At about 5:32 a.m. of last Wednesday, March 21st, I was hanging out at the hottest Los Angeles club. Encircling me at my table were the three judges of the show “American Idol” (Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell). I turned to Simon, who was sitting next to me, and quietly whispered, “Paula’s looking pretty good tonight isn’t she?” After Simon reluctantly nodded his approval, I continued: “how the hell haven’t you hit that yet?”
Randy, who was clearly eavesdropping on the conversation, flipped his head around toward me and proclaimed, “I heard that, dawg.”
Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder, and as I looked to my right, I saw that it was Jessica Biel. “Hey,” she began. “I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.” While contemplating her offer, I turned toward my newfound advisors for further guidance.
Randy spoke first, offering the following advice: “The last time I saw something white with that good of a body was a white-washed sculpture of Wesley Snipes.” As Paula was about to start talking, Simon cut in with the following: “Unfortunately I’m going to have to disagree with you there.”
Then, turning directly towards Jessica, Simon continued, “Let’s just say that the title of the show ‘7th Heaven’ was a tad bit generous. I’d have renamed the show ‘5th,’ or at best, ‘6th Heaven.’ To be frank Jessica, you look like a vampire.”
At that moment, Jessica opened her mouth widely and began to emit a ghastly noise, which immediately disoriented me. Then the scene around me slowly disappeared, leaving in its wake darkness so bleak and hopeless that I had to close my eyes to escape it. When I reopened my eyes a moment later, I was welcomed with a scene that was entirely different. As I first looked towards my clock, I was dismayed to see 5:32 glowing brightly before me.
To my right, my girlfriend was sleeping soundly and, to my left, my stuffed animal raccoon was looking at me with the same apprehensive eyes that had won me over roughly eight years ago.
It was in the fall of ninth grade, and I was a young stallion on the rise. Well actually, being that I had just recently gone through puberty, I was pretty much always at a “rise.” As I looked around me, I began to notice a dimension of the world, which had previously been foreign to me – the dimension of breasts and ass.
But from among the endless sea of curves, seductive outfits and eyeliner, one particular catfish caught my eye. With the homecoming dance right around the corner, the time was right to try to reel her in. I went to the mall looking for the perfect bait to entice her, and it was in the Animal Planet store that I found it.
As I was walking by the store, a group of girls in front of me were admiring a stuffed animal raccoon in the front window. I heard one of them say, “I wish my boyfriend would get me something like this, it looks so adorable.”
Before she had even finished her sentence, I darted into the store, grabbed the raccoon from the window and purchased it.
The next day, I bravely approached my date-to-be’s locker armed with the raccoon and a memorized poem, which, for the record, I still remember to this day. The last three lines of the poem were, “And I remember when you told me that 7th Heaven was your favorite show / But the truth is you’re as beautiful as Jessica Biel / And I can only hope heaven is as wonderful as the way you make me feel.”
At the conclusion of my recitation of the aforementioned poem, I handed my crush the stuffed animal raccoon with a note taped to his hand, which stated “Will you go to homecoming with me?” She took the raccoon from me with a look of wonder in her eyes, as I looked on with the apprehension of a young child. Slowly she raised her head toward me until her eyes met mine. Then she opened her mouth to speak. “Go to homecoming with you?” she asked in a surprised tone. I only nodded slowly, and she continued in an elevated tone “I’ve never spoken to you once in my life. How do you even know that I like ‘7th Heaven?’ Are you stalking me?”
Then she thrust the raccoon at my chest and spitefully added, “Why don’t you take your stuffed animal friend to homecoming instead.” As I turned to slowly walk away, with my head down and tears welling up in my eyes, I heard her call behind me. “And for the record, it’s not a compliment to be compared to Jessica Biel, she looks like a vampire.”
As soon as I was out of her sight, I began sprinting to the locker room. Throwing open the door, I made my way to the trash can to rid myself of the raccoon that had come to represent the first of many rejections that I would inevitably receive from the opposite sex.
As I grabbed the raccoon tightly around its plump neck, I for the first time noticed its facial expression. Its look of trepidation reminded me of my own trepid expression that overcame me each time I had practiced reading my memorized poem into a mirror. It was probably the same apprehensive look that came over me when my crush had taken the raccoon from my hand. It was then that I vowed never rid myself of my furry companion.
As my mind returned to the realm of reality, I looked at my raccoon compassionately and muttered to myself, “At least someone else is up.”
And after what seemed like an eternity, I turned towards the apparent source of the “ghastly noise,” my cell phone. “What the hell do you want?” I asked with a mixture of frustration and disinterest.
“I’m really sorry to be calling you this late,” was the answer on the other line, “But I’m in your English class and I was wondering if that essay was due tomorrow.”
“Call me back in 5 minutes,” I blurted out impatiently.
“Five minutes?” he confusedly asked. “What are you doing at 5:30 AM that takes five minutes?”
“I need to watch a scene from the movie Blade 3,” I replied briskly.
“Blade 3? The vampire movie? Jessica Biel is in that movie, isn’t she?”
“Exactly,” I replied with a sly grin as I hung up the phone and began to take off my pants.
Schwartz is a member of the class of 2007.
