Alex
Shapiro
November 5, 2002
When Alex Shapiro was a seventh grader at Marblehead Middle School,
a classmate of his named Kim Stein told him a secret. They were
in drama class, on stage, supposedly mouthing the names of fruit
to imitate what people look like when they talk, and Kim gave him
a sly wink that said, “Come here.” She cupped her
hands together by his ear to whisper, “Hey Alex, no-one likes
you.”
Though they lived in roughly the same neighborhood and both had
ultra-Jewish last names, Kim had never really spoken to him before,
so this came as even more of a shock from a relative stranger. Suddenly
even Mike Bourne, his close friend since preschool, became suspect.
“And here I am, thinking everything’s okay,”
Alex thought. “Meanwhile, this.”
Two nights later, at the Spring dance, Kim the conspiratress struck
again, this time to ask Alex why he wasn’t with another classmate
of theirs named Tara. “Ask her out,” she said. He was
wary, but he inhaled five or six blasts of peppermint breath spray
and followed his instincts, and somewhere between “Rock Lobster”
and “Stairway to Heaven” Tara consented, and they were
officially together until school ended a couple of months later.
That’s the story of his first love. There you have it. Tara
and Alex had another brief thing a few years later around the senior
prom and graduation, but he and Kim pretty much never spoke again
after the dance, though Alex always thought she was mysterious and
wondered why she had to be so unkind.
Shapiro’s recent work has been described as “an all-natural
alternative to a famous blue pain reliever,” by frbq302@100pesos.com
and “a train wreck” with “some interesting things
spilling out of the cars,” by J. Robert Lennon, author of The
Funnies, The Light of Falling Stars, and On the Night Plain.
Frbq302’s insights may be unrelated, and Lennon may not have
meant his comments in an entirely nice way, but Shapiro has decided
to take them both as compliments and see what happens.
____
Alex @ IdentityTheory.com: "this
own-lee" | Jiffy
Popped Corn and Puppy Don't Care | Angel's
Left | Why
I Went to Portugal | Constant,
Steady Strokes | Passion
and Apathy | "In
the Rut"
E-mail: alvegas999@yahoo.com
|
