“Tease me a little…” I pout, tilting my head to the right with a slight raise of my eyebrows. For some odd reason, one of my ex-girlfriends and I are on a vacation in some random forest. With an obliging roll of her eyes, she leaned forward and sunk her teeth into the side of my neck-

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

“…fuck.”

The world came into focus – warm under the covers, sunlight streaming into my room, and the only thought in my head is that I could use another hour of sleep. Smacking the snooze button, I rolled out of bed and shook my head, shaking off the cobwebs as I grabbed clothes and went into the shower, not really concerned with how I looked. Fifteen minutes of rocking back and forth in the fetal position while being jolted awake with hot water, and I staggered to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and headed out the door.

It was a slacker Wednesday: guest speaker, movie, movie, and… well, aside from Stats, nothing to do, which suited me just fine; I am a Ten Percenter.

“Ten Percenters aren't stoners, geeks, goths, computer freaks or loners. They're not rebelling against anything. In fact, they look and act entirely average in every regard. They operate like highly functioning alcoholics. One may have performed surgery on you. Another might have been piloting the plane you were on yesterday. The difference between a Ten Percenter and anyone else is so subtle you could easily miss it. Ten Percenters hold a viewpoint, an attitude and a sense of humor ever so slightly tweaked from the everyman's…They live in the moment a bit more than the others. They didn't buy into the merry go round of non-stop devotion to the field on which the school tried to place us. That put them at odds with the other 90...Ten Percenters cannot work to their full capacity at something unless they find it engaging. It's impossible for Ten Percenters to invest themselves in anything, school or work, to the extent that it becomes their life, unless the subject absolutely fascinates them.”

By the time I’d made it to college, my coffee was already tepid and getting that slightly oily quality of dissolved creamer with a thin film of stale sugar – like mainlining battery acid. Downing it with gusto as my eyes noted the décor – earthen rock tiles on the wall to my right, a high sloped ceiling accented with dull steel beams, black plastic, and groggy students staring blankly at the world in front of them, it occurred to me that I’d become one of those assholes who enjoyed the small moments in life even as I could feel my stomach cringing in an unholy agony of forced alertness.

During the creative writing class, my attention wandered between the speaker and the profile of girl sitting to the side of me. In between his good advice and bon mots, I’d glance at her for a half-second at a time before being caught up in the writer’s magnetic charisma. He spoke of art, the virtue of disconnecting and slowing down to see things to write on, and beside me sat the perfect example. There was a certain irony to my practical application of his lecture during his lecture, and that amused me all the more. It was curious – I wasn’t particularly interested in dating her, but I wanted to take her picture. I wanted to take the stray blonde curls free of her ponytail, her bored sneer, and make art of it. She was insolent poetry in motion.

After the writer took his leave of us, the class swamped the front desk to grab the papers to read, and clogged the aisles. Two in particular seemed to think that right in front of me was a great place to discuss what cell phones they had – irony had stuck again.

“Kindly get the fuck out of my way, please!”

I hid my slightly-less-than-social thought behind a politely blank half-smile and waited until they decided to get out of the way before an idea occurred to me. Following the girl out of class, I wandered casually to the water fountain and took a sip, caffeine and adrenaline racing through my veins.

“I just wanted to say… I love what you did with your hair today.”

Instead, I swallowed both my confidence and the cool water, and then walked away without a word, laughing at myself even as my inner critic mocked my cowardice. There was always another day, after all, and with a rueful grin to nobody in particular, I went down to my car and grabbed my CDs and my binder, once again regretting my lack of a camera after passing a single green leaf with a drop of water hanging off the edge, lit from behind by the sunrise.

The hours in between class consisted of sitting in the library and listening to music. Music is an escape, an art. To a writer, it’s an invaluable tool. People who write song lyrics know how to write. That’s why they get paid to do it, after all. They understand the inherent power of words, of rhythm, of structure, of images. One can even write a story from song lyrics alone.

Lately things just don’t seem the same - actin' funny, but I don't know why - 'scuse me while I kiss the sky. Purple haze all around, don't know if I'm comin' up or down. Am I happy or in misery? Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me. She said she wants to be friends. She said she's sorry. With one finger, I said “Fuck that. It's my life, don't you forget.”

Funny how I blind myself - I never knew if I was sometimes played upon. I'm sorry to myself for treating me worse than I would anybody else. Well, I wonder which crime is the biggest? Forgetting you or forgetting myself... had I heeded the wisdom of the latter, I would've naturally loved the former.

The time is now, to sing my song. I'm goin' round the world, I got to find my girl on my way - gotta find the queen of all my dreams. She's the kind of girl you bring home to your mother. She looks good in blue jeans, even better under covers - she's a devil in bed between the sheets. Ask her if she's a saint and she'll get down on her knees and pray.

Oh baby, you're my obsession, my addiction, my drug, don't want to be without you when I wake up. Will you be there in the morning, will you be there when I want you? Will you be there when I wake up? I'll stay with you, the walls will fall before we do. So take my hand now, we'll run forever. I can feel the storm inside you, I'll stay with you.

My next class, as predicted, consisted of videos. While they can certainly be interesting to watch, there’s just something about a dark classroom and a warm, slightly flexible seat and the aftereffects of a crash from coffee that just contribute to a natural sleeping environment. And, unsurprisingly, most of these people in class seemed to be unable to fight it off. As I grimly struggled against the siren call of exhaustion and incompetence, pen in hand, my mind began to drift-

After class I’m gonna go sleep in the car. Man, that would be great, sleeping. I’m pretty tired.

With a upswing of my neck, I focused back in on the video, back to taking notes about that vainglorious jackass Custer, his army of poor people, and the Sioux who owned the lot of them at Bighorn.

Huh, she didn’t say a word to you. Maybe you should go sleep and think about it?

The scratching of my black Pilot G2 pen against my paper kept me awake for at least a half-page of notes before my body decided to ignore my desperate attempts to remain awake, such as scratching mosquito bites, shifting in my seat, constant sips of water, and even plying my body with sugar. One second, my page was covered in notes, and the next second, class was over.

Damnit.

The funny thing is that after getting out of class, you can never just go back to sleep, even if you’re still weary. So, once again, I found myself curled up in the library, vacillating between the choice of attending my next class or ditching it altogether. On the one hand, I wouldn’t be in class and would be free to do as I pleased. On the other, I had pretty much nothing to do aside from chatter to right-wing fundies online and listen to music. Not convinced by either of these arguments, I built up both cases: If I go to class, I’d fall asleep again, the weariness already dragging my steps. If I didn’t go to class, I wouldn’t get a chance to flirt with a classmate.

With fifteen minutes to go, it was a dead tie, and since I lacked a coin to flip, I sat deadlocked, staring absentmindedly at the screen. If I wanted to go to class, I’d need to get up and go to my car, grab my backup can of soda, change binders, put up my CD’s… and suddenly, the choice became clear. This was a “library”, which to most people, indicated a quiet place to study, or slack, depending on their preferences. To the people around me, it was a social hall. Faced with the choice of bludgeoning strangers until they shut up or going to class, I gave up and went, sulkily lighting a Djarum to keep me awake.

Surprisingly enough, it was pretty well worth it. The first fifteen minutes was the teacher wondering why we all were not doing well on our tests and quizzes, and mentioning redos for if people got "sick of coming to class." A bit of a surprise, especially considering the conversations around me.

"I so didn't feel like coming today."

"I almost ditched, but didn't.”

And then, a video. Fancy that. The class passed in relative speed, culminating in another of the random (see: daily) quizzes we were plagued with, victims of apathy destined for failure.

As I wandered off to my Stats class, I passed the teacher and gave him a friendly nod hello, beating him to the classroom for the first time. With an 88 on the first exam, I was barely satisfied despite my policy of always expecting to fail. That way, I'd either be right and not disappointed, or wrong and pleasantly surprised. There was no way to lose. With a graceful application of Zen-

“Fuck it.”

-I dismissed the concern and sat ready, pen in hand for further notes, up until the “object of my affections” arrived. I wasn't interested in her either, but when one has a chance to practice their game... She'd failed to call me last week, and I'd spent about six minutes being worried before I realized that like most seventeen year olds, she was unreliable and also jailbait – aka, not my type.

“You don't need to play hard to get just for me.”

“So where were you Monday?”

“We didn't have classes in the day.”

“Yeah... you missed a test.”

In the art of seduction, you keep your target off-balance. Your weapons aren't just your looks and personality, but their own emotions. The sound of jealousy is a sweet one to play at times, and with the default blonde sitting next to me, I let a mischievous sparkle show in my eye and a familiar, friendly tease to my voice – it was time to flirt. DefaultBlonde was not quick on the draw this day, giving me an opening.

“What's the odds of drawing a card that is both red and a spade?” the teacher spoke to the class, and DefaultBlonde spoke.

“Fifty percent – oh, wait.”

Turning to me, she blushed a bit and whispered confidentially that she wasn't really good with this sort of thing.

“Wanna play some poker?”

“Wanna play some poker?”

“Actually, I'm pretty good at poker. Last time I was in Vegas-”

DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!

“I won like a hundred dollars. My boyfriend noise .”

“Damn.”

Obviously, I hadn't heard the rest of her sentence. There's a natural phenomenon common to most males – we automatically ignore anything dealing with your boyfriend, because we just don't give a flying shit. I'd continue the flirting, though. The thing with game was that it really wasn't hard: fifty percent self-confidence, twenty percent humor, fifteen percent intelligence, ten percent looks, five percent innuendo, four percent bullshit, and one percent luck. Any idiot could do it and most didn't.

As expected, Jailbait took my bait during the break, and she proceeded to focus entirely on me.

“Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't call. My mom freaked out when she saw how old you looked, even though I told her it was just a friends thing.”

Another tip for seduction – go the friend approach and then constantly flirt. It's a quick way to bypass walls and you get to know your target. Plus, women seem to dig the whole mixed-message thing. Not to mention, being out in public with other women makes you look attractive to other hot women you haven't had the pleasure of flirting with.

“So yeah, we'd have to meet in the library or something.”

This was a perfectly good idea, and I expected no less from a person who had spent the past few weeks discussing politics with me. However, I had a better idea, involving not doing what she wanted.

“I could bang your mom instead.”

“I could meet your mom.”

“Oh, she hates men. You wouldn't have a chance.”

I scented a challenge in this. Although a pro-feminist myself, I couldn't help but dryly wonder how many of the modern feminists would just shut their mouth if they would just have a few hours of mindblowing sex. Besides, Jailbait was at least a seven and a half and her mother couldn't be that far off.

“One thing we have in common already.”

“And she's kind of a racist too. It's not that she hates other races, but she says things like 'All Filipinos are bad.' Drives me nuts.”

ABORT ABORT ABORT!

It was now my job to do damage-control. How would I do this? Revert back to the sleepy unconcerned slacker persona I'd used at first before springing the witty Stanford-educated artist persona on her. Another tip for game: look to Janus. One-dimensional people are boring and if you apply a hint of another persona in your game face, that's another way to get interest.

“Hah. I'm an equal opportunity racist- I hate all of them.”

“That's misanthropy.”

And that's why I hate people younger than me. They think they know something.

“If I'm going to hate someone, I'm going to hate him because he's an asshole, not about the color of his skin. I'd be a hypocrite, but still.”

And in a few words, I'd burned my plan to the ground. No harm, no foul. The next step was to over pursue, and so I waited after class to walk her out.

“I think my mom would freak out if she saw you talking to me again, so unless you've got something to say...”

Looking at her, I could tell there was still this faint glimmer of hope in her moonlit eyes. There was another opening from that, of course – I could have played the rake and kissed her on the spot, or any of another dozen options.

“Nah. See ya.”

A quick turn and I'd walk off. Of course, this was also something that could potentially get her interest – people want what they can't have. If I hadn't shot myself in the foot enough by implying that I was an anti-social hypocritical asshole, there was a chance she'd take it in a good manner and want me more.

Driving home, I'd listen to the radio and ponder the next day. It was Singles Awareness day, the special time of the year designated by the corporations for men to blow copious amounts of money in the interest of “getting laid ever again.” Each year, they set the bar higher for themselves, and it was pretty pointless. Get a box of chocolates one year and the next year you'd better get her something shiny. Year after that? You're fucked unless you sweep her off her feet in a tide of flowers, booze, and ceremonially serving up your balls on a silver platter -well, actually, you weren't fucked, which was the essence of the problem.

The rest of the night was spent in relative calm, playing video games with my father until I went to bed.