Zapruder Film

"I'm beginning to feel that no author has the right to tear his characters apart if he doesn't know how, or feel that he knows how (poor sucker) to put them together again. I'm tired - my God, so tired - of leaving them all broken on the page with just 'The End' written underneath."

JD Salinger, 1943

I come back to that doozy all the time. I have a taste for stuff laid out all pure and complicated. Salinger has a way of way of molesting you with his wisdom and making everybody else's grope feel a little too vanilla for a while. I'm still trying to figure out where you leave them or where they leave you when you're broken and it's *not* on the page. Which makes sense. I've missed a million connecting flights since pretty early I found out fiction has to make sense where life doesn't. That's why on most levels I can tell my nephew Mathew that I'm five years old too and he has to think for a second, with an impressive little scowl, before he tells me I'm lying. I tell him to ask his dad and, sure enough, my story is backed up and poor Mathew is left scratching his blond little head. I'm waiting until he understands I'm not conning him to see what he makes of it.

My best friend got engaged the other day. I'd written a story about him a while back that I hadn't got around to finishing and sorta left it like a kite rattling around in a windstorm. Most of my kid stories feel like that---except usually some girl has a cozy grip on my string along with a pair of gleaming scissors in her other hand. This story does too, but not for my friend. Dan never missed any of his connecting flights I don't think. But a girl in this story did her best to try...

DH Lawrence was bonkers over the idea of love being a stench rotting in people's noses. A stench. Basically whether or not you mind kissing her armpit on a first-date (I wear "Secret" deodorant just in case).

There are plenty of old Hungarian folk songs my mother used to hum around the kitchen whose lyrics she left out because they all described love as a curse. Figures. If you asked for a jacket for Christmas from your Hungarian sweetheart they'd give you a vest and cut off your arms, "Dare's jee-or jaggat, Bweeny." So what is the stench? The back of everybody's baseball card? All the headlines and fine print wafting off somebody.

Which is to say, courtesy of one long-ass, belabored stutter, that's how this story happened on a few different levels. So as an engagement present I figured I'd dust this fucker off and give Dan its kite-string and a pair of scissors seeing that his lady swiped my soul-mate so that he could moonlight as a husband.

Zapruder Film


Before ninth grade math's first buzzer, the mute, top-of-the-class, allergic-to-eye-contact foreign exchange student handed me Steph's note without even slowing down her pencil. The note read: WHOS GONNA BE THE FIRST TO GET LAID IN OUR GRADE???

Of our two week note passing spree this was by *far* the grandest question posed. I glanced over with approval but Steph just stared straight ahead, chewed her gum (Carefree), blew a massive bubble toward the empty teacher's desk until it popped and splattered over her lips and one cheek. I was obsessed with her mouth. The kid in the desk in front of her looked back and she winked at them as her tongue went after the gum stuck to her cheek.

I tapped the exchange student's shoulder, leaned over her desk and flashed some dimple placing the note over her notebook's opened page. She pretended not to appreciate it. I waited until I saw her eyes move over the note. She read it twice and shook her head the second time.

Ok. So who's your horse? I asked.
Shhhh.
Class hasn't even started yet!
Shhhh!
Nobody shushes me the way you do.

Steph threw an eraser at me. Don't be mean to her, she mouthed.

Buzzer rang. Last few kids trickled in. Two girls who shared the same name crammed and grinded against each other through the door. One formerly chubby now conspicuously anorexic in baggy clothes that had once been a couple sizes too-tight. The other with a hearing-aid after a fight with a brain-tumor a few years before. Death was circling and was gonna take her a couple years later. She'd get a plaque next to a planted tree. They slid into their chairs and opened their books as a few kids around class silently observed and considered them for a second. I noticed a few doing it. They noticed me noticing. Steph threw a crumpled piece of paper that whacked me in the temple and I tried to get back on task trying to answer her question. I felt a little woozy. You had to keep your head down, there was a lot of crossfire around here.

We're secondary characters in a lot of people's lives. The brushstroke that sums us up usually isn't all that pretty. Cheap, tabloid headlines mostly. Cancer and anorexia were pretty heady words lit up on a kid's marquee, especially when things are so fucked up they can't hide it but still try to. It leaves an impression. People tended to resent stains at my school. Invisible janitors cleaned up all our shit and graffiti and vandalism.

Teacher charged into class wearing gym strip. This was not unusual. Nut-hugging shorts the most famous article of the ensemble. Always a little puzzling whether the result was a desired effect or just a generational thing. He pulled down a chalkboard, turned and faced it displaying a considerable wedgie to us, started writing instructions. There were still wild, unrestrained sounds in class. After a second he crushed the chalk against the board and paused, slowly looked over his shoulder, stared at the backs of a huddled group of girls giggling and moaning encircling the desk of a pony-tailed, lisp-ridden brunette smiling closed-lipped at the back of class. They were all smiling back there with whatever news was going around but the lispy-brunette was the only one with enough composure to have her mouth closed. Which meant, as far as I could tell, she was the one dishing.

Math teacher squared his shoulders to them, clasped both sides of his waist just over the elastic band of his nut-hugger trunks, cocked his eye brows as the big lead-up to his trademark...

A kid jumped in for the alley-oop, fully loaded with spot-on mannerisms and delivery: Uhhhh, ladies? UHHHH... shut-up. Yeah, shut-up.

Teacher glanced over at the kid. Not bad, he said.
Don't mention it.
Timing, tone, cadence, tempo. Nicely done.
You're a pillar in the math and physical education departments, sir.
I appreciate that. Girls, really. Girls. GIRLS. What the hell are we doing back there? You're a little young for a sewing circle aren't you?

They dispersed and went back to their seats but still had their attention glued to whatever they were talking about. Something had blown their circuits. Their aerials all seemed a little bent.

I only have you folks for an hour. TRY, at least PRETENDING, to pay attention. Sewing circle bullshit later.

We loved that he swore. It reminded us that the nut-huggers weren't a style so much as a shot across the bow.

After the teacher finished writing up our assignments and went back to his desk, Steph crushed and snapped off the tip of her pencil against her notebook. This was a tactic she employed only in extreme emergencies. The teacher heard it and looked over. I did too. Steph shrugged and went to the back of class where another girl went into her bag and dug around for a replacement.

A minute later a Laker's "Show Time"-era no-look pass with a note: LAST NOTE VOID. GUESS WHICH GIRL.

I looked over and Steph nodded gravely until we both smiled.

Other guys looked at her mouth when she smiled sometimes. Puberty was like getting cable and I was stuck on community television. I'd had a few dreams about kissing that mouth of hers and spent a lot of time wondering if it would feel the same if I ever had the chance in real life. I knew the other guys looked at her mouth and saw getting blown. I tried to see getting blown but it never worked. I had enough trouble seeing kissing her.

You're in love with me, Steph taunted.
Huh?
Why are you staring?
I dunno.
You're in love with me.
What makes you so sure?
You can't stop thinking about me.
Oh yeah?
Every girl you'll ever go with you'll compare to me.
You sure?
You're so in love with me.

The last time she said it was strange, like somebody had stepped on the peddles of a piano to draw out vibration. The eye contact had made the real communication something like this:

You're so in love with me.
Yeah, Steph. I'm afraid so.
You're in love with me?
I'm sorry.
You're in love with me.
What choice did I have?

It was the last time she'd ever joke about it. I'd become the punch-line and it didn't go over.

I wrote the name down. Nudged our reluctant messenger and placed the note on her desk and saw her pass it across the aisle. Watched Steph's grin as she read it. After a little while she shot me a look with her chlorinated swimming pool-blue eyes.

Our teacher got called on the PA to go the office. He said Fuck under his breath and several of us beamed with pride. Our champion. When he was two steps out the door Steph and I jumped up simultaneously and sprinted back to ground zero.

The lisping brunette already had on her headphones. She took out one of the buds on Steph's side. She had the hiccups (symptom of sex???).

Is it weely such a big deal? See-wee-ussly. It coulda happened, like, at the beginning of school. Weely.

Steph acknowledged this much was true. Turning it over, I did too. The girl in question arguably had the best ass in high school. This fact was lost on nobody. Her least of all. There was a certain prudence in her fucking at 14.

Was it good? I asked.
She didn't bother to remove the bud.

Steph was smiling and shaking her head.
Listen Steph, getting laid totally isn't a big deal at all.

That's when an amazing thing happened. Dan, who was seated in front of the lisping-brunette, turned around in his seat and leaned in. He had an easy look on his face, down-playing the obvious explosiveness of the subject matter.

Steph, it totally isn't. I mean, take Dan. He's a good looking, weely smart, like, super nice guy.
Totally. He has a nice ass, too.
I slapped the desk. He DOES?
Dan smirked at me.
Weely Dan, I'd totally have sex with you. I'm see-wee-us.

Only last week Dan had worn a pair of glasses that we all discovered weren't even prescription glasses. Why had he done this? he was asked repeatedly. Because I like wearing glasses, he answered.

Weely. See-wee-usly, Dan. Any time you want.

Steph and I exchanged glances at this offer. The entire classes' attention fell towards that table like dominoes. "Indecent Proposal" was out in theaters that year but it had nothing on this offer. Dan's virginity on an indecent proposal? Way bigger deal than a million bucks to bang Redford.

Any time you want to, Dan. Okay? You lemme know.
Dan couldn't make eye contact with her. He tried. No dice. He looked at me and Steph though.
Steph smiled and I was glued to her lips.

Teacher came back into the room:

Uhhhh, you guys back there? Uhhhh, what the hell are we doing? Can you get back to your desks so we can all pretend there's some remotely useful point to any of us sharing the same room here?

At recess, after the indecent proposal, Dan had an interesting question. He took his time finishing his President's Choice soda and half his ham sandwich with the crust pre-removed before he was ready to ask it.

You ever wonder if you're a bigger person for staying with one girl or you think going for as many as you can possibly get is bigger?
Depends.

I said this because my brother always answered big questions with "depends" and I was trying to try it on. Several girls at school had seen my brother---who was actually my *half*-brother---and me at a movie one weekend and the following Monday bitterly attacked me for not being as handsome as him as if I'd done it on purpose. What happened to *you*?

Depends?
Yeah, it depends.

By Dan's troubled expression I seemed to pull it off okay. But then I wasn't sure.

But it doesn't depend for everybody.
No, I guess it doesn't. Shit.
What?
I thought maybe it did.
That's what scares me about what she offered me. I know I have to, you know, really like, RESOLVE this thing inside me before I go through with it. IF I go through with it. It's really bugging me.
A lot of people in here, when they break out into real life, are gonna get revenge. If they can't get laid to save their lives, I mean.
I know.
You just had a girl put it on the table and you didn't do shit. But maybe you did.
How?
You're not desperate. You aren't pretending to be somebody you're not. Maybe she realizes that.
I doubt it, Dan said.
Me too. But, my point is, if you go for one person your whole life and you do it because you're afraid about trying out sex or whatever with a LOT of people, you're still a fucking chicken. The same way as if you fuck a million girls because you're afraid of one girl breaking your heart.
I think I might like her. I mean like, I might wanna her to be my girlfriend.
WHAT?
I have a crush on her.
But are you gonna do it first? I asked him. You gonna sleep with her?
I dunno, Dan said. What kinda girl, like, publicly says she'll sleep with you? Especially right after she lost her virginity. What kinda girl is that?
One who's gonna shit out a LOT of kids very very very soon.
Who'd she sleep with anyway?
That kid who skipped a grade who always wears a hat.
Hmmm.
Can kids go bald at 14? Maybe he's trying to, like, hide it.
I dunno. Maybe.
She fucked a balding 14 year old?

We chewed our sandwiches solemnly and Dan broke out some Spitz sunflower seeds and handed me a handful that we cracked open for a while.

I don't even know her. How could she say something to me like that?
Guys would KILL to be in your shoes! I said. KILL.
But I've barely even said five words to her.
You can lose your virginity at 14, man. It doesn't even have to be with your girlfriend! In a way, you're doing your girlfriend a big favor.
How's that?
If you end up with a virgin you're going in all experienced and shit.
That's a good thing?
Girls dig that shit.
They do?
It's what Norman says. Make her first time special, man. What if you marry her? Everything might be hinging on the first time! You owe it to her.
Wait a minute, Dan said. He dated her before.
Who?
Norman.
I know. Last year.
Yeah.
He didn't sleep with her or anything.
I know. But still.
He won't give you shit about it.
No, he wouldn't do that.
You're right, you'll never hear the end of it.
Great.
You gotta do it for every guy who ever dreamed of getting an offer like yours.
I dunno.
You really are a tin man sometimes.
I really wish you wouldn't call me that anymore. I gotta go.

The buzzer rang outside the room, echoed down the hall. Mrs. S. left her desk and closed the door to the classroom, muzzling the effects of the buzzer. She turned back, rested a hand against the pencil sharpener, and slowly looked us over. We gathered an announcement was going to be made but Norman and I got up anyway and picked up our packs ready to go just to bug her. She pointed us back down to our chairs and we profusely thanked her for clarity on the issue until she denounced the, Effusive excessiveness of your use of superlatives in thanking me. Both of us assured her a more clean, declarative sentence couldn't be devised to address our egregious folly.

In her kicked field mousy-way, she glared at us with suspicion.

She knew every ten dollar word in the world and Norman had discovered why: she didn't have anything to say. Norman could sniff-out anybody's scam. He was that guy in everybody's nightmare who knows the score way before they do.

She took small slipper steps to the center of class and clasped her hands. Her Indian dress and scarf were matching pumpkin orange. The thick lensed glasses on her face hung from a golden chain wrapped around her soft, slightly melted candle-looking neck. The garishly bejeweled fingers and wrists sparkled under the fluorescent light.

I leaned over to Norman, Do you think she polishes them?
Are you a fucking retard? Of course she does. Nightly, man.
She has more gold than your Filipino barber.
She has more gold than all three guys who work at that barber shop combined and those fuckers have more gold than Fort Knox.

This was an exaggeration. But Carlito alone walked around with fifteen grand worth of bling on his person at ALL times. Amado and Perfecto (respectfully) were steadily gaining on him.

Mrs. S. hands broke away from their prayer-like gesture and she held one stateswoman-ly palm before us for a few moments before she spoke. Norman and I avoided eye contact while she did this. Everybody in the class leaned in because it was never easy following Mr. S. even if she had no accent. The verbiage was always a vicious curve ball, but her accent hit your mind's windshield like a monsoon so you just tried to stay with the yellow line and do the best you could.

Boys and girls, before you leave I have something I'd like to bring to your attention. One of our students is departing for a special program at a different school. It's a very special endeavor. The main reason that compels me to mention this, however, is how much---and I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say this---we're all going to miss Natalie.

Time seemed to stop for a moment. The class focus zeroed in on Natalie. She put her head down and blushed. I watched her eyes scanning, a torn off power wire writhing in her brain. You could tell she was touched by Mrs. S.'s gesture slightly more than she was embarrassed by the attention of us. I'd never seen Natalie have a spotlight placed on her before. I never thought about her besides when she happened to be in front of me, but I always thought she was pretty in a blan-way, like the kind of flowers that need a flowerbed of like-flowers to please you. Her prettiness had no sauce. No real flavor. In a year and a half I didn't know what her voice sounded like since she used it so sparingly. But there was something darker, too. It caught my attention less then than it did later on. Somewhere in whatever was troubling her, I think I had an inkling that despite being really smart and having this rich, complex internal life, behind everything was a very straight-forward desire to be completely objectified. Not really to be a bimbo or a whore, just to have the instant, arresting response that beauty gets. And deserves. Real beauty is an obscenity. It was something she would never have. It gave her the effect of an out of season Christmas tree left up in every room she entered. Her face was soft, usually fixed in expressionlessness, but you knew bitterness was going to take a chisel to it. Maybe a jackhammer.

Norman nudged me. Get a load of this, man.
What? I asked him.
He turned to the class:

*I* know why we'll all miss Natalie, Mrs. S.

You do? she replied.

Natalie tensed up as if she was facing a firing squad.

Sure I do. Because she's SOOOOOOO beautiful.

Instantly all of us in that room suddenly bystanders to the execution and participants in it too. But none of us had blanks as we stared at the carnage of Natalie's face. And Norman trained his large, famously heavy eye-lashed eyes directly on her too. His face had more in common with a sawed off shotgun that second than it did with the guy I knew from ten seconds earlier. What was the most chilling was just how deliberate his expression was, just the same as his voice in how he'd said it. You had to go a really long way into understanding a victim, having something delicate and innocent warped inside you, to find that button to push on another person. And he'd unleashed it like it was nothing---he tossed it into all our mouths like a Flintstone chewable vitamin.

Ms. S. broke the silence. She *is* beautiful, Norman.
Norman smiled. He enjoyed this topic of discussion.
Man, I said to him, you're gonna have worse karma than fucking Yoko Ono if you keep this up.
I'm just getting started... I think you *are* beautiful, Natalie. I don't know why everyone here doesn't belieeeeeve me. Do you?

Lunch hour was almost over. She was in the hallway just outside class leaning against her locker. I was sorta sad she'd never be able to joke about me being in love with her anymore. I laid off and just looked at her for a second.

Some girls just have a holiday in their eyes. At least, that's the best I can come up with to explain the nagging quality Steph had that a lot of people got hung up on. Because there wasn't anything particularly special in the color, they had the same light blue as Connecticut Avenue on a Monopoly board. Other girls had Boardwalk or Park Place-blue, but pretty soon people started passing them over for cheaper real estate. You wouldn't have to take your shoes off if you stepped into her front door. The furniture in the living room wouldn't be about impressing you so much as making you comfortable. The other prettier girls hearts might've felt like casinos or pawnshops---Steph's was a petting-zoo.

What kind of impression did she make entering a room? Not much. No entry-wound. Garden variety entrance. She never seemed interested in being the center of attention. She preferred being a member of the audience in welcoming somebody. From that setting she was a little more handy at distinguishing herself. She was sneaky about it. She perfected the art of sucker-punch compliments. And it went a long way. You'd bump into her being in a lousy mood and she'd lick her suction cup dart compliment and fire it at you and it could stick for the whole week. She had some kind of directory on where we lived emotionally and she let us know it with compliments. Everywhere else she was low-key.

But she exited a room differently than other girls and it stayed with you more and longer than even the really expensive ones. It felt like she disappeared every time. Nobody else could do that. She's the only girl I ever saw leaving a room who didn't have some kind of bumpersticker on her fender about what it meant.

Then she saw me. Then she remembered what I was worried about her remembering. She took a second before she said anything. She smiled and came over.

Do you want to give me a call tonight to talk about Dan's situation?
I don't have your number.
I'll give it to you. Lemme write it on your hand.

That night Dan slept over at my mother's house. We were in my room with a bunch of Dan's paintings on the walls. A portrait of my mother hanging over his head while he stared at the rug with the discouraged look he always made when he had to make a decision someone had put him up to.

I'll make you a deal, he said.
YOU'RE GONNA FUCK HER??? I can't believe you're gonna fuck her!
No. But if you agree to never call me Tin Man ever again I'm going to ask her to be my girlfriend.

And that's what he proceeded to do.

I picked up the phone after Dan fell asleep.

Is Steph there please?
Do you know what time it is?
It's an emergency. Some Danish woman is waving a butcher knife outside my house screaming Soren! Soren! Soren!
I heard a hand go over the phone and a muffled, Mom, just let me get it! behind it.
Hello?
He asked her out.
Asked her out?
Yeah.
WHY?
He had a crush on her.
Then why didn't he fuck her?
I guess because he wanted her to be his girlfriend.
Guys fuck their girlfriends, Brin.
Thanks for the heads up.
They do.
I know.
He should fuck her and *then* ask her out.
Steph, you're a sick maniac. What kind of---
What did she say?
She said she wasn't looking for a boyfriend. She just wanted something a little more *casual* right now.
That's what she said?
Yeah.
She'd fuck him but not be his girlfriend?
Yeah.
See-wee-us-ly?
Weely and twooly.
How'd Dan take it?
I dunno. But we recorded it on my mother's answering machine.
WHAT?
We recorded it. I wanted to hear it and he was too shy to talk with her on the phone with me in the room so he agreed.
Okay, fucking J. Edgar Hoover.
Hey, I wanted to hear it go down!
You've preserved that shit, right? That's like the Zapruder film, Brin. Dan turned down losing his vee so that he could be with her as a boyfriend! That's the most romantic thing I ever heard.
I know.
I wanna hear it. Can I come over tomorrow to listen to the tape?

Intermission. The rest of my life went forward...

If you want to.
Of course I want to.

Intermission.

Okay.
Is your hot brother gonna be there?
Jesus fuck. I can't help I don't anything like him, okay? We have different dads. I think he---
I'm just bugging you. I think you're cuter...

Intermission.

Why did she say no?
What did Dan say after she said no?
You'll have to come over to find out.
You're in---
No I'm not.
Yeah you are.

Of course I was.

Steph did come over the next day and listen to the tape. And then we listened to it again from the beginning with Dan's trembling voice making small talk before arriving at the business and the conversation going down like an animal in quicksand.

After that day we talked every night on the phone for a couple months. Mostly we talked from Norman's basement which was where I slept over most nights. Then I'd talk with Norman about strategy and tactics to get Steph. I'd done such a good job selling Norman on the idea that Steph was the most amazing girl in school that he started calling her too. And he was a lot better at than me. Then she ended up being his first girlfriend by mid-ninth grade. Then he bragged to me she'd blown him during the commercial break of 90210. Then she'd dumped him. Five years later, out of the blue, I bumped into her one afternoon a few weeks shy of my 19th birthday and she invited me to see her new apartment and a week later I did finally get around to kissing her.