jeans-straining yes.” In one motion he turned his accusatory finger into a thumbs up, and continued holding it a few inches away from Alex’s nose. “It’s that simple.
“And besides,” Tyson added, “you don’t think they do it, too? Trust me: fewer chicks than you think are turned on by magic realism.”
“Hey, José Saramago is
not
a magic realist,” Alex said, with the pained expression of someone used to making his case to indifferent ears. “There’s a difference, okay? He doesn’t make people levitate. There aren’t any magic potions. What he’s actually doing—I think, anyway—is playing with logic, so things that might
seem
magical can happen once you start extrapolating.” For the second time that week Alex felt his audience turning on him. “Plus he has a Nobel Prize and lives on top of a volcano. How’re you going to tell me that’s not awesome?”
Tyson looked at his watch. “It took you twenty seconds to get that out, and now look. They’re fucking gone, dude. Presto. See how far that gets you? Now here’s a story drawn straight from real life. Pay attention—it’s got a moral.”
Alex steeled himself. After four years in residence—the average was closer to two—Tyson had fine-tuned a handbook for promiscuity in close quarters that never failed to disgust and captivate. Alex couldn’t even imagine having to walk down a rez hallway and seethe same girl from the night before, now hungover and inquisitive in a baggy T-shirt and pajama bottoms. How could the two of you have a polite chat about dining hall hash browns when, mere hours earlier, you were licking her naked thighs and memorizing the way she bunched the sheets in her fists for future playback? Every conquest would just be one fewer girl Alex could ever conceivably speak to again, which put him pretty much back where he started: alone and pining.
“Can we get back to my real problem for a minute?” Alex said. “The
Metro
is going to put us out of business if I don’t figure this out.”
“Oh, Alex,” Tyson said. He made the softly nagging
tsk tsk
sound in the most irritating way he knew how. “This
is
your real problem.”
They continued their circuit through the poster grounds. All ironic tendencies aside, Alex was comforted by seeing stalwarts like James Dean and those two ladies tongue-kissing still in active rotation. This touring exhibit marked, in its own small way, a kind of mini-canonization of pop-culture ephemera. Sure, posters for new films and buzz bands came and went. But if your face was still recognizable enough for students to shell out six bucks to own a copy ten years after the fact, well, that meant something, didn’t it? These minor gods would live on for as long as undergrads had a taste for coarse philosophies about life and death and comedies about unlikely bongs.
But Tyson’s X-rated fable couldn’t be silenced for long. This one turned out to be the rambling story of last week’s Pub Night, where he allegedly convinced a lithe 2nd-year brunette to watch a meteor shower with him from the football field’s fifty-yard line. They smuggled out bottles of Alexander Keith’s in her purse, and, after fifteen minutes of innocently wondering where all the meteors were and if, just maybe, his astrologist had mixed up her dates again, Tyson made his move. By his count, they had sex four times (field,parking lot, bathroom, bunk), in all kinds of positions that sounded Rorschachian in their convoluted symmetry. He swore that when this girl had an orgasm, her whole body shook like a cell phone on vibrate.
Alex was never sure how much of this stuff was made up. It made him wonder what percentage of all the world’s sex anecdotes were real—fifty percent? Forty? One detail he knew for sure was a lie: Tyson swore that after two of the four sessions he came all over the girl’s tits. Impossible. No matter how good an idea it might seem in the heat of the moment, Alex knew nobody would take a
“And besides,” Tyson added, “you don’t think they do it, too? Trust me: fewer chicks than you think are turned on by magic realism.”
“Hey, José Saramago is
not
a magic realist,” Alex said, with the pained expression of someone used to making his case to indifferent ears. “There’s a difference, okay? He doesn’t make people levitate. There aren’t any magic potions. What he’s actually doing—I think, anyway—is playing with logic, so things that might
seem
magical can happen once you start extrapolating.” For the second time that week Alex felt his audience turning on him. “Plus he has a Nobel Prize and lives on top of a volcano. How’re you going to tell me that’s not awesome?”
Tyson looked at his watch. “It took you twenty seconds to get that out, and now look. They’re fucking gone, dude. Presto. See how far that gets you? Now here’s a story drawn straight from real life. Pay attention—it’s got a moral.”
Alex steeled himself. After four years in residence—the average was closer to two—Tyson had fine-tuned a handbook for promiscuity in close quarters that never failed to disgust and captivate. Alex couldn’t even imagine having to walk down a rez hallway and seethe same girl from the night before, now hungover and inquisitive in a baggy T-shirt and pajama bottoms. How could the two of you have a polite chat about dining hall hash browns when, mere hours earlier, you were licking her naked thighs and memorizing the way she bunched the sheets in her fists for future playback? Every conquest would just be one fewer girl Alex could ever conceivably speak to again, which put him pretty much back where he started: alone and pining.
“Can we get back to my real problem for a minute?” Alex said. “The
Metro
is going to put us out of business if I don’t figure this out.”
“Oh, Alex,” Tyson said. He made the softly nagging
tsk tsk
sound in the most irritating way he knew how. “This
is
your real problem.”
They continued their circuit through the poster grounds. All ironic tendencies aside, Alex was comforted by seeing stalwarts like James Dean and those two ladies tongue-kissing still in active rotation. This touring exhibit marked, in its own small way, a kind of mini-canonization of pop-culture ephemera. Sure, posters for new films and buzz bands came and went. But if your face was still recognizable enough for students to shell out six bucks to own a copy ten years after the fact, well, that meant something, didn’t it? These minor gods would live on for as long as undergrads had a taste for coarse philosophies about life and death and comedies about unlikely bongs.
But Tyson’s X-rated fable couldn’t be silenced for long. This one turned out to be the rambling story of last week’s Pub Night, where he allegedly convinced a lithe 2nd-year brunette to watch a meteor shower with him from the football field’s fifty-yard line. They smuggled out bottles of Alexander Keith’s in her purse, and, after fifteen minutes of innocently wondering where all the meteors were and if, just maybe, his astrologist had mixed up her dates again, Tyson made his move. By his count, they had sex four times (field,parking lot, bathroom, bunk), in all kinds of positions that sounded Rorschachian in their convoluted symmetry. He swore that when this girl had an orgasm, her whole body shook like a cell phone on vibrate.
Alex was never sure how much of this stuff was made up. It made him wonder what percentage of all the world’s sex anecdotes were real—fifty percent? Forty? One detail he knew for sure was a lie: Tyson swore that after two of the four sessions he came all over the girl’s tits. Impossible. No matter how good an idea it might seem in the heat of the moment, Alex knew nobody would take a
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