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Home Explore Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska

Published by sertina2308, 2017-03-06 04:17:26

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this time not to speak, and she reachedup and put a finger to my lips and said,\"Shh. Shh. Don't ruin it.\" fifty-one days before The next morning,I didn't hear theknocking, if there was any. I just heard, \"UP! Do you know whattime it is?!\" I looked at the clock and groggilymuttered, \"It's seven thirty-six.\" \"No, Pudge. It's party time! We'veonly got seven days left before everyonecomes back. Oh God, I can't even tellyou how nice it is to have you here. Last

Thanksgiving, I spent the whole timeconstructing one massive candle usingthe wax from all my little candles. God,it was boring. I counted the ceiling tiles.Sixty-seven down, eighty-four across.Talk about suffering! Absolute torture.\" \"I'm really tired. I—\" I said, and thenshe cut me off. \"Poor Pudge. Oh, poor poor Pudge.Do you want me to climb into bed withyou and cuddle?\" \"Well, if you're offering—\" \"NO!UP! NOW!\" She took me behind a wing ofWeekday Warrior rooms—50 to 59—and stopped in front of a window,placed her palms flat against it, andpushed up until the window was half

open, then crawled inside. I followed. \"What do you see, Pudge?\" I saw a dorm room — the samecinder-block walls, the samedimensions, even the same layout as myown. Their couch was nicer, and theyhad an actual coffee table insteadofcoffee table. They had two posters onthe wall. One featured a huge stack ofhundred-dollar bills with the caption thefirst million is the hardest. On theopposite wall, a poster of a red Ferrari.\"Uh, I see a dorm room.\" \"You're not looking, Pudge. When Igo into your room, I see a couple of guyswho love video games. When I look atmy room, I see a girl who loves books.\"She walked over to the couch and picked

up a plastic soda bottle. \"Look at this,\"she said, and I saw that it was half filledwith a brackish, brown liquid. Dip spit.\"So they dip. And they obviously aren'thygienic about it. So are they going tocare if we pee on their toothbrushes?They won't care enough, that's for sure.Look. Tell me what these guys love.\" \"They love money,\" I said, pointingto the poster. She threw up her hands,exasperated. \"They all love money, Pudge. Okay,go into the bathroom. Tell me what yousee there.\" The game was annoying me a little,but I went into the bathroom as she satdown on that inviting couch. Inside the

shower, I found a dozen bottles ofshampoo and conditioner. In themedicine cabinet, I found a cylindricalbottle of something called Rewind. Iopened it — the bluish gel smelled likeflowers and rubbing alcohol, like afancy hair salon. (Under the sink, I alsofound a tub of Vaseline so big that itcould have only had one possible use,which I didn't care to dwell on.) I cameback into the room and excitedly said,\"They love their hair.\" \"Precisely!\" she shouted. \"Look onthe top bunk.\" Perilously positioned onthe thin wooden headboard of the bed, abottle of STAWET gel. \"Kevin doesn'tj ust wake up with that spiky bedheadlook, Pudge. He works for it. He loves

that hair. They leave their hair productshere, Pudge, because they haveduplicates at home. All those boys do.And you know why?\" \"Because they're compensating fortheir tiny little penises?\" I asked. \"Ha ha. No. That's why they'remacho assholes. They love their hairbecause they aren't smart enough to lovesomething more interesting. So we hitthem where it hurts: the scalp.\" \"Ohh-kaay,\" I said, unsure of how,exactly, to prank someone's scalp. She stood up and walked to thewindow and bent over to shimmy out.\"Don't look at my ass,\" she said, and so Ilooked at her ass, spreading out widefrom her thin waist. She effortlessly

somersaulted out the half-openedwindow. I took the feet first approach,and once I got my feet on the ground, Ilimboed my upper body out the window. \"Well,\" she said. \"That lookedawkward. Let's go to the Smoking Hole.\" She shuffled her feet to kick up dryorange dirt on the road to the bridge,seeming not to walk so much as cross-country ski. As we followed the almost-trail down from the bridge to the Hole,she turned around and looked back atme, stopping. \"I wonder how one wouldgo about acquiring industrial-strengthblue dye,\" she said, and then held a treebranch back for me. forty-nine days

forty-nine days before Two days later — Monday, the firstreal day of vacation — I spent themorning working on my religion finaland went to Alaska's room in theafternoon. She was reading in bed. \"Auden,\" she announced. \"Whatwere his last words?\" \"Don't know. Never heard of him.\" \"Never heard of him? You poor,illiterate boy. Here, read this line.\" Iwalked over and looked down at herindex finger. \"You shall love yourcrooked neighbour/ With your crookedheart,\" I read aloud. \"Yeah. That's prettygood,\" I said.

\"Pretty good? Sure, and bufriedosare pretty good. Sex is pretty fun. Thesun is pretty hot. Jesus, it says so muchabout love and brokenness — it'sperfect.\" \"Mm-hmm.\" I noddedunenthusiastically. \"You're hopeless. Wanna go pornhunting?\" \"Huh?\" \"We can't love our neighbors till weknow how crooked their hearts are.Don't you like porn?\" she asked, smiling. \"Urn,\" I answered. The truth was thatI hadn't seen much porn, but the idea oflooking at porn with Alaska had acertain appeal.

We started with the 50s wing ofdorms and made our way backwardaround the hexagon — she pushed openthe back windows while I looked outand made sure no one was walking by. I'd never been in most people'srooms. After three months, I knew mostpeople, but I regularly talked to very few— just the Colonel and Alaska andTakumi, really. But in a few hours, I gotto know my classmates quite well. Wilson Carbod, the center for theCulver Creek Nothings, hadhemorrhoids, or at least he kepthemorrhoidal cream secreted away inthe bottom drawer of his desk. ChandraKilers, a cute girl who loved math alittle too much, and who Alaska

believed was the Colonel's futuregirlfriend, collected Cabbage PatchKids. I don't mean that she collectedCabbage Patch Kids when she was, like,five. She collected them now — dozensof them — black, white, Latino, andAsian, boys and girls, babies dressedlike farmhands and buddingbusinessmen. A senior WeekdayWarrior named Holly Moser sketchednude self-portraits in charcoal pencil,portraying her rotund form in all itsgirth. I was stunned by how many peoplehad booze. Even the Weekday Warriors,who got to go home every weekend, hadbeer and liquor stashed everywherefrom toilet tanks to the bottoms of dirty-

clothes hampers. \"God, I could have ratted outanyone,\" Alaska said softly as sheunearthed a forty-ounce bottle ofMagnum malt liquor from LongwellChase's closet. I wondered, then, whyshe had chosen Paul and Marya. Alaska found everyone's secrets sofast that I suspected she'd done thisbefore, but she couldn't possibly havehad advance knowledge of the secrets ofRuth and Margot Blowker, ninth-gradetwin sisters who were new and seemedto socialize even less than I did. Aftercrawling into their room, Alaska lookedaround for a moment, then walked to thebookshelf. She stared at it, then pulledout the King James Bible, and there — a

purple bottle of Maui Wowie winecooler. \"How clever,\" she said as shetwisted off the cap. She drank it down intwo long sips, and then proclaimed,\"Maui WOWIE!\" \"They'll know you were here!\" Ishouted. Her eyes widened. \"Oh no, you'reright, Pudge!\" she said. \"Maybe they'll go to the Eagle andtell him that someone stole their winecooler!\" She laughed and leaned out thewindow, throwing the empty bottle intothe grass. And we found plenty of pornmagazines haphazardly stuffed inbetween mattresses and box springs. It

turns out that Hank Walsten did likesomething other than basketball and pot:he liked Juggs. But we didn't find amovie until Room 32, occupied by acouple of guys from Mississippi namedJoe and Marcus. They were in ourreligion class and sometimes sat with theColonel and me at lunch, but I didn'tknow them well. Alaska read the sticker on the top ofthe video. \"The Bitches of MadisonCounty. Well. Ain't that just delightful.\" We ran with it to the TV room,closed the blinds, locked the door, andwatched the movie. It opened with awoman standing on a bridge with herlegs spread while a guy knelt in front ofher, giving her oral sex. No time for

dialogue, I suppose. By the time theystarted doing it, Alaska commenced withher righteous indignation. \"They justdon't make sex look fun for women. Thegirl is just an object. Look! Look atthat!\" I was already looking, needless tosay. A woman crouched on her handsand knees while a guy knelt behind her. She kept saying \"Give it to me\" andmoaning, and though her eyes, brownand blank, betrayed her lack of interest, Icouldn't help but take mental notes.Hands on her shoulders, I noted. Fast,but not too fast or it's going to be over,fast. Keep your grunting to a minimum. As if reading my mind, she said,\"God, Pudge. Never do it that hard. That

would hurt. That looks like torture. And all she can do is just sit thereand take it? This is not a man and awoman. It's a penis and a vagina. What'serotic about that? Where's the kissing?\" \"Given their position, I don't thinkthey can kiss right now,\" I noted. \"That's my point. Just by virtue ofhow they're doing it, it's objectification.He can't even see her face! This is whatcan happen to women, Pudge. Thatwoman is someone's daughter. This iswhat you make us do for money.\" \"Well, not me,\" I said defensively. \"Imean, not technically. I don't, like,produce porn movies.\" \"Look me in the eye and tell me this