Steven often found his girlfriend staring at the photo strip, but it had been in a different condition than the one he was looking at presently. His eyes had been poked out in each of the four pictures and she had also drawn tiny dicks on his forehead.
“Lolly, baby, it didn’t mean anything. It’s you I love. I swear.” Saying this out loud he knew it was true. When Steven was fourteen years old, his father discovered him getting a BJ from Jenna H. while her parents were over for dinner. His father sent the humiliated girl out of the room and sat Steven down and told him two things. First, he needed to get better at hiding if he didn’t want to get caught. And second, the more important lesson, Steven needed to learn the difference between loving sex with girls and loving the girl he was having sex with.
At a loss for what to say and knowing Lolly adored Anna, as every girl adored his younger sister as soon as they met her, Steven announced Anna was on her way into the city, hoping Lolly would take this as a sign he wasn’t giving up easily. But again, he was met with only silence. He did however get a text from the doorman alerting him to the fact that Dustin L. was on his way up. Steven sighed, pissed at himself for forgetting to cancel his thrice-weekly homework tutoring session. He stood up in the hallway and headed toward the front door.
He considered talking to Dustin about his current dilemma, as Dustin was one of the smartest guys he knew, but Steven decided there was no way Dustin would take his side. Dustin was technically one of Steven’s oldest friends, as their mothers had happened to attend the same mommy-and-me music classes, so they played together as babies every Tuesday and Thursday and were “best buds” until the age of five. But then Dustin’s parents divorced, and he went to public school while Steven went to private, which meant they hadn’t run in the same social circles for years and had only recently gotten back in touch when Dustin became Steven’s homework tutor.
Currently Dustin was a senior graduating with honors from Stuyvesant in June, while Steven was a second-time senior at Collegiate. Steven had attended Collegiate for elementary school but was kicked out in fifth grade when he got busted pantsing a classmate during PE. Next, he was kicked out of Xavier in seventh grade for pot, then Riverdale in ninth grade for fighting. He then attended Horace Mann for a few semesters and was now back at Collegiate on a very short leash.
Steven had his mother to thank for his reinstatement. She’d had to call in a few favors to make it happen. And since one of the conditions of his academic probation was maintaining a high GPA, his mother had hired a string of overpriced homework tutors that all quit after a week or two, citing Steven’s poor attitude (i.e., filthy mouth) and even worse work ethic. At her wit’s end, his mother finally had the brilliant idea to call Dustin’s mother to see if Dustin, whose impressive academic accomplishments were always touted on fb, would agree to work with Steven as his new homework tutor. His mother knew that while her son had little respect for the authority of adults, he coveted the approval of his peers.
Dustin had been adamantly opposed to tutoring Steven when his mother brought it up to him last October. He pointed out that he and Steven were only “friends” because of the happenstance of their two mothers meeting, and by all accounts, the two boys could not have had more different childhoods. “We have nothing in common!” Dustin moaned. “What will we talk about?”
“What you’re being paid to talk about … homework,” was her calm reply.
Dustin let out a deep sigh and rolled his eyes. Where Steven was a good-looking, rich party boy from Manhattan’s highest social circle, Dustin was none of those things. Dustin was adopted and knew nothing about his biological parents. Well, he did know that his teenage mother had left a note saying he should be given to Tamar L., “the nice social worker lady who was smart and kind, when she was just a kid from a fucked-up home living with her messed-up mom.” She wanted a better life for her own kid, which is why she knew she should give him up.
And so, one Friday night on her way to temple for her first Shabbat service in quite some time, Tamar received a call from a social worker at a hospital and was given one hour to decide if she wanted to become the mother of a two-day-old newborn. Taking it as a test of her lapsed piety, she leaned forward and gave her cab driver the address to St. Luke’s on 112th Street. When she told her husband about her intentions and explained her taxicab epiphany, Dustin’s soon-to-be adoptive father didn’t give it a moment’s hesitation (even though they already had a three-year-old) before saying, “I’m in!” And Tamar was consumed with a feeling of security that she had married the right man. Eighteen years later, Dustin’s mom still told this story, but with the caveat that while she was right about adopting Dustin, she had spoken too soon about her now ex-husband.
Dustin had grown up to be a quiet, serious boy whose adoptive parents continually made jokes to their friends that their own genes could have never produced such a smart kid, and Dustin, knowing the routine, would respond that he was pretty sure his biological parents could never have raised him to be such a good Jewish boy. (Only recently with the rise of Drake’s popularity was Dustin’s blackness combined with his Jewish upbringing thought of by his peers as “cool” rather than “weird.”) What people didn’t know was that Dustin was also prone to panic attacks and had been in therapy for his anxiety since the age of ten, which was why the thought of tutoring a “crazy rich kid” like Steven tied his stomach in knots. “No way. I can’t do it, Mom,” Dustin said. “Steven’s the epitome of the one percent, and me helping him is like going over to the dark side. I’m no Kylo Ren.”
Dustin’s mother, being a very practical woman, calmly explained to her son that he was making far too much of a big deal over the matter. “You’re being too emotional, Dusty,” she said. “This is not Star Wars. This is real life, and it’s not fair of you to write Steven off just because he was born into great wealth. No one’s saying you have to be best friends with him. This is a job where you’re providing a needed service and getting paid well for doing it. You’ll make more money in the next eight months than I make in an entire year.” The going rate for homework tutors in Manhattan was easily two hundred bucks an hour, and Steven’s mom was of course offering more, which meant Dustin would be clearing over two thousand dollars a week along with a bonus of ten grand if Steven ended the year with a GPA above a 3.2.
“Don’t you see how insane that is?” Dustin replied. “You’re a licensed professional who spends her days helping the underprivileged, people who actually need help. You’re the one who’s always saying social workers and public-school teachers are the two noblest professions that are grossly undervalued in today’s world. How can you in good conscience suggest I do this?”
“Stop being so melodramatic! You’re going to college next year and this will spare you working at some crappy part-time job for spending money. That’s the way I’m looking at it, and so should you.” Dustin found his mother’s viewpoint to be simplistic and shortsighted but when he tried to tell her as much, she refused to debate the matter with him further and instead insisted he talk the matter over with someone else before turning it down.