Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--H is for Humor (and how to create it)

If you want to write or create anything funny, this just might be the most important blog post you’ll read this year.

I have a universal formula for creating humor, and I’m going to try to relate it to you in a single post that you should be able to read in under five minutes, ten if you're a slow reader.

So pay attention, and take notes if you have to. There WILL be a test, and I’m not the one who will be grading it. That privilege belongs to your audience.  You will either pass or fail. As Yoda says, “Do, or do not. There is no try.” You’re going to want a laugh, or, at the very least, a smile or a smirk.

Are you ready? Here it is.

The Quest

When I was a teenager, I used to sit with a spiral notebook and a pen in front of the TV while I watched shows like Soap and Taxi. (Yes, I am that old. Shut up.) I took apart and analyzed these shows, trying to figure out their formula. Why were they funny? I had to know.

In college, I studied English Literature and Theater. One of my Theater professors taught a class on Comedy, while another taught a class on clowning. Both turned out to be cases of “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” The Comedy class taught the classic formula, which is pain+distance=comedy.

Now give that a little bit of thought. First take something painful and add distance to it to see if that makes it funny. Then take everything you know that’s funny and see if you can find the pain and the distance in it. You’ll discover, as I did, that this formula DOESN’T WORK.  It only explains SOME comedy, but not all comedy. You can’t take something painful, add some distance to it, and then expect it to be funny. Is the Lincoln assassination funny just because it happened about 150 years ago? No. And what about the other way around? Is there any pain and distance in “Why did the chicken cross the road?” No.

So I knew I had to keep looking.

The Discovery

About a year and a half after I graduated from college and earned a teacher’s certificate, I started to work as an editorial cartoonist, a job I held for seven years. During that time, I came up with about a thousand cartoons. That’s when I discovered my universal humor formula. I reduced it to just three S-words, and for reasons that will soon be apparent, I called it the House of Funny formula.

Here it is, everything you need to know about creating any kind of comedy:

Setup+Surprise+Sense=Laughter!

This formula works for all kinds of comedy and humor. All kinds. I have yet to find any joke or comedy or funny cartoon or comic strip that didn’t utilize this formula. A humorist, cartoonist, comedian, or comedy writer might say, “Well, I don’t,” but when pressed, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell you how he comes up with funny stuff. Most funny people use it‑‑they just aren’t aware that they do.

So how does this formula break down?

Setup

The Setup part is easy. That’s whatever your funny thing is about. If you’re a comedian, your setup is probably either your life or a character or characters you’ve created. Then again, maybe your comedy is more like an editorial cartoonist, and your setup is the news. If you’re writing a comedy or humorous fiction, your setup is the plot and your characters. Your setup can be anything, really. That’s one of the beautiful things about humor. It can be about anything.

Surprise!

Surprise, and in a way Sense, are the parts that make this the House of Funny formula.

Like a House of Fun, the House of Funny is made up of mirrors and lenses that show you something in surprising ways.

To turn your setup into something funny, just look at it through a House of Funny mirror or lens.

In a House of Fun, there’s a wavy mirror that makes you look like something you’re not. It can stretch your neck to make you look like a giraffe, or it can shorten your neck and legs to make you look like a penguin. In the House of Funny, there are also microscope lenses that take something small and make it big, and there are lenses that take something big and make it small. There’s a rosy lens that makes things that shouldn’t be happy happy, and a blue lens that makes things that shouldn’t be sad sad. There are all kinds of character lenses that simply take things and show them to the audience through the filter that is the character. There are regular mirrors that flip things from left to right and concave mirrors that turn things on their head. There’s that strange mirror that puts something in a surprising place or puts together two things that don’t go together, like that mirror in Disney’s Haunted House that puts a ghost in the seat next to you. And finally, there are those cool mirrors that show you things exactly as they are, which is surprising since standard mirrors always flip things from left to right. In some ways, this is the ultimate House of Funny mirror. There’s nothing more impressive that showing people a truth that’s always been there but that they’ve never really seen. This is the mirror of wit.

Sense

Many of these mirrors come with their own sense. For example, if I take something and exaggerate it, it’s still the thing, so it makes sense. Or if I take something and show it through a character lens, both the character and the thing are still the same, so they make sense. Or if I’m showing you a similarity between disparate things, like how you look in a House of Fun wavy mirror and a giraffe or a penguin, you can see that makes sense with your own eyes. It’s mostly when you use the mirror that puts together two things that don’t belong together or something in a surprising place that sense is something you need to create. It doesn’t have to be something that makes sense in the real world. It can, but it doesn’t have to. It just has to make sense in some kind of context. For example, the sense of a pun is a linguistic one. Puns make sense because this word or these words are like that word or those words that make sense in another context. For example, “Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns don’t work!” Cows have bells and horns, and so do bicycles. By taking something that make sense in the context of bicycle bells and horns and applying them to cowbells and cow horns, you have a pun. Pain, however, generally doesn’t make sense to the person feeling the pain, no matter the distance. Causing your audience pain is something you want to avoid if you want your joke to make sense.

It’s all about the Audience

Each part of the House of Funny formula only works if it applies to the Audience.

The Setup has to be known to the audience. Sometimes you need to explain it in advance, and sometimes you don’t. For example, if I did a joke today in America about Donald Trump, I can assume the audience already knows the setup: that Donald Trump was on a show called The Apprentice, that he likes to put his name on buildings and water and pretty much anything else, and that he’s currently running for president. If I were doing the same joke in, oh, France, I might have to explain the setup. I might also have to explain it in America in ten years. But in America today, I don’t.

The Surprise only works if it’s surprising to the audience. For example, if you’ve heard the joke before, it won’t be surprising, so you won’t laugh.

And, finally, the joke has to make sense to the audience. There has to be a moment of “oh, I get it!” in the audience’s mind. If the audience doesn’t get it, it won’t be funny. Duh!

So that’s the House of Funny in a nutshell. Now all you have to do is take whatever setup you’re using, look at it through a House of Funny mirror or lens, and find the sense in it. As long as you do all these things within the context of your intended audience, you’ll be able to pass the test.

Two other things to keep in mind:

 Brevity really is the soul of wit. In general, keep is as short as you can to keep it funny. I can’t tell you how many times something that should have been funny lost me because it took just enough time for me to figure out the punch line seconds before it came. If your audience can figure out where you’re going before you got there, you’ve lost that all important element of surprise.  

Take it as far as it can go, all the way to the edge of the cliff . . . and then push.  If you’re using a microscope to make something small big, make it as big as you possibly can. As I’ve told members of my critique group, “Don’t do anything half-assed. It’s full-assed or nothing.”

If all of this seems too overwhelming, I suggest you start by taking something you find funny and breaking it down to its parts. What’s the Setup? What’s the Surprise? What mirror or lens was used? What’s the sense? Be teenage me sitting in front of a TV set with a notebook and a pen, and analyze everything that makes you laugh. It’s a great place to start.   

Good luck! I hope this will help you bring more laughter into this world. We certainly need it. 

My Notes from the "Social Media for Creators" Panel from New York Comic Con 2015

One of the most useful panels I attended at NYCC this year was the one on Social Media for Creators.

Buddy Scalera from ComicBookSchool.com moderated, and Jimmy Palmiotti, Matt Hawkins, Tim Washer, and Dennis Calero spoke and answered questions.

Here are my notes:

In the "Kickstarter Generation," you can be successful by excelling in these areas: you can be good, you can be fast, or you can be cheap. Just pick two!

 Of course, there’s a bit more than that.

You also have to be likeable.

 Jimmy suggested starting with your family/friends/coworkers. He also suggested that you be inquisitive about people. Talk to them. “What do you do?” is a good place to start. Find like-minded people on Twitter and engage. Build relationships using connections, contextualizing them, and letting them know what you want to happen.

Self-branding. Using humor. The evolution of journalism.

Tim Washer on the importance of humor. He showed us a pie chart of the percentage of people who like to laugh. It’s everyone!

 So how do you make that work for you? Have can you be funny with your social media? 

Brevity is the soul of wit, so be brief. And funny. Don’t worry about being too ludicrous and absurd. The ludicrous and absurd GETS ATTENTION! Play around, have fun, and just trust that something will happen. 

He mentioned a woman with 23,000 followers on Twitter who got a free trip to Japan because she made short videos using lots and lots of photos (with music) about the stuff she loves. She said she wanted to go to Japan, and she got it! Follow her lead. Be passionate, have fun, be brief and say what you want.

LAUGH! Relax. The big ideas will come to you.

 One way to come up with funny ideas is with Comic Juxtaposition. (I know about this from my political cartooning days. One thing makes you think of another and so on. Suddenly you find two things that are so different and yet weirdly fit together—and that’s funny! That’s the “Oh, I get it” moment in comedy. For example, there are many similarities between school and prison life. They both have cafeterias where people get served food on trays and have to take those trays to a table where they have to eat with others who are in the same position. Taking things that are exclusive to one of those situations and putting it in the other could be funny. For example, you could draw a comic strip with two tough looking school girls sitting at a table in a cafeteria. One asks that others, “So what are you in for?”)

 Tim Washer had us give example of two things that don’t go together. We went with “banana” and “toy store.” We then had to give attributes for each of those. One of the attributes for banana is that people slip on them. Two of the attributes for toy stores are that they sell toys to parents.

Suggestion #1: BANANA
Attributes: Slipping

Suggestions # 2: TOY STORE
Attributes: Toys, Parents
                 
Tim put those two together and came up with the idea of a Slip ‘N Slide at an office. It’s funny, because it’s absurd.

 This association process is also called “webbing.”

Matt gave ThinkTank on Facebook as an example of a good strategy. ThinkTank is about science, and the guy who does it writes observations, personal stuff, and some promotion. (I don’t know if this is the same ThinkTank I found, but these people post a video a day.)

You have to discover your VOICE. In Improv, there’s a game called “The Rant.” The point of the rant is to let you see who you truly are. It helps you discover your honest Voice.

On dealing with trolls: Jimmy and Matt will delete comments and block attacking commentators (on their blogs and/or Facebook pages?). You can argue, but keep it civil. Jimmy will sometimes DM people to get them to stop their angry comments. Usually when they realize there’s a human being on the other side, they stop. Jimmy says that when you’re dealing with an angry person, you should smile, wave, and say, “Have a nice day!” You can delete the thread that’s gotten out of control and post a picture of a sunset. It diffuses the situation. Comedy diffuses bad situations.

Dennis says that people want to get to know you, warts and all. If you have problems, people will support you.

 Someone recommended a book called On Intelligence, which is about the brain and pattern recognition. Humor is about seeing patterns in disparate things (what I call the third “S” of comedy: “Sense.” The other two are “Setup” and “Surprise”).

 Matt says, “Be about something.” You can’t be mysterious if you aren’t famous.

Dennis says you should be a Voice with a distinctive personality. People tend to forget there’s a real person on the other side. Remind them.

 Someone asked which platforms they prefer.

Tim likes Instagram and Facebook, but you have to find the platform that works for you.

Jimmy also likes Instagram. Twitter is great, because you can ask for retweets—AND you can retweet others.

Dennis draws every day and posts on Instagram. (This is probably a habit I should get into, posting something visual or a video EVERY DAY.)

Matt gives freebies and writes a week of promotional tweets and Facebook posts one day a week and then schedules them. (This is probably a habit I should get into, too.) He loves Facebook advertising and spends $50 a day, money he considers well spent.

Dennis says build a following and put out a pure vision.

THE TAKEAWAY FOR ME: Post something funny, short, and visual that helps show who you are at least daily. You can create this content once a week and schedule it to release through the week. Use Facebook and Twitter--and start using Instagram.  Post your observations and personal stuff, and just a little promotional stuff. Use the ludicrous and the absurd to get attention. Laugh, relax, be passionate, have fun, and be brief. Be inquisitive about others, find connections to contextualize your relationships online, and let them know what you want to happen.

What's wrong with this screen grab shot?

Here's a screen grab from my Verizon account. Notice something a little...odd? 

The answer to "Where does your humor come from?"

A friend and fellow writer, LM Preston, recently asked me where my humor comes from. 

Well, I'll tell you, and I hope it helps you see the humor in the world the way that I do, because if there’s one thing the world needs more of, it’s laughter.

Like Gilbert Garfinkle--the hero of Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one), I like to take things apart and fix them. I always have. Unlike Gilbert, though, the things I most like to take apart are stories, particularly funny stories.

I was born into a big family. I was the second child of six, which means I was a middle child in a sea of middle children. Like most middle children, I wanted attention. After all, that’s easy for the eldest and youngest to get attention. Middle children, not so much, particularly when there’s four.

My dad loved jokes, and I did too. So I would collect them. I know it seems odd, but I would watch sitcoms and take notes. I had a little spiral notebook where I’d write down different elements of my favorite shows, like Taxi and M.A.S.H., including the best lines. Once a week, I’d repeat the jokes I had collected to my family and make my dad laugh.

I also used to write funny essays for school. My class and my teachers loved them. I wasn't the class clown; I was the class wit. I was funny on paper, and I still am. 

Brevity, they say, is the soul of wit, and I know that’s true when it comes to my humor. The more I edit something funny, the funnier it gets. Comedy, I believe, is tragedy dancing the quickstep.

I continued to take apart and try to figure out comedy as I grew up, and I even took a couple of courses on the topic in college, where I majored in English Literature and Theater Studies. I was taught that pain plus distance equals comedy, which is the standard theory. I didn't agree with it. I think that sometimes comedy comes from painful things viewed at a distance; but so many funny things have no element of pain in them, and so many things that include pain and distance aren't funny at all. So I continued to work on my own theory.

A few years later, I got a job as an editorial cartoonist, and that's when I developed my own formula for comedy.

It’s summed up with three S’s. They are Setup, Surprise, and Sense.

Setup is pretty much what your humor is about. It could be the news, your life, or the characters and plot of your novel.

Surprise is the most important element of comedy, because without it, the audience just isn't going to laugh. Think of a joke you've already heard. If you hear it again, you won't find it as funny as you did the first time, and that’s because the element of surprise is gone.

And all jokes have to make some sort of Sense, because if they didn't, they'd just be confusing, not funny. Puns, for example, make phonetic sense.  And when it comes to stories, each character has to act in a way that makes sense in some way for that character.

As for pain, I think it's important that a joke not be too painful for the intended audience. That's when you cross the line from being funny to just being mean and hurtful. Of course, what one audience finds painful, another won't. Sometimes it's a matter of tailoring your humor for a particular audience; and other times it's a matter of finding an audience that fits a particular brand of humor.

Okay, so now you have my formula. The question still remains: where does humor come from? Finding or creating a setup is easy. Finding the sense in it is easy too. But how do you create the surprise--the most important element of comedy?

It’s all about looking at things from a fresh and surprising perspective.

Blow it up under a magnifying glass. Make it big, bigger, biggest. Put it in a surprising context, but in a way that makes sense. If it’s rosy, make it blue. If it’s blue, make it rosy. And take it as far as it will go. I like to say that when it comes to comedy take it all the way, to the edge of that cliff. Then push.

Edit, edit, and edit some more. Can you make that happen faster? Then do. Can you say that more briefly and still make sense? Then do.

Take my latest novel, Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one) as an example.

I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo in under a month...and then I spent the next year editing it. 

Taking a page from Improv, I wrote several versions of many of the scenes so I could choose the funniest one. And any time I saw a chance to make things bigger, I took it. I didn't want Gilbert to be just a regular geek: I wanted him to be the ultimate geek. And I didn't want to give him just any old conflict: I wanted to give him the ultimate geek's ultimate conflict. Gilbert has a compulsive need to take apart, figure out, and fix things, so I had to give him something he would never be able to take apart, figure out, and fix. I had to give him a gorgeous vampire girl who wants to turn him into her platonic BFF, literally forever. How is the ultimate geek supposed to make sense of that?  

If you're thinking, “But that doesn't make sense, and you said comedy has to make sense,” you're right, it doesn't. It defies Gilbert's obsessively logic mind. At least it does at first. There is a logic to that gorgeous vampire girl's seeming insane choice, a logic that takes Gilbert most of the book to figure out.

I’d tell you what it is, but then I'd spoil the surprise, and you know comedy won't work without it. You'll just have to read it to find that out for yourself.    

10 + 1 Songs from the Unofficial Why My Love Life Sucks Soundtrack

I love all kinds of storytelling. When I was little, right up until the year before I graduated from college, I wanted to write and direct TV shows and movies. But then I found out that writers and directors never really have full control over the stories they tell, which is why I decided to become a novelist instead. My stories, though, still play like TV shows or movies in my head--with soundtracks and everything.

So here is the unofficial soundtrack for my funny, geek-centric YA novel: Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one). These are songs I hear in my head when I think of certain scenes and characters from the book. Click on the song title to follow the link to a YouTube video.

10 + 1 Songs from the Unofficial Why My Love Life Sucks: The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer (part one) Soundtrack

Intro: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by Eric Idle (Monty Python)

Chapter one: “Breakeven” by The Script.

Chapter three (Amber): “She’s So High Above Me” by Tal Bachman

Chapter three: “I’m Going to Go Back There Someday” (Gonzo’s Song from The Muppet Movie, with clips from Life on Mars, cover version by Paula Jarvis)

Chapter four: “Crazy” by Seal

Chapter five: “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas (Oprah show flash-mob version)

Chapter 10: “Galaxies” by Owl City

Chapter 12: “D & D” by Stephen Lynch

Chapter 16: “Fix You” by Coldplay

Epilogue: “May It Be” by Enya from The Lord of the Rings soundtrack

As the credits roll: “My Life Would Suck Without You” by Kelly Clarkson

Why I Write Humor

Joss Whedon--the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, and writer and director of The Avengers--says,“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”

Joss Whedon and the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I agree.

Humor adds so much to any kind of writing.

Humor can prevent a dramatic scene from getting melodramatic and sappy.

Sometimes it can be a preemptive strike, because you know that if you don’t poke fun at your own story, there are those who will be more than happy to do it for you. It’s enough to have a character say, “You’ve gotta be kidding” before the reader does to “for the love of God, tell a joke.”

Humor can also prevent readers from getting bored.

Stephen King--the author of numerous bestselling novels, including Carrie, It and The Stand, and the undisputed king of the horror genre--says, “You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”

It stays as long as it wants, because readers want laughter to stick around.

Humor keeps us on our toes and stops us from getting bored, because comedy is about surprise. 

Don’t believe that? Then ask yourself if you laugh harder the first time you hear a joke or the second? If it’s the first, ask yourself why. You’ll soon realize it’s because the element of surprise is gone. Humor can turn any kind of ordinary novel, movie, or TV show into one you just can't put down, walk away from, or turn off. Once it plops down in your favorite chair, you want to plop down in your favorite chair and stay there as long as it does.

Humor can change a cliche into something new.

For example, you've probably encountered many lovesick vampires in books, movies, and on TV, but how many have you encountered who are too shy to tell the girl they love how they feel? That's one of the reasons why Gilbert Garfinkle from Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one) is who he is--that amazing geek full of self-confidence who is afraid of only one thing: girls. He breaks all the vampire cliches, and that makes his story funny, surprising, and new.

And last but not least, humor makes us feel good. That’s been scientifically proven.

I don’t always write comedies. In fact, I cried buckets when I wrote my romantic, YA ghost-story, Ride of Your Life, and readers have told me that it has the same effect on them. But I do try to put some humor in everything I write. When I see a cliche, I feel a compulsive need to break it, or, at the very least, point it out. One of the scenes that is a turning point in Ride of Your Life isn't when Josh wows Tracy with some huge romantic gesture; it's when she laughs at his mistake and he's not too proud to laugh along with her. In fact, it makes him happy just to know he's put a smile on her face.

I like reading books--and watching TV show and movies--that make me laugh, even when they're making me fall in love, terrified, excited, or anything else. Who doesn’t? And knowing that makes me want to be the kind of writer whose stories I would enjoy reading, the kinds of stories that--at least here and there--make me laugh.  

I hope they make you laugh too.

Top 10 Reasons Why Gilbert Garfinkle's Love Life Sucks

Here's one of several requested guest posts I wrote specifically for a recent blog tour that, due to technical problems, were never posted. I'll post the others over the coming days.

Top 10 Reasons Why Gilbert Garfinkle's Love Life Sucks

SPOILER ALERT: Why does Gilbert Garfinkle's love life suck? Why My Love Life Sucks (The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer, book one) slowly reveals the answer to that question, so if you'd rather not read any spoilers before reading the book, stop here. Otherwise...

1. The beautiful, mysterious, and seemingly sweet Amber is the first girl he's ever kissed. She's also a vampire who bites him, sucks his blood, leaves him paralyzed and in pain, and later tells him she did it because she wants him to be her platonic BFF--literally forever. She likes him a lot, just not “that way.” Isn't that reason enough?

2. He's had a crush on the absolutely amazing Jenny Chen since the day she let him fix her camera when they were both six, but he’s too afraid to tell her. What if it ruins their friendship, and she never wants to see him again? It would be a pain worse than death.

3. His mother constantly reminds him that the only reason a pretty girl would want to be with someone like him is for money. That's the only reason why she married his brilliant father, and although Gilbert badly wants to be like his father, he's also afraid of falling into a golddigger’s trap.

4. His mother is beautiful, and she loathes him. That makes beautiful girls in general terrifying.  

5. Gilbert needs everything to make sense. Love. Doesn't. Make. Sense.

6. Delilah Jones, the former school bully turned domineering school queen bee, insists he take her out in an expensive car to an expensive restaurant. Considering she only dates guys who can help her move up the social ladder at school and geeks like him are at the bottom of that social ladder, that doesn't make sense.

7. Gilbert has a compulsive need to take apart, figure out, and fix things. He can't do that with a girl. Case in point: Amber. If she's not at all attracted to him like she says, why does she want to spend eternity with him and not her boyfriend?

8. When he’s in the presence of a girl he’s attracted to, he doesn’t think. That’s never a good idea.

9. After Amber bites Gilbert, girls are suddenly attracted to his vampire charm. That terrifies him, which brings out a “bite or flight” response--and he doesn’t want to bite anyone. Ever.

10. He was starting to fall for Amber before she bit him, and his eidetic memory means he'll never forget the pain and terror he felt when she did. How will he ever get past this connection his brain has made between opening his heart and the greatest pain he’s ever known?

~*~*~

Also, it's love. It sucks. The trick is to forget that and fall in love anyway. And maybe, if you're really lucky, for at least a few glimmering moments, life in general won't suck so much.

Why My Love Life Sucks, chapter one

Here's the first chapter of my funny, YA, science-fantasy novel: Why My Love Life Sucks, book one of The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer.  This is the story of Gilbert Garfinkle, a teenage, super, tech geek with a compulsive need to take apart, figure out, and fix things, who encounters the one thing he can't make sense of no matter how hard he tries--a gorgeous, teenage, vampire girl named Amber who wants him to be her platonic BFF literally forever! 

Want to win a free digital copy? Leave a comment below. When I get 50 comments (or more), I'll give away FIVE free digital copies. That's a one in ten chance of being a winner! I'll announce the winners here, so follow and check back.

I’m not dead. Yet.

It’s funny when Monty Python says it; not so funny when it’s true.

According to Amber, I’m not going to die, but I’m not sure I believe her. She’s a pretty convincing liar. I thought she liked me. I thought things were going just fine between the two of us. And then . . . she bit me.

Now I’m stuck here alone, paralyzed and in pain, and the only thing I can do is think. And the only thing I can think is Why me?

A few minutes ago, when she stepped into my room, Amber said, “This is . . . cozy.” She was being polite. My room isn’t cozy. It’s tiny. “You sure do have a lot of stuff.” That was an understatement.

“My Uncle Ian likes to buy me things to make up for the fact that my mother’s a bitch.”

Amber laughed. It was a nice laugh. I felt so relaxed, because she’s so beautiful. They say there’s no point in worrying about the things you can’t control, and I figured I didn’t have a chance in hell with her. Guess I was right, but not in the way I thought.

“You do realize that makes you a son of a bitch, right?”

I laughed nervously. “Can’t deny that.” She was quick. I’ll give her that. “Would you like to play a video game?”

“No, thanks.” She picked up a piece of one of the gaming systems that I’d taken apart, and she tilted her head. She seemed confused.

“I like to see what I can do to improve them,” I explained.

“Not taking them apart might be a good start.”

I considered telling her the modifications I’d made, but I figured that would only bore her.

Her eyes moved to the largest object on my tiny wall. It’s a little hard not to notice. “Wow, that is one big TV.” 

“Did you want to watch something?”

“No.”

I pointed through the open door in the direction of the kitchen.  “Are you still hungry? Would you like a bite?” Looking back, I probably should have phrased that differently. 

She stepped into my room and shut the door behind her. “No windows?”

“No.”

“That’s convenient.”

I thought she meant it was convenient, because we had privacy. It was just the two of us, alone. Now I’m starting to realize she might have meant something else.

She took off the navy-blue jacket from my suit—the jacket I had lent her—and she hung it up on my ratty, old office chair. The bright red of her dress and the pink of her lipstick looked out of place in my mostly black, white and metallic-gray room.

I said, “I sometimes call this place ‘The Dungeon.’”

She said, “Because of all the dragons?”

All the dragons? It’s not like I have only dragons on my walls and ceiling. My tastes are eclectic. I have a ton of science-fiction, comic book, and video-game stuff, too, not to mention the posters of my hero, Albert Einstein. “No, I call it ‘The Dungeon’ because it’s a tiny room in a house as big as a castle, and it has no windows. Plus, it’s in the basement. My mother doesn’t like me to leave the servants’ quarters. Okay, maybe it has something to do with one particular dragon . . .”

Amber laughed again. It felt nice to make her laugh. It’s usually a good sign when I can make someone laugh, a sign they aren’t going to try to hurt me. Usually.

“I don’t want to talk anymore about your mother.” She sat on my bed and patted my vintage Star Wars sheets. “Sit next to me.”

“I don’t know . . .” I rubbed the back of my neck and looked at the closed door to my room. I felt . . . trapped. But I didn’t know why. I wish I had trusted my instincts.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “I won’t . . .”

Now I know why she didn’t finish that sentence.

But she was smiling at me, and she looked so beautiful and sweet, and I didn’t want to say no to her.

So I sat beside her on my bed. She took off my glasses, leaned in, and started to kiss me. I thought, This is not happening. I’m Gilbert Garfinkle, for God’s sake. Pretty girls don’t sit on my bed and kiss me, except in my dreams. Then another part of my brain said, Shut up, Gilbert, you think too much. So I stopped thinking and kissed her back. Yeah, it’s always a mistake when you stop thinking. I should have realized that before it was too late.

I’d never kissed a girl before, not a romantic kiss, but I’ve been studying it. My mother’s maid, Olivia, leaves her women’s magazines in the kitchen, and they’re full of tips about what girls do and don’t like. Most women apparently don’t like wet, sloppy kisses with probing tongues. Most prefer dry but firm kisses with slightly parted lips. Most guys don’t realize they could learn a lot from women’s magazines. I know I have. I take kissing seriously. I take everything I care about seriously, even things I once thought I could only dream of.

Amber pulled her soft lips away for a moment, tilted her head, scrunched up her eyes, and smiled at me again. “You’re a good kisser.”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

She pulled me by the shirt collar closer and kissed me harder. I started to wonder how long it normally takes a couple to move past kissing on the lips to something else, and it was making me nervous again. Amber continued to kiss me. She moved from my lips to my cheek. Such sweet, little, soft kisses, like feather strokes. Kiss, kiss, kiss . . . I could still smell the pizza on her breath, but her lips tasted of sweet, strawberry lip gloss. She slowly inched her way down from my cheek to my neck. Kiss, kiss, kiss . . . It felt really good, and I was starting to relax, until . . . 

She licked my neck.

I guess that was the first sign something weird was going on, and my brain started screaming, Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!  Is that normal for your brain to quote old movies or TV shows all the time, or is it just me because of my eidetic memory? Guess I’ll never know.

She paused for a second and looked up at me. She smiled a closed-lipped smile.

I said, “Amber, what are you . . . ?”

Then I saw these two sharp things suddenly extend out of her mouth. I tried to pull back, but she held my shoulders firmly in her hands and sank those horrible things into my neck.

I felt an unbearable, burning, stabbing pain that quickly spread from my neck through my entire body, and I was suddenly paralyzed. I’ve never wanted to scream more in my life. My mouth was open, gasping for air, but I couldn’t control it, couldn’t make a sound. I tried to lift my hands to push her away, but they wouldn’t budge from the sheets. I could hear her breathing in my ear, and I heard and felt her gulping my blood. It burned, and even though I was breathing rapidly, I felt like I was suffocating. It probably only took a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours, and it felt like I was dying.

I guess what they say is true: there really are no atheists in a foxhole. I’m not the most religious guy, but I still silently told God I didn’t want to die, and then I silently begged him to make it quick. Neither prayer was answered. 

When Amber was through, she retracted her . . . those two sharp pointy things. She was panting, her chest heaving until she stopped to take in and let out a deep breath. She moaned softly, pushed me onto my back, wiped blood—my blood—from her lips with the back of her hand, and ran her tongue over her teeth to lick them clean. She leaned over me, examined my neck, and once again smiled. “Already starting to heal.”

I tried to pull away again, but I still couldn’t move. She held my chin in her hand and looked into my eyes. The only thing I could do was tremble in pain and fear, gasp for air, and look at her looking at me.

“Now listen carefully,” she said. “You’re not going to die. I only drank two pints. Three tops. You taste very good, by the way, it was so hard not to stop.” Now there’s a comforting thought. “I know you’re in a lot of pain right now.” No kidding? Really? I had no idea until you mentioned it. “But it will pass. You’re going to be stuck like this until sunrise, and when morning comes you’re going to fall asleep. If I know what I’m doing . . .” What did she mean, ‘if’?! “. . . you should be mostly fine tomorrow night. I’m going to wait for you at Bucky Bee’s. Don’t forget.”

She started to leave, but then she turned and picked the jacket up from my office chair. “I hope you don’t mind my borrowing this again. It’s kind of chilly out.” She slipped it on. It still looked a hell of a lot better on her than it did on me. “I had an amazing time tonight.” That makes one of us. She leaned over and kissed my cheek one more time. I couldn’t even flinch. “I know you probably don’t believe this now, but you’ll see: your life is about to get a whole lot better.” Then she switched off the lights, left, and closed the door behind her.      

And I’ve been lying here in total darkness, paralyzed and in unbelievable pain ever since.

Pain, pain, pain. There’s nothing but pain. I can’t close my eyes. I mean, I can, but I’m afraid if I do, I won’t open them again. Ever. The place on my neck where she bit me is throbbing. My mouth is throbbing with pain, too, particularly my gums and the roof of my mouth. What’s that about? My breathing is shallow, and I’m worried I might stop breathing altogether. I don’t know if I’m going to make it through the night.

And then there’s the other thing I’m trying really hard not to think about . . . the possibility that dying might not be the worst thing that happens to me tonight.

I don’t want to fall asleep and never wake up, but I really don’t want to become a . . .

No, as Mister Spock would say, that’s “highly illogical.” I am nothing if not logical. The truth is I don’t really know what’s going to happen. Oh, God, I really, really don’t know, but either way I am so screwed.

Stop thinking about that. I need to concentrate on here and now. I have to keep talking in my head to distract myself from this awful pain.  

Why did Amber do this to me? I’m a nice guy. And I’m not exactly sexy. I’m pretty much the opposite of that. It can’t be because she’s attracted to me. So really, why me?

And it’s not just illogical on a personal level. I love fantasy and science fiction as much as the next geek, but I know the difference between them and reality. For what I think just happened to have happened . . . Well, either the universe has gone insane or I have, and either possibility is unacceptable. The universe has to make sense. I need it to make sense.

Okay, Gilbert, you’re a scientist, sort of, so try thinking like a scientist. When confronted with an unexpected result, a scientist would start his experiment over again to figure out what went wrong. I just need to go back in my mind to the last time the universe made sense on all levels and then slowly work my way forward to my current situation. Like anything that needs fixing, I first need to take it apart and figure it out. I just . . .

Ow, ow, ow! Go away, pain! Focus. When did the universe stop making sense?

Yesterday, right before lunch.

Here I am, in twelfth grade, the final scene in a really bad but necessary prequel to a great movie series. I almost made it too. In a few months I should have been leaving my mother and the hell that is high school behind for MIT, where my real education—and my real life—were going to begin. Jenny Chen was going, too, and maybe . . . I don’t know, but maybe we could have had something. The two of us together would have been unstoppable. My future was going to be amazing, and I know that, because I was going to invent it myself. I was going to invent so many things. I was going to fix the world. That was always the plan.

But yesterday right before lunch, Delilah Jones left her little coven of teenage bitches and backed me into the lockers in the corner of the hall, and that was when the logic of the universe began to unravel. 

“Is it true your father is a bazillionaire, Barftinkle?” she asked.

Her friends giggled in the background. They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but I think it’s insulting puns based on a person’s name. How much intelligence does it take to turn Garfinkle into Barftinkle? Sarcasm, however, is a fine art. I should know: I’m the Leonardo da Vinci of sarcasm.

“That’s Garfinkle,” I said, “and my father is dead. The only things I inherited were his eyes.” That’s my standard joke answer whenever anyone mentions how rich he was.

The truth is I also inherited my father’s mind . . . and now looking back on it, apparently his unfortunate luck with beautiful but dangerous women, and by that I mean Amber. They say a guy usually ends up with a girl who’s like his mother. My mother is a gorgeous, blood-sucking leech, metaphorically speaking; Amber is a gorgeous, blood-sucking . . . something, literally speaking.

I’m smart. You think I would have seen that coming.

Delilah towered over me. I know I’m short, but that girl is a freaking Amazon. “Listen up, Garfinkle, ‘cause this is the way it’s going down.” She likes to talk and act like she’s some tough girl from the hood, even though I know she lives in an apartment building four blocks away from me in Chelsea. “Tomorrow is Saturday night, and you are going to take me out. You’re going to pick me up in a big, fancy car. You’re going to take me to a big, fancy restaurant. You’re going to buy me a big, fancy dinner. And when it’s over, you are going to thank me, because I . . .“ She licked her lips. I think she was trying to be seductive, but it was just plain scary.  “. . . I am going to make a man out of you. Do you understand me?”

Understand her? Hell, no, I didn’t understand her.

I mean, I know how Delilah works. High school might just be a prequel to me, but this is the last showing for her. Next year she’ll be serving up fries at the Golden Arches and wondering how she went from queen bee to queen used-to-be. Everything is about power with her. There are the boys she hooks up with to work her way up the high-school social ladder, horizontally: the jocks, the popular good-looking guys, and the gang leaders. Then there are girls, who fall into two categories: the ones she can manipulate to her advantage, and the ones she can bully or manipulate other girls into bullying. Geeks like me, on the other hand, have no place in her world. We don’t offer anything she wants. In fact, we’re her social Kryptonite. Merely being in our proximity reduces her power.

Of course, it made sense that she had decided to move on to the rich guys after having used up all her other options in the sleep-her-way-to-the-top department. But there are plenty of rich schmucks at our school who flaunt their wealth with expensive haircuts, expensive clothes, and expensive cars, guys who brag about summering in Belize. I’m not one of them. The last time I had a haircut was at least half a year ago, and it only cost me about fifteen bucks. I wear cargoes, hoodies, and t-shirts from ThinkGeek and Woot to school, not over-priced designer clothes. In a logical, sane universe, no girl would want to go out with me, least of all Delilah Jones.

I started to tell her, “I don’t—”

“I said . . .” She narrowed her eyes and growled. “. . . ‘Do you understand me?’” From high school star athletes to lowly tech geek, I thought, my, how the slutty have fallen.

And that’s when Dylan turned to Delilah and said, “He’ll be there.”

I’m sure he never means to, but Dylan has an uncanny knack for getting me into trouble. What are best friends for, right?

Of course, the irony here is that Dylan had very little to do with the jam I’m in now. I have over a dozen scars to remind me of all the totally awesome times I’ve had when Dylan taught me everything from rollerblading to snowboarding. If anyone was going to get me killed, it should have been him. At least that way it would have been fun, and it would have been my choice. Now I know what Dorothy meant when she told the Scarecrow, “I think I’m going to miss you most of all.” If I don’t make it through the night, big dude, I am so going to miss you.

Delilah pulled a piece of paper out of her purse, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. “My address. Be there tomorrow night at seven and dress appropriately.” Dress appropriately for what, I thought, my funeral? Wish I’d known at the time how much closer to reality that would turn out to be. 

She went back to her friends, and they high-fived her. I don’t know what was going on between them. The only thing I did know is that I was so screwed.

“Well, alright,” Dylan said with a grin. “Looks like someone is going to get some action on Saturday night!” He picked up his hand to high-five me, but I ignored it. 

“Are you out of your mind?” I replied. “That’s Delilah Jones.” Dylan raised his eyebrows behind that swoop of dirty-blonde hair that covers a third of his face. “Don’t you remember fourth grade?” He shrugged. I sighed. “She used to knock everyone down in the schoolyard during recess? One time she sat on you and made you eat a bug?”

Dylan laughed. “No, little dude, that was Karen Jones.”

“Karen changed her name to Delilah during our freshman year.”

“Oh.” He paused. Then his eyes opened wide, and his voice deepened. “Oh! Dude, that’s not good.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Wish I could.” He grinned. I love it when he says that. “Still, you can’t back out now. If you do, she’ll tell everyone in school you’re gay.” 

 “It’s high school,” I reminded him, even though that fact couldn’t have been more painfully obvious. “The Neanderthals here call every guy they don’t understand gay, and as Neanderthals they’re too stupid to understand anyone.”

Dylan should know this. He gets picked on more than anyone because of his shaggy hair and how sweet he is to girls. He gives them flowers and poems, and they treat him like he’s some sort of lanky puppy they have to jump up to pet. Bullies view him as the competition, which of course means he needs to be punished—and punished often.

Lucky for him, he’s got me, though I try to make sure he doesn’t know that I’ve been looking out for him. Lucky for me, I don’t have his problem. My hair is kind of long, but it’s dark and curly, and together with my glasses and bad complexion, I look more like a young mad scientist than an adorable puppy. It’s an image I’ve chosen to cultivate.

“They don’t call you gay,” Dylan said, “not since you kicked Coleman’s ass with your karate moves in ninth grade.” He did a weak imitation of a karate kick and screamed, “Haiah!” It almost knocked his glasses off.

A girl passing by giggled. He pushed his glasses back onto his nose and grinned at her. She grinned back. I don’t know why, but girls seem to find everything he does adorable, at least until he tries to take it to the next level. Then they tell him he’s cute, but they don’t really see him that way. And yet he perseveres. Got to admire that.

“It wasn’t karate,” I pointed out. “It was aikido, which means that technically that schmuck kicked his own ass. I just helped him.”

The memory of what had happened that day made me smile. Coleman had tried to punch me in the face. I twisted to the side and pulled his wrist forward, using his own momentum to propel him over my shoulder and into a wall. It was a basic aikido move, but after Coleman hit the floor, he looked up at me stunned, like I had just teleported him from a world where he was king of our high school to one where he couldn’t even intimidate a short geek like me. For weeks people talked about my Jedi moves and called me Neo. Good times.

Dylan said, “It’s different when girls are saying it, though.” 

“How is it different? It’s not like they’re lining up to date me now.”

“Yeah, but if they think you’re gay, they might want you to be their gay best friend. You know, they’ll want to talk to you about hairstyles, fashion, how all men are jerks . . .”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about it that way.

“On the bright side, Gilbert Garfinkle sounds like a great name for a hairdresser.”

I shuddered. “Don’t even joke about that.”

I used one of the lock picks I keep in my sneakers to open my locker. The locker came with a combination lock in the door, but I didn’t like it, so I tricked it out in September. It still looks like all the other lockers, but I put a keyhole where no one would see it. If it were up to me, school lockers would work with magnetic keys, thumbprint scanners, or voice recognition. The world in general would probably make a lot more sense if I were in charge. I’d fix so many things. I was going to fix so many things . . .

I put my books from my last class away and took out my bagged lunch, a corned beef on rye sandwich I’d made that morning.

“Cheer up,” he said. “At least you’re going to get laid.” 

“Riiiight. Because there’s no place in New York City where a guy could get an STD for less money and with fewer complications.”

“You don’t know Delilah has an STD.”

“Apparently you haven’t read the writing on the stall.”

Dylan didn’t laugh, but I did get a smirk out of him. “Have you seen the one really high above the mirror?”

“If it’s really high, how would I have seen it?”

“It says, ‘The only difference between Delilah Jones and a city bus is you have to pay to ride the bus.’”

He laughed, but I didn’t find it that funny. “In case you haven’t noticed, she made it clear that, ride or no ride, I am going to pay big time.”

“Okay, forget about that. At least this might put an end to the rumors about you.”

“Rumors?” I’ve been trying to fly under the radar lately, so I was surprised to hear that anyone was talking about me. “What rumors?” 

“They’ve voted you ‘Most Likely to Lose His Virginity to a Robot.’”

I paused to think it over. “Okay, yeah, I can see that.”

Girls are scary; robots I understand. I can take a robot apart and figure out how it works. But I can’t take a girl apart, and I will never figure one out.

“Go out with her,” Dylan said. “What harm could it do?” What harm could it do? The famous last words of Darwin Award winners everywhere.

I tried to think of a way out of it, and then I realized . . . Delilah had made some very specific demands. A big, fancy car? Where was I going to get a big, fancy car? All I had to do was ask my mother. She’d say no, and that would be the end of it.

Or at least that’s the way it would have ended if the logic of the universe hadn’t continued to unravel.  

∞∞∞∞ 

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