Gert Garibaldi's Rants and Raves One Butt Cheek at a Time

Okay, so here's the deal. My best friend's Adam. Adam Bryant. No, this isn't one of those disgustingly sweet stories about how best friends figure out by senior prom that they're deeply in love and can't live without each other. Yuck. Has that ever happened in real life? Uh, no. Anyway, Adam likes Tim, so it would never work. I'm a girl, he's a boy, we both like boys, you get the idea. And no, we're not those two small-town teens who move to the big city to find ourselves at the bottom of a beer can, with an MTV sound track and tons of making out with strangers. We don't fit here, but honestly, can we fit anywhere? I don't know yet. I'll keep you posted. Tangent: sorry. The point is, I like Tim's twin brother, Lucas. Lucas is in third-period English with me. He's a junior, but I'm a Brain sophomore, so it evens out. We don't really know each other. And he's tight with the in crowd, which means the people he talks to are not the same people I talk to. I mean, if I'm honest, Tim and I have many more conversations than me and Lucas. I say hi in the halls and, if Lucas isn't busy with someone else, he sometimes says hi back. But I'm optimistic. It's only a matter of time before he figures out we're perfect for each other. English isn't the most romantic place to have a crush. It's not drama, where you can hide in dark costume closets, or bio, where you can snuggle around the Bunsen burner. You know what I'm talking about. All you need to know about Mr. Slater's English class is summed up with one visual. He stands at the board, back to the class, and twitches his butt muscles. One cheek. The other cheek. Back and forth. Left and right. Right and left. The entire lecture, the entire fifty-eight minutes, is him talking and twitching and all of us trying not to watch the grotesque display. It's a bit like the cobra and the mongoose, although not really, because he doesn't ever turn around to see if we're hypnotized or not. And, as far as I know, he's never bitten a student. Though if he turned up on Dateline, I wouldn't be one of the people saying, "Oh, we had no idea. He was always so nice and quiet." The other thing is, we're working on our term paper. (Quarter paper to be accurate, but Mr. Slater doesn't care about accurate.) We're supposed to compare and contrast Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway. I title my paper "The Crackhead and the Suicidal Alkie." Mr. Slater looks over my shoulder, wheezes through his chin-length nose hair and tells me, "That won't do." No other explanation. How's that for crappy teaching? Isn't he supposed to be supportive and foster my young mind? Hello? Show of hands--how many of us in the world are forced to compare old dead guys who obviously tried to work their issues out on the page, and later killed themselves, or overdosed, instead of actually getting therapy? The answer is simple: all high school students. Everywhere. I mean, if the dead guys couldn't understand what they wrote, why the heck do the rest of us have to try to make sense of it? Have you ever had a conversation with a stoner that was deep and intellectual? The script goes like this: Normal nondrugging Brain: 'Scuse me. (Continue to stand there, and wait for Zoner to move out of the way to the locker room door. Make obvious signals about ticking off seconds until the tardy bell rings.) (With a glazed slow-mo stare, Zoner notices you standing there. He holds out a self-rolled cig like it's manna. Exaggerated facial expression of devotion.) Zoner: You want some? Brain (speaking softly and slowly, as if being stalked by a wild animal): Could you just move? Away from the door? Zoner (Looks around. Surprise evident on face.): This door? Brain (Smile, nod. Repeat. Careful to move at the pace of Elmer's glue.): That's the one. Zoner (said with excitement): Hey, Billy, did you know there's a door there? Billy: No! (After shouKizer, Amber is the author of 'Gert Garibaldi's Rants and Raves One Butt Cheek at a Time', published 2007 under ISBN 9780385904391 and ISBN 0385904398.