The Instructions by Adam Levin
The email was from Jelly.
Sent: November 15, 2006, 7:09 PM Central-Standard Time
Subject: THE PLOT THICKENS
From: [email protected] (Jelly Rothstein)
To: [email protected] (me)
Dear Gurion,
How was ISS? The Cage was crazy today. Every carrel’s got a WE DAMAGE WE bomb now, and someone put one on Botha’s blotter when he went to the bathroom during a passing period. You ever think about Botha going to the bathroom? I never did til I just wrote it. It is a very sad thought, actually, but not because of why I’d think it was sad if someone told me it was sad which is because of how he probably has a hard time with his fly, which I think is actually funny since he’s such a bancer and I hope everything in his life is hard. The sad part is how after the fly’s open, and he’s using his hand to aim because it would be too cold to use his claw, what does he do with the claw? In the movies, the unholding hand either hangs straight at the guy’s side or they put it on their hip or on the wall the urinal’s attached to, except I picture Botha like I’m standing a few feet behind him and holding a length of pianowire, and he’s peeing into the urinal, aiming with his real hand, and there’s his claw, and he can’t decide where to put it, so he lets it dangle, then puts it on his hip, then lets it dangle, then puts it on the wall, but then no, the hip, the wall, dangle, and so on until he’s done peeing and it gets me sad and I can’t get myself to garrote him after all. Isn’t that stupid?
Anyway, the reason I’m writing is because I know how you’ve been following my sister’s stories on the Main Hall Shovers, and there’s new news she just told me I thought you should know. When they came to school today, they all got their new scarves, and during lunch, three of them drew thick Jewish stars on their blankspots with Darkers because Berman, who Ruth told me you saw her fight with in the Office, told them they should draw the stars because the blankspots meant Christian even though they weren’t Jesusfishes. So then after school, the Shovers all had an emergency meeting by the dumpsters and Ruth was there to do a report, and the Shovers voted to kick out Berman and the other two whose blankspots were starred because Acer said they defaced official Shover apparel, and then he told them to give back their scarves, and Berman said no way they were giving their scarves that they paid for to Acer to burn in an oven like his mom’s grandma’s cousins who were burned in ovens and had to wear stars, and Ruth said Acer never said anything about an oven, but that after Berman said oven all the rest of the Shovers who were Israelites took out Darkers and starred their blankspots, and they all walked away with their scarves still on. It really pissed off the other fifty-however-many Shovers, who voted to kick out ALL those kids who starred their blankspots, who there were thirteen of, and who before they walked away said that they were Main Hall Shovers no matter what anyone else had to say about it.
Ruth says the whole thing is very stupid. She says the Israelite Shovers are the stupidest part of it, and that Berman is the stupidest part of them because of the ovens. I think she’s right about the ovens being very uncool because that’s not even what Acer said, and even if he said it that’s probably not what he would have meant, and I think Ruth’s right that it’s stupid to put Jewish stars on the scarves, but then I also think it’s stupid to kick people out for starring their scarves because the scarves are theirs, but Ruth doesn’t agree that that part’s stupid because of how they all went through all that trouble with the Jesusfish and the blankspot, and the Israelites got their way and agreed to it. But I told Ruth they didn’t really get their way because it was Frungeon who finally decided no Jesusfish, not the Shovers, and that meant the Shovers didn’t care about their friends as much as their friends wanted them to, and that was the important thing, not the Jesusfish, and that would really piss me off if I was one of those friends, so whatever the blankspot meant, I wouldn’t have been happy about it. I would have quit because you can’t let people push you around like that and if they do you have to ditch them, I think. But then I imagine what if Mangey did something like that, or you, or, like, Benji, and how hard it would be to decide we weren’t friends anymore because a lot of the way that I think of myself is that I’m Benji’s friend, and if I stop being Benji’s friend, then I am not who I was, and who wants to stop being who they are? I don’t. And then I also think that maybe I just don’t understand something those Shovers who starred their scarves do understand because of how I’m less Israelite than any of them, and so is Ruth, and so maybe she doesn’t understand either because we never went to Hebrew School, but I know that you’re the most Israelite person who I ever met, so what do you think?
I really want to know what I should think so that I don’t have to think about it anymore. All of it makes me uncomfortable and I don’t think that’s really fair. Who cares about the stupid Shovers, right? They’re stupid. But still. I feel bothered.
XOXO
Angelica Rothstein
PS Benji told me you were really in love with June Watermark and I wanted to tell you that what I said about her painting violent things and being weird I didn’t mean. She does paint violent things and was always weird since a couple years ago, but that’s not bad, and I was teasing you. I like her a lot, actually, and of course she didn’t really kiss Josh Berman, that was just me teasing too hard because I like to wind you up because it’s exciting for some reason, and if one day you don’t have to go to Chicago right after school and you want to hang out, like you and June and me and maybe Benji or Jenny or Leevon, but probably not Jenny since her mom’s always grounding her, and probably not Leevon because Leevon rides his bike to school and probably wouldn’t want to leave it and it would be weird if he had it while the rest of us walked, we should go to eat pizza or something else and a movie or maybe just not get on the buses and walk to the lake instead if someone has cigarettes, the four of us, or maybe but probably not the five or six of us, since come to think of it, it should probably just be me and June and you and Benji because we probably shouldn’t invite Leevon or Jenny since they probably couldn’t go anyway for the reasons I just explained and so the invitation would only make them wish they could, and that would be suck.
PPS Ruth is standing here, looking over my shoulder, and she just told me that it is dumb to use a PS because the PS was invented before computers which means before you could cut and paste and delete stuff and that people used it because they had to write or type their letters, and once they got them perfect, they didn’t want to have to retype or rewrite them to make room for anything they realized they should have said before they signed their name, so they put what they realized they should have said in the PS, but now there’s no need to do that, so it’s dumb to do it, Ruth says, and I should just cut and paste the PS content (Ruth keeps calling it “the PS content”) into the space above the XOXO Ruth says, which is why I won’t do it, and also why I will type PPS after I finish saying what I’m saying here, which is what I am calling the PPS content, and then cut and paste it into the space right before the first “Ruth” of this paragraph (even though you can already see the “PPS” before the paragraph’s first “Ruth” right now, while I’m writing this, I mean, since there’s only just one skipped line that divides the Ruth from the “suck” that ends the PS) because if you could see how much it is bothering her right now, the way she is biting off the nails of one hand and holding that hand’s elbow with the other hand and getting sweaty because I know how to use and will use cut and paste but still won’t use cut and paste the way she wants me to and how she can’t do anything about what I want to do because I can beat her up so easy even though she’s older than me, you would laugh at Ruth as much as I am laughing at Ruth and you would want to make that last as long as you possibly could.
I wrote her back:
Sent: November 15, 2006, 7:27 PM Central-Standard Time
Subject: RE: THE PLOT THICKENS
From: [email protected] (me)
To: jellyjellyjellyj
Hey Jelly,
You should write to me more often. I love long emails that aren’t in leetspeak, and this one especially because it helped me figure something out. While I was in ISS, I saw this Shover through the window for a second, and I instantly knew he was an Israelite, but I didn’t know how I knew he was an Israelite, and now I’m pretty sure I knew because he was one of those first three to star their scarves = I must have seen the star for a split second and registered what it meant without really registering that it was there
More importantly: There are no degrees of Israelite. You either are one or you’re not. That is how it has always been. You, Jelly Rothstein, ARE one, so nobody in the world is more Israelite than you, and no one ever, in all of history, has been more Israelite than you.
Second: Israelites or not, the Shovers are dickheads because they are Shovers. On top of being dickheads, the Israelite ones are rats because they finked to Brodsky about the Jesusfish back in September. At the same time, the scarves, like you said, are theirs, and no one should be able to stop them from drawing whatever they want on the scarves, so I agree with you on that, but no one HAS stopped them, and no one CAN stop them, just like no one ever forced them to become Shovers. Should the Shovers have kicked them out for drawing the stars on the scarves? Maybe. I’d even say probably. I can’t say for sure because I’m not a Shover, and it’s not up to me to decide what it means to be a Shover (though it clearly means to be a dickhead). If the democratically elected president of the Shovers, shmendrick or not, says that drawing on the blankspot is an offense punishable by de-Shoverment—and especially if the vast majority of the Shovers agree with him—then it seems to me that drawing on the blankspot is an offense punishable by de-Shoverment, even if the de-Shoverment is hiddenly motivated by antisemitism (which I really don’t think it is, not unless it’s also antisemitic to say that Jews can’t be mullahs or cardinals), or insensitivity, which it might be (but even that’s complicated because the Gentile Shovers could just as easily say—and for all we know actually BELIEVE—that the Israelite Shovers had been insensitive to THEM; that instead of taking into account the Gentile Shovers’ feelings about Frungeon or the Indians or whatever other feelings they feel that led them to think a Jesusfish or blankspot needs to be on their scarves, The Israelites ignored those feelings, insulted those feelings, etc).
The thing is, it isn’t wrong to wear a Jesusfish on a scarf. It’s wrong for ISRAELITES to wear a Jesusfish on a scarf. And furthermore, it’s neither right nor wrong for Israelites to wear a scarf with a blankspot on it. And Adonai (God) couldn’t care less either way if an Israelite wearing a scarf with a blankspot covers the blankspot with an Israelite religious symbol. He just doesn’t care. So there’s nothing good or noble about those Israelite Shovers starring their scarves, nor is there anything bad or cowardly about them breaking Shover rules—Adonai doesn’t care about Shover rules either.
I’m with you when you say that the Israelite Shovers should have walked out on the rest of them the second it became clear that the rest of them wanted the Jesusfish regardless of what it meant to The Israelites. And I’m also with you on how hard it would be to stop being the friend of someone who betrayed you, and I would say that when a friend betrays you, it is normal, and understandable, and probably even good if your first impulse is to figure out a way to forgive the betrayal.
And probably some Israelite Shovers DID have friends among the Gentile ones, and those who did probably felt betrayed when their friends supported the Jesusfish, but obviously they chose to forgive those friends. And probably those same friends felt betrayed when the Israelites finked to Brodsky, but obviously those friends chose to forgive the Israelites. Except then they each betrayed each other again: the Israelites when they starred their scarves; the Gentiles when they kicked out the Israelites for starring their scarves. Whether or not they should forgive each other again isn’t for anyone to say—there’s no laws about it—but since they are all dickheads, it’s a safe bet that whether they forgive or don’t, it’ll be for dickheaded reasons.
Another safe bet: tomorrow we will see some Jesusfished scarves.
Your friend,
Gurion
PS The PS may have been invented and used for the reasons Ruth said, but either way the content of a PS is an afterthought, so I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t—as it does—look like one. Unless it’s only pretending to be an afterthought, which would make the writer shady, except in certain situations like, for example, at the beginning of Part One, how everyone goes to Don Corleone’s office during his daughter’s wedding bearing gifts and giving blessings, but even Don Corleone knows they’re there to ask a favor, even though the favor gets asked after the gifts and blessings are delivered = If every party knows that every party knows a given pretense is a pretense, then the pretense, even if it’s unnecessary, isn’t offensive.
PPS I think the best idea is to go to the beach and smoke, since I could walk to the train after that if it’s not too cold. We should see how the weather is next Wednesday because I just quit the thing that I usually do on Wednesdays after school, so I’ll have time to kill.
PPPS Sorry if there’re a lot of grammar or spelling errors in this email. My mom’s been yelling for me to come downstairs to eat dinner for the past five minutes, which is distracting.
Having eaten a little too much too fast, my mom and I leaned in opposite directions, against either arm of the three-cushion sofa, one leg apiece stretched over the ottoman, on which plates crusting with hummous and baba specks abutted a napkined basket of pita crumbs. Somebody’d slashed my father’s tires. He’d caught a ride home from his office with a clerk. He entered the family room holding a pastry box ribboned with twine, and my mom and I waved. He set the box down atop the TV. Seinfeld was playing, disc 2, season 4. Kramer made noises, Elaine’s mouth twisted, George’s voice tightened, and Jerry rolled his eyes. My mother and father caught up on their day in voices whose volumes matched the TV’s. Everything was fine, or seemed to be fine, the laughtrack mixing with my parents’ conversation, and I started spacing out, started falling asleep, maybe even fell fully for a second or a minute—and then I snapped to with a hiccup.
“…on the stoop?” my Dad was saying.
“No,” said my mother. “I came through the back.”
I hated the hiccups. They made me feel hopeless. I hardly ever got them; when I did they’d last hours.
“‘Maccabees not unwelcome,’ it says. This guy doesn’t understand the effect of double-negatives—either that or he likes me,” my dad told my mom. “I don’t know what’s more spooky.”
I could heal the hiccups instantly, but not when they were mine. When a friend had the hiccups, I’d take out my wallet, then take all the money out of my wallet, then count the money slowly, out loud.
“Both ways are spooky,” my mother said. “I’ll call the police.”
I’d have eleven dollars, or maybe just three—it didn’t matter, but call it eleven.
“I called them already—after the tires. They’re sending a car. It’ll be here at nine. They’ll send it every night til the trial blows over.”
I’d slap the money, or I’d slap a table with the money, and I’d tell my friend: This right here is eleven dollars cash. If you can hiccup one more time, I will give you all of it.
The cure never failed. No one ever hiccuped after I’d say that. Even the people who I’d done it to already. None of them would ever perform the cure on me, though. I think they thought that since I’d invented it, it wouldn’t work, and then they’d have to give me the money.
“Not unwelcome,” my father said. “Why not skip the not and the un? Why not just write—
“Boo!” my dad shouted.
I startled. I hiccupped.
He laughed with my mom and the fake studio audience.
Then I explained to him about the un, and only the fake studio audience laughed.
I hiccuped.
“I’m asking you, Gurion.”
I was planning to blind him, I said, from my window, but he only comes around while I’m at Aptakisic.
“Why not call the police?” said my father.
I said, Because—
And he cut me off—he hadn’t been asking. “Even if being stricken with blindness,” he said, “were an appropriate punishment for committing an act of vandalism—and it isn’t, by the way, it’s tyrannical—why let your life be controlled by your ill-wishers? Why lose the sleep that they want you to lose? I don’t understand you.”
The police eventually leave, I said, and the vandals—
I hiccupped, this time cutting myself off.