After this, I'm off...I promise.

From Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (this killed me this morning):

If you'd lived in Demarest that year, you would have known her: Jenni Munoz. She was this boricua chick from East Brick City who lived up in the Spanish section. First hardcore goth I'd ever met - in 1990 us niggers were having trouble wrapping our heads around goths, period - but a Puerto Rican goth, that was just as strange to us as a black Nazi. Jenni was her real name, but all her little goth buddies called her La Jablesse, and every standard a dude like me had, this diabla short-circuited. Girl was luminous. Beautiful jibara skin, diamond-sharp features, wore her hair in this super-black Egypto-cut, her eyes caked in eyeliner, her lips painted black, had the biggest roundest pair of tits you've ever seen. Every day Halloween for this girl, and on actual Halloween she dressed up as - you guessed it - a dominatrix, had one of the gay guys in the music section on a leash. Never seen a body like that, though. Even I was hot for Jenni firs semester, but the one time I'd tried to mack on her at the Douglass Library she laughed at me, and when I said, Don't laugh at me, she asked: Why not?

Fucking bitch.

So, anyway, guess who decided that she was the love of his life? Who fell head over heels for her because he heard her playing Joy Division up in her room and, surprise, he loved Joy Division, too? Oscar, of course. At first, dude just stared at her from afar and moaned about her "ineffable perfection." Out of your league, I snarked, but he shrugged, talked to the computer screen: Everybody's out of my league. Didn't think nothing of it until a week later when I caught him putting a move on her in Brower Commons! I was with the boys, listening to them grouse about the Knicks, watching Oscar and La Jablesse on the hot food line, waiting for the moment she told him off, figured if I'd gotten roasted she was going to vaporize his ass. Of course, he was full on, doing his usual Battle of the Planets routine, talking a mile a minute, sweat running down his face, and homegirl was holding her tray and looking at him askance - not many girls can do askance and keep their cheese fries from plunging off their trays, but this was why niggers were crazy about La Jablesse. She started walking away and Oscar yelled out superloud, We'll talk anon! And she shot back a Sure, all larded with sarcasm.

I waved him over. So how'd it go, Romeo?

He looked down at his hands. I think I may be in love.

How can you be in love? You just met the bitch.

Don't call her a bitch, he said darkly.

Yeah, Melvin imitated, don't call her a bitch.

You have to give it to Oscar. He didn't let up. He just kept hitting on her with absolutely no regard for self. In the halls, in front of the bathroom door, in the dining hall, on the buses, dude became ubiquitous. Pinned comic books to her door, for Christ's sake.

In my universe, when a dork like Oscar pushes up on a girl like Jenni, he usually gets bounced faster than your tia Daisy's rent checks, but Jenni must have had brain damage or been really into fat loser nerdboys, because by the end of February she was actually treating him all civil and shit. Before I could wrap my brain around that one I saw them hanging out together! In public! I couldn't believe my fucking eyes. And then came the day when I returned from my creative-writing class and found La Jablesse and Oscar sitting in our room. They were just talking, about Alice Walker, but still. Oscar looking like he'd just been asked to join the Jedi Order; Jenni smiling beautiful. And me? I was speechless. Jenni remembered me, all right. Looked at me with her cute smirking eyes and said, You want me to get off your bed? Her Jersey accent enough to knock the guff clean out of me.

Nah, I said. Picked up my gym bag and bolted like a bitch.

When I got back from the weight room, Oscar was at the computer - on page a billion of his new novel.

I said, So, what's up with you and Scarypants?

Nothing.

What the hell you two talk about?

Items of little note. Something about his tone made me realize that he knew about her scorching me. The fucker. I said, Well, good luck, Wao. I just hope she doesn't sacrifice you to Beelzebub or anything.