The Self-Made Loser


Oxford, Ohio, 1989


	



  


Billy Dose grew up in the suburbs of Ohio with two adoring parents who had given him the opportunity to do everything, and remained patient and loving as it became apparent he could do nothing at all.
He could not play piano, they found out early on, and it soon became clear he could not keep up with the Little League either.  The other boys didn't like him because he tattled, so he was never invited to join their treehouse or pirate clubs.  By high school, he had also failed at junior farming, karate, and chess, his grades were unimpressive, and the first girl he had managed to kiss and brag about told all of Columbus he had sloppy lips.  Then, at age 17, his hair started falling out. 
  







	

	 
 


  
It was that development that made him finally lose faith with the world.  Other guys didn't have to look like their grandfathers when they were 17 years old.  That sucked, he decided;  everything sucked. 
And since life had never played fair with him, he saw no reason to play fair with anyone else. 
That was the year of the golf club incident.  At the urging of his father, Billy was planning a career in business: there were many stories of men who had made it in business when they could do nothing else.  He joined his high school golf club, because golf was what businessmen did. 
He wasn't a natural golfer, but he soon discovered golf was easy to cheat at.  You could write down as few strokes as you wanted, and the other golfers believed you.  He was soon one of the low scorers in the club, although those who played right next to him noticed he seemed to slice the ball an awful lot.
His foul play caught up with him in an interschool tournament, when he took what he thought was an excellent stroke, only to have to ball land inconveniently and, he thought, unobtrusively in a sand trap.  He took a ball out of his pocket to replace it where it really should have fallen, on the green.  But a player for the other team spotted him, and that was the end of his brief stardom with the golf club.
"At least if you were honest," said his coach, "people could feel sorry for you." 

  





	





  


When it came time for college, his guidance counselor recommended the unambitious University of Toledo.   But Billy's father's willingness to pay full tuition got him accepted to the more upscale Miami University of Ohio.  Billy was able to pledge at Tau Kappa Epsilon, one of Miami's best fraternities, and one which had just expanded its house and was in desperate need of freshmen.  
He survived the hazing, which involved being locked in a car trunk until he finished drinking a bottle of Tabasco sauce.  He was very good at being hazed. 
The TKE brothers were an all right group of guys.  They gave great parties, at which they served so much beer that Billy was finally able to be successful with women, as well. 
He quit in his sophomore year, after lobbying unsuccessfully for the job of sophomore pledge master, who would introduce new pledges to TKE.  
"We're going to go with Huber instead," said a senior brother.
"Don't you know he's a homosexual?"  Billy told him.  Billy did not know that, either, but that was the best he could come up with off the cuff. 
They went with Huber anyway.   Billy guessed, correctly, that the TKE brothers didn't think he was cool enough to impress potential pledges.  He had even less hair now.

  


 




	

	 
 



  
Quitting the frat left him without a place to live, and he was forced to move into the only dormitory available at mid-term, an all-male residence called Hepburn Hall.   It was at Hepburn Hall that he met Troy Diddel.
Troy was a large, blond, trusting man with a birthmark like a tearstain beneath his left eye.  He had come back to Ohio after flunking out of school on the East Coast, and seemed all set to work at his father's cement company after graduation.  He and Billy became friends, not entirely without thought by Billy that he might someday also be able to work for the cement company.
There was one hitch to this clever plan:  Troy didn't want to be a cement executive.  He wanted to be an actor. 
Messing around with an amateur theater troupe had taken up all his time at the old school, and contributed heavily to his academic failure.  Here in Ohio, his father hoped to keep a closer eye on his extracurricular activities. 
But Troy believed that if his father could only see him onstage, he would be struck by his talent and believe in his dream.  That was how Troy and Billy got involved with a fundraising show scheduled for the annual Parents' Day. 
  





	



  


Most of the guys were planning dog tricks, stand-up comedy, and drag acts involving old bras filled with oranges.  
"We could do air guitar," suggested their friend Daev, who had been Dave before he left his parents' home.  "You know, pretend to play along to Aerosmith or something."
"No," said Billy,  "the guys down the hall are doing air-guitar Aerosmith."
"I think we should do Hamlet," said Troy.
Troy was adamant, and he cast himself at Hamlet.  After checking a copy of the play out of the library and struggling, over a case of beer, to read it, they eventually decided on Act 1, Scene IV.  That was a sequence in which Hamlet meets the ghost of his troublesome father.  It was chosen not for its parallels to Troy's life,  but because it had only men in it.  None of them had girlfriends.
  
   


 




	

	 
 



  
Then Billy, to his surprise, met a girl.  He met her in the student health service, where he went after slipping on a mushroom in the cafeteria.  She worked behind the desk,  and laughed when she read his admissions form.  Billy had looked up angrily with his chin out, and then realized it was a sweet laugh and she was a sweet girl.  Jessica, a California girl of Philippine descent.  She flirted with him.  Girls never flirted with him. 
From that moment, he thought about her all the time.  He thought about her during class, during meals, while trying to study or rehearse for Hamlet.  Passion for her infused every cell of his body:  it was like drums, deep African drums, beating within him.  He could think of nothing else.  
The Hamlet rehearsals were not going well.  Troy could never remember his lines, so Billy, playing his buddy Horatio, had to prompt him a lot.  Daev, who had only a couple of lines, helped too.  A fourth buddy, who played the wordless ghost, sat to the side, smoking.  
When Billy wasn't rehearsing, he was hanging around the health service looking for Jessica.  She was difficult to spot; when he did see her, it was from a distance, like watching a bird.  
  
	  






	



  


The day of the show, Billy unexpectedly, he ran into Jessica backstage.  He saw her from across the room: lithe, cheerful, and helping to style her brother's hair.  He was one of the Aerosmith imitators.
Breathing deeply to control his fear, Billy went to her.  She smiled when she saw him.  She was flirting again. 
"I hear you're going to be Hamlet," said Jessica. "I think that's really sexy. I love smart men."
Billy, of course, was not Hamlet; he was Horatio, whom nobody had ever heard of.  He didn't tell Jessica that.  He just winked, in a way he hoped was charming.
  


 




	

	 
 

  


The show began with a well-received drag act; then one boy played the trumpet, and a couple of others reprised the old Abbott and Costello "Who's on First" routine.  Then act followed act followed act.  The show was too long, and most of the parents had already seen their own sons and were thinking about the evening buffet table by the time Billy, Troy, and Daev took the stage. 
They were all wearing black T-shirts and jeans, the closest they could get to matching Elizabethan costumes.  Troy struck his pose in the middle of the stage, and they were ready to begin. 
"The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold," said Billy, almost before he realized what he was doing.  He had said Hamlet's line.  
Troy, in his pose, was frozen with confusion.  
There was silence onstage.  Then Daev, inexplicably, took Horatio's part.  "It is a nipping and eager air," he said.
There was another silence.  The audience might have assumed it was too cold to speak.
"What hour now?" said Billy, continuing as Hamlet.  It seemed like the right thing to do.  Besides, he could see Jessica in the wings.
"I think it lacks of twelve." Now Troy was taking Horatio's part.
"No, it is struck," said Daev, back in his own part for the moment.

  
	  





	





  


Anyone familiar with Shakespeare would have been very confused by this point, but there was not a rustle from the audience of parents.  
It was too late to stop, Billy decided, and as Hamlet he charged ahead.
"The king doth wake tonight," he said, and then launched into a long speech about wassails, kettledrums, and the troubled state of his kingdom, while Troy paced the stage.  
"Something is rotten in Denmark," said Daev, right on cue. 
Billy messed up a little around the lines about nature's livery and fortune's star, and the entering ghost, who had been out back having a smoke, spooked the wrong person, but otherwise, the scene went remarkably well.
They got a round of applause, and Billy flashed a smile at Jessica waiting in the wings.
  




 




	

	 
 

 
  
"What happened?" Troy sputtered as they came off the stage. "You stole my lines!"
"I got confused," said Billy.
"I think you make a good Hamlet," said Jessica, touching Billy's arm.
Troy looked at her, and then back at Billy, and his face turned as red as his tearstain birthmark.
The evening buffet was full of brittle introductions.  Billy's parents insisted on meeting Troy, and Billy met Troy's father.  The father had been impressed by Troy's performance - particularly his honest fear when the uninformed ghost starting menacing him - and wondered if the time might be right to finance a community theater in the cement town.  Billy also met Jessica's boyfriend, a wrestler who boxed on weekends. 
Having lost the sympathy of Troy and Daev - who did go on to work for the cement company, under his original name - Billy spent senior year with very few friends.   When he graduated, and could no longer stand being known as the biggest loser in the small town of Oxford, Ohio, he moved to New York.  

  















Library of Congress Copyright TXu 875-975