The Shape of Water

MOVIE TITLE: The Shape of Water

DIRECTOR: Guillermo Del Toro

YEAR: 2017

GENRE: Dark Fantasy Romance

RATING: R for sexual content, language, and violence

GRADE: Pass

During the Cold War in 1960’s America, Elisa Esposito is a lonely, mute janitor at a top secret military base whose only true friends in the world are a fellow janitor named Zelda and a gay advertising artist named Giles. Elisa finds additional friendship in the unlikeliest place when the military captures a South American merman and keeps him in captivity for the purpose of sending him into space. The more time Elisa spends with the merman, the more she identifies with him since they both communicate in strange ways and are both outcasts in their respective worlds. Her eventual plan is to break the sea creature out of captivity before he can be tortured any further for “scientific reasons”.

The fact that any movie can introduce a romantic plot to us without sounding like a shallow Harlequin romance novel is always impressive to me. As strange as it may seem, Elisa and the merman are perfect for each other. Nobody in the world understands them. Few people want to be within arm’s length of them. They may not be beautiful to the superficial population at large, but they’re beautiful to each other and that’s what true love is all about. They don’t need to argue with each other over stupid things. They don’t need to fight over pretentious jealousy. While those last two things are realistic in most relationships, they’re not found in this love story, because we all know at the end of the day such petty things are foolish anyways. Let this delightfully unique couple enjoy their moments together.

On the opposite end of the love spectrum, you have a vile and disgusting villain named Colonel Richard Strickland. As the chief bad guy, he’s believable in every sense of the word. His dialogue is slick and hard-boiled without dipping into bathos territory. His obsession with defeating the Russians in the space race will lead him to do and say horrible things to get what he wants. His methods of torture are brutal even by pre-Bush Administration standards. When he psychotically breaks down, you’d better run like you’ve got rocket fuel pouring out of your butt. Although, I don’t know how much good running will do considering he’s driving around in a smug teal Cadillac. The worst part about him? He’s in a position of power and can throw it around whenever he wants. If it wasn’t for all that power, he would have been taken out long before the movie even had the chance to start.

While this movie is deserving of all of its Academy Award nominations and victories, it’s not without flaws (at least for me). The opening exposition into the movie’s plot seemed a little slower than it had any right to be. The merman devouring an innocent kitty was disturbing as hell (I get that he’s a wild creature, but it knocks a few points down for him as a lover). Those two flaws may seem like small potatoes on the surface, but one series of scenes that sticks out to me is when Giles’s art is turned down by his boss and he’s banned from a pie café by the homophobic and racist owner. Before these two scenes happened, Elisa wanted to recruit Giles in breaking the merman free from the military base and he was adamantly against it. Now that Giles is friendless, only then does he want to get back in the good graces of Elisa. That’s like a high school kid who rejects his uncool friends in favor of the popular jocks, gets kicked out by said jocks, and then tries to get his uncool friends back. I know this series of scenes was necessary in Giles’s character development, but they still seemed a little suspect to me.

All in all, The Shape of Water is a cinematic masterpiece that earned all of its universal acclaim. The acting was spot-on. The plot was unique. The cinematography was breathtaking. And yes, there are sex scenes in this movie that are quite lovely, but that by no means makes The Shape of Water pornographic. These scenes have a purpose in developing characters and actually get us past their surface levels. If you get a chance to see this movie, do it. You’ll have no regrets and will have to dig deep to find flaws (like I did). How does a passing grade sound to everybody here?

Silent Warrior, Chapter 9

Out of one dark abyss, into another. The George household bathed in blackness while Beth’s snoring rattled the walls. She didn’t even wake up when Scott walked through the door. He never had to be light on his toes when he entered the kitchen looking for a bite to eat. Through all of the fury, tears, and insanity, Scott just now realized he had only eaten one meal that day. His ribs were sore for more reasons than the constant use of his diaphragm.

Every Tupperware meal in the refrigerator was crawling with worms and maggots, at least in Scott’s mind. He shook his head to try and free his mind of that image, but the little bastards slithered even more and grew as big as snakes. He slammed the refrigerator door shoot and there was a slight disturbance in his mother’s obtrusive snoring. And then the tiny motor in her closed throat wailed once again. Scott breathed a sigh of relief and reopened the fridge door.

Still they crawled with worms. Slime and shit covered the mashed potatoes and gravy. The macaroni and cheese moved by itself, as if the little pasta bites were necrovores themselves. The milk jug had more worms at the bottom than a bottle of tequila. Scott knew this was just an illusion and took a deep breath to calm himself. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what Adrienne told him: replace the worms with something more pleasant. Something delicious. Something that made eating enjoyable again.

With his eyelids still clamped shut, Scott pulled out a Tupperware container of meatloaf and ate it cold. As he slowly chewed and suppressed his gag reflex, he could feel something moving around between his maulers. The thought of worms moving around wouldn’t be allowed to surface and instead the little creatures were replaced with gummy worms. Meatloaf and gummy worms: the dinner of champions. He took another bite. And another. His eating speed became so rapid that he bit down on his tongue and suppressed a scream.

For the first time since having those Aloysius Striker dreams, Scott finished a meal without getting the urge to vomit himself inside out. He breathed heavily after taking the last bite of meatloaf, his appetite satisfied only until he realized it was bedtime. The thought of going back into his subconscious theater made Scott lightly bang his head against the fridge door repeatedly. If biology was truly up to him, he’d drink Red Bull until the end of time and never fall asleep again.

But reality was always worse than the dream world. Scott’s day had been an exhausting one where he dealt with all sorts of jerk-off characters: Aloysius Striker, Alan Young, Tom Simpson, Beth George, and an undertaker and football jock who both went unnamed  None of these people deserved names in Scott’s mind; they were all just part of a community of worms.

But Adrienne was different from all of those conformists. She was beautiful in more ways than just her physical appearance. She too was hurting badly. She too loved creativity. She too resisted any attempts at breaking her spirit and bending her to the will of the corporate overlords. Those things made her the most beautiful woman on the planet. And yet, Scott wondered what she even saw in a man like him anyways. It wasn’t as though he had the dashing looks of a Hollywood actor or the charisma of a rock star. He was just Scott George. Plain old Scott George. Even his own name was boring to him.

All of these racing thoughts in his head blinded him to the fact that his mother’s footsteps were pitter-pattering across the wooden floor. He quickly closed the fridge door, dropped the meatloaf container in the sink, and bolted upstairs to his bedroom. One stupid fight was one too many for Scott, so he took the role of diplomat and tucked himself in bed, not even bothering to change into more suitable sleepwear.

Scott’s ribs ached like a motherfucker. His head exploded with pain and trauma. His blood was lukewarm. His eyes still burned hotly enough to make closing them a painful experience. Scott didn’t stand a chance when it came to fighting the forces of sleep. His eyelids burned like shooting stars, but his lids were heavier than a grand piano. He could have used such a gentle instrument to sooth his battered soul. Laziness took over to where he didn’t want to press play on his stereo. One slip and down the rabbit hole he fell…

Just a few moments of uninterrupted darkness was what Scott needed. His tortured mind rebuilt itself from a rock bottom foundation. His pain was numbed to the very last nerve. He forgot that a world of a shit existed outside of his aching brain. And it felt good. It felt more heavenly than an hour-long chair massage. It felt more soothing than a harp concert serenading his pounding ears. The nothing consumed every last bit of his body.

And then his temporary peace was shattered as he found himself on a football field with lightning and grayness in the sky. The rain poured down and smacked his skin like bamboo canes. Then the rain thickened into dreaded fucking worms and Scott danced around shivering in disgust. Rows of puppet cheerleaders, so flawless, yet so ugly by virtue of their perfection, twirled and flipped in the air with worm infested pom-poms. Scott swore he heard their chant somewhere before.

“Bring out the gimp! Bring out the gimp! Come on, everybody, let’s bring out the gimp!”

Scott tried to shout back at them, but his mouth was obstructed by a rubber object. He touched his face and scalp and sensed a leather presence covering his Sideshow Bob hair. He also felt a heavy dog chain digging deeply into his neck. He could panic, kick, and scream all he wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that Aloysius Striker owned him and was dragging him to the top of an Olympic-style platform. The puppets formed a semi-circle around the enslaved Scott and listened intently to Mrs. Striker’s oratory.

“You see this, everyone?!” she shouted in her signature ham voice. “This young man is an example of someone who doesn’t want to be part of our community! He wants to go his own way and leave his neighbors to drown in the worms! Well, if he must leave this community, it’s only fair that we give him a going away present!”

Mrs. Striker lifted up her own dress and pulled out a handful of the slimiest, nastiest worms she could, much to the cheerleaders’ giddy delights. The worms oozed with black oil, red blood, and white…whatever the fuck it was. The teacher unzipped the mouth on Scott’s gimp hood and prepared to shove the filthy fuckers down his throat.

“Stop!” shouted a female voice for a prolonged period of time. The cheerleaders and teacher alike stared down the one member of their “community” who dared defy them. The lone cheerleader threw down her pom-poms and ripped off her own head to reveal she was Adrienne Simpson underneath. The puppets and Mrs. Striker gasped in unison like good little conformists when Adrienne sprouted metal angel wings that shot flames in either direction.

“Don’t just stand there, you dolts! Get her!” shouted Mrs. Striker, to which the cheerleaders threw their pom-poms down and attempted to cannibalize the metal angel with shark-like teeth. Adrienne was one step ahead of them when she pointed the tips of her wings at her assailants and shot streams of fire at them. The cheerleaders squealed in agony as their wooden, worm-infested bodies warped and twisted into piles of ashes.

“What the…what have you done to my community? My poor, poor community!” cried Mrs. Striker while holding her dimply cheeks. Scott used this distraction to rip off his gimp hood and shove his “teacher” into the gigantic football field fire, barbecuing the bitch nice and crispy. Her screams were more music to his ears than anything he listened to on his MP3 player that day.

Adrienne flew over to Scott and scooped him up in her arms before floating into the heavenly sunrise of a newly pink morning. The rain had stopped, but the thunder remained, sending crashes of lightning onto the burning field of dead puppets. Scott didn’t want to relish on this recent war and instead relaxed in the arms of his beautiful angel. She sang to him lyrics that were once familiar in his dead father’s music collection.

“I bless the wings that bring you back across the shore. If I could touch you now, my darling, I’d love you just once more. If I could hold you…hold you…hold you…I know you’d understand…I know you’d understand…”

Her soothing soprano tones would have made the Moody Blues proud, but they made Scott relax even further in his girlfriend’s arms. She leaned her face down and kissed his mouth, no taste of worms, no embarrassing boner on Scott’s part, no awkwardness or disgust at all, just a moment of love that would last longer than any haunting trauma. Too bad Scott had to eventually wake up to go to school the next day. But if it meant Adrienne would be there and walk him home again, it would be worth all the heartache.

What would she think of the You Tube video that Alan Young posted in the graveyard? Would she see him as a weakling? Would she take pity on him? Would she break up with him before their relationship even got started? Scott tried not to think too hard about these circling questions and just enjoyed a moment in the pink and orange sunshine with his angelic girlfriend…while he still could.

Silent Warrior, Chapter 8

By the time Scott gathered his wits about him for the thousandth time that day, the orange hell across the sky darkened into a starlit night complete with a full moon. He didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved that his mother didn’t try to call him on his cell phone. He didn’t burst out of the house all this way just to think about her any more than he had to. Instead he tried to find relief in the cold night air blowing against his still red hot skin. Maybe a rainstorm would have been nice, but at this time of year, it was highly unlikely.

Rows upon rows of marked graves lay before Scott. This wasn’t the start of another trippy nightmare; he was wide awake as he humanly could be. Every stone cross, every marble angel, and every tombstone reminded him that life was short even though he had his own future ahead of him. Did he have much of a future left after high school? What college was going to take a damaged young man like him? Why should anybody care? He guessed he would be dead or in jail long before he had the chance to find a real job.

The soundtrack of “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1” by Pink Floyd soothed Scott’s battered eardrums as he approached the grave of his father, Carter Clifford George. The tombstone wasn’t anything fancy, but the sentiment of remembering a simpler life was the same. Scott touched the gravestone with his fingertips and allowed a singular tear to soak the grass beneath.

“Dad…I love you,” he whispered, his voice growing shakier with every word. “If you were here today, none of this would be happening. You were what a real father should be. Not that I would know anything about that, because I don’t plan on having kids. I might not even live long enough to know if I’ll ever be a worthy father. You and I can be together again, Dad. Won’t that be great?”

Scott dropped to his knees and the tears welling up in his eyes turned into a winter storm of emotions. His eyeballs stung like a motherfucker from holding all of this back at school. Even while sharing this moment with his deceased father, he wanted to keep holding it in. But the tears kept rolling. The rage kept bubbling. Adrenaline pulsated through his body. With nobody here but the spirits of the dead, Scott finally cracked and splintered while shouting “DAD!” to the dark heavens above.

He pounded the gravestone with clenched fists and shouted, “Why the fuck did you leave me here to die, you motherfucker?! I need you, damn it! Come home! Come back home and teach my bitch mother a lesson in what it means to be a good fucking parent! Dad! Come back!” Tears moistened his knees like a lawn sprinkler while he struggled to swallow the snot building up in his nose. No matter how many times he pounded that gravestone and begged his father to return, Scott George was still a broken man with nothing to live for.

The crying and screaming session left his legs feeling spaghetti-like and his ribs feeling like they’d been punched in by a heavyweight boxer. Scott breathed so heavily that his voice dropped a few octaves. Using the gravestone for leverage, he hoisted himself up and struggled to stay balanced. He could have easily passed for someone who was just tossed out of a bar for being too intoxicated. His blurry vision was proof of this, but with one hard blink, he could clearly see Alan Young holding a smart phone up to him and grinning from ear to ear.

“I got to say, that’s some Oscar-worthy shit right there, buddy,” Alan mocked. “You’ll be a You Tube celebrity in no time at all once this goes live. Hell, you might even have fifteen minutes of internet fame as a meme. I’ll have to think of a good tagline, though.”

Still breathing like an enraged grizzly bear, Scott held up a finger and warned, “This isn’t the time or the place for your bullshit, Alan. Give me that phone so I can shove it up your ass and lose it forever!”

“Too late, crybaby,” said Alan as he put his phone back in his shorts pocket. “Uploading that shit was as easy as one, two, three. Your ass is on TV!”

The question wasn’t how far Alan Young would stoop. It was how far Scott would run towards him if it meant giving this moron the beating of a lifetime. The chase was on throughout the graveyard. Scott shouted every curse word he could think of at Alan while threatening to, “Punch a hole through [his] big fat chest.” The bully turned around and laughed at his assailant while keeping a long distance between the two of them. Alan even zig-zagged between rows of graves, but the red-visioned Scott stormed towards him like a stampede of rhinos.

Scott had his target in sight and was ready to pounce on him at any moment. Oh, the punches he could throw. The knees that could connect to Alan’s jaw. Maybe Scott could devour this uncaring human being as though this really was the African wild. He could taste the blood on his tongue and feel the moistness of brains sloshing between this teeth. Maybe this would be his permanent cure for anorexia.

And then the high school senior accidentally pounded his own knee against one of the stone crosses and plummeted to the ground, allowing Alan to get away with the evidence and wave goodbye in the process. The cries of pain and the curses that followed filled the night air like a wolf’s howl at the full moon. Scott clutched his bruised knee and pounded the ground with the fist he wanted to use on Alan over and over again.

“Hey, kid!” shouted a middle-aged man not too far from Scott’s location. The crying came to a screeching halt as what appeared to be an undertaker shined a flashlight in Scott’s eyes. “I think you better go home, kid. You and your friend have had enough fun at the dead’s expense for one night.”

“Friend? Friend?!” chuckled Scott through his tears, progressively growing more insane with every cackle. He used the gravestone to pull himself to his feet and limped over to the undertaker, staring up at him with wild bat shit eyes. “If that fat fucker was a friend, I’d hate to meet my enemies. You saw the whole thing, didn’t you? And yet, you did nothing about it! You’re just like every other client you’ve got buried six feet under: you’re dead to the world around you!”

“You want me to do something about this, buddy?” asked the undertaker. “How about if I pull out my cell phone and call 9-1-1 right now. Does that sound good to you? Maybe I’ll tell them a couple of necro-nuggets were looking to get their freak on with the dead bodies.”

Scott ripped the undertaker’s cell phone out of his overalls and asked, “You mean this piece of shit? You want to know what I think of your little 9-1-1 call? Do you, bitch?!” The teenager threw the phone against one of the stone crosses and shattered it into slivers. “If you to want call someone that badly, you should probably howl at the moon like all the other doggies. Woof-woof! Hahaha!”

“You are bat shit crazy, my friend,” said the undertaker while shaking his head. “I’ll be sure to send you the bill for my cell phone once I figure out who the hell you are.”

Scott pulled on the undertaker’s overall straps and grinned at him like a comic book villain. “You do all the detective work you need to do, Dick Tracy. In the meantime, I’m going to just fly away and leave you to…whatever it is you like to do with dead bodies. I’m sure it’s a healthy hobby. If not, then fuck you. I’m flying away! I’m flying away!”

The watchman shook his head yet again as Scott flapped his arms like bird wings and skipped his way out of the graveyard. He sang a little high-pitched tune for the undertaker’s musical enjoyment. “Get some help, asshole!” shouted the watchman as Scott George “flew away” into the night.

“Are you getting this, Alan?!” shouted Scott in a quasi-feminine tone. “I’m going to be a runway diva! I’m going to be a You Tube star! Who’s going to please me today?!” He giggled like a sassy schoolgirl all the way home that night while listening to “I’m Going Slightly Mad” by Queen on his MP3 player. He didn’t bother to see if anybody was spying on him or if any pedestrians were scrambling to get out of his way. That kind of thought process required a brain that didn’t explode like a bag of popcorn.

As soon as Scott reached his doorstep, the divalicious insanity was replaced by another round of him dropping to his knees and bawling his eyes out. This was what it meant to hit rock bottom. Any further down and he’d truly be walking the nine circles of hell for all eternity. He didn’t give two shits if his mother was listening to him agonize or not. The closest he’d get to sympathy was looking it up in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. That seemed to be the general consensus among the people of this god forsaken city. 

Lunatic Justice and Silent Warrior Announcements

***TWO ANNOUNCEMENTS***

I prepared two speeches tonight. Hopefully, I’ll get to use the one in my left pocket. No, I have no idea what that means either; I just heard it on an episode of The Shield. Let’s get started, shall we.

***LUNATIC JUSTICE***

First and foremost, it finally happened. My third collection of poetry, Lunatic Justice, is currently online in paperback and (soon to be) Kindle format, though it’ll take a few days for the book to actually be buyable. The poems cover a wide variety of topics whether it’s politics, anger, violence, drugs, bullying, or even something as simple as being stuck in traffic. There are a few comedy songs in there too whether it’s the David Bowie parody “Ground Control to Uncle Tom” or the ridiculously put-together “Conspiracy Theory”. This book is geared towards mature audiences due to the abundance of cursing, sex references, and delicious bloody violence.

Good Reads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38324494-lunatic-justice

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1984137816/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517543240&sr=1-1

***SILENT WARRIOR, CHAPTER 7***

Remember how I said a few blogs ago how I would never post sex-oriented chapters of Silent Warrior online? Well, my lovely beta reader Marie Krepps suggested that I post them to a safe haven for this kind of content, Wattpad. I wrote chapter seven two days ago and it’s there now if you want to read it. I should warn you all that it’s not all hot and spicy action. There’s some heart-wrenching drama shortly after Scott George gets done stroking his meat. Your hard-on will be dead by the time this chapter is over.

Wattpad Profile: https://www.wattpad.com/user/Garrison-Kelly

I’d give you all the direct link to chapter seven, but I’m exercising a little caution with this one since this blog entry is going live on my non-mature social media accounts.

***SILENT WARRIOR SIDE NOTE: TITLE***

The further I get into writing this novel, the more I question whether Silent Warrior is the best title for it. Sure, it sounds cool and all, but Scott George is neither silent nor a warrior. He’s very outspoken about his opinions and the most violent thing he’s done in this story so far is strangle Alan Young over the back of a bus seat (not to mention that Alan lives through the whole thing). Maybe something I can do tonight is brainstorm a list of possible alternatives for titles. One that I’m thinking about is “A Community of Worms”, which is a reference to the nightmare Scott has in the opening chapter. And yes, that nightmare and its characters will factor into the novel later on, in case you were wondering. I can’t think of any other title ideas at the moment, so I’ll leave it to you guys to let me know what you think of all of this.

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking at the barrel of an Armalite. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say. I don’t want to spend my time in hell looking at the walls of a prison cell. I don’t ever want to play the part of a statistic on a government chart. It’s dark all day and it glows all night. Factory smoke and acetylene light. I face the day with my head caved in looking like something that the cat brought in. And they’re only going to change this place by killing everybody in the human race. They would kill me for a cigarette. But I don’t even want to die just yet. There has to be an invisible sun. It gives its heat to everyone. There has to be an invisible sun. It gives us hope when the whole day’s done.”

-The Police singing “Invisible Sun”-

Dumb Asses

VERSE 1

A drug zombie with his Johnson hanging out

A drunken loony shouting gibberish so loud

Giving hand jobs in exchange for change

With a hairy palm all covered with mange

Giving blow jobs with infected bloody gums

Now you’ve got rivers of pus in your cum

These are the characters you see at a bus station

Or out on the streets doing public masturbation

CHORUS 1

Dumb asses should be a priority

Locked up by the highest authority

Locked up in a room full of white

Straightjacket fitting oh so tight

VERSE 2

Laughing at nothing but the wall in front of him

Shouting conspiracy theories about the government

Smelling like shit and a pack of cigarettes

Jaywalking blindly where the streets intersect

Everyone’s walking just a little bit faster

While the acid trip is his psyche’s master

His hand goes up an unsuspecting woman’s skirt

He squeezes so hard that it starts to fucking hurt

CHORUS 2

Dumb asses should be a priority

Everywhere we go, they are the majority

Buses, ferries, and even taxi cabs

Walking ain’t crowded, but it’s sure a drag

VERSE 3

I’ll never go back to this city anymore

Except to listen to music so hardcore

Except to eat at the best restaurants

Except to hold signs in the biggest font

A love-hate relationship with the clown town

For every breath of fresh air, a stain that’s brown

For every sane guy, there’re a hundred freaks

For every bus trip, there’s the jerk of the week

COMBINED CHORUSES

Dumb asses should be a priority

Locked up by the highest authority

Locked up in a room full of white

Straightjacket fitting oh so tight

Dumb asses should be a priority

Everywhere we go, they are the majority

Buses, ferries, and even taxi cabs

Walking ain’t crowded, but it’s sure a drag

FINAL LINES

Dumb asses should be a priority X4

Dumb asses!

Your Own Fault

VERSE 1

I’m not the source of your misery

This ain’t no big fucking mystery

You are the owner of your anger

You put your loved ones in danger

I’m not your lightning rod of hate

I’m not the author of your sealed fate

When it comes to building your walls

Your stress is your own damn fault!

CHORUS

Control yourself! Calm the fuck down!

Say you’re sorry with your nose so brown!

Break your promises the very next day!

It’s your own fault that you feel this way!

VERSE 2

Make your threats, get inside my head

Blame me for your soul being dead

Blame me for the prison you built

Cry forever for the milk you spilt

This ain’t tough love, you’re selling me out

You’re not on point, you’re fucking loud

Throw your punch, you macho moron

In this battle, you won’t last for long!

CHORUS

Control yourself! Calm the fuck down!

Say you’re sorry with your nose so brown!

Break your promises the very next day!

It’s your own fault that you feel this way!

BRIDGE

Round one! Let’s ring the bell!

Round two! Let’s go to hell!

Round three! Let’s finish this shit!

It’s all your fault you’re throwing a fit!

EXTENDED CHORUS

Control yourself! Calm the fuck down!

Say you’re sorry with your nose so brown!

Break your promises the very next day!

It’s your own fault that you feel this way!

It’s your own fault the world hates you!

It’s your own fault, nobody made you!

It’s your own fault you can’t find peace!

Don’t take your fucking anger out on me!

Silent Warrior, Chapter 6

“I was beginning to think you actually served your thirty minutes with my dad,” said Adrienne with a cute smile as she held Scott’s sweaty hand in hers. While the two of them walked down the street together like a cuddly couple, Scott’s hand wouldn’t stop perspiring and his face wouldn’t stop glowing with strawberry redness. The more embarrassed he looked, the more Adrienne held onto his hand and smiled at him. “You don’t need to be nervous around me, Scott.”

“I know, I know…it’s just that…” Scott sighed as he searched for his words. “It’s been a while since somebody held me hand like this. I mean, are we…uh…what are we, exactly?”

“We can be anything you want, Scotty-Boy. We can be friends. We can be good friends. We can be really, really, really good friends. For all the world knows, we could be dating right now.” That last sentence really brightened up Scott’s tomato-colored cheeks. “You’ve never had a girlfriend before, have you?”

“Actually, I had three of them before you,” explained Scott, his eyes tucked low and not meeting Adrienne’s. “They didn’t work out too well, though. They were a lot like your dad in the sense that they didn’t give a crap about my introversion. Either that or they didn’t know it was a real thing. Constant phone calls, twenty-four seven, right in the middle of homework.” Adrienne gave him an accusatory look and placed one hand on her right hip. “That doesn’t mean that…” Scott stuttered. “I mean, you can call anytime you…oh, no…”

“I’m just screwing with you, Scott, you can relax now,” said Adrienne while swinging Scott’s liquefied hand. “Truth be told, I actually get a lot of what you’re saying. Sometimes you’ve just got to have your space, that’s all. But even with all that space, there still can’t be secrets between us. You have to find a balance between those things, you know?” A beat of awkward silence hung between them. “So tell me the truth, Scott: did you have anything to eat today?”

He sighed, “No, I didn’t. That’s part of the reason why I didn’t show up for our walk right away. I was at the gas station eating a microwavable pizza.”

“Lift up your shirt, Scott,” demanded Adrienne. Scott swallowed a nervous gulp and questioned his girlfriend before she asked him again to lift up his shirt. When he did so, he revealed that his ribcage was slightly visible. “I knew it,” she said. “You’re not getting enough to eat these days. That’s not good for you, honey.”

“Thanks, Mom,” snickered Scott.

“Scott, I’m serious. Didn’t you take health class in middle school? You would have learned all about anorexia if you actually paid attention.”

“I’m not anorexic!” snapped Scott, to which Adrienne’s accusatory eyes widened. “Sorry about that. You’re right. I should be eating more often than I do. It’s just that…it’s this goddamn dream I keep having every night. It won’t go away.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s like…having an acid trip every night. There’s this puppet teacher and she’s always covered in worms. So are her students. And every time I try to take a bite of food, all I an see are those worms just crawling around on my plate. It took all the strength I had just to eat that gas station pizza. Goddamn, what the fuck is wrong with me?” Scott placed his head in his free hand and rubbed his temples, as if the face massage would actually ease his permanent pain.

Adrienne let go of Scott’s goopy hand and instead wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “I get it, Scott. School is a shitty place to be. It always has been. But if you don’t eat on a regular basis, you could die. And don’t even try telling me that’s a better option than living.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? Every time I have something to eat, it’s just worms and maggots. I can’t put it out of my mind. I can’t see a shrink or else they’ll lock me up in a loony bin.” A little tear splash plopped onto the sidewalk, Scott hurrying to wipe his eyes away.

“I have an idea. How about instead of worms, you imagine something else over it. It’s like mental censorship. If you’re eating mashed potatoes, imagine gravy instead of worms. If you’re eating pizza, imagine more cheese and pepperoni instead of maggots. It takes a lot of time to master, but that’s true with pretty much any skill. That’s what being healthy is, Scott: a skill. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

Scott let out a deep sigh and said, “Okay, I’ll give it a try. If it’ll keep me out of the nuthouse, I’ll do it. By the way, how do you know all about this?”

“I see a therapist every Sunday morning.” Scott’s dewy eyes widened as if this therapist was a true alternative to the nuthouse he saw in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. “It’s true, Scott,” said Adrienne. “You get to sit on a comfy couch and talk about your feelings for an hour or so. It’s good for the soul.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute…You always seem so happy all the time. I mean, why would you…you know…”

“You of all people should know that what happens on the outside has little to do with what happens on the inside. My therapist got me through the divorce proceedings between my mom and dad. There was nothing happy or joyful about any of what happened between those two. I’m still hurting over it. I get that my dad can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s still my dad. He should have protected me…”

A small tear welled up in Adrienne’s eye and Scott gently wiped it away with his shirt sleeve. He said, “Now we’re even,” referencing their shared moment in the cafeteria. She gave him a little smile and his heart pulsated with life once more. For the next twenty minutes, the two of them walked together in silence, just admiring each other’s company.

Scott still couldn’t help looking down at Adrienne’s bare feet in those sandals. He tried his damnedest not to get a boner in front of her as he admired those pink-painted toenails of hers. He even titled his head backwards so that he could see her soft and silky soles, which were his favorite part of the female foot. Adrienne thought he was staring at her ass and playfully swiped him away before giggling.

“Is this your house?” Adrienne asked. Scott nodded and the two of them stopped in the lawn while holding each other’s hands. They gazed in each other’s eyes and Adrienne couldn’t help but giggle again, while Scott’s shy guy smile was a little more attractive than his slasher smile in the locker hallways. “I had fun walking with you today. I learned a lot about you.”

“Yeah, uh…same here…heh…”

“Goodnight, Scott. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.” Adrienne grinned sweetly at Scott before slowly bringing her face closer to his and planting a kiss on his already flaming cheek. The senior’s eye’s widened as his newfound girlfriend kissed him on the lips and swirled her tongue around his mouth. For good measure, she kicked off one of her sandals and rubbed her sole against his calf while kissing him deeper and deeper.

This was the first time in a long time that Scott’s oral activities didn’t involve worms and maggots. Adrienne’s lips and tongue tasted more heavenly than Crème Brule despite the fact that she had eaten a crappy school lunch just hours before. This was Scott’s instant vacation from reality, if only for a few seconds. He could stay in this beautiful kiss forever. He thought to himself, Fuck you, Mrs. Striker! Fuck you, Mr. Simpson! Fuck you, Alan! Fuck everybody…

“Oh my god!” said Adrienne as she broke the kiss with shocked wide-eyes. Scott began to kick himself once again as he assumed he was talking out loud the whole time. But how could he form a coherent sentence with another woman’s tongue in his mouth? And then Adrienne pointed down at Scott’s crotch and the offender stood proudly in the air.

Scott used his backpack to cover up his aroused manhood and profusely apologized to Adrienne, who just stood there not knowing what the hell to do. Any smile she once had was minimal at best. Instead of throwing more useless, “I’m sorrys” her way, Scott ran inside his house and bolted upstairs to his bedroom, where he threw the backpack on his bed and locked the door. He hoped in all of that turbo-charged madness that his own mother didn’t notice the wood jutting through his sweatpants. Otherwise, he’d have to kick himself even harder than before.

Scott placed a hand on his chest and kept telling himself to settle down before taking a seat on the bed and breathing heavily. “It’s just a boner. It’ll go away. They always do.” His breathing intensified as he laid back in his bed and pounded the mattress with his fists. “Goddamn it, why did I have to be so stupid!” He tried to say it softly enough so that his mother didn’t hear him. Lord knows she didn’t need to see Scott giving her a one-gun salute after a hard day of work. “I’m so fucking embarrassed,” he whispered while his breathing intensified yet again. He wiped the sweat off of his face and hands and closed his eyes for a while, hoping the boner would flatten sooner than later.