The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

way fat, you know.
    His abuela, La Inca? Hijo, you’re the most buenmoso man I know!
    Oscar’s sister, Lola, was a lot more practical. Now that her crazy years were over—what Dominican girl doesn’t have those?—she’d turned into one of those tough Jersey dominicanas, a long-distance runner who drove her own car, had her own checkbook, called men bitches, and would eat a fat cat in front of you without a speck of vergüenza. When she was in fourth grade she’d been attacked by an older acquaintance, and this was common knowledge throughout the family (and by extension a sizable section of Paterson, Union City, and Teaneck), and surviving that urikán of pain, judgment, and bochinche had made her tougher than adamantine. Recently she’d cut her hair short—flipping out her mother yet again—partially I think because when she’d been little her family had let it grow down past her ass, a source of pride, something I’m sure her attacker noticed and admired.
    Oscar, Lola warned repeatedly, you’re going to die a virgin unless you start changing .
    Don’t you think I know that? Another five years of this and I’ll bet you somebody tries to name a church after me.
    Cut the hair, lose the glasses, exercise. And get rid of those porn magazines. They’re disgusting, they bother Mami, and they’ll never get you a date.
    Sound counsel that in the end he did not adopt. He tried a couple of times to exercise, leg lifts, sit-ups, walks around the block in the early morning, that sort of thing, but he would notice how everybody else had a girl but him and would despair, plunging right back into eating, Penthouses , designing dungeons, and self-pity.
    I seem to be allergic to diligence, and Lola said, Ha. What you’re allergic to is trying .
    It wouldn’t have been half bad if Paterson and its surrounding precincts had been like Don Bosco or those seventies feminist sci-fi novels he sometimes read—an all-male-exclusion zone. Paterson, however, was girls the way NYC was girls, Paterson was girls the way Santo Domingo was girls. Paterson had mad girls, and if that wasn’t guapas enough for you, well, motherfucker, then roll south and there’d be Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, the Oranges, Union City, West New York, Weehawken, Perth Amboy—an urban swath known to niggers everywhere as Negrapolis One. So in effect he saw girls—Hispanophone Caribbean girls—everywhere.
    He wasn’t safe even in his own house, his sister’s girlfriends were always hanging out, permanent guests. When they were around he didn’t need no Penthouses . Her girls were not too smart but they were fine as shit: the sort of hot-as-balls Latinas who only dated weight-lifting morenos or Latino cats with guns in their cribs. They were all on the volleyball team together and tall and fit as colts and when they went for runs it was what the track team might have looked like in terrorist heaven. Bergen County’s very own cigüapas: la primera was Gladys, who complained endlessly about her chest being too big, that maybe she’d find normal boyfriends if she’d had a smaller pair; Marisol, who’d end up at MIT and hated Oscar but whom Oscar liked most of all; Leticia, just off the boat, half Haitian half Dominican, that special blend the Dominican government swears no existe , who spoke with the deepest accent, a girl so good she refused to sleep with three consecutive boyfriends! It wouldn’t have been so bad if these chickies hadn’t treated Oscar like some deaf-mute harem guard, ordering him around, having him run their errands, making fun of his games and his looks; to make shit even worse, they blithely went on about the particulars of their sex lives with no regard for him, while he sat in the kitchen, clutching the latest issue of Dragon . Hey, he would yell, in case you’re wondering there’s a male unit in here.
    Where? Marisol would say blandly. I don’t see one.
    And when they talked about how all the Latin guys only seemed to want to date whitegirls, he would offer, I like Spanish girls, to which Marisol responded with wide condescension. That’s great, Oscar. Only problem is no Spanish girl would date you.
    Leave him alone, Leticia said. I think you’re cute, Oscar.
    Yeah, right, Marisol laughed, rolling her eyes. Now he’ll probably write a book about you.
    These were Oscar’s furies, his personal pantheon, the girls he most dreamed about and most beat off to and who eventually found their way into his little