by Zack Wentz
Some of the guys wear earplugs. They wear ‘em because they don't wanna hear it. Oscar Livitt fucking. Nobody looks.
We sit in the back of the bus, the tallest ones of us, the Tall Guys Club, so Oscar Livitt can fuck. Oscar Livitt isn't real tall, not even as tall as the shortest one of the Tall Guys, but he's big. He's big and he's crazy. Crazy enough to beat up Chad Peasley so bad Peasley got a fractured knee and even pissed blood for a while and bad enough Peasley told his folks and everybody else old he just fucked up on his bike at the Drops and his folks took his bike away for good, nice one too: Diamondback, and Peasley went with it even though he fucking loved that bike and is probably better at the Drops than the rest of us just because Oscar Livitt beat him up because he's crazy. Crazy enough to kill Peasley if he told on him and crazy enough to fuck in the back of the bus too.
Nobody looks. Nobody's looked yet because whoever does is dead for sure, but you can hear it and hearing it is bad enough. Or at least you think you can hear it. You think you can hear it and you wanna look. You don't wanna see it, but you wanna look, even though it doesn't sound like much. You never know when he's starting or when he's done, but not like any of us are stupid enough to go, so hey, Oscar, are you done fucking back there? because that guy would be dead too. Everybody just knows.
The Tall Guys all sit in the back of the bus, very tallest guys last in front of the very back seats that are for Oscar and whoever he's fucking and the next tallest in front of the very tallest guys and then next tallest to the next tallest in front of them and then everybody else and that's just the way it is. Jack, the driver, must be a hundred years old and legally blind, calls us the Tall Guys Club. He's the one who thought it up. He thinks it's funny. Like we all must play basketball together or something and are just the tightest bros because we always sit like that in the back of his bus. I remember my gang, Jack says. And we say, yeah, Jack, because we've all heard it a million times and we figure they must've been the Short Guys Club because Jack can't be more than five foot three and doesn't look like he was ever any taller.
It doesn't sound like much. The fucking. Or at least what you think is the fucking when you think you hear it. The bus is loud and old and most of the roads around here are bad and sometimes you think you hear something and you go, is that fucking? but it's hard to tell. Sometimes there's a noise that gets kinda out of time with the bus noise and you go, a-ha, but then it'll blend in and you go, maybe not. That's the part that drives you crazy. That's why some of us guys . . . earplugs.
I know what fucking sounds like. Real fucking. A few of us do. Troy Edwards had a movie once with fucking. Real fucking. Not like fake fucking in movies where they're just rubbing around in the dark kissing and shit and the lip sounds are so loud it's like someone's sucking on your eardrum, but a real, honest to God fuck movie. We saw exactly ten minutes because Troy was scared his mom might walk in and we'd all be busted. But not like his mom ever walks in, not at Troy's house, and Troy is pretty much a puss, but he said to us, shit, I got a fuck movie from my cousin Kyp, and we were like, fuck yeah, and then we were all, well, so let's see it, and Troy was like, no way, and first we sweet-talked him going, c'mon, Troy, you're the shit, but still, uh-uh, and then we said his ass was grass and finally he said, okay, okay, but just ten minutes. And ten minutes of it we got. Ten minutes of fuck movie, real fucking on tape and that was it. That was it and the fucker, fucking Troy, was timing it, timed it on his stupid, cheap-ass, digital watch and soon as ten minutes were up he stopped the thing and popped it out and ran out of the room with it somewhere else in his shitty house so he could hide it before any of us could say more than, Troy, you motherfucking pussy-ass son of a bitch, but he was already gone by then. That fast. Fucking Troy. But back to the fucking, the real fucking on the tape. The fuck movie . . . Listen: I will never forget those ten minutes as long as I live. Swear to God, I can watch those ten minutes in my head any time I want and even make it better and change things around a little, if I like. The director, or whatever, and that fuck movie isn't going anywhere.
So when Oscar's fucking I think of that. My ten minutes, over and over again. Half of us who saw it must be doing that, but believe me Oscar's fucking doesn't sound anything like the fuck movie. Maybe if the sound on the T.V. was so low you could only hear the tape going in the machine and you had your ear up on it, little bits of things that might be fuck noises coming through, but probably mostly just the machine going and going and going and kinda squeaking around. But of course Oscar probably doesn't want any fuck noise when he's fucking. He probably doesn't want any of us Tall Guys to hear it and, more than that, he doesn't wanna get caught. Even though he's crazy, he's not that crazy. I mean, if Oscar's fucking sounded like the fucking in the fuck movie, he would sure as hell get caught. Even Jack would be able to hear that shit and I'm sure he remembers what fucking sounds like from a hundred years ago. And what's Oscar gonna do? Beat the shit out of Jack? Not that crazy . . .
I don't like to think of Oscar fucking. Oscar's ass going up and down and his mouth twisted up and drippy. I can't believe any girl can even stand to fuck with him, he looks so nasty. They gotta be under him, looking up at his stupid face while he goes up and down like duh, duh, duh, unless he mostly does them from the back and they can maybe just look out the window or at the bus seat or the metal and screws and writing and stuff on the wall of the bus by the seat and just kinda space out or maybe they just close their eyes and think of something else. How could they not wanna think about something besides getting fucked by Oscar Livitt? The girls though, the girls Oscar fucks on the other hand . . . I like to think of them. I mean, there's only been three that I know of, that everybody knows, but all of them are more than good enough to think about fucking. Not fucking Oscar Livitt, but just fucking. Maybe me, maybe one of the guys from the fuck movie . . . anybody but Oscar Livitt and I can change it around like that and, hey, it works for me.
Like Tia Sanders, she looks good getting fucked in a bad way in my movies. It's good, but it's bad. Tia's hot, but she's not the kind anybody would say is hot because she's from the foster home on 16th by the park and because she smokes dope and because it's a joke around that Tia's got crabs and has fucked, like, cousins of hers and Mexican high-school guys and shit and of course nobody ever said a damn thing about her when Oscar was fucking her because to do that would just be asking for it, asking to be dead, but since he's moved on it's not like he cares any more. Still, the last thing you're gonna hear anybody say about Tia Sanders is she's hot. She's hot though. Bad hot.
After her was Victoria Henderson, and of course everybody thought she was hot. People would say Victoria Henderson was hot even if they didn't think she was hot because she was just the kinda girl where anybody, if you asked them: if you could fuck anybody at school, who would you fuck? would just automatically say Victoria Henderson because she's just the hottest in creature ever born in the entire history of hotness, or whatever, because she's rich and lives on the hill and blonde and wears expensive shit and does all the sports and student government and gets all A's and all that crap, but I gotta say, borrrrring. Sure, I've put her in my movies before, but Victoria Henderson is more the kinda girl you'd see in a toothpaste ad. Or at least was.
Everybody about shit their pants when we were all sitting on the bus one morning waiting for Oscar and Tia to get on when who should show up holding hands with Oscar Livitt and go all the way to the back but Victoria Henderson. Victoria fucking Henderson. And nobody said a damn thing. Nobody moved. It didn't even seem like anybody breathed. I don't think anybody even said anything to each other about it for the next few days of it going on because it was almost like everyone thought it wasn't real and they were just seeing shit because it was that fucking unbelievable. But it was. It was real. Oscar Livitt fucking Victoria Henderson. And Tia, you didn't even see her on the bus for a while. Must've gotten a ride or walked, but I guess half the time she's never in class anyway, so whatever, but can you believe it? Victoria Henderson.
Of course now nobody would touch Victoria Henderson with a long, sharp stick. Victoria Henderson might as well curl up and call it or move or something because Oscar fucked her and he isn't fucking her any more and maybe when he was nobody would say a damn thing and it was like everybody was so blown away they couldn't believe it, but it could still be all like nothing had changed and Victoria Henderson was still queen of the school and she could somehow do both: fuck Oscar Livitt in the back of the bus twice a day and be the perfect, little, white-candy angel the rest of the time and it didn't matter, but the second he got on the bus with the new girl it was like the whole world kinda let out this big, quiet laugh. Like, ha, ha, ha, now Victoria Henderson has really been fucked by Oscar Livitt and it all came out and it was almost like she was dead even though she was still alive. Like she was just a ghost girl zombie or something of Victoria Henderson, walking around with her books pulled up tight over her tits like those books could protect her.
And Oscar was the first to say it. He never said shit about Tia Sanders after he quit fucking her, but after Victoria . . . after a few classes that day he got on the bus with the new girl Chris Wallace came up and said, shit, did you hear? Did you hear what Oscar Livitt said about Victoria? Did you hear what Oscar said about Victoria Henderson? And we all shook our heads because we hadn't because even though some of us were Tall Guys and Oscar had talked to us once to tell us what to do and sometimes people kinda think of us as maybe having something to do with Oscar Livitt because of that, because they know he must've said something to us some time and maybe it was important because, you know, we're like his guys all sitting in front of him in the back of the bus so he can fuck, but the truth is we don't know shit about him or some of us even much about each other because it's just that way: he told us and we just did it and that's it and sometimes people ask us stuff like, so, have you ever seen Oscar Livitt fuck? but it's like a fucking joke. Of course not. Do you think I'm crazy? You think I want my ass busted up all over the playground? Shit, no. We all sit and look straight ahead and don't say anything, some of us with the earplugs even, and Oscar's back there fucking, I guess, and that's the most we know. As much as anyone else knows is all we know and just then after the new girl, that day, Chris Wallace comes up saying, did you hear, did you hear and of course we hadn't yet and Chris says he heard from Blake Newman, who is known to, you know, just like . . . talk to Oscar Livitt every once in a while, that he was kinda hanging out with Oscar a bit before class, Blake was, and Oscar said to him just out of the blue, you know Victoria? and Blake nodded like, yeah, of course, who doesn't know Victoria Henderson, and, shit, she's been going to the back of the bus with you every day now for three months or so until today and now you've got somebody else, the new girl, and yeah, I know Victoria, I mean, I don't really know her, like I never tried to talk to her while you were fucking her or even before that and, hell, not like she would have talked to me anyway, and it's not like Blake Newman even said any of that out loud, Chris said, but it's what Blake said he was thinking, and Blake just nodded and played it cool, just nodded to Oscar like, yeah, and left it at that and Oscar nodded too and shook his head, kinda made this little hissing noise through his teeth like a laugh or something, Chris tried to do it, and Blake waited because it was like Oscar was about to talk and then Oscar looked at Blake again and shook his head again and kinda did the hissing laugh thing again and then he said, that Victoria, Oscar said, that Victoria, Oscar Livitt said about Victoria Henderson to Blake Newman who told Chris Wallace who told us, some of the Tall Guys in the whatever, Tall Guys Club, Oscar said, that Victoria . . . she doesn't know the first thing about how to fuck.
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This one was published in Nerve.
I spent the bulk of my early life in a small Oregon town called Forest Grove. A part of me still lives in some alternate universe version of it, watching. Occasionally reporting back.
On point. The conversation between Blake and Oscar is priceless, and ending on that was the perfect decision. Excellent.
Gracias, Cami.
Killer opening para. Sets everything up perfectly.
"I remember my gang, Jack says. And we say, yeah, Jack, because we've all heard it a million times ..." Beauty-ful
"That was it and the fucker, fucking Troy, was timing it, timed it on his stupid, cheap-ass, digital watch and soon as ten minutes were up he stopped the thing and popped it out and ran out..." this evoked memories of something somewhat similar, how i'd find ways to pop in my shitty VHS tape of Tyson getting KTFO's by Douglas...whenever over at my friend's house...he loved Tyson more than anything else and that fight shook him deep
"Bad hot" - damn love that too
wonderful ending...can see why Nerve wanted this. well done.
Ah, thank you, Mr. Erlewine. Much appreciated:}