Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp Read Online Free Page A

been worth it. I asked Mom for some money to buy sunglasses, but instead she gave me her old pair. It took me 45 minutes to chisel out the rhinestones. That accomplished, they still don’t look like a style Tom Cruise would wear.
    Like an early-morning erection, the sailor came back. (I am trying to introduce more similes into my prose.) This time Mom had the pleasure of chatting with him. The sailor demanded she write him a check! She explained that was impossible, but said she would try to contact Jerry. While the sailor waited, seething nautically, she called Jerry’s dispatcher, who gave her the number of a motel in Iowa City. When she called the motel and asked for Jerry’s room, a woman answered! The woman said Jerry was in the shower and could she take a message? Mom turned red, hung up, and told the sailor she would get him his $900. Even if it was the last thing she ever did.
    TUESDAY, August 14 — Mom found my Polaroid of Lacey! She claimed she discovered it “while putting away some clean socks.” Yeah, like I always keep my argyles hidden in the back of my bottom desk drawer. With the parental Gestapo on patrol around here, privacy stops at the bathroom door. And even that sanctuary is hardly inviolable.
    Mom really hit the roof when I told her the well-proportioned semi-nudist was Dad’s latest girlfriend. She stared in horror at the photo, her face contorted by revulsion and envy. Then I got a 25-minute grilling about Lacey. Mom takes a morbid interest in Dad’s love life (don’t we all?), so I don’t mind inventing a few details here and there to watch her boil. To cope with my torrid revelations, Mom chain-smoked throughout the interrogation.
    I told her no, Lacey did not appear to live with Dad, but she did hang her bra and panties in his bathroom. I said I didn’t know if it was serious, but theyspent a lot of time in the bedroom taking naps. I revealed that Lacey liked to sit on Dad’s lap during
Masterpiece Theatre
and blow into his ear. (I made that up.) I said she called him “Thunder Rod” and he called her “Sugar Puss.” (True, believe it or not.) I told her Lacey liked fast cars, knew bikers by their first names, and carried a small flask of brandy in her décolletage. (All true.) I said she came from a prominent San Francisco family, graduated from Stanford at 19, had an IQ of 163, and did secret work for the government involving hair. (More or less lacking a factual basis.) Finally, I said Lacey was fun to be with, had a good sense of humor despite being such an intellectual, and had a mature outlook on the beauty and wholesomeness of the human body. Therefore, I wanted her photo back.
    Mom snorted, “That’s what you think, buster.” She said she was keeping the Polaroid for evidence and had half a mind to have Lacey prosecuted for corrupting a minor. “You’re still a child,” lectured Mom, taking multiple deep drags on her cigarette. “You should be out playing sports. Not looking at disgusting pictures of naked harlots.”
    I replied that Millie Filbert had played softball for years, but that hadn’t stopped her from getting knocked up.
    Mom told me to get my mind out of the gutter. So much for trying to reason with a woman.
    WEDNESDAY, August 15 — A sunny day, so I put on my sunglasses and my I’M SINGLE, LET’S MINGLE tee shirt and walked all the way downtown to the library. We live about three miles up from the center of town—in the nervous zone between the affluent hills and the seething flats. Seeded baguettes in one direction, barbecue in the other—it’s a short trip either way.
    Because of the heat, the library smelled even worse than usual. I wish some wealthy philanthropist would endow a foundation to distribute Right Guard to the homeless. In the library bathroom a bookish-looking gentleman about 30 glanced at my sunglasses and asked me if I wanted to go out for coffee. I said no, I was too young for dating. He seemed disappointed. I’m glad that in