the breaking waves and dive under, even though the water was freezing. I think it was the only place she ever felt really happy. It was like everywhere else she felt caged in.”

“I remember that picture you showed me,” I say.

“It’s funny. That’s the only picture my dad keeps out, but after my mom died he never wanted to go to the beach anymore. I can’t remember the last time I was here.”

“Is that why you wanted to come tonight?”

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know. I had forgotten what it feels like to look at the ocean.”

I gesture toward the drunken chorus, now belting out a frightening rendition of “We Are the Champions.” “What do you think your mom would say if she could see this?”

Charlotte laughs. “I don’t know. But I think she would be happy to know I was here.”

“Can I ask you something?” I say after a moment.

She turns to me, and her face glows in the moonlight. “Of course.”

“Where do you think would be the best place around here to go to the bathroom?”

The sun is just starting to rise when the limousine pulls up in front of Charlotte’s housing development, and all around us the world is sleeping. We walk hand in hand across the deserted playground and stand together in front of the door to her building.

“Well, I guess this is good night,” Charlotte says.

I lean over and kiss her and then gently stroke the side of her face. “Good night,” I say.

She turns and walks into her building, and after a moment I walk slowly back to the limousine.

Soon I will be home. I will creep up to my room, dump my clothes in a heap, and tumble into a bed that has never felt so welcoming. I will end up sleeping most of the day, and I will not dream anything I can remember. Later, when I wake up, I will call to check on Neil and Katie, I will answer my parents’ queries about the night in an infuriatingly vague way, and I will sit down at my computer to finish writing my memoir.

THE TIME I BECAME A PUBLISHED AUTHOR

I was always in such rebellion against my name that for a long time I was not willing to concede the fact that I might actually be a good writer. I had spent years constructing a narrative for myself in which my name was a major source of my problems, and suddenly to discover that my name might actually signal my one area of strength was not something I was willing to admit.

What could I make, then, of the fact that my highest grades so far in high school were all coming in my English classes? How could I explain the way I rushed to read every edition of the school literary magazine just to see how the published writing stacked up against my own?

By the beginning of eleventh grade, I surrendered. Maybe I was a good writer. My life was still a disaster and the world was still treating me unfairly, but writing was something I could do, and maybe it was time to embrace that gift and see what I could get out of it.

I began to consider submitting some of my writing to the school literary magazine, but I always balked when the signs went up soliciting submissions. I came up with allsorts of explanations for my behavior—my work was too personal, my material in appropriate, my stories too long—but the simple truth was that I could not bear the thought of one more form of rejection in a life weighed down by failure and disappointment. Writing was one thing I thought myself good at, and I had no intention of allowing the editors of the school literary magazine to tell me otherwise.

Our school magazine was called Red Herring, a name that struck me as being a little bit clever and very pretentious. In theory, anybody could sign up to be an editor of the magazine, but it was understood that this was an extra curricular activity meant to attract only a certain type—that is, students who dressed mostly in black, drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, spent their free time in the periodical room having discussions with big words, and talked too much in their English classes. In other words, students who struck me as being a little bit clever and very pretentious.

In the spring of junior year, inspired by that memorable drunken conversation in Rome the previous summer, I decided to rewrite the flood story from the Bible. I did not show what I was working on to anyone except Neil, who immediately began pressing me to submit it to the literary magazine.

“I don’t know,” I said. Neil loved everything I wrote. This did not mean it would be accepted.

“Come on. This is brilliant.”

“Those pompous assholes think they’re the only ones in the school who can write,” I said.

“You know what you should do? Submit this anonymously. It will drive them crazy trying to figure out who the author is.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“What have you got to lose? If they don’t like it, then nobody ever knows it was you. But if they do, and can’t figure out who wrote it, they’ll do that thing where they write the letter to you in the next school newspaper asking who you are. Then you can decide if you want to tell them or not.”

I thought about this. “Maybe I could submit it under a pseudonym.”

“Pseudonym, homonym, whatever. Just submit it.”

So, for the first time in my high school career, just two months shy of finishing eleventh grade, I submitted a piece of writing to Red Herring and its coffee-drinking, cigarette-smoking, black-turtleneck-wearing, big-word-using board of editors. Neil had made it seem like a no-lose situation, but I knew that if no letter appeared for me in the next issue of the school paper, I would be as devastated as if the paper were to proclaim my failure in a front-page headline.

The paper came out every month, and I had two weeks to wait until the next issue. I knew the editors of Red Herring were working to get out their magazine by the middle of May, so if there was no letter for me in the next issue of the paper, I would know my piece had not been accepted.

And then two weeks had passed and on page thirteen of the newspaper there was a short blurb, one of several short blurbs, and it said:

We, the editors of Red Herring, would like to include the following anonymous (and pseudonymous) submissions in our next issue: “Soliloquy in Black and White,” “My Dinner with Nero,” and “Noah Revisited.” If the authors of these pieces wish to reveal themselves, we ask them to do so immediately, and to consider, also, joining our magazine as future editors.

I had submitted the piece under the pseudonym Samuel Clemens, which was Mark Twain’s birth name, and this struck me as being a little bit clever and very pretentious. The question now was whether to stick with my alternate identity or whether to reveal myself to the magazine’s editors. What everything really boiled down to was whether short-term recognition or long-term mystique was more likely to help me land a girl friend. With only six weeks left of school, the decision was simple.

I imagined that once the new issue of Red Herring appeared, my life would suddenly change. People would admire me. I would over hear conversations about how funny my piece was. Girls would compliment me on my writing. I would be somebody worth knowing.

And I had good reason to think so. The day I found out my piece had been accepted, I revealed myself to Celeste Keller, who was an editor of the magazine, and she told me how funny she thought the piece was and touched my arm. The next day, the editor in chief of Red Herring, Jordan Miller, passed me in the hall and asked if I was Shakespeare Shapiro.

“I loved your piece,” he said. “It’s good for the magazine to get something so different and edgy. Have you ever submitted anything before?”

I told him I had not.

“Well, I hope you’ll submit more next year. And by the way, I love your name.”

I walked away with a smile on my face and replayed the conversation in my mind over and over. Jordan Miller. How cool was that? I had always thought he was a pompous asshole, but that was just out of jealousy. Really he was a great guy.

“There’s Jordan Miller,” I said to Neil the next day. “Let’s go over and say hi.”

“Why would we do that?”

“He’s really cool. Come with me. I don’t want to go alone.”

Neil gave me a contemptuous look. “What, do you have a crush on him or something?”

I blushed. “Forget it,” I said.

When the magazine came out, I turned quickly to my piece and tried to imagine what it would be like to read it for the first time.

Noah Revisited
Prologue

“‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.’” God put down the manuscript and gave the angel in front of him a contemptuous look. “Garbage. Absolute garbage.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The humans you commissioned just aren’t very good.”

“How hard could it be? I asked them to tell the story of the Creation in as much detail as possible. I didn’t say tell the story of the Creation using as many pronouns as possible.”

The angel blanched. “I think he was just trying to emphasize the importance of the act.”

“The only thing he was emphasizing is how much of an idiot he is.” God pressed a button on his intercom. “Judy, send in Gabriel.” He turned back to the quivering angel. “From now on, I don’t even want to see it unless it’s publishable.”

Gabriel entered and took a seat in front of the Lord. “What’s up, Boss?”

“What kind of writing have you been seeing?” God asked.

“Oh, you know, some historical fiction, a few vignettes, a couple of family trees—”

“No, damn it, what’s the quality of the writing?”

“Oh. It’s pretty weak.”

God raised an eyebrow. “Pretty weak?”

“All right, it’s awful. Listen to what one human wrote. Let’s see, where is it? Enoch…Methuselah…Lamech…ah, here it is. ‘And God saw the light, that it was good.’ Can you believe it? He’s talking about the creation of light, and the best adjective he can come up with is ‘good’? Tremendous, miraculous, divine…but good?”

God slammed his almighty hands down on his desk. “I tell them what I want, I tell them how I want it, and those lamebrained good-for-nothing morons still fuck it up. I ought to kill the lot of them.”

Chapter 1

And it came to pass that Noah was sitting at his desk proofreading his latest piece of writing.

“Honey, tell me how this sounds. ‘And Cain knocked his brother, Abel, silly.’”

“It sounds fine, dear. Now, why don’t you stop working for a while? You’ve been revising that story for days.”

“I know, I know. I’m just still not satisfied with it.”

“NOAH.”

“Not now, honey, I’ll lose my train of thought.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“NOAH.”

“Who said that? What do you want?”

“NOAH, IT IS ME. No, no, that’s not right…NOAH, IT IS I. I hate those damn pronouns.”

“Oh, Lord, you scared me. I hate when you speak in capital letters.”

“Noah, I need you to build an ark.”

“An ark? What’s an ark?”

“You think I should call it something else?”

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“It’s like a boat or a ship.”

“I can’t build a ship. I’m a writer.”

“I don’t have time to argue. Either you build yourself a damn ark, or you drown with the rest of mankind.”

“Whoa, slow down a second. What do you mean ‘drown’?”

“Drown. Under water. What’s the matter, you don’t understand English?”

“Drown the world? What a great idea for a story.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely. Hold on while I jot this down. Let’s see…‘flood to destroy mankind.’ Great. Now tell me why you’re destroying mankind.”

“They don’t listen to a damn thing I say.”

“Well, what did they do?”

“Just listen to this writing. ‘And Adam knew Eve, his wife.’ Of course he knew her. They were the only two people on the planet. Why doesn’t he just say what he means, that he fu—”

“You’re drowning them because they can’t write? I don’t buy it. Give me something more believable. Drugs, prostitution, incest. There must be some of that.”

“Well, of course there’s incest. When you start off with only one family in the world, your little sister starts to look pretty good.”

“Well, maybe I’ll just say there was some kind of general wrongdoing. Anyway, instead of building an ark, let me shape this into a draft.”

“I don’t know…”

“One night, that’s all I need.”

“Okay. But you still have to build the ark when you finish…Oh, and Noah…don’t call me ‘The Big Cheese’ in this one. ‘God’ or ‘The Lord’ will do just fine.”

Chapter 2

And it came to pass that God was reading the story that Noah had submitted.

“FORTY DAYS? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? NOBODY WILL BELIEVE THAT IT RAINED FOR FORTY DAYS.”

“Well, twenty days certainly isn’t enough to drown the world. Haven’t you ever heard of the willing suspension of disbelief? If you can have characters living nine hundred years, you can certainly have a flood that lasts forty days.”

“And look at this. ‘Too of every animal went into the ark.’”

“What’s the matter with that?”

“TWO. T-W-O. T-O-O MEANS ‘ALSO.’”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. The snake’s not going.”

Chapter 3

And it came to pass that Noah constructed an ark and prepared to set sail.

“Aardvarks?”

“Here.”

“Aardwolves?”

“Here.”

“Abyssinian cats?”

“Here.”

“Addaxes?”

“Here.”

“Adders?”

“Here.”

“Adélie penguins?”

“Here.”

Chapter 4

And it came to pass that Noah kept a diary during his voyage:

CAPTAIN’S LOG, DAY 1: After three days of calling roll, we finally set sail. We all stood on the deck and waved good-bye to our friends who had come to see us off. The poor, unsuspecting fools.

My wife has been against this ark since I first mentioned it. For the past three days, it’s been nag, nag, nag. “Since when did you become a sailor?” Or, “Since the kids were born, you’ve refused to get them a pet, and now all of a sudden you’re an animal lover?” It took me hours of begging just to get her on the ark, and then she went straight to her room and locked the door.

CAPTAIN’S LOG, DAY 2: It looks like I didn’t give enough thought to my rooming assignments. At breakfast this morning a bunch of animals said they had already eaten. That was when I discovered that about one hundred species had become extinct.

As for my own rooming, my wife refused to let me in, but I spent a surprisingly satisfying night with the sheep.

CAPTAIN’S LOG, DAY 5: The sheep kicked me out last night when I suggested we invite the goats over for a little threesome. Word must have gotten around that I was some kind of pervert, because none of the other animals would let me in. Despair.

CAPTAIN’S LOG, DAY 10: I have been feverishly writing love poems to my wife in an effort to win her back.