She Still Spits

There’s a woman who hates me so much, she spits on the ground every time she says my name.

To be fair, I earned it….kinda.

A lifetime ago, I took a class in Printing and Graphic Arts at a local Tech Center. It was my Junior year, and I was a raging ball of highschool hormones. It was that part of every young man’s life where they transition from trying to screw everything that moves into the thought of “why limit myself?”. 

She was well out of my league. She was exceptionally beautiful; the problem was she knew it. She existed in a social bubble of her own. A little clique of five radiantly attractive girls that did everything together. These are the girls that date the guys with more muscles than brains and quietly wear the penis in the relationship. They don’t just have beauty, they have control. The desire of every guy, and the envy of every girl. The female teenage dating mafia. 

I….was not in that world. I was an outcast weirdo in my hometown. A dorky, redneck kid from the farm country in southwest Michigan. I was solidly on top of the Nerd clique in my school, guaranteeing that nobody from her social caste would ever even talk to me in my hometown. I was fine with this. I knew my place and carved out my own little existence there as the class clown.

But this was a new school. This was Tech Center, and students there came from a dozen schools spread all over the county. I came from a tiny school, and only one other person from my entire school went to Tech Center. She didn’t know me, my past, my social standing, or the fact that I was an absolute spaz. I had a clean slate.

I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to reach above my station in life, combined with a complete lack of anything to lose.

So, I took a shot, because why the hell not?

Flirting is a delicate dance that requires a deep understanding of subtle nuance. It requires the reading and interpretation of thousands of slight social cues and microexpressions. You have to apply a small stimulus, wait for the tiniest of responses, be socially and emotionally aware enough to detect when that happens, gauge the results, and input the next stimulus. This feedback loop repeats thousands of times (often several times a minute) for anywhere from hours to months. In the unlikely event that you successfully navigate the feminine psyche algorithm, you get laid.

That is an engineer's perspective of dating, all in a single paragraph.

Now, sitting here with 44 years on my back. I have a soul that’s been shredded, stomped, scorched, and scarred by a dozen women that were like bad laptop batteries; full of energy and Lithium and very likely to burn your damn house down. Age gives the luxury of hindsight. But we’re talking about teenage me. I spent as much time as possible actively avoiding social interaction, yet desperately trying to get laid. My idea of a successful relationship was one that lasted long enough to have to shave twice, and I was ok with that.

There were only two classes a day at Tech Center and everyone either drove there or was bussed there from their local school. Half of the kids came for the morning, the rest came for the afternoon, spending the other half of the day at their regular highschool. We were on the 2nd shift, and since my school was just across the street I got there a bit before everyone else. 

There is a little store across the street. So one day I bought her the finest bouquet of convenience-store flowers and left it on her desk. No note, no secret admirer mojo. I didn’t have the skills to write one. I just left them on her desk and made sure the teacher and their two assistants saw me do it.

And absolutely nothing happened.

For a week.

Because I’m an idiot. I thought the teacher would tell her, they didn’t. They’re smart enough to stay well clear of the drama of pubescent youth.

So I spent a whole 30 seconds and formed a plan. I mustered all of the social acumen and subtlety that I could. The moment that class let out I hauled ass to the back parking lot, and sat on the roof of her car smoking a cigarette.

Certainly this was an excellent idea. She would come out, see me sitting there in my awesome jean jacket, smoking a Camel and being the ultimate high school badass. I was the pinnacle of Cool. At least, I was as long as she didn’t notice the giant Tigger that covered the back of my jacket, because my mom thought it was cute and was actively working to ensure I died a virgin.

She came out of nowhere, screaming, on a dead run, and threw a golf ball sized rock at my head. The only two things that saved my ass were that she can’t throw worth a damn, and I am a hell of a comedian when I’m scared.

“Get the fuck off my car!” she screamed, clearly not enraptured by my ultimate coolness.

“You throw like a girl!” I replied, which is not something you should ever say to an armed girl within rock-throwing range. She flung another one.

The good news is, she actually did throw like a girl and missed me by a mile, despite the fact that she was only ten feet away. The bad news is, she didn’t miss the rear-driver’s side window. It made a “POOFFFFFFF” sound and shattered into thousands of tiny granules all over the back seat. 

She was…...upset.

And somehow, despite the fact that I never even touched a rock, she made it very clear that this was entirely my fault. 

Now, I’m an engineer. I don’t know anything about women. But I do know how to fix things. Once she stopped yelling, we went back inside and talked to the auto-shop teacher. Tech Center gets out for the day at just after 2pm but he usually stayed after school a couple hours and let guys tinker on their cars. Sometimes he even came in on Saturday mornings to do it. He graciously gave me permission to use a bay and any tools I needed to fix the window. He told us where to run into town and get an inexpensive replacement at a local junkyard, and when we got back about 45 minutes later, he even helped me figure out how to get the interior door panel off (which was easy) and back on (which was not).

She and I spent a couple hours together while I fixed her window. It took me less than an hour to get her from being thoroughly pissed off at me, to laughing at my antics. She seemed genuinely amazed that I could actually take something complicated apart and put it all back together. Despite what they say about nerds, smart is sexy. Nerds just have terrible social skills because our priorities are different. If a nerdy guy wants to fix your things for free, it’s very likely because we think you’re attractive. Technical repair is a primary mating display for a Nerd.

In the end, the only thing that was different was that I never got the little lip at the bottom of the window quite right. But aside from her and I, nobody would ever notice that.

We dated for four months, a lifetime in highschool terms.

Over the course of our deep and meaningful relationship I learned many valuable life lessons. The first was that it’s a lot easier to date exceptionally hot girls than most people think it is. Because the perception is that they’re so unattainable, nobody bothers to try. It turns out, it’s lonely at the top. This was true for her and her entire pack.

The next lesson I learned was that while it’s awesome to date someone who’s radiantly attractive, it’s hell when they know it. She wasn’t the hottest woman in school, but she was in the top ten, and she was well aware of her beauty and the value it had. She treated it like a commodity. She wasn’t the Queen, she was a Princess, and she acted like the entire world should treat her as such. For as pretty as she was, she was mean. She had a casual cruelty that was the basis of her entire personality, and she didn’t even try to hide it.

And so did her entire little clique of princess girls. I watched them devour, trade, manipulate, and shatter a dozen different guys. When they decided upon a guy that they wanted, they worked together as a team and hit him with a tidal wave of attention. It was mesmerizing, and incredible to watch from the inside. They would be passing messages (and this was before everyone had cell phones), controlling situations, always working three steps ahead of the poor bastard. They always got what they wanted, rides, dates, gifts, anything. They were an estrogen army of great outfits and perky tits, and could completely control the mind and wallet of any young man they chose.

I saw it. I saw and understood the fate that awaited me, and I didn’t care. She was radiant, the sex was spectacular, and while I knew she would destroy me at any random moment she decided, I was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. There is a profound motivation that comes from knowing that every time you’re with someone could easily be the last, and that made me into one hell of an impassioned lover.

Now the number one problem most men have in the whole world is the airspace between their nose and chin. We have a powerful, and frightfully common ability to be able to speak nonstop for hours on end, and not once need to have a conscious thought. Thankfully we have a backup microbrain located just ahead of and slightly above the testicles and not only is it fully capable of doing all the thinking, for many of us it gets us entirely through highschool and most of college.

True to form, my own mouth was my undoing. We were having a deeply intimate post-coital cuddle, sharing our vulnerabilities and speaking from the heart and she asked me what I really thought of her as a person. Being the complete moron that I am, with all honesty and sincerity, I told her.

That…..was a bad choice of actions. Our intimate relationship ended as it began, me with a sheepish smile, and her screaming at full throttle. She wasn’t just mean, she was fierce. Her rage came on instantly, without reservation or hesitation. I was dressed, out the door, and halfway home before I even realised what the hell happened.

As bright as the warm spotlight of her attention is when it shines upon your face, the hawkish, brumal wrath of her scorn and abandonment goes to the bone. I spent the entire weekend in tears, hiding in my room or walking alone in the woods.

Monday was back to normal. I went to class and life went on just as it always had. A week passed and I was still alive and fine. I tinkered with the most important woman in my life, Solna, and focused on the real problems that needed solving, like how to fix the damn vacuum leak  and how I was going to get laid sometime soon.

What I had not counted upon, was the persistence and depth of a woman’s wrath. I was upset for a weekend and went on with my life, as you do. That bitch held a grudge, and she was going to make sure I felt it in her own time.

She decided the best way to get back at me for my crime of bringing truth to power, would be to have her and her acolytes seduce and devour my closest friends and kill me with jealousy. She started with my class-partner and it was obvious what she was doing. He filled me in and told me he had enjoyed one hell of a weekend and then I gave him my side of things. Together we talked while printing a run of posters for some school play, and pieced together the whole story.

I was, am, and always shall be, a Nerd. The thing about nerds is, we have nerd friends. We also enjoy a high degree of social invisibility, especially back then in a 90’s highschool. We’re as invisible as an inner-city homeless person. Everyone knows we’re there, but people just pass us by in the halls. We simply don’t register in their world.

She really didn’t have any idea just who the hell my friends actually were. I didn’t have any close friends at Tech Center. I barely had any friends back at my actual highschool. I spent the majority of my time with a massive, 60’s vintage Solna offset printing press that was the size of a minivan. A cantankerous beast of iron and glistening stainless that wheezed, snorted, and dripped water, ink, and grease. It made a glorious racket as it ate a pallet of paper at a time and would easily cover you in ink or rip your arm off the moment you had a lapse of attention or respect. 

What I did have was a classroom of printing weirdos. This was not the class for the cool kids. This was a loud room filled with people who were very okay spending everyday with permanent ink under their nails. Between the noise of Offset, Flexo, Screen, Letterpress, and Xerography the room was a delight of scents and sounds. We didn’t have intimate conversations, we yelled at each other above the din. We didn’t develop deep social interactions, we hid in the darkroom when we needed a moment of peace.

Printing was a collection of slackers, stoners, and weirdos. And at the bottom of the roster, the kid who got picked last for everything, was Pigpen. He was a dopey, quiet, kind, and incredibly polite kid who grew up on a turkey farm where they also happened to keep a few dozen pigs. 

He smelled like hell's dumpster. 

He would occasionally help me clean Solna because he could lift the big steel rollers that would crush my scrawny little ass if I ever tried. He lived a few towns away from me, but we were friends enough. He was a farm kid like me, and had the physique of someone who was comfortable spending all day baling hay. Big and doofy, he was genuinely a nice guy. But the stench of his homelife was baked in his skin, and he walked with the hunched-over shoulders of someone who had a lifetime of having to pay for sex ahead of him.

If he had any social skills he’d probably have been a jock. But he was completely inept. He never talked to a girl much less kissed one. I decided I would change his life.

So over the next couple days Pigpen and I went through a few hundred rags and a can of Varn V-120 solvent together, cleaning the giant press (blue ink is a particular bitch) and talking. I told him about what had happened and what she was doing now, and asked if he wanted to have a fun adventure and possibly lose his virginity in the process.

It wasn’t a difficult decision for him, at all. What the microbrain lacks in critical thinking, it compensates with in reaction time.

The first thing I had to do was clean him up. When you live on a farm like that, the smell permeates everything you own. His truck, his clothes, even his skin smelled like turkey shit. You become noseblind to it pretty quickly, but those around you don’t. He knew he had a problem, he wasn’t stupid. But he had no idea how bad it actually was, and didn’t have the means or inclination to change it.

We began with a tedious afternoon cleaning his truck. An old Ford that was his dad’s originally and had been a work truck on the farm for over a decade. We scrubbed every inch of it inside and out. We cleaned the seats and got it to that nice plastic interior smell of an old truck with just a faint hint of cigarette smoke. So long as he didn’t use it for work for a week or two, he’d be fine.

We took three sets of jeans, socks, and shirts in a garbage bag to my sister’s house and let her in on the idea. She used magical big-sister powers to get his clothes so clean they smelled like a cheerleader’s underwear drawer. It was incredible.

We went downtown to Norm’s Barber Shop and both got a decent haircut. As the bastion of hygiene that he is, we decided that Norm was the best guy to go to on how to learn to smell better. A 60 year old barber in a tiny farm town knows these things. He pulled a bar of soap out of the little glass case that was quite possibly older than both of us put together, and said to not be shy with using it, just don’t get it in your eyes. It was cheap, simple, and would remove sin or skin depending on how vigorous you were with it and smelled somewhere between Old Bay and Old Man.

The rest was easy. We didn’t really have a plan. We didn’t know how it would end. The real goal was just to get my untouchable friend touched in all the right places. We figured it was only a matter of time before she saw us hanging out and hopefully tried to seduce him. We just had to get him to hold it together as long as he could.

So I started riding home with him after school. It was a nice break from the 40 minute bus ride all the way from Tech Center back to the middle of nowhere. He passed by my place on his way home anyway, so it was easy. Over the course of our mischievous project and rides together, we actually became good friends.

It took longer than we had planned. She waited over a week before she decided to pounce on him. She tossed him on her emotional rollercoaster and he didn’t know which way was up. But damned if he didn’t enjoy the hell out of the ride. It wasn’t that I knew the next morning when he’d lost his virginity, everyone who walked by him knew. He had permagrin for a week. He knew she was using him. He knew it wasn’t love. And he didn’t give a good god damn. If he couldn't get Miss Right, he’d certainly be thrilled to experience Miss Right Now. He banged her like an old screen door and loved every moment of it.

I wish I could say that she learned her lesson. I wish I could say that he turned into a Prince Charming. But sadly, life doesn’t work out like that. Pigpen’s overhaul was a temporary fix of a lifestyle that he simply couldn’t escape, and didn’t really want to. Within a couple weeks he was back to his normal, fragrant self. It only takes a couple day’s work on a turkey farm to get that well established aroma ingrained. I grew up around milk cows, and am well familiar with Dairy-Aire, but that’s got nothing on turkey shit.

I have to hand it to her, she was a trooper. She hung in there through his slow regression before he came over to her place one night straight from work and the smell could have knocked a buzzard off a shitwagon. He got the same display of ferocious entitlement and rage that she gave me, but Pigpen had a much different reaction. He was completely unfazed,and just sat down on her clean, fluffy princess bed; still wearing his overalls.

And that, to hear him tell it, is when she completely lost her mind. He laughed, knowing damn well what he’d just done, and the more he’d laugh the madder she got. He wasn’t intimidated by her in the slightest. He knew his position, he had nothing to fear and nothing to lose. She had no power over him at all and he just let her scream, while he laid down and gently ground turkey shit into her duvet.

Eventually, he quietly got up, got in his old pickup truck, and left. I got the whole story from him the next day in class, and he was laughing so hard he had a coughing fit, turned beet red, and nearly pissed himself.

Oddly enough, she stopped trying to seduce my friends after that. In the year and a half we still had at school together, I never talked to her again. Her, and her estrogen army stayed well away from my Nerd friends and I. Balance and order was restored in the universe.

Pigpen and I both graduated in ‘93, and we’re still friends to this day. He’s married now, to a typical blonde, round, Dutch farm girl just like just about every third woman in Southwest Michigan. He’s a gunsmith and smells appreciably better these days. While women may spend a fortune on Chanel #5, they really seem to enjoy the smell of Hoppes #9 on a man. They have a couple kids, and a nice boring life that makes them all perfectly happy.

She grew up and married a fucking lawyer. I don’t know anything at all about them other than their idea of having fun is playing tennis and spending summers driving places in an RV with a couple tiny dogs. Though I’m pretty sure she carries his balls in her purse. I’d wager they deserve each other.

I had honestly forgotten about the whole experience until a decade after graduation when I found out that we had a mutual friend. I told them to ask her about me and see what she said. A few days later they told me that when they asked her if she knew me, she actually spat on the ground when she said my name.

“That asshole? Yes, I know Chris Boden *spit*” like some angry old european stereotype.

It’s good to be remembered, and the old joke “mean girls suck, nice girls swallow” now reminds me of her every time I hear it.