"Lolita and I"

In the eighth grade I was in a special program for the really smart kids. We got bussed in from the every corner of Jersey City and we got the best teachers the city had to offer. Every third or fourth day, it seemed, someone would do a newspaper story about us. There was always some journalist sitting at the back of the class or some camera man wanting to know what we thought about this or that. Everyone in the program was smarter than me. The only one who was maybe dumber than me was a girl named Lolita. Nobody knew how Lolita got into the program. It must have been some loophole in the system. Lolita was Hispanic and she was the only Hispanic among us. Maybe that was it. Or maybe she was the only candidate from her school. Who knows? I don't. I don't even know how I got in. Maybe I was the only Greek. Lolita, for all her dumbness, was the prettiest girl in the program and I was madly in love with her. Quite a few other guys were too, all of them smarter than me, and they would make it their business to tell me I stood no chance. At first, that didn't bother me. I didn't think any of them stood a chance either, and my no chance was just as good as their no chance. At least Lolita and I had the dumb thing in common. Plus, I was the only boy she would let walk her home. She lived in a house just outside Journal Square. We went to school downtown, so it was a fairly long walk, but I didn't mind. It was just great to be next to her. Lolita had black hair that came down past her shoulder blades. She had skin the color of a early red pear. Her eyes were like something out of a Japanese animation film, big and brown and beautiful. Sometimes the light caught them and the water inside glowed so intensely she looked like she was crying. Lolita and I didn't talk much. We just walked, and I would try to get my steps in perfect sync with hers. Right before Journal Square, we'd make a sharp right and walk the last couple of blocks to her house. Her house was huge and gothic-kind of scary, really. I didn't see how such a girl could come from such a place. Lolita would tell me thanks and I'd watch her slowly go to her door, turn around and wave, then disappear behind her house's terrifying walls. I'd turn around and head for my bus in Journal Square that would take me the rest of the way to the Greenville section, where I lived in a house that was terrifying too, though for completely different reasons. I don't know how many times I walked Lolita home and I don't know how often we talked. My best guess is that the former was pretty often and the latter was hardly at all. "You don't say much," she said to me once. "Just thinking," I answered. When we got to her house, I'd want to kiss her, but then I'd always chicken out. I'd watch her walk up that long gothic staircase and I'd beat my shin with my notebook like a jockey beats a horse going down the stretch. I'd want to say something then, something I didn't have the words for, something real and true and smart. But I wouldn't say anything, and she'd turn around, wave, and I'd go find my bus. I never felt so bad about being dumb in my life. On the bus ride home, I'd try to get smarter. I believed I could will myself to do this. I just needed to think of some smart thoughts and I would become smart. I'd look at a mother holding a child over her shoulder and I would think the baby was pretty. Then I'd think that was a dumb thought. Leonardo da Vinci wouldn't think a baby was pretty. Albert Einstein wouldn't think a baby was pretty. Stupid people think babies are pretty. Smart people thought something entirely different. Maybe they thought babies are beautiful or ugly or chopped liver. I didn't know. I wasn't smart. But slowly, over time, I started getting what I believe were some smart thoughts. Things started getting complex. Then an epiphany came. It seemed to me that if I was dumb then the only thing I needed to do was think and feel the exact opposite of what I was thinking and feeling in order to be smart. Then I realized that if everything I thought and felt was dumb than loving Lolita was also dumb. A smarter man would not love so dumb a girl. This caused me a great deal of anguish. To make matters worse, I began to realize that love itself, since I felt it, was quite dumb. Plato did not love. Thomas Jefferson did not love. I never heard anything about any of those really smart guys loving anyone, let alone some silly eighth grade girl, who was bottom of her class. I began to think that I was truly stupid for loving her, and, furthermore, if I wanted to have any chance with her, I'd have to stop loving her altogether, for only a stupid person would love her. It was okay for her to love me-if she so desired-but I was getting smarter all the time, thinking my smart bus thoughts, and therefore the onus fell on me to break things off with her once and for all. So, one day after school, when all the kids were filing out of the main entrance, I hung back and sneaked into one of the classrooms. From the window I could clearly see the front exit where Lolita waited for me to walk her home. She waited a half-hour, tossing her lovely head this way and that, and when she finally gave up I watched her walk right past my window. She paused momentarily to look back once more and then she started walking again. I waited another ten minutes, then I left the school and headed for Journal Square, being careful not to walk too fast, lest I catch up to her. On the bus that day, I felt pretty smart, smarter than I've ever felt, and better looking, too. For three days I continued to do this, while also ignoring her in school, and at the end of the third day she was no longer waiting for me. I looked out the window and saw her leaving with a boy named Thomas, who, if he wasn't the second dumbest boy in the program, he was pretty close. I grabbed my books and, without thinking, ran after them. Outside, I yelled, "Lolita!" She turned around and walked back towards me. I met her half way. "Thomas is my boyfriend now," she said. "I'm sorry." I looked at her. She was the dumbest girl ever. Lady MacBeth and Elmer Fudd were not quite so dumb. And I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to kiss her dumb face, her dumb lips, in front of her big dumb house. I wanted to walk next her as she walked dumbly along, and I wanted to be her dumb boyfriend. I look at her with all the intelligence I could muster. "Why?" I said. "I don't know," she said. "I think maybe you're too smart for me." She kissed me on the cheek. Then she turned around and caught up to Thomas. I stood there slapping my notebook against my shin. I watched them go. Thomas and Lolita. Two of the dumbest people I have ever met, holding hands, walking, eyes forward, their strides perfectly in sync. - Jim Valvis

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