The Brutal Language of Love Read Online Free PDF

believe their lives weren’t as bad as they really were, and for the most part it seemed to work. Only Jonquil told the truth on a regular basis, and she was the saddest person I had ever known.
    Jennings thought I was crying because of Garrett and so quickly offered to hypnotize him the following day in the boys’ bathroom, using Dr. Flay’s technique. I reminded him that despite my key word I was getting fatter by the minute, and suggested Jennings beat Garrett up instead—an idea he resisted. “Larynx,” he whispered in my ear.
    â€œL-A-R-Y-N-X,” I answered back. “Larynx.”
    He laughed and pushed a brand-new erection up against my stomach. “No,” he said. “The key word to keep Garrett from kicking you will be larynx. ”
    The next day I met Jennings in the girls’ rest room before music class. He confirmed he had successfully hypnotized Garrett using a small penlight during social studies, while the rest of the class sat in the dark watching a film about nuclear war. We stood on top of a toilet seat in the mauve-colored stall, touching each other as we spoke, and Jennings made me promise to come over to his house right away after school.
    In music class I turned around in my seat and said, “Larynx!” forcefully to Garrett, who looked back at me blankly. “Turn around, ugly,” his friends said, and I did, but I took my time about it. Garrett really did look hypnotized. He looked as stupid and bland as I had imagined he might, once stripped of all his cruelty.
    Mrs. Krieg put on Beethoven, and to be sure I was safe, I turned around and whispered, “Larynx!” once more. Garrett wasn’t even looking at me; he was noting the timpani with a pencil on his sheet music. “Shh!” Mrs. Krieg hissed at me, and I understood then that her hearing was selective.
    When I went to see Jennings after school, eager to ask him how he had really made Garrett stop kicking me, Garrett himself was there, sitting on Jennings’s bed. The two of them were flipping through a Playboy and both had erections in their pants. “Roz,” Jennings said, setting the magazine aside and standing up. His penis pointed at me like the finger on an Uncle Sam poster. “I was thinking you could have sex with Garrett today instead of me. Just for today,” he added hurriedly. Garrett stood up then, too, his erection pointing down at the ground. He cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets.
    â€œOh,” I said, trying not to sound scared. “No thanks.” I stayed and talked with them for a while about nuclear holocaust, which didn’t diminish their erections in the least. We all agreed germ warfare was the wave of the future, then I went home and called Jonquil. She was still at work so she couldn’t talk long, but she told me not to go over to Jennings’s house again, and to deny anything anyone might say about me in school from this day forward, should it come to that.
    Things were okay for a while then. I ignored Jonquil’s advice and continued making love with Jennings most afternoons, pretending nothing had ever happened with Garrett. In music class I stopped saying larynx, but Garrett didn’t kick me anyway. I wondered if it had something to do with germ warfare and our shared views on that subject. I might have asked him about it had I not gone on to lose the citywide spelling bee.
    â€œI should never have let you back into the competition!” Mrs. Googan screeched when I called to tell her the news. “Think how poor Jennings must feel right now!” I went across the street to ask him and he said he didn’t give a shit. But if I wanted to make it up to him, he said, he had just gotten a new Polaroid for Christmas and needed someone to pose. I sat on his bed with my legs apart and wearing a Santa hat, like the lady from the Porta Potti. When I left I took the pictures with me, which Jennings