The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

stories. In his dreams he was either saving them from aliens or he was returning to the neighborhood, rich and famous—It’s him! The Dominican Stephen King!—and then Marisol would appear, carrying one each of his books for him to sign. Please, Oscar, marry me. Oscar, drolly: I’m sorry, Marisol, I don’t marry ignorant bitches. (But then of course he would.) Maritza he still watched from afar, convinced that one day, when the nuclear bombs fell (or the plague broke out or the Tripods invaded) and civilization was wiped out he would end up saving her from a pack of irradiated ghouls and together they’d set out across a ravaged America in search of a better tomorrow. In these apocalyptic daydreams he was always some kind of plátano Doc Savage, a supergenius who combined world-class martial artistry with deadly firearms proficiency. Not bad for a nigger who’d never even shot an air rifle, thrown a punch, or scored higher than a thousand on his SATs.

SOCAR IS BRAVE
     
    S enior year found him bloated, dyspeptic, and, most cruelly, alone in his lack of girlfriend. His two nerdboys, Al and Miggs, had, in the craziest twist of fortune, both succeeded in landing themselves girls that year. Nothing special, skanks really, but girls nonetheless. Al had met his at Menlo Park. She’d come onto him , he bragged, and when she informed him, after she sucked his dick of course, that she had a girlfriend desperate to meet somebody, Al had dragged Miggs away from his Atari and out to a movie and the rest was, as they say, history. By the end of the week Miggs was getting his too, and only then did Oscar find out about any of it. While they were in his room setting up for another “hair-raising” Champions adventure against the Death-Dealing Destroyers. (Oscar had to retire his famous Aftermath! campaign because nobody else but him was hankering to play in the postapocalyptic ruins of virus-wracked America.) At first, after hearing about the double-bootie coup, Oscar didn’t say nothing much. He just rolled his d10’s over and over. Said, You guys sure got lucky. It killed him that they hadn’t thought to include him in their girl heists; he hated Al for inviting Miggs instead of him and he hated Miggs for getting a girl, period. Al getting a girl Oscar could comprehend; Al (real name Alok) was one of those tall Indian prettyboys who would never have been pegged by anyone as a role-playing nerd. It was Miggs’s girl-getting he could not fathom, that astounded him and left him sick with jealousy. Oscar had always considered Miggs to be an even bigger freak than he was. Acne galore and a retard’s laugh and gray fucking teeth from having been given some medicine too young. So is your girlfriend cute? he asked Miggs. He said, Dude, you should see her, she’s beautiful. Big fucking tits, Al seconded. That day what little faith Oscar had in the world took an SS-N-17 snipe to the head. When finally he couldn’t take it no more he asked, pathetically, What, these girls don’t have any other friends?
    Al and Miggs traded glances over their character sheets. I don’t think so, dude.
    And right there he learned something about his friends he’d never known (or at least never admitted to himself). Right there he had an epiphany that echoed through his fat self. He realized his fucked-up comic-book-reading, role-playing-game-loving, no-sports-playing friends were embarrassed by him .
    Knocked the architecture right out of his legs. He closed the game early, the Exterminators found the Destroyers’ hideout right away—That was bogus, Al groused. After he showed them out he locked himself in his room, lay in bed for a couple of stunned hours, then got up, undressed in the bathroom he no longer had to share because his sister was at Rutgers, and examined himself in the mirror. The fat! The miles of stretch marks! The tumescent horribleness of his proportions! He looked straight out of a Daniel Clowes comic book. Or like the fat blackish kid in Beto Hernández’s Palomar.

    Jesus Christ, he whispered. I’m a Morlock.
    The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly?
    She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don’t take after me.
    Dominican parents! You got to love them!
    Spent a week looking at himself in the mirror, turning every which way, taking stock, not flinching, and decided at last to be like Roberto Durán: No más. That Sunday he went to Chucho’s and had the barber shave his Puerto Rican ’fro off.