Rebecca Marder
Lit with uncontrollable public ejaculation and explosive diarrhea on a dick, if you’re a guy, you probably don’t want to be the inspiration for one of the characters in my feminist high school sex novel.
Jizz. Jealousy. Diarrhea Dick.
The most ridiculous high school romance of a decade.
Unless, you’re a hot foreign-exchange Albian artist and biologist named Rrap, the witty and intellectual newspaper columnist, Joe Luther, or Yale-bound, two-time spoken word winner, class president, team captain of the state champs baseball team, fellow mathlete, and hot girlfriend haver, Jack FakeLastName. Other guys, like Harry McDufus, who broke up with his girlfriend a week after having sex with her for the first time, can suck my big, fat, harry balls.
All of these young men are part of the story, but they didn’t light the world on fire. Here’s the story of the six men who did.
The Story of Six Men Who Lit The World on Fire
The Spark: Scott S.
This past year, I had a work assignment to win a state writing award for the best $100 million new building in Washington State. It was a scary and daunting task. In a thousand words or less, I had to tell a story that was more convincing than anyone else’s, without knowing what anyone else was writing about.
Stuck and unsure, I went to the president of my company for help. Talking about the award, excitement filled the room like the spirit of Christmas morning. There wasn’t any room for doubts. There was only joy. Pure joy. Scott was elated for me to tell the best story in the world and he trusted that I could be the one to tell it. It was the high school baseball state championship and it was my job to be Jack Fakelastname taking us to the finals with my hot girlfriend cheering me on. It wasn’t his job. It was mine. It was my job to dominate the competition. It was my job to sell a $100 million story.
And so I did. I got us to state finals.
Because I’m always going to do the assignment. My boss gave me the opportunity to write a $100 million story in two weeks. The whole time, my stomach was in knots and I wasn’t digesting food well, but I did it. That was just two weeks of my life.
Can you imagine what I could write in a couple years? I could write a billion dollar story. I could become the Taylor Swift of books. And no matter what, I can travel all around the world and sell my wild sex stories til the day I die.
I needed to see the joy and excitement of someone who was excited to read my story. No doubts. No questions. No mansplaining. Just pure joy.
He gave me the confidence to be an award-winning writer again. He’s not a character in the book like the other men, but I think he’s going to discover some fun easter eggs and compelling character lines. I guarantee that it will be the most incredible book he’s ever read. I can’t wait to send him a copy. I saved the most perfect gold ribbon for it.
The Wood: My Dad
My dad can be a complete asshole. He also gave me $125,000 this year so I could own my own house and pay off my Tesla. I’m sure there are a lot of people who have a dad that’s an asshole who don’t get a comfortable life handed to them. Just because I live a comfortable life doesn’t mean I can’t destroy the man who gave it to me. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or not, if you’re an asshole, I’m going to ruin you.
Before my mom’s Alzheimer’s progressed, she was never able to use her words and boundaries to reduce my dad to cinder dust. In his whole life, my dad never had the opportunity to rise from the ashes and become reborn. Isn’t that tragic?
It would be tragic if my dad wasn’t given the gift of humility. I’m confident that I’m the only person in the world who can give it to him. My mom would have been cheering me on because none of us wanted the family we had. Even with my dad’s hard work and money, we weren’t thriving; we were surviving.
I had to survive my dad’s cruel jokes and ridicule. I’m not talking about little things. I’m not talking about small mistakes. I’m talking about the time that I was thirteen years old and wrote suicide letters home from camp because I was having a meltdown in an unknown environment. For decades, my dad laughed about my “dramatic camp letters” to friends and family. Nothing I could do, nothing I could write could make him see me as a serious human being in pain. I was just a joke. I was a ridiculous punchline. A punching bag. He tried to make me the punchline when I visited home in the fall of 2022. He brought up the letters, but this time I wasn’t a child. I was an adult who could navigate life how I wanted to.
I gave him the gift of honesty. I was honest that his jokes about my suicide letters were cruel and he completely failed me when I needed help the most.
And then something wild happened. My dad did something that was so familiar and so exotic all at once. He spun a story that was different than mine. He made it up on the spot, saying he never got the letters that specifically mentioned suicide. How tragic that he didn’t want the truth to destroy the asshole he truly was.
It makes a lot of sense now that I went into a foggy, compliant haze and agreed with him, just like my mom would do. It makes a lot of sense that after that conversation, I had so much hatred for someone who could be so cruel and unwilling to change that I went into fight or flight mode and dug my nails into his skin until he bled. At the time, I was so ashamed and confused how I could hurt my dad like that. I was nearly 30 years old and I wasn’t able to verbalize how awful he was.
How could I verbalize my hatred of him when I was never allowed to before?
“Go write it in your book,” is a phrase my dad said to us kids growing up when we were sharing how upset or angry we were with him. It was a sarcastic phrase. He didn’t actually want us to journal and have him read about how his behavior hurt us so that we could feel heard, understood and loved. I’m glad I remembered what he said and can take his advice so literally. I will write it in my book. What an inspiration.
My dad is the one who needs to burn so that the fire can live on. He can gaslight me and pretend that terrible things didn’t happen. But it’s my story. Not his. I own my own story. And my dad can own it, too. I’m excited for him to own it. It’s the story he’s been wanting his entire life. A story so beautiful and tragic and real that he can’t put it down. It’s my dream to write this book, and even though my dad can be an asshole, I know he would be willing to sacrifice who he was so that I can be the person I was always meant to be.
The Flame: Lucas P.
Maybe it’s just me, but for me, a good romance has wild passion and hot sexy sexiness. Isn’t it obvious that the flame of the wildest, sexiest romance novel in the world would be fellow high school math team nerd, Lucas P? He was the only boy on the math team who didn’t make fun of me for enjoying the romance novel I was assigned to read for senior year Pop Fiction class. Whether or not he read those kinds of books, Lucas wanted romance in his life just as much as I did. Just as much as anyone.
But Lucas never had the high school romance of a century and neither did I. Lucas never dated a girl in high school. For the rest of eternity, Lucas will always have an “incomplete” on his high school dating record. As for me, I’d give my high school relationship with Harry “McDufus” an F. He was abusive and sexually assaulted me repeatedly. Isn’t all of it terribly tragic?
But what if we could redefine our time at high school? After all, as a yearbook nerd, I knew the theme of junior year was “Redefined” before anyone else. Wouldn’t it be perfect to redefine that year? Wouldn’t it be perfect to date a smart, hard working, kind young man who respected me?
Lucas and I took AP English (and AP Bio) together our junior year. Mr. Alexander taught us that our theses needed to be clear, convincing, cogent, concise, and controversial.
Here’s my thesis if Lucas P and I dated junior year: Jizz. Jealousy. Diarrhea Dick.
Our relationship wouldn’t have been perfect, but it would have had perfect moments and it would have been real. We could have created a world that only existed for us. And the good news is that we still can. Or I can. If Lucas wants to write his own version no one is stopping him. But I think just like Scott S., he’ll trust that I can tell the story the best.
It’s going to be a masterpiece, just like tits covered in cum.
The Match: Mr. Alexander
Mr. Alexander wasn’t like other English teachers. He was one of the cool english teachers. He had us watch The Matrix and The Boondocks because what’s the point of critical analysis if you can’t apply it to art, entertainment and the world at large? He would call characters and students, “punk ass bitches” and it was always funny.
Mr. A made it possible for my world to be on fire because he knew I was destined to write incredible things. He knew I was always going to make it up to him for not being able to write my mandatory 8-10 page junior theme on The Great Gatsby at the end of the year. He understood that my junior year didn’t make any sense to me and he could see the wheels turning in my head for one brilliant, clear, convincing, cogent, concise and controversial solution. He understood that the rules didn’t apply to me and they never would.
He never forgot me and I never forgot him. I will be so proud to give him a copy and I can’t wait for his critical analysis. Can you imagine a world where my teacher teaches my fiery romance set in his classroom? Call me crazy, but I can. I can do the most incredible things.
The Smoke: Mr. Greenstone
My sophomore year, the same year I had Mr. Greenstone for world history, was the year my dream of being a writer evaporated into smoke. It wasn’t Mr. Greenstone’s fault. It wasn’t his “mistake about me.”
It was the other Jewish faux comedian in my life: my dad. He thought it was funny that I wanted to write a book at 15. He didn’t believe in me. He wasn’t excited for me. He laughed. It destroyed my confidence. It destroyed the only dream I was holding on to. That’s pretty tragic.
And then later that year, Mr. Greenstone published a novel. Despite his foibles and flaws, he was one of my favorite teachers. He loved to be entertaining and make learning fun. He was charismatic and brilliant. I read his first novel because that’s what you do when a person you adore writes a book. How tragic that the hilarious Harvard graduate wrote a story that wasn’t as completely amazing as he was. Mr. Greenstone – I want your next book to be as completely amazing and as John Mulaney-esque as you are. It’s not like there’s any guilt or shame (remember when you taught us the difference?) in competing with yourself.
The smoke of my deserted dreams lived on in Mr. Greenstone. I can’t wait for my first novel at 30something to smoke his first novel at 30something. And then we’ll both work even harder on our second books, just to make sure nobody is let down, especially not ourselves.
Cheers to being book nerds!
The Forest: Mr. Ganschow
Mr. Ganschow was my high school teacher for four years, including English and Yearbook. He gave me all the supply and resources I needed to be an award-winning writer who would light the world on fire.
He gave me rules for writing and publishing a book. The value of setting and the power of satire. How to carry out a theme.
He trusted me to be a writer and senior editor that published a hardcover gold award-winning book every year. I was an award-winning writer before I turned 18. The taste of gold in my mouth never left. Diamonds are great, but yearbooks are forever, and so is my first novel.
I hope it lights the world on fire.