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A YOUNG MAN’S LONG, AWKWARD, OCCASIONALLY
TRAGIC, AND FREQUENTLY HUMILIATING
EDUCATION IN AFFAIRS OF THE HEART, PART II:
THE CRUSH
In high school, the attention of girls was not an affliction I suffered from. I wasn’t the hot guy
in class. I wasn’t even the cute guy in class. I was ugly. Puberty was not kind to me. My acne
was so bad that people used to ask what was wrong with me, like I’d had an allergic reaction
to something. It was the kind of acne that qualifies as a medical condition. Acne vulgaris, the
doctor called it. We’re not talking about pimples, kids. We’re talking pustules—big, pus-filled
blackheads and whiteheads. They started on my forehead, spread down the sides of my face,
and covered my cheeks and neck and ravaged me everywhere.
Being poor didn’t help. Not only could I not afford a decent haircut, leaving me with a
huge, unruly Afro, but my mother also used to get angry at the fact that I grew out of my
school uniforms too fast, so to save money she started buying my clothes three sizes too big.
My blazer was too long and my pants were too baggy and my shoes flopped around. I was a
clown. And of course, Murphy’s Law, the year my mom started buying my clothes too big was
the year that I stopped growing. So now I was never going to grow into my clown clothes and
I was stuck being a clown. The only thing I had going for me was the fact that I was tall, but
even there I was gangly and awkward-looking. Duck feet. High ass. Nothing worked.
After suffering my Valentine’s Day heartbreak at the hands of Maylene and the
handsome, charming Lorenzo, I learned a valuable lesson about dating. What I learned was
that cool guys get girls, and funny guys get to hang out with the cool guys with their girls. I
was not a cool guy; therefore I did not have girls. I understood that formula very quickly and I
knew my place. I didn’t ask girls out. I didn’t have a girlfriend. I didn’t even try.
For me to try to get a girl would have upset the natural order of things. Part of my
success as the tuck-shop guy was that I was welcome everywhere, and I was welcome
everywhere because I was nobody. I was the acne-ridden clown with duck feet in floppy
shoes. I wasn’t a threat to the guys. I wasn’t a threat to the girls. The minute I became
somebody, I risked no longer being welcomed as nobody. The pretty girls were already spoken
for. The popular guys had staked their claim. They would say, “I like Zuleika,” and you knew
that meant if you tried anything with Zuleika there’d be a fight. In the interest of survival, the
smart move was to stay on the fringe, stay out of trouble.
At Sandringham, the only time girls in class looked at me was when they wanted me to