Dysfunctional Literacy

“I’ve never seen a guy pee before,” Danielle stated profoundly in front of my friends.

This was the moment I had been dreading.  Despite Danielle’s recent good behavior in public, I had been nervous the entire day that she might do something inappropriate while we were at the football game with Kirk and Linda.  Danielle hadn’t worn suggestive clothes, and she hadn’t over-cursed in front of kids, so she had been doing pretty well so far.  But then she announced that she wanted to watch a bunch of guys urinate into the men’s bathroom trough.  She was serious.  She was going to do it.  And it could be potentially embarrassing.

Luckily, nobody sitting around us in our section seemed to be listening.  The other team was backed up on their own end zone, and the defense had almost scored a safety, so everybody around us was cheering and stomping their feet and yelling so that the quarterback couldn’t call an audible.  This made it tough for us to talk, but nobody could eavesdrop.  I really didn’t want anybody to eavesdrop.

Danielle then turned to me.  “Have you ever seen a woman pee?”

I rubbed my palm against my forehead.  “I’ve heard you a couple times,” I said.  “I wasn’t trying to, I promise.”

Danielle placed her hand on my knee.  “I know I can’t watch you pee because you get stage fright,” she said.  “But I really want to see ten guys pee into a tub.  And we’ve already paid for our tickets.”

“Admission to a football game does not guarantee women entry into the men’s room,” I said.  “Especially you.”

“I can look like a guy,” Danielle said.

Kirk (still sitting to my right) stared, open mouthed.  “I don’t think so.”

Danielle began tying her hair up.  “Give me your cap,” she said to Kirk.

Kirk handed it over, looking to Linda for permission, but Linda was staring at Danielle too.  Danielle then replaced her thick glasses with my dark sunglasses, and put my windbreaker over her college jacket to give her a bulkier, less feminine look.

I glanced at Danielle’s jaw line and neck; both definitely belonged to a hot chick.

“Look down and hunch your shoulders,” I told her.  That was her only hope.  She put her hands into my jacket’s pockets, raised her shoulders, and put her head down.  If nobody paid attention, maybe nobody would notice she wasn’t a man.  But she’d probably need more help.

Linda tapped her finger on her armrest.  “Danielle, if you were in a laundromat, and you had just washed all your clothes, and you realized that there was only one dryer, and it was being used by a strange guy you didn’t know… would you ask the strange guy to share the dryer with you?”

“No,” Danielle said, with a tone of disgust.  “I’d wait until the guy was done.”  Then she turned to me and announced in a loud fake deep voice:

“I need to take a leak.”

I really didn’t want to go through with this, but now Danielle had committed.  Maybe she was (unintentionally) embarrassing me in public, but I had known when we started living in sin that this could happen.  When you start living in sin with a hot chick (simply because she’s hot and willing to live in sin with you), you have to accept most of your partner-in-sin’s faults.  If Danielle wanted to go see a bunch of men urinate into a communal, then I had to back her play.  It was my responsibility as a boyfriend.

“I do too,” I said, even though I got stage fright at communals.

“So do I,” Kirk said.  I didn’t know if he was supporting me as a friend or if he just wanted to see what was about to happen.

“I’ve never seen three men go to the bathroom together,” Linda said.  “What are you going to talk about in there?”

Before we moved, I spotted one other problem.  “Dan!” I shouted, even though I didn’t need to.

Danielle paused.

“You gonna read that in the men’s room?” I asked, pointing to my copy of Sense and Sensibility which she had instinctively grabbed.

Danielle cleared her throat and continued with her fake voice, “This piece of shit?”  Then she gave the book to Linda.

“Men are allowed to read Jane Austen books,” Linda said.

“Not when I’m taking a leak!”

“You probably shouldn’t call any Jane Austen book a piece of shit,” I muttered to Danielle as we got up.

“I took drama in high school,” Danielle said. She attempted a male strut past me in our row.  “I’m staying in character.”

As she squeezed past Kirk (despite Danielle being a man now, Kirk still let her out of our row first), he checked out her tight jeans.  “If that’s a guy, I’m turning…”

“I’ll walk close behind her,” I said.  “You go in front.”  Once Kirk was in place, it was like a Danielle sandwich, but not in a vulgar way.  And that’s how we walked to the men’s room, Kirk in front, Danielle close behind and looking down, and me in the rear (again, not in a vulgar way).

As we entered the bathroom and got in line for the community urinal, there was an intense fecal smell, but Danielle didn’t say anything.  Somebody was working through intestinal issues in one of the toilets, and it offended at least two senses.  All we could see were the backs of a line of guys hunching with their hands in front of them.  Men in front of us filled in the gaps as they finished relieving themselves.  Kirk whistled as he strolled to a gap but stopped when he got a couple dirty looks from other guys.  That was a good play on Kirk’s part, distracting other men who might notice Danielle.

A few seconds later, another hole in the line opened up, and Danielle took her place, two spaces from the left end of the trough line.  She hunched her shoulders and pretended to play with her zipper.  I really hoped she didn’t stay there long.  I really hoped she would take a quick peek, glance both directions, get the visual she wanted (whatever it was), and leave before anybody noticed.  Most guys are aware of the presence of others urinating around them, but they don’t want to make eye contact or look like they’re trying to make eye contact.

Danielle was lingering.  A hole opened up a couple spaces to her right.  I hesitated.  A guy behind me cleared his throat.  I knew I wasn’t going to do anything functional right then, but I had to go through the motions, so I took the spot.  I thought about fake sneezing and leaving the line to wash my hands.  But I didn’t have to.

Danielle did the unexpected.  She screamed.  It was quick.  It was shrill and high-pitched.  And even worse, it obviously came from a woman.  Every guy in the men’s room knew there was a woman in the pee line at the trough.

*****

To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Interesting.

To read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.

If you’re a literary pretender, you run the risk of getting caught, and that can be humiliating.  It had happened to me a couple times, but now Danielle was carrying around Sense and Sensibility and had brought it with her to the football game.  Unfortunately, Kirk’s girlfriend Linda had read Sense and Sensibility and started asking Danielle questions.  It had happened so quickly that I couldn’t intervene or think of a distraction without being obvious.

Danielle took a quick breath.  “I don’t talk about books until I’m finished reading them,” she said, glancing quickly at me.

“How far have you read?” Linda asked.

“Not enough.  I don’t think it sucks, but I haven’t read enough to talk about it.”

“Maybe when you’re done…” and Linda’s voice trailed off.  “What books have you finished?”

Danielle thought about it.  “Animal Farm,” she said.

“What did you think of that?” Linda asked.

I gulped.  Danielle had quizzed me about Animal Farm the first night we were together, but I didn’t remember what I had told her.  I didn’t even know if what I had told her was accurate.  The conditions of our literature discussion that night hadn’t been ideal.  My mind had been on something else.

“It was… political,” Danielle said.  Then she smiled widely and asked, “Have you read Atlas Shrugged?”

Linda rolled her eyes.

“I finished it last week,” Danielle said.

“You’ve read Atlas Shrugged,” Linda said.

“I know who John Galt is,” Danielle announced.  “But right now, I really want to read a trashy romance.”

Danielle rested her hand on my leg while Linda talked about a few books that Danielle might like to read, but I hadn’t heard of any of them.  Danielle (who probably knew less than I did about any book) asked a couple questions and pretended to be interested.  Then she steered the conversation away from books to nails and manicures and the best places to get them and the best gyms to work out in and the best place to get a sports car repaired where the mechanics wouldn’t rip you off.  Even Kirk listened to that part of their conversation.

I was surprised at how Danielle and Linda were getting along.  Linda had barely talked to me during previous outings with Kirk.  I wasn’t sure if she had been intentionally rude in the past, but there had definitely been a distance.  Danielle had gotten her out of that shell almost instantly.  I knew that was part of her job (the job that she didn’t want to tell my friends about), pretending to be interested in people she wasn’t interested in.  Then I wondered, I was pretty sure Danielle liked me, I really hoped that she liked me, but if Danielle was good at making people she wasn’t interested in think that she was interested in them, and if she was that good at pretending…

“You suck!” Kirk yelled next to my ear.

Our home team’s quarterback had just fumbled the ball after a big hit. Luckily, an offensive lineman recovered it, so he’d get another chance.

“That was loud,” Danielle whispered to me.

“Kirk takes his football seriously.”

We talked and watched football for a while, and then I went to get hot dogs and drinks.  Danielle said she didn’t want any food, but I bought two hot dogs just in case, and she ate one.  The home team was losing, and Kirk kept getting mad, which was funny because he really didn’t care.  He just got mad when athletes made stupid mistakes.  The quarterback kept getting hit, and he kept missing his throws.  After a really bad throw on 3^rd and long almost got intercepted, Kirk yelled out again, “You suck!”

“Would you please shut up,” Danielle said, half-serious.  “It’s not his fault.”

“He missed an easy throw!” Kirk said.

“He’s getting his ass kicked,” Danielle said.  “His line sucks.”

“He missed an easy throw!”

“You ever get your ass kicked?” Danielle said.  It almost sounded like a threat.

Kirk just stared at her.

“Try throwing a football when you’re getting your ass kicked,” Danielle said.  “See if you can do it.”

“But he…that throw…”

I kept myself from grinning because Kirk rarely got flustered.  I just drank my soda and enjoyed the moment.

Danielle said, “If that line starts protecting him and he still can’t throw, then he sucks.”

“Don’t argue with her about what sucks and what doesn’t,” I said.  “I had to learn the hard way.”  I took another drink.

Kirk leaned back and whistled.  I think he knew he had just been verbally beaten down.  Then he stared at me like he was about to point out a zit on my face.

“Go easy on that,” Kirk said, nodding toward my soda.  “Remember, the communals.”

Ugh, I had forgotten about the communals in the men’s bathrooms.  I could feel my lips tighten as I put my drink down.

“What’s a communal?” Danielle asked.

Kirk pointed at me to explain.

“It’s a long tub that a bunch of guys urinate into at the same time.  I hate them.”

Danielle laughed.  “You have to pee in front of other people?”

“A bunch of other people,” I said.

Kirk said, “He gets stage fright.”

“Shut up,” I said, a hint of desperation in my voice.  He was right, I didn’t like doing that in front of other people, but I didn’t want it mentioned in front of my girlfriend.

“How many guys line up to pee in this tub?” Danielle asked, not picking up on the stage fright thing.

“I don’t know.  Ten?”

“Bullshit,” Danielle said.  “You’re making that up.”

“I wish I was,” I said.

“Ten guys peeing in a tub,” Danielle said.  Her eyes widened and her smile broadened.  “This, I’ve gotta see.”

When Danielle said that she had to see the communal, I knew she was speaking literally.  She didn’t want to hear it described anymore.  She didn’t want to just picture it in her brain, ten guys peeing in a row.  Right then, I knew Danielle was going to go into the men’s bathroom and look at the communal.  She didn’t have to say she was going to do it.  She didn’t have to announce it.  I just knew she was going to do it.  And she was going to do this in front of my friends.

*****

To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Embarrassing Public Behavior.

And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.

After a week of busting through relationship milestones way too quickly (spending the night, moving in together, and settling into a routine), Danielle and I decided she was going to start meeting some of my friends. Even though Danielle was eager to meet my friends, she didn’t think I was ready to meet hers yet.  According to Danielle, my friends were probably safer to meet than hers.  That probably wasn’t a good sign, but I figured I could deal with that issue later.

First up were Kirk and his girlfriend Linda.  Kirk had been a college roommate, and we both ended up moving into the same city after we had graduated.  Kirk had been dating Linda for a few months, but Linda was taking things very slowly (supposedly for religious reasons), and Kirk was getting antsy.

Before we had gotten girlfriends, Kirk and I would go to a local college’s home football games.  The games were cheap and entertaining, and they usually started in the late morning, and we could hit the sports bars later to watch the late afternoon and night games too.  That was, if Kirk’s girlfriend Linda wasn’t having him go to art museums or something cultured.

I had told Kirk that I was bringing a date, but I hadn’t said much about her.  Eager to make a good first impression, Danielle wore her glasses but let her hair down.  She had a university jacket even though she never went to college, and when I asked her why she had a jacket (it was probably a tacky question), she said a friend had given it to her.  Once she put her college jacket on, she looked like an eye-turning co-ed.  I was okay with that.

Despite Danielle’s unpredictable nature, I wasn’t worried about how this meeting would go.  Yeah, Danielle had walked bra-less into the laundry room while wearing a tight t-shirt when I first saw her.  Yeah, she had asked to share a dryer with me when we were strangers.  Yeah, she had coughed like an old man in the library, eaten corn chips really loudly in the library, and fake sneezed really loudly in the library.  Yeah, she had a history of wearing really tight and revealing clothes in public.

But recently, she had behaved herself.  She still walked around bra-less in tight t-shirts in our apartment, but there was no way I wanted her to stop doing that.  And as long as Danielle had on the thick glasses and carried my copy of Sense and Sensibility, she seemed to have more self-restraint in public.

Once we entered the stadium, Kirk and Linda waved to us from their lower deck seats near the 20 yard line.  We had to scoot past a few strangers who were already seated.  Danielle slid gracefully past them, and I almost stumbled over somebody’s foot.  By the time I started to introduce Danielle to Kirk and Linda, she was already talking to them.

“Sorry we’re late,” Danielle said.  “Jimmy let me oversleep.”

Before anybody could respond, Danielle introduced herself.  She complimented Linda’s earrings and asked where she had gotten them.  She asked them if they had been waiting long.  While Danielle was talking, Kirk was trying to check Danielle out, but Linda’s eyes kept darting back to him.  Poor Kirk, I thought.  If Linda wouldn’t spend the night with him, the least she could do was let him check out my girlfriend.

Before Kirk could determine what kind of body Danielle had underneath that jacket, she had sat down next to Linda on my left, so Kirk reluctantly sat next to me on my right.  Danielle had taken his seat, but he wasn’t going to say anything about it.

While Danielle talked, Linda eyed the university jacket.  “You go to school here?” Linda asked.

“No, I just have the jacket,” Danielle said in a light tone so that it didn’t sound sarcastic.

“What do you do?” Linda asked.

“Nothing,” Danielle said.  “I’m… deciding what I’m going to do.”

Linda paused.  “So you don’t work or go to school?”

“No.”

Both Kirk and Linda stared at Danielle.  I knew they wanted to ask her more questions (like how she paid for stuff), but they probably didn’t want to be rude.  Kirk kept leaning forward to hear.

After a kind of awkward pause, Linda asked, “Where did you meet?”

“The library,” Danielle said, making eye contact with me.  “I could tell he was shy.  I had to corner him just to get him to talk to me.”

“That sounds like Jimmy,” Kirk said.

“The library,” Linda said, leaning forward.

“I was returning Interview with a Vampire, and Jimmy checked out some big book written by a dick.”

“Tom Clancy,” I said.

“He looks like a dick,” Danielle said.

“You read Interview with the Vampire?” Linda asked.

“I didn’t finish it.  It sucked.”

“Finally!” Linda said with a smile.  “Somebody else agrees with me.  I don’t get what everybody sees in it.”

“I just started Sense and Sensibility,” Danielle said, pulling out the paperback from her giant bag/purse.

Oh no, I thought.

“Now that’s a great book,” Linda said.

Kirk clenched his fists.  “You don’t bring books to a football game.”

“I’m not going to read it here,” Danielle said.  “I like football.”

Kirk’s mouth hung open a little.  “Then why bring the…?”  But nobody was listening to him anymore.

“What do you think of it?” Linda asked Danielle.

Uh oh, I thought again.  This was the first time that anybody had questioned Danielle about Sense and Sensibility.  I knew she hadn’t really read much of it.  She was only pretending to read it.  I had warned Danielle not to mention Sense and Sensibility to Linda, that Linda was the type of person that might cross-examine her if she mentioned it.  I had warned her, and Danielle had gone and brought it up anyway. When you only pretend to read a book, you run the risk of somebody figuring it out, and Danielle had just put herself in that situation.  I wanted to interject or cause a distraction, but everything was happening too quickly.  I didn’t have any drinks to spill, and even if I did, I was curious how Danielle would handle the situation.  Danielle was going to have to bluff her way out of this herself.  She was on her own.

*****

To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: The Bluff, Part 2

And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.