Page 7 of Goodbye Days
I shudder like a buzzing wasp just landed on my neck. “No. Why?”
He shakes his head nonchalantly. “Curious.”
“Have you heard anything?”
“No, I’d just be surprised if there weren’t an investigation. Three teenagers, texting, you know.”
“Should I be worried?”
Darren keeps scribbling notes. He shrugs. “Probably not.”
“I mean, a couple of cops talked to me right after and I told them that Mars and I were texting that afternoon. But they didn’t, like, arrest me.”
“Yeah, I don’t know.” Darren clicks his pen.
“Could you maybe not write that I might have been texting Mars?” I’m smart enough to know both how futile this request is and how bad it makes me sound, but I sometimes do dumb stuff.
He looks up. “Man, I can’t—”
I chew on a fingernail. He never finishes the sentence.
Darren raises his pad again. “So, what time were you—”
It suddenly occurs to me how little I have to gain by continuing this conversation, and how much I have to lose. “I gotta go. I gotta—”
“Just a couple more questions.”
“No, sorry, I have to be at Blake’s house. His grandma wanted me to come.” I sit down in my car and close the door. I have to roll down the window to breathe in the stifling heat.
Darren rests his hand on the windowsill. “Look, Carver, I’m sorry to be doing this right now. I really am. But this is news. And the news doesn’t wait for people to mourn. So you can either tell me your side of the story or you can wait to read it in the paper. But either way.”
“I don’t read the paper.” I turn the key in the ignition.
He fishes a card from his shirt pocket and hands it to me through the window. “Anyway, man, here’s my card. Drop me a line if you remember something or if the police start asking questions.”
I toss the card on the passenger seat.
“Can I get your number?” Darren asks.
“I’m late.” I roll up the window. Darren gives me a you’re-making-a-mistake look, as though I didn’t know I already had.
Acid bubbles up and scalds the back of my throat as I drive to Blake’s house.
Blake Lloyd is surely the only student in the history of Nashville Arts who secured admission on the strength of his public farting. Okay, not just public farting, but that was by far the most popular part of his oeuvre.
Blake was a minor YouTube celebrity. He made comedy videos—skits, observations, impressions, etc. He’d thicken his accent and country it up. What really got people’s attention, though, was his willingness to embarrass himself publicly. He’d trip himself at the grocery store and take out a display of cereal boxes while his pants fell down (he always cleaned up his messes). He’d step in dog poop barefoot. He’d walk into Green Hills Mall, the snootiest mall in Nashville, shirtless (and he did not look like he worked out).
And then there was the public farting. In movie theaters. During a quiet scene. Puuuurp. Then a pause. Then another one. Longer. Priiiiiiiiiip. He always kept a straight face. One of his most popular videos was one where he rips ass at the library and he hasn’t even gotten the whole thing out yet when the librarian bellows, “EXCUSE YOU.”
In the months before the Accident, though, he had upped the ante to public farting in midconversation. So he’s talking with a prim hobby-shop clerk, acting the perfect young gentleman, and midsentence, he cuts one. The lady tries to be polite, because we all make mistakes, but she can’t help an involuntary grimace. But then he goofs out another—it sounds like a pig’s squeal. Brrrrrrrp. And now she’s certain it’s no mistake.
“Do you need the restroom?” she asks icily.
“Ma’am?” Blake says.
Now this may not seem the sort of portfolio that would get you into a competitive arts school (please note: if you say “competitive arts school” fast, it sounds like “come pet at a fart school”). But Blake was smart. He studied comedy. He listened to people talk about it and pick it apart, analyzing it on podcasts and in essays. He knew his craft and was serious about it. He knew how to intellectualize it and frame what he was doing to make it attractive to the admissions committee. So he wasn’t a bored kid farting in public for laughs on the Internet. He was a performance artist, actively violating the social contract and confronting those in public spaces with the reality of bodily function. He was challenging people, forcing them to question the artificial barriers we construct between ourselves and our bodies. He was subverting expectations. He was sacrificing himself; laying it on the line. He was creating art.
Plus, come on. Farts are always funny. Even to admissions officers.
