The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

FOUR

Sentimental Education

1988-1992

It started with me. The year before Oscar fell, I suffered some nuttiness of my own; I got jumped as I was walking home from the Roxy. By this mess of New Brunswick townies. A bunch of f*cking morenos. Two a.m., and I was on Joyce Kilmer for no good reason. Alone and on foot. Why? Because I was hard, thought I’d have no problem walking through the thicket of young guns I saw on the corner. Big mistake. Remember the smile on this one dude’s face the rest of my f*cking life. Only second to his high school ring, which plowed a nice furrow into my cheek (still got the scar). Wish I could say I went down swinging but these cats just laid me out. If it hadn’t been for some Samaritan driving by the motherf*ckers probably would have killed me. The old guy wanted to take me to Robert Wood Johnson, but I didn’t have no medical, and besides, ever since my brother had died of leukemia I hadn’t been hot on doctors, so of course I was like: No no no. For having just gotten my ass kicked I actually felt pretty good. Until the next day, when I felt like I had died. So dizzy couldn’t stand up without puking. My guts feeling like they’d been taken out of me, beaten with mallets, and then reattached with paper clips. It was pretty bad, and of all the friends I had — all my great wonderful friends — only Lola came f*cking through. Heard about the beat down from my boy Melvin and shot over ASAP. Never so happy to see someone my whole life. Lola, with her big innocent teeth. Lola, who actually cried when she saw the state I was in.
She was the one who took care of my sorry ass. Cooked, cleaned, picked up my class work, got me medicine, even made sure that I showered. In other words, sewed my balls back on, and not any woman can do that for a guy. Believe you me. I could barely stand, my head hurt so bad, but she would wash my back and that was what I remember most about that mess. Her hand on that sponge and that sponge on me. Even though I had a girlfriend, it was Lola who spent those nights with me. Combing her hair out — once, twice, thrice — before folding her long self into bed. No more night-walking, OK, Kung Fu?
At college you’re not supposed to care about anything — you’re just supposed to f*ck around — but believe it or not, I cared about Lola. She was a girl it was easy to care about. Lola like the f*cking opposite of the girls I usually macked on: bitch was almost six feet tall and no tetas at all and darker than your darkest grandma. Like two girls in one: the skinniest upperbody married to a pair of Cadillac hips and an ill donkey. One of those overachiever chicks who run all the organizations in college and wear suits to meetings. Was the president of her sorority, the head of S.A.L.S.A. and co-chair of Take Back the Night. Spoke perfect stuck-up Spanish.
Known each other since pre-fresh weekend, but it wasn’t until sophomore year when her mother got sick again that we had our fling. Drive me home, Yunior, was her opening line, and a week later it jumped of. I remember she was wearing a pair of Douglass sweats and a Tribe T-shirt. Took off the ring her boy had given her and then kissed me. Dark eyes never leaving mine.
You have great lips, she said.
How do you forget a girl like that?
Only three f*cking nights before she got all guilty about the boyfriend and put an end to it. And when Lola puts an end to something, she puts an end to it hard. Even those nights after I got jumped she wouldn’t let me steal on her ass for nothing. So you can sleep in my bed but you can’t sleep with me?
Yo soy prieta, Yuni, she said, pero no soy bruta.
Knew exactly what kind of sucio I was. Two days after we broke up saw me hitting on one of her line-sisters and turned her long back to me.

Point is: when her brother lapsed into that killer depression at the end of sophomore year — drank two bottles of 151 because some girl dissed him — almost f*cking killing himself and his sick mother in the process, who do you think stepped up?
Me.
Surprised the shit out of Lola when I said I’d live with him the next year. Keep an eye on the f*cking dork for you. After the suicide drama nobody in Demarest wanted to room with homeboy, was going to have to spend junior year by himself; no Lola, either, because she was slotted to go abroad to Spain for that year, her big f*cking dream finally come true and she was worried shitless about him. Knocked Lola for a loop when I said I’d do it, but it almost killed her dead when I actually did it. Move in with him. In f*cking Demarest. Home of all the weirdo’s and losers and freaks and fem-bots. Me, a guy who could bench 340 pounds, who used to call Demarest Homo Hall like it was nothing. Who never met a little white artist freak he didn’t want to smack around. Put in my application for the writing section and by the beginning of September, there we were, me and Oscar. Together.

I liked to play it up as complete philanthropy, but that’s not exactly true. Sure I wanted to help Lola out, watch out for her crazy-ass brother (knew he was the only thing she really loved in this world), but I was also taking care of my own damn self. That year I’d pulled what was probably the lowest number in the history of the housing lottery. Was officially the last name on the waiting list, which meant my chances for university housing were zilch to none, which meant that my brokeness was either going to have to live at home or on the street, which meant that Demarest, for all its freakery, and Oscar, for all his unhappiness, didn’t seem like so bad an option.
It’s not like he was a complete stranger — I mean, he was the brother of the girl I’d shadow — f*cked. Saw him on campus with her those first couple of years, hard to believe he and Lola were related. (Me Apokalips, he cracked, she New Genesis.) Unlike me who would have hidden from a Caliban like that, she loved the dork. Invited him to parties and to her rallies. Holding up signs, handing out flyers. Her fat-ass assistant. To say I’d never in my life met a Dominican like him would be to put it mildly.

Hail, Dog of God, was how he welcomed me my first day in Demarest.
Took a week before I figured out what the hell he meant.
God. Domini. Dog. Canis.
Hail, Dominicanis.

I guess I should have f*cking known. Dude used to say he was cursed, used to say this a lot, and if I’d really been old-school Dominican I would have (a) listened to the idiot, and then (b) run the other way. My family are sure?os, from Azua, and if we sure?os from Azua know anything it’s about f*cking curses. I mean, Jesus, have you ever seen Azua? My mom wouldn’t even have listened, would have just run. She didn’t f*ck with fukú’s or guanguas, no way no how. But I wasn’t as old-school as I am now, just real f*cking dumb, assumed keeping an eye on somebody like Oscar wouldn’t be no Herculean chore. I mean, shit, I was a weight lifter, picked up bigger f*cking piles than him every damn day.
You can start the laugh track anytime you want.
He seemed like the same to me. Still massive — Biggie Smalls minus the smalls — and still lost. Still writing ten, fifteen, twenty pages a day. Still obsessed with his fanboy madness. Do you know what sign fool put up on our dorm door? Speak, friend, and enter. In f*cking Elvish! (Please don’t ask me how I knew this. Please.) When I saw that I said: de León, you gotta be kidding. Elvish?
Actually, he coughed, it’s Sindarin.
Actually, Melvin said, it’s gay-hay-hay.
Despite my promises to Lola to watch out, those first couple weeks I didn’t have much to do with him. I mean, what can I say? I was busy. What state school player isn’t? I had my job and the gym and my boys and my novia and of course I had my slutties.
Out so much that first month that what I saw of O was mostly a big dormant hump crashed out under a sheet. Only thing that kept his nerd ass up late were his role-playing games and his Japanese animation, especially Akira, which I think he must have watched at least a thousand times that year. I can’t tell you how many nights I came home and caught him parked in front of that movie. I’d bark: You watching this shit again? And Oscar would say, almost as if apologizing for his existence: It’s almost over. It’s always almost over, I complained. I didn’t mind it, though. I liked shit like Akira, even if I couldn’t always stay awake for it. I’d lay back on my bed while Kaneda screamed Tetsuo and the next thing I knew Oscar was standing timidly over me, saying, Yunior, the movie is finis and I would sit up, say, F*ck!
Wasn’t half as bad as I made it out to be later. For all of his nerdiness, dude was a pretty considerate roommate. I never got stupid little notes from him like the last f*cknuts I lived with, and he always paid for his half of shit and if I ever came in during one of his Dungeons & Dragons games he’d relocate to the lounge without even having to be asked. Akira I could handle, Queen of the Demonweb Pits I could not.
Made my little gestures, of course. A meal once a week. Picked up his writings, five books to date, and tried to read some. Wasn’t my cup of tea — Drop the phaser, Arthurus Prime — but even I could tell he had chops. Could write dialogue, crack snappy exposition, keep the narrative moving. Showed him some of my fiction too, all robberies and drug deals and F*ck you, Nando, and BLAU! BLAU! BLAU! He gave me four pages of comments for an eight-page story.
Did I try to help him with his girl situation? Share some of my playerly wisdom?
Of course I did. Problem was, when it came to the mujeres my roommate was like no one on the planet. On the one hand, he had the worst case of no-toto-itis I’d ever seen. The last person to even come close was this poor Salvadoran kid I knew in high school who was burned all over his face, couldn’t get no girls ever because he looked like the Phantom of the Opera. Well: Oscar had it worse than him. At least Jeffrey could claim an honest medical condition. What could Oscar claim? That it was Sauron’s fault? Dude weighed 307 pounds, for f*ck’s sake! Talked like a Star Trek computer! The real irony was that you never met a kid who wanted a girl so f*cking bad. I mean, shit, I thought I was into females, but no one, and I mean no one, was into them the way Oscar was. To him they were the beginning and end, the Alpha and the Omega, the DC and the Marvel. Homes had it bad; couldn’t so much as see a cute girl without breaking into shakes. Developed crushes out of nothing — must have had at least two dozen high-level ones that first semester alone. Not that any of these shits ever came to anything. How could they? Oscar’s idea of G was to talk about role-playing games! How f*cking crazy is that? (My favorite was the day on the E bus when he informed some hot morena, If you were in my game I would give you an eighteen Charisma!)
I tried to give advice, I really did. Nothing too complicated. Like, Stop hollering at strange girls on the street, and don’t bring up the Beyonder any more than necessary. Did he listen? Of course not! Trying to talk sense to Oscar about girls was like trying to throw rocks at Unus the Untouchable. Dude was impenetrable. He’d hear me out and then shrug. Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself.
But your yourself sucks!
It is, lamentably, all I have.
But my favorite conversation:
Yunior?
What?
Are you awake?
If it’s about Star Trek
It’s not about Star Trek…He coughed. I have heard from a reliable source that no Dominican male has ever died a virgin. You who have experience in these matters — do you think this is true?
I sat up. Dude was peering at me in the dark, dead serious.
0, it’s against the laws of nature for a dominicano to die without f*cking at least once.
That, he sighed, is what worries me.
So what happens at the beginning of October? What always happens to playboys like me.
I got bopped.
No surprise, given how balls-out I was living. Wasn’t just any bop either. My girl Suriyan found out I was messing with one of hermanas. Players: never never never f*ck with a bitch named Awilda. Because when she awildas out on your ass you’ll know pain for real. The Awilda in question dimed me for f*ck knows what reason, actually taped one of my calls to her and before you could say Oh shit everybody knew. Homegirl must have played that thing like five hundred times. Second time I’d been caught in two years, a record even for me. Suriyan went absolutely nuts. Attacked me on the E bus. The boys laughing and running, and me pretending like I hadn’t done anything. Suddenly I was in the dorm a lot. Taking a stab at a story or two. Watching some movies with Oscar. This Island Earth. Appleseed. Project A. Casting around for a lifeline.
What I should have done was check myself into Bootie Rehab. But if you thought I was going to do that, then you don’t know Dominican men. Instead of focusing on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive.
Out of nowhere, and not in the least influenced by my own shitty state — of course not! — I decided that I was going to fix Oscar’s life. One night while he was moaning on about his sorry existence I said: Do you really want to change it?
Of course I do, he said, but nothing I’ve tried has been ameliorative. I’ll change your life.
Really? The look he gave me — still breaks my heart, even after all these years.
Really. You have to listen to me, though.
Oscar scrambled to his feet. Placed his hand over his heart.
I swear an oath of obedience, my lord. When do we start?
You’ll see.
The next morning, six a.m., I kicked Oscar’s bed.
What is it? he cried out.
Nothing much, I said, throwing his sneakers on his stomach. Just the first day of your life.
I really must have been in a dangle over Suriyan — which is why I threw myself something serious into Project Oscar. Those first weeks, while I waited for Suriyan to forgive me, I had fatboy like Master Killer in Shaolin Temple. Was on his ass 24/7. Got him to swear off the walking up to strange girls with his I-loveyou craziness. (You’re only scaring the poor girls, O.) Got him to start watching his diet and to stop talking crazy negative — I am ill fated, I am going to perish a virgin, I’m lacking in pulchritude — at least while I was around, I did. (Positive thoughts, I stressed, positive thoughts, motherf*cker!) Even brought him out with me and the boys. Not anything serious — just out for a drink when it was a crowd of us and his monstro-ness wouldn’t show so much. (The boys hating — What’s next? We start inviting out the homeless?)
But my biggest coup of all? I got dude to exercise with me. To f*cking run.
Goes to show you: O really did look up to me. No one else could have gotten him to do that. The last time he’d tried running had been freshman year, when he’d been fifty pounds lighter. I can’t lie: first couple of times I almost laughed, seeing him huffing down George Street, those ashy black knees of his a-shaking. Keeping his head down so he wouldn’t have to hear or see all the reactions. Usually just some cackles and a stray Hey, fit-ass. The best one I heard? Look, Mom, that guy’s taking his planet out for a run.
Don’t worry about them jokers, I told him.
No worry, he heaved, dying.
Dude was not into it at all. As soon as we were through he’d be back at his desk in no time flat. Almost clinging to it. Tried everything he could to weasel out of our runs. Started getting up at five so when I got up he’d already be at his computer, could claim he was in the middle of this amazingly important chapter. Write it later, bitch. After about our fourth run he actually got down on his knees. Please, Yunior, he said, I can’t. I snorted. Just go get your f*cking shoes.
I knew shit wasn’t easy for him. I was callous, but not that callous. I saw how it was. You think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who’s trying to get thin. Brought out the mother-f*cking balrog in niggers. Sweetest girls you’d ever see would say the vilest shit to him on the street, old ladies would jabber, You’re disgusting, disgusting, and even Harold, who’d never shown much in the way of anti-Oscar tendencies, started calling him Jabba the Butt, just because. It was straight-up nuts.
OK, people suck, but what were his options? O had to do something. Twenty-four/seven at a computer, writing sci-fi monsterpieces, darting out to the Student Center every now and then to play video games, talking about girls but never actually touching one — what kind of life was that? For f*ck’s sake, we were at Rutgers — Rutgers was just girls everywhere, and there was Oscar, keeping me up at night talking about the Green Lantern. Wondering aloud, If we were orcs, wouldn’t we, at a racial level, imagine ourselves to look like elves?
Dude had to do something.
He did, too.
He quit.
It was a nutty thing really. Four days a week we were running. I put in five miles myself but with him it was just a little every day. Thought he was doing OK, all things considered. Building, you know? And then right in the middle of one of our jogs. Out on George Street, and I looked back over my shoulder, saw that he had stopped. Sweat running down everywhere. Are you having a heart attack? I am not, he said. Then why ain’t you running? I’ve decided to run no more. Why the f*ck not? It’s not going to work, Yunior. It ain’t going to work if you don’t want it to work. I know it’s not going to work. Come on, Oscar, pick up your goddamn feet. But he shook his head. He tried to squeeze my hand and then walked to the Livingston Ave. stop, took the Double E home. The next morning I prodded him with my foot but he didn’t stir.
I will run again no more, he intoned from under his pillow.
I guess I shouldn’t have gotten mad. Should have been patient with the herb. But I was pissed. Here I was, going the f*ck out of my way to help this f*cking idiot out, and he was pissing it back in my face. Took this shit real personal.
Three days straight I badgered him about the running and he kept saying, I’d rather not, I’d rather not. For his part he tried to smooth it over. Tried to share his movies and his comic books and to keep up the nerdly banter, tried to go back to how it was before I started the Oscar Redemption Program. But I wasn’t having it. Finally dropped the ultimatum. You either run or that’s it.
I don’t want to do it anymore! I don’t! Voice rising.
Stubborn. Like his sister.
Last chance, I said. I was sneakered up and ready to roll, and he was at his desk, pretending not to notice. He didn’t move. I put my hands on him. Get up! And that was when he yelled. You leave me alone! Actually shoved me. I don’t think he meant it, but there it was. Both of us astounded. Him trembling, scared sick, me with my fists out, ready to kill. For a second I almost let it go, just a mistake, a mistake, but then I remembered myself.
I pushed him. With both hands. He flew into the wall. Hard.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. Two days later Lola calls from Spain, five o’clock in the morning. What the f*ck is your problem, Yunior? Tired of the whole thing. I said, without thinking, Oh, f*ck off: Lola. F*ckoff? The silence of Death. F*ck you, Yunior. Don’t ever speak to me again. Say hi to your fiancé for me, I tried to jeer, but she’d already hung up. Motherf*cker, I screamed, throwing the phone into the closet.

And that was that was that was that. The end of our big experiment. He actually did try to apologize a couple of times, in his Oscar way, but I didn’t reciprocate. Where before I’d been cool with him, now I just iced him out. No more invitations to dinner or a drink. Acted like roommates act when they’re beefing. We were polite and stiff: and where before we would jaw about writing and shit, now I didn’t have nothing to say to him. Went back to my own life, back to being the ill sucio. Had this crazy burst of toto-energy. Was being spiteful, I guess. He went back to eating pizzas by the eight-slice and throwing himself kamikaze-style at the girls.
The boys, of course, sensed what was up, that I wasn’t protecting the gordo anymore, and swarmed.
I like to think it wasn’t too bad. The boys didn’t slap him around or nothing, didn’t steal his shit. But I guess it was pretty heartless any way you slice it. You ever eat toto? Melvin would ask, and Oscar would shake his head, answer decently, no matter how many times Mel asked. Probably the only thing you ain’t eaten, right? Harold would say, Tu no eres nada de dominicano, but Oscar would insist unhappily, I am Dominican, I am. It didn’t matter what he said. Who the hell, I ask you, had ever met a Domo like him? Halloween he made the mistake of dressing up as Doctor Who, was real proud of his outfit too. When I saw him on Easton, with two other writing-section clowns, I couldn’t believe how much he looked like that fat homo Oscar Wilde, and I told him so. You look just like him, which was bad news for Oscar, because Melvin said, Oscar Wao, quién es Oscar Wao, and that was it, all of us started calling him that: Hey, Wao, what you doing? Wao, you want to get your feet off my chair?
And the tragedy? After a couple of weeks dude started answering to it.
Fool never got mad when we gave him shit. Just sat there with a confused grin on his face. Made a brother feel bad. A couple times after the others left, I’d say, You know we was just kidding, right, Wao? I know, he said wearily. We cool, I said, thumping him on the shoulder. We cool.
On the days his sister called and I answered the phone I tried to be cheerful, but she wasn’t buying. Is my brother there? was all she ever said. Cold as Saturn.

These days I have to ask myself: What made me angrier? That Oscar, the fat loser, quit, or that Oscar, the fat loser, defied me? And I wonder: What hurt him more? That I was never really his friend, or that I pretended to be?

That’s all it should have been. Just some fat kid I roomed with my junior year. Nothing more, nothing more. But then Oscar, the dumb-ass, decided to fall in love. And instead of getting him for a year, I got the motherf*cker for the rest of my life.

You ever seen that Sargent portrait, Madame X? Of course you have. Oscar had that one up on his wall — along with a Robotech poster and the original Akira one-sheet, the one with Tetsuo on it and the words NEO TOKYO IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE. She was drop-dead like that. But she was also f*cking crazy.

If you’d lived in Demarest that year, you would have known her: Jenni Munoz. She was this boricua chick from East Brick City who lived up in the Spanish section. First hardcore goth I’d ever met — in 1990 us niggers were having trouble wrapping our heads around goths, period — but a Puerto Rican goth, that was as strange to us as a black Nazi. Jenni was her real name, but all her little goth buddies called her La Jablesse, and every standard a dude like me had, this diabla short-circuited. Girl was luminous. Beautiful jíbara skin, diamond-sharp features, wore her hair in this super-black Egypto-cut, her eyes caked in eyeliner, her lips painted black, had the biggest roundest tits you’ve ever seen. Every day Halloween for this girl, and on actual Halloween she dressed up as — you guessed it — a dominatrix, had one of the gay guys in the music section on a leash. Never seen a body like that, though. Even I was hot for Jenni first semester, but the one time I’d tried to mack on her at the Douglass Library she laughed at me, and when I said, Don’t laugh at me, she asked: Why not?
F*cking bitch.
So, anyway, guess who decided that she was the love of his life? Who fell head over heels for her because he heard her playing Joy Division up in her room and, surprise, he loved Joy Division too? Oscar, of course. At first, dude just stared at her from afar and moaned about her ‘ineffable perfection’. Out of your league, I snarked, but he shrugged, talked to the computer screen: Everybody’s out of my league. Didn’t think nothing of it until a week later when I caught him putting a move on her in Brower Commons! I was with the boys, listening to them grouse about the Knicks, watching Oscar and La Jablesse on the hot-food line, waiting for the moment she told him off, figured if I’d gotten roasted she was going to vaporize his ass. Of course he was full on, doing his usual Battle of the Planets routine, talking a mile a minute, sweat running down his face, and homegirl was holding her tray and looking at him askance — not many girls can do askance and keep their cheese fries from plunging off their trays, but this was why niggers were crazy about La Jablesse. She started walking away and Oscar yelled out superloud, We’ll talk anon! And she shot back a Sure, all larded with sarcasm.
I waved him over. So how’d it go, Romeo?
He looked down at his hands. I think I may be in love.
How can you be in love? You just met the bitch.
Don’t call her a bitch, he said darkly.
Yeah, Melvin imitated, don’t call her a bitch.
You have to give it to Oscar. He didn’t let up. He just kept hitting on her with absolutely no regard for self. In the halls, in front of the bathroom door, in the dining hall, on the buses, dude became ubiquitous. Pinned comic books to her door, for Christ’s sake.
In my universe, when a dork like Oscar pushes up on a girl like Jenni, he usually gets bounced faster than your tía Daisy’s rent checks, but Jenni must have had brain damage or been really into fat loser nerdboys, because by the end of February she was actually treating him all civil and shit. Before I could wrap my brain around that one I saw them hanging out together! In public! I couldn’t believe my f*cking eyes. And then came the day when I returned from my creative-writing class and found La Jablesse and Oscar sitting in our room. They were just talking, about Alice Walker, but still. Oscar looking like he’d just been asked to join the Jedi Order; Jenni smiling beautiful. And me? I was speechless. Jenni remembered me, all right. Looked at me with her cute smirking eyes and said, You want me to get off your bed? Her Jersey accent enough to knock the guff clean out of me. Nah, I said. Picked up my gym bag and bolted like a bitch. When I got back from the weight room Oscar was at his computer — on page a billion of his new novel.
I said, So, what’s up with you and Scarypants?
Nothing.
What the hell you two talk about?
Items of litle note. Something about his tone made me realize that he knew about her scorching me. The f*cker. I said, Well, good luck, Wao. I just hope she doesn’t sacrifice you to Beelzebub or anything.

All March they hung out. I tried not to pay attention, but we were all in the same dorm so it was hard not to. Later, Lola would tell me that the two of them even started going to movies together. They saw Ghost and this other terrible piece of ass called Hardware. Went to Franklin Diner afterward, where Oscar tried his best not to eat for three. I wasn’t around for most of this nonsense; I was out chasing the p-ssy and delivering pool tables and out with the boys on the weekends. Did it kill me that he was spending time with such a fly bitch? Of course it did. I always thought of myself as the Kaneda of our dyad, but here I was playing Tetsuo.
Jenni really put it on for Oscar. Liked to walk arm in arm with him, and hug him every chance she got. Oscar’s adoration like the light of a new sun. Being the center of a universe something that suited her. She read him all her poetry (Thou art the muse of the muses, I heard him say) and showed him her little dumb sketches (which he f*cking hung on our door) and told him all about her life (which he dutifully noted in his journal). Living with an aunt because her mom moved to Puerto Rico to be with her new husband when she was seven. Spent from eleven on up making runs into the Village. Lived in a squat the year before she came to college, the Crystal Palace, it was called.
Was I really reading my roommate’s journal behind his back? Of course I was.
Oh, but you should have seen the O. He was like I’d never seen him, love the transformer. Started dressing up more, ironing his shirts every morning. Dug this wooden samurai sword out of his closet and in the early morning stood out on the lawn of Demarest, bare-chested, slicing down a billion imaginary foes. Even started running again! Well, jogging. Oh, now you can run, I carped, and he saluted me with a brisk upsweep of his hand as he struggled past.
I should have been happy for the Wao. I mean, honestly, who was I to begrudge Oscar a little action? Me, who was f*cking with not one, not two, but three fine-ass bitches at the same time and that wasn’t even counting the side-sluts I scooped at the parties and the clubs; me, who had p-ssy coming out my ears? But of course I begrudged the motherf*cker. A heart like mine, which never got any kind of affection growing up, is terrible above all things. Was then, is now. Instead of encouraging him, I scowled when I saw him with La Jablesse; instead of sharing my women wisdom I told him to watch himself — in other words I was a player-hater.
Me, the biggest player of them all.
I shouldn’t have wasted the energy. Jenni always had boys after her. Oscar only a lull in the action, and one day I saw her out on the Demarest lawn talking to the tall punk kid who used to hang around Demarest, wasn’t a resident, crashed with whatever girl would let him. Thin as Lou Reed, and as arrogant. He was showing her a yoga thing and she was laughing. Not two days later I found Oscar in his bed crying. Yo, homes, I said, fingering my weight belt. What the hell is the matter with you?
Leave me alone, he lowed.
Did she diss you? She dissed you, didn’t she?
Leave me alone, he yelled. LEAVE. ME. ALONE.
Figured it would be like always. A week of mooning and then back to the writing. The thing that carried him. But it wasn’t like always. I knew something was wrong when he stopped writing. Oscar never stopped writing — loved writing the way I loved cheating — just lay in bed and stared at the SDF-I. Ten days of him all f*cked up, of him saying shit like, I dream about oblivion like other people dream of good sex, got me a little worried. So I copied his sister’s number in Madrid and called her on the sly. Took me like a half-dozen tries and two million vales before I got through.
What do you want?
Don’t hang up, Lola. It’s about Oscar.
She called him that night, asked him what was going on, and of course he told her. Even though I was sitting right there.
Mister, she commanded, you need to let it go.
I can’t, he whimpered. My heart is overthrown.
You have to, and so on, until at the end of two hours he promised her that he would try. Come on, Oscar, I said after giving him twenty minutes to stew. Let’s go play some video games. He shook his head, unmoved. I will play Street Fighter no more.
Well? I said to Lola later on the phone.
I don’t know, she said. He gets like this sometimes.
What do you want me to do?
Just watch him for me, OK?
Never got the chance. Two weeks later, La Jablesse gave Oscar the coup de friendship: he walked in on her while she was ‘entertaining’ the punk, caught them both naked, probably covered with blood or something, and before she could even say, Get out, he went berserk. Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywhere. I found out because some whitegirl ran up and said, Excuse me, but your stupid roommate is going insane, and I had to bolt upstairs and put him in a headlock. Oscar, I hollered, calm down, calm down. Leave me the f*ck alone, he shrieked, trying to stomp down on my feet.
It was pretty horrible. As for punkboy, apparently dude jumped right out the window and ran all the way to George Street. Buttnaked.
That was Demarest for you. Never a dull f*cking moment.
To make a long story short, he had to attend counseling to keep from losing his housing, couldn’t go to the second floor for nothing; but now everybody in the dorm thought he was some kind of major psycho. The girls especially stayed away from him. As for La Jablesse, she was graduating that year, so a month later they relocated her to the river dorms and called it even. I didn’t really see her again except once while I was on the bus and she was out on the street, walking into Scott Hall with these dominatrix boots.
And that’s how our year ended. Him vacated of hope and tapping at the computer, me being asked in the hall how I liked dorming with Mr. Crazyman, and me asking back how their ass would like dorming with my foot? A lame couple of weeks. When it came time to re-up at the dorm, me and O didn’t even talk about it. My boys were still stuck in their moms’ cribs so I had to take my chances with the lottery again and this time I hit the f*cking jackpot, ended up with a single in Frelinghuysen. When I told Oscar that I was leaving Demarest he pulled himself out of his depression long enough to look astounded, like he was expecting something else. I figured — I stammered, but before I could say another word, he said, It’s OK, and then, as I was turning away he grabbed my hand and shook it very formally: Sir, it’s been an honor.
Oscar, I said.

People asked me, Did you see the signs? Did you? Maybe I did and just didn’t want to think about it. Maybe I didn’t. What the f*ck does it really matter? All I knew was that I’d never seen him more unhappy, but there was a part of me that didn’t care. That wanted out of there the same way I had wanted out of my hometown.
On our last night as roommates Oscar housed two bottles of orange Cisco I had bought him. You remember Cisco? Liquid crack, they used to call it. So you know Mr. Lightweight was f*cked up.
To my virginity! Oscar shouted.
Oscar, cool it, bro. People don’t want to hear about all that.
You’re right, they just want to stare at me.
Come on, tranquilisate.
He slumped. I’m copacetic.
You ain’t pathetic.
I said copacetic. Everybody, he shook his head, misapprehends me.
All the posters and books were packed and it could have been the first day again if it hadn’t been for how unhappy he was. On the real first day he’d been excited, kept calling me by my full name until I told him, It’s Yunior, Oscar. Just Yunior.
I guess I knew I should have stayed with him. Should have sat my ass in that chair and told him that shit was going to be cool, but it was our last night and I was f*cking tired of him. I wanted to f*ck silly this Indian girl I had on Douglass, smoke a joint, and then go to bed.
Fare thee well, he said as I left. Fare thee well!
What he did was this: drank a third bottle of Cisco and then walked unsteadily down to the New Brunswick train station. With its crumbling fa?ade and a long curve of track that shoots high over the Raritan. Even in the middle of the night, doesn’t take much to get into the station or to walk out onto the tracks, which is exactly what he did. Stumbled out toward the river, toward Route 18. New Brunswick falling away beneath him until he was seventy-seven feet in the air. Seventy-seven feet precisely. From what he would later recall, he stood on that bridge for a good long time. Watching the streaking lights of the traffic below. Reviewing his miserable life. Wishing he’d been born in a different body. Regretting all the books he would never write. Maybe trying to get himself to reconsider. And then the 4:12 express to Washington blew in the distance. By then he was barely able to stand. Closed his eyes (or maybe he didn’t) and when he opened them there was something straight out of Ursula Le Guin standing by his side. Later, when he would describe it, he would call it the Golden Mongoose, but even he knew that wasn’t what it was. It was very placid, very beautiful. Gold-limned eyes that reached through you, not so much in judgment or reproach but for something far scarier. They stared at each other — it serene as a Buddhist, he in total disbelief — and then the whistle blew again and his eyes snapped open (or closed) and it was gone.
Dude had been waiting his whole life for something just like this to happen to him, had always wanted to live in a world of magic and mystery, but instead of taking note of the vision and changing his ways the f*ck just shook his swollen head. The train was nearer now, and so, before he could lose his courage, he threw himself down into the darkness.
He had left me a note, of course. (And behind it a letter each for his sister, his mother, and Jenni.) He thanked me for everything. He told me I could have his books, his games, his movies, his special dio’s. He told me he was happy to have been friends. He signed off: Your Compa?ero, Oscar Wao.

If he’d landed on Route 18, as planned, it would have been lights out forever. But in his drunken confusion he must have miscalculated, or maybe, as his mother claims, he was being watched from up on high, because the dude missed 18 proper and landed on the divider! Which should have been fine. Those dividers on 18 are like concrete guillotines. Would have done him lovely. Burst him into intestinal confetti. Except that this one was one of those garden dividers that they plant shrubs on and he hit the freshly tilled loam and not the concrete. Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven — where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with — he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he’d jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge.
I was there, of course, with his mother and his thuggish uncle, who took regular bathroom breaks to snort up. He saw us and what did the idiot do? He turned his head and cried. His mother tapped him on his good shoulder. You’ll be doing a lot more than crying when I get through with you.
A day later Lola arrived from Madrid. Didn’t have a chance even to say a word before her mother launched into the standard Dominican welcome. So now you come, now that your brother’s dying. If I’d known that’s what it would take I would have killed myself a long time ago.
Ignored her, ignored me. Sat next to her brother, took his hand.
Mister, she said, are you OK?
Shook his head: No.

It’s been a long long time, but when I think of her I still see her at the hospital on that first day, straight from Newark airport, dark rings around her eyes, her hair as tangled as a maenad, and yet she still had taken the time, before appearing, to put on some lipstick and makeup.
I was hoping for some good energy — even at the hospital, trying to get ass — but she blew me up instead. Why didn’t you take care of Oscar? she demanded. Why didn’t you do it?

Four days later they took him home. And I went back to my life too. Headed home to my lonely mother and to tore-up London Terrace. I guess if I’d been a real pal I would have visited him up in Paterson like every week, but I didn’t. What can I tell you? It was f*cking summer and I was chasing down a couple of new girls, and besides I had the job. Wasn’t enough time, but what there really wasn’t enough of was ganas. I did manage to call him a couple of times to check up on him. Even that was a lot because I kept expecting his mother or sister to tell me that he was gone. But no, he claimed he was ‘regenerated’. No more suicide attempts for him. He was writing a lot, which was always a good sign. I’m going to be the Dominican Tolkien, he said.
Only once did I drop in, and that was because I was in P-town visiting one of my sucias. Not part of the plan, but then I just spun the wheel, pulled up to a gas station, made the call, and the next thing I knew I was at the house where he had grown up. His mother too sick to come out of her room, and him looking as thin as I’d ever seen him. Suicide suits me, he joked. His room nerdier than him, if that was possible. X-wings and TIE-fighters hanging from the ceilings. Mine and his sister’s signatures the only real ones on his last cast (the right leg broken worse than the left); the rest were thoughtful consolations from Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, and Samuel Delany. His sister not acknowledging my presence, so I laughed when she walked by the open door, asked loudly: How’s la muda doing?
She hates being here, Oscar said.
What’s wrong with Paterson? I asked loudly. Hey, muda, what’s wrong with Paterson?
Everything, she yelled from down the hall. She was wearing these little running shorts — the sight of her leg muscles jiggling alone made the trip worth making.
Me and Oscar sat in his room for a little bit, not saying much. I stared at all his books and his games. Waited for him to say something; must have known I wasn’t going to let it slide.
It was foolish, he said finally. Ill advised.
You could say that twice. What the f*ck were you thinking, O? He shrugged miserably. I didn’t know what else to do. Dude, you don’t want to be dead. Take it from me. No-p-ssy is bad. But dead is like no-p-ssy times ten.
It went like that for about half an hour. Only one thing sticks out. Right before I headed out, he said: It was the curse that made me do it, you know. I don’t believe in that shit, Oscar. That’s our parents’ shit. It’s ours too, he said.

Is he going to be OK? I asked Lola on the way out. I think so, she said. Filling ice-cube trays with faucet water.
He says he’s going back to Demarest in the spring. Is that a good idea? She thought about it a second. That was Lola for you. I do, she said. You know best. I fished my keys out. So how’s the fiancé? He’s fine, she said blandly. Are you and Suriyan still together? Killed to even hear her name. Not for a long time. And then we stood there and stared at each other. In a better world I would have kissed her over the ice trays and that would have been the end of all our troubles. But you know exactly what kind of world we live in. It ain’t no f*cking Middle-earth. I just nodded my head, said, See you around, Lola, and drove home.

That should have been the end of it, right? Just a memory of some nerd I once knew who tried to kill himself: nothing more, nothing more. But the de Leóns, it turned out, weren’t a clan you could just shake of.
Not two weeks into senior year he showed up at my dorm room! To bring over his writings and to ask me about mine! I couldn’t believe it. Last I heard he was planning on subbing at his old high school, taking classes over at BCC, but there he was, standing at my door, sheepishly holding a blue folder. Hail and well met, Yunior, he said. Oscar, I said, in disbelief. He had lost even more weight and was trying his best to keep his hair trim and his face shaved. He looked, if you can believe it, good. Still talking Space Opera, though — had just finished with the first of his projected quartet of novels, totally obsessed with it now. May be the death of me, he sighed, and then he caught himself. Sorry. Of course nobody at Demarest wanted to room with him — what a surprise (we all know how tolerant the tolerant are) — so when he returned in the spring he’d have a double to himself, not that it did him any good, he joked.
Demarest won’t be the same without your mesomorphic grimness, he said matter-of-factly.
Ha, I said.
You should definitely visit me in Paterson when you have a reprieve. I have a plethora of new Japanimation for your viewing pleasure.
Definitely, bro, I said. Definitely.
I never did go by. I was busy, God’s Truth: delivering pool tables, bringing the grades up, getting ready to graduate. And besides, that fall a miracle happened: Suriyan showed up at my door. Looking more beautiful than I ever saw her. I want us to try again. Of course I said yes, and went out and put a cuerno in her that very night. Dios mío! Some niggers couldn’t have got ten ass on Judgment Day; me I couldn’t not get ass, even when I tried.
My negligence didn’t stop O from visiting me every now and then with some new chapter and some new story of a girl he’d spotted on the bus, on the street, or in a class.
Same ole Oscar, I said.
Yes, he said weakly. Same ole me.

Rutgers was always a crazy place, but that last fall it seemed to be especially bugging. In October a bunch of freshman girls I knew on Livingston got busted for dealing coke, four of the quietest gorditas around. Like they say: los que menos corren, vuelan. On Bush, the Lambdas started a fight with the Alphas over some idiocy and for weeks there was talk of a black-Latino war but nothing ever happened, everybody too busy throwing parties and f*cking each other to scrap.
That winter I even managed to sit in my dorm room long enough to write a story that wasn’t too bad, about the woman who used to live in the patio behind my house in the DR, a woman everybody said was a prostitute but who used to watch me and my brother while my mom and my abuelo were at work. My professor couldn’t believe it. I’m impressed. Not a single shooting or stabbing in the whole story. Not that it helped any. I didn’t win any of the creative-writing prizes that year. I kinda had been hoping.
And then it was finals, and who of all people do I end up running into? Lola! I almost didn’t recognize her because her hair was ill long and because she was wearing these cheap blocky glasses, the kind an alternative whitegirl would wear. Enough silver on her wrists to ransom the royal family and so much leg coming out of her denim skirt it just didn’t seem fair. As soon as she saw me she tugged down the skirt, not like it did much good. This was on the E bus; I was on my way back from seeing a girl of zero note and she was heading out to some stupid-ass farewell party for one of her friends. I slopped down next to her and she said, What’s up? Her eyes so incredibly big and empty of any guile. Or expectation, for that matter.
How have you been? I asked.
Good. How about you?
Just getting ready for break.
Merry Christmas. And then, just like a de León, she went back to reading her book!
I poked at the book. Introduction to Japanese. What the hell are you studying now? Didn’t they throw you out of here already?
I’m teaching English in Japan next year, she said matter-of-factly. It’s going to be amazing.
Not I’m thinking about or I’ve applied but I am. Japan? I laughed, a little mean. What the hell is a Dominican going out to Japan for?
You’re right, she said, turning the page irritably. Why would anyone want to go anywhere when they have New Jersey?
We let that sit for a sec.
That was a little harsh, I said.
My apologies.
Like I said: it was December. My Indian girl, Lily, was waiting for me back on College Ave., and so was Suriyan. But I wasn’t thinking about either of them. I was thinking about the one time I’d seen Lola that year; she’d been reading a book in front of the Henderson Chapel with such concentration I thought she might hurt herself. I’d heard from Oscar that she was living in Edison with some of her girlfriends, working at some office or another, saving money for her next big adventure. That day I’d seen her I’d wanted to say hi but I didn’t have the balls, figured she would ig me.
I watched Commercial Ave. slide past and there, in the distance, were the lights of Route 18. That was one of those moments that would always be Rutgers for me. The girls in front giggling about some guy. Her hands on those pages, nails all painted up in cranberry. My own hands like monster crabs. In a couple of months I’d be back in London Terrace if I wasn’t careful and she’d be off to Tokyo or Kyoto or wherever she was going. Of all the chicks I’d run up on at Rutgers, of all the chicks I’d run up on ever, Lola was the one I’d never gotten a handle on. So why did it feel like she was the one who knew me best? I thought about Suriyan and how she would never talk to me again. I thought about my own fears of actually being good, because Lola wasn’t Suriyan; with her I’d have to be someone I’d never tried to be. We were reaching College Ave. Last chance, so I made like Oscar and said, Have dinner with me, Lola. I promise, I won’t try to take your panties off.
Yeah right, she said, almost ripping her page in the turning.
I covered her hand in mine and she gave me this frustrated heart-wrenching look like she was already on her way down with me and didn’t, for the life of her, understand why.
It’s OK, I said.
No, it’s f*cking not OK. You’re too short. But she didn’t take her hand away.

We went to her place on Handy and before I could really put a hurt on her she stopped everything, dragged me up from her toto by my ears. Why is this the face I can’t seem to forget, even now, after all these years? Tired from working, swollen from lack of sleep, a crazy mixture of ferocity and vulnerability that was and shall ever be Lola.
She looked at me until I couldn’t stand it anymore and then she said: Just don’t lie to me, Yunior.
I won’t, I promised.
Don’t laugh. My intentions were pure.
Not much more to tell. Except this:

That spring I moved back in with him. Thought about it all winter. Even at the very end I almost changed my mind. Was waiting by his door in Demarest and despite the fact that I’d been waiting all morning, at the very end I still almost ran off, but then I heard their voices on the stairwell, bringing up his things.
I don’t know who was more surprised: Oscar, Lola, or me.
In Oscar’s version, I raised my hand and said, Mellon. Took him a second to recognize the word. Mellon, he said finally.

That fall after the Fall was dark (I read in his journal): dark. He was still thinking about doing it but he was afraid. Of his sister mainly, but also of himself. Of the possibility of a miracle, of an invincible summer. Reading and writing and watching TV with his mother. If you try anything stupid, his mother swore, I’ll haunt you my whole life. You better believe it.
I do, se?ora, he reported saying. I do.
Those months he couldn’t sleep, and that’s how he ended up taking his mother’s car out for midnight spins. Every time he pulled out of the house he thought it would be his last. Drove everywhere. Got lost in Camden. Found the neighborhood where I grew up. Drove through New Brunswick just when the clubs were getting out, looking at everybody, his stomach killing him. Even made it down to Wildwood. Looked for the coffee shop where he had saved Lola, but it had closed. Nothing had opened to replace it. One night he picked up a hitchhiker. An immensely pregnant girl. She barely spoke any English. Was a wetback Guatemalan with pits in her cheek. Needed to go to Perth Amboy, and Oscar, our hero, said: No te preócupas. Te traigo.
Qye Dios te bendiga, she said. Still looking ready to jump out of a window if need be. Gave her his number, Just in case, but she never called. He wasn’t surprised.
Drove so long and so far on some nights that he would actually fall asleep at the wheel. One second he was thinking about his characters and the next he’d be drifting, a beautiful intoxicating richness, about to go all the way under and then some last alarm would sound.
Lola. Nothing more exhilarating (he wrote) than saving yourself by the simple act of waking.