SYMPATHETIC FANTASY

          Five-and-a-half-feet tall, one hundred pounds, and still nursing the bruises I had received from the disorganized social atmosphere of the eighth grade, I entered high school with little enthusiasm. As Grade Nine began, I was trying to keep a low profile, minding my own business, getting good grades and what not.
          Then one day, my English class started having pre-class discussions. And there was this one guy--a junkie named Albert--who turned to me and said, "Hey, man. What's your name?" "Ben," I said unassumingly. "Hey, Ben, what's up," he said, shaking my hand fiercely.
          "So, Ben," he said, "how's your sex life?" "What sex life?," I replied humorously. Then pretty much everyone around me started laughing. Laughing with me, I thought. Then Albert went, "You mean you're still a virgin?" "I suppose," I laughed, "unless something's going on that I don't know about!" Then the others laughed some more. Laughing with me, I thought. Then our English teacher entered the room, and as Albert started to turn himself back towards the front of the room, he looked at me and laughed, "What a friggin' dork!" Then the others laughed again. I spent the rest of the class looking down at my books. Laughing at me, I thought.
          After that incident, others started to bother me. People I didn't even know would walk up to me, ask me if I was still a virgin, laugh loudly into my ears, and give me a swift, hard punch in the arm before walking away. My efforts to keep a low profile ended up with me feeling pretty low....

          "Ben?"
          "Wha--" His upper body sprang from the mattress.
          "Oh." She brought him down gently with her hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were sleeping."
          "Oh, no, I was just thinking."
          "About what?"
          "Uh...um...jerks. All those people that are jerks. They really bother me."
          "You mean Steve?"
          "Um, okay. He qualifies."
          "You know, I am glad you told me he was a jerk."
          "You still went out with him, though."
          "Yeah, but, I mean, it was good to know that you didn't like him. That way, I knew that it was better for me to keep you two apart and hang out with only one of you at a time."
          He began to smile. "Did he ever get jealous about my spending time alone with you?"
          "Oh, Steve's never jealous." She also began to smile. "He's just horny all the time."
          Ben's eyes widened. "Thank you for sharing."
          "I'm sorry." She kissed him on the cheek. "I'm just saying that I'm glad you told me how you felt. I wouldn't have wanted to risk you two going up against each other. I don't like those kinds of confrontations and stuff."
          Yeah, Ben thought, me neither. Once again, his mind drifted to the writings in his desk....

          It seemed like tenth grade would be an improvement from the previous year. I was older, more cautious, and Albert wasn't in any of my classes. But I was foolish to think that there would not be successors to his throne.
          By this time, I had made myself invisible to most of the other students. But one thing I've learned about high school is that the more anonymous you are, the less sympathy you get when you're down. Guys like Albert knew that all too well.
          I remember one time that year, as English class was ending, this guy Erik walked up to me, put his face right in front of mine, and said, "Hey, Ben. You a virgin?"
          Remembering my blurt of honesty from the previous year, I decided that I wasn't ready to be embarrassed again. Erik had been mouthing off to me several times before, so I decided to do the same to him. But my best answer to "You a virgin?" was, smirkingly, "Are you an idiot?" Unaffected, he turned to his friends and shouted, "Yep, he's a virgin all right!" They laughed, of course. My smirk disappeared as they walked away. I was beginning to hate English classes.
          Though I continued to work hard in all of my classes, the high marks did little to raise my spirits. After all, good grades don't keep the Eriks away....

          "Hey, Ben."
          He sprang for a moment and saw Cynthia sitting up beside him. "Oh, it's you." He shifted towards her. "What is it?"
          "I was just thinking about Steve."
          "Why would you want to do that?"
          "I don't. He's just been..." She cringed for a moment. "He's just been bothering me lately."
          "Bothering you?" Ben shifted himself up even further.
          "Oh, it's nothing big. He just...calls me sometimes. He, like, still asks me out."
          "And what do you say?"
          "I tell him it's over between us, and that he screwed up." She began to grin. "Then I tell him to bite me."
          Ben laughed. "What a jerk."
          "A jerk?" Cynthia was laughing, too. "Who's a jerk?"
          "Well, actually, both of you." Ben laughed even harder.
          "Oh, so I'm a jerk, am I?" She was getting defensive, but she was still laughing.
          "Yeah, but I like it when you're a jerk."
          "Oh yeah?" She hovered over him again. "Do you like it when I do this?" She started wiggling her fingers all over his stomach.
          "Hey!" He began shaking about, still laughing, on the bed.
          "Oh, come on, you like it!" She continued tickling him.
          "Stop!"
          "You like it! You do! You know you do!"
          "Stop it!"
          "You do, you do, you do, you do!"
          Within seconds, they were both rolling around and laughing and tickling each other like mad. And then, without warning, the door opened. Ben lay motionless on top of Cynthia.
          "Well," laughed a voice from the other side of the doorway, "you two look pretty cozy."
          Ben rolled back onto his side of the bed. "Good night, Dad."
          Cynthia inched further to her side. "Good night, Ben's dad."
          "Good night, kids." He closed the door and walked away, still laughing.
          Lying face-up on the wrinkled sheets of the bed, the two ticklers turned to each other and smiled.
          "Your dad sure knows how to kill a moment."
          "I think that's the idea."
          "Oh, well..." She turned herself towards him. "At least he's not as annoying as Steve." As she closed her eyes, her voice became softer. "Actually, I don't think anybody's as annoying as Steve."
          "Well, you never know." Of course, he thought, I probably do know....

          I entered my junior year not looking forward to much of anything. By this time, I was used to spending my lunch periods in the vacant darkroom of the school library (I never really had anyone to sit with during lunch, and the yearbook photographers all had their photos developed at a drugstore).
          But on the first day back at school, I did attempt to rejoin the cafeteria crowd. Yet just as I entered the lunch line, I ran into good ol' Albert, who was more hairy and coked-up than ever before. "Hey, Beh-hen," he said, slapping me on the shoulder, "long time no see!" I nodded and turned away from him. "So," he persisted, "you still a virgin?" I wouldn't even look at him. "You know," he said, leaning against me, "I know some girls who'd be glad to help, I mean, they'd do anything for a nickel!" Some nearby friends of his started laughing. Laughing at me, I thought.
          Frustrated, I turned back and shoved Albert onto the floor. "Come on, Big Al," I said, "let's see what you can do for a nickel!" Then he jumped at me, and we fought from there. But we were soon broken up, and both of us were suspended.
          After that, Albert never really bothered me again. But that was probably because I spent the rest of my lunch periods back in the darkroom, hiding, alone. I knew that if I wanted to stop being alone, I would have to try something else....

          "Are you cold?"
          "Huh--"
          "You are. You're shivering." She got out of bed and began looking through the closet for another blanket. "Ah, here we go." She unfolded the blanket and put it over the other one on the bed. "There. Now, let me back in." She got under the covers with him.
          "Thanks."
          "No problem." It seemed for a moment that they would start to actually doze off. But after a few seconds, Cynthia turned to Ben and put her mouth up to his ear. "You know," she said softly, "it's really my fault that Steve hates you."
          Ben turned. "How's that?"
          "He's not mad because you told everybody what he was doing. What bothers him is that I'm not all lonely and crying without him. He blames you for that."
          "Is he right?"
          Cynthia nodded. "Yeah."
          Ben smiled, then stopped. "You...did cry, though."
          Cynthia looked away for a moment. "Yeah." She moved closer to him. "I just couldn't believe he'd be screwing around. I mean, he was all nice and...well, I'm just glad you were around."
          "Yeah." He put his hand on her cheek. "Me too."
          "He was such a jerk, and you told me that. But you didn't say anything like 'Well, I told ya so!' You were just there, for me. I mean, you just held me and let me cry and..." She took a moment to look into his eyes. "...it was...pretty cool, you know?"
          "Well..." He was losing himself in her eyes as well. "You're pretty cool too, you know?"
          "Yeah," she grinned, "I know."
          They both laughed as they turned away from each other.
          "So," she said, "are you going to Rita's party tomorrow?"
          Ben thought for a moment. "Well..."
          "Oh come on, Ben, it's Spring Break. Let's have some fun!"
          "Well..." Oh come on, Ben, he thought to himself, this is Rita we're talking about, so--duh!--yes, you're going, so say it already! "Um, okay. I'm going."
          "I'm glad." She began to close her eyes again. "I feel so uncomfortable by myself at parties."
          "Yeah," he said, closing his eyes, "me too...."

          If I could sum up my senior year in five words, the message would read, "It looked good on paper."
          Since the end of my junior year, I was becoming more involved in afterschool activities. I was in the vocal group; I took theater classes; I put together layouts for the yearbook; and I was even chief editor of the literary magazine. As a result, I got to meet a lot of people. But even though we got along well together, it seemed that outside of classes and club meetings, I never really got to hang out with anybody. Another thing I've learned about high school is that if you don't know every influential person right from the start, you never will.
          An exception to this rule was Rita. She had spent her first three years of high school in another state, so nobody in our town knew her. Despite this, Rita managed to become very popular at our school. But why? Well, she was pretty nice. And friendly. But wasn't I nice and friendly, too? It seemed that no matter how I readjusted myself or my image, the other students would always be more accepting of fresh faces.
          Anyway, as fate would have it, Rita was in my vocal group. Halfway through the year, we had volunteered to sing a duet at an upcoming chorus concert. After a few rehearsals and a well-received performance, we had become more familiar with each other, if only vaguely.
          She was so nice, in fact, that I later got invited to one of the many parties that she threw throughout the year. It was the first party I had ever really been invited to, so I felt obligated--and, to a good extent, anxious--to attend.
          So I went, and I was having a pretty good time. But towards the end of the night, when a bunch of us were talking in Rita's living room, I casually used a curse word in one of my sentences, and this guy Marc went nuts. "Whoa," he shouted, "I can't believe you just swore." "It happens," I replied humorously. "Not with you, it doesn't!," he said, "You're probably the most innocent person in this whole room. You don't drink, you don't smoke..." I started leaving the room, but not soon enough. "...I'll even bet you're still a virgin!" I said nothing. I didn't even look at him. I just walked away. What could I have said? Nothing I had said or done before seemed effective enough. Why bother? He had already won.
          When that year began, I told myself that if I could get through at least one year of high school without someone assuming how "innocent" I was, I could graduate with some sense of pride. But all I had now was myself, sitting on the porch of the house of some girl I barely felt I knew, looking back on four years of people like Albert, Erik, and Marc. Four years of no one to sit with during lunch. Three years of "he's nobody" plus one year of "he's somebody, but he's too nice." Four years of that word..."virgin."
          But why? No one else at school had to put up with that word four years in a row, right? Why me? Was it written on my face? Was it in the way that I acted? How could they judge me so easily? How could they want to judge me at all?
          I was ashamed of being a "virgin," and after all that I had been through, I felt I had every right to be....

          "Oh, Ben, I can't take it anymore!"
          "Oh boy." Ben was getting used to these interruptions. "Here we go again."
          "Come on, Ben, I have to tell you. She probably doesn't want you to know yet, but I have to tell you, I have to!"
          "Okay, okay, settle down. What is it?"
          "Rita's crazy about you."
          "What??" Ben sprang up.
          Shifting herself up to him, Cynthia started to grin like a naughty child. "She really likes you, Ben."
          Ben's eyes were beach balls compared to hers. "Is that what she told you?"
          "Yeah." Her grin got even bigger.
          "But how do you know--?"
          "She read the poem you gave me the night I broke up with Steve."
          "That's it? One poem?"
          "Well, actually, she said you two sang this thing together in high school, and she thought you were really cool. So now that she knows me, she knows you even more. That's what me and Rita were talking about today. That's when I showed her the poem."
          "Whoa..." Ben's eyes were just starting to go back to their normal size. "Wait, which poem was that?"
          "I told you, that one you gave me..." She reached into her right pants pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Unfolding it, she held it up to the light coming in from the window so that Ben could see it.
          "Oh yeah, I remember this one." Ben looked at the poem with her, and they read it, simultaneously, to each other...

A neoteric evergreen
A new born novel youth
So recent, modern, immature
Immaculate and true
A righteous, well-intentioned girl
So worthy and correct
She lives a quite reserving life
As good as you'd expect
Yet deep inside I see a glow
Of unction, blush, and zeal
A penetrating eagerness
Absorbing, warm, and real
A spirit of pervading need
Emotion, mood, and grain
A sympathetic fantasy
A soul to ease my pain
Transversely crossed in synthesis
An intersecting twine
A dovetail joined embodiment
A braid both hers and mine
Her vestibule of origin
Her portico of source
Yes I've been through these hidden doors
And entered without force
But through this breach of purity
Though waters not untried
She has not lost the innocence
That flows from deep inside.

          Cynthia turned to him and smiled gently. "You knew that Steve was my first..."
          "Yeah." He smiled at her, then glanced back at the paper. "It was something I wrote last year, but I figured it was appropriate."
          "It was." She rested her head on his chest. "It made me feel a lot better."
          "That was the idea." He began stroking her hair.
          "It made Rita feel better, too." Her voice became more cautious. "Steve was her first, too." She glanced up at him for a moment. "She felt like crap about it. Even today, before I showed her that poem. She really wants to go out with you."
          Ben thought about it for a moment, as if he needed to. "Okay, I'll talk with her."
          "You'll ask her out?"
          "Something like that."
          She smiled. "So, what made you write that poem, anyway?"
          "Well...there was a party last year. This guy embarrassed me."
          "He called you a virgin, didn't he?"
          Ben nodded.
          "That's usually how they put you down when they can't find anything else to tease you about."
          "Yeah, but you know how I am about that stuff. I had to write something to make myself feel better. That's what I did when I got home. I just didn't want to believe that whether you've done it or not is all that important, you know?"
          She grinned. "You do want to have it, though, don't you?"
          He thought for a moment. "Not as much as I used to."
          "Really?" She sprang for a moment, then began grinning again as she went back down. "Too bad. I'm sure she'd give it to ya."
          His eyes were beach balls again. "Um, could you please get off me?"
          As she rolled off him, Ben got out of bed, sat down at his desk, and turned on his computer.
          "Ben, what are you doing? Come back to bed."
          "In a second. I just have to finish something."
          "Okay." As Cynthia closed her eyes, Ben began typing another page to put into the bottom drawer of his desk....

          When I entered college, I expected just what my parents described: a place where everybody goes off and does their own thing. In other words, I figured that not only would I be shut out again, but I would also be obligated to shut myself out.
          But instead, I met Cynthia, and we became best friends almost immediately. And High School Rita, as fate would have it, is now my college classmate and is also becoming a close friend. In other words, things have really gotten better. But I hadn't realized that until I started writing this book.
          For years, I had tried to brush off the past, dismissing it in most of my conversations. But when it got down to writing about it, there was no escape. I had to face it, and I'm glad that I did. Only by looking back in time could I see how much I've grown since then.
          My high school years may not have been the best years of my life, but they were my years, and no matter how I've changed since then or how much I change now, those years are a part of what I am today. Whether or not I lose my virginity is besides the point. Regretting my past is regretting myself, and I have no room in my life for that kind of misery.
          I don't know what all that I'm saying here could mean to anybody else. For all I know, this stuff--my life, my past, my thoughts--could only apply to me. Whatever. I just felt like writing it down.

          "There," he said. "All done."
          Cynthia lifted herself up. "Good. Now come back to bed."
          "Okay."
          As she opened the covers for him, Cynthia began to shiver. "Oh, man. I'm glad I got that other blanket. It's really cold in here."
          "Really?" Ben smiled. "I haven't noticed."

PUBLICATION: Scop (literary magazine), 19th edition, April 1996, Corning Community College.

HISTORY: I wrote this not-so-favorite story of mine, originally titled "Ben and Cyn in Bed", for a CCC composition class in Fall 1995. I first got the idea for the story by listening to an on-campus conversation fronted by a girl I kind of knew. She would talk about this platonic male friend of hers who would lie in bed with her whenever they spent the night together. From that, I added elements of my own life.
          The resulting story has eight characters, but is based on three times as many people from my own life. Rita, for example, is a combination of at least two women and one man. Albert, meanwhile, is a combination of at least two jerks from my past.
          To help push the "purity is irrelevant" message of my story, I inserted my poem, "Sympathetic Fantasy", towards the end.
          The story took three months of writing, revision, and reduction. After getting a high grade for it, I submitted it to the following semester's issue of the college's annual literary magazine (which was put together mostly by my writing classes of Fall 1995 and Spring 1996). Before publication, my writing teacher wrote that, "It catches a lot of the "angst" of growing up in a fresh way," but, "I wish you'd work on a catchier title." So, I changed the title from "Ben and Cyn in Bed" to "Sympathetic Fantasy" (the same name as the poem I put into it).
          Despite my high hopes for the story, it got very little response from my peers. The most I heard from it outside of my teacher's praises was when my parents read it and said, "Oh, it's about you." They (and others) couldn't get past their narrow opinion that I was writing about my personal life and nothing else. How embarrassing.
          Those kind of responses led me to re-evaluate my story as a pathetic montage of my own miserable experiences, fantasies, and paranoia, with fantasy elements (i.e. girl friends) thrown in to give it a positive ending, and a good-quality poem thrown in to somehow redeem it all. Also, I didn't think my views on virginity were expressive enough of how I felt about the matter, though it did match my views about how jerks always seem to "get to" the women before the nice guys can.
          In the introduction to a Fall '95 portfolio I handed in to my writing teacher, I wrote, "This is one story that I myself like and would want to see published and shown to a mass audience....I am very excited about this one." A year later, I was left wondering what all the fuss was about.