Will Grayson, Will Grayson(20)
Author: John Green

“ID,” he tells me. I pull my wallet from my back pocket, slide the ID out, and hand it to him. He shines a flashlight on it, then turns the flashlight onto my face, and then back to the ID, and then he says, “What, you think I can’t add?”

And I say, “Huh?”

And the bouncer says, “Kid, you’re twenty.”

And I say, “No, I’m twenty-two.” And he hands me my ID and says, “Well, your goddamned driver’s license says you’re twenty.” I stare at it, and do the math. It says I turn twenty-one next January.

“Uh,” I say. “Um, yeah. Sorry.”

That stupid h-o-p-e-l-e-s-s stoner put the wrong f**king year on my ID. I step away from the club’s entrance, and Tiny walks up to me, laughing his ass off. Jane is giggling, too. Tiny claps me too hard on the shoulder and says, “Only Grayson could get a fake ID that says he’s twenty. It’s totally worthless!”

And I say to Jane, “Your friend made it with the wrong year,” and she says, “I’m sorry, Will,” but she can’t be that sorry, or else she’d stop laughing.

“We can try to get you in,” Jane suggests, but I just shake my head.

“You guys just go,” I say. “Just call me when it’s over. I’ll just hang out at Frank ’s Franks or something. And, like, call me if they play ‘Annus Miribalis.’”

And here’s the thing: they go. They just get back into line and then I watch them walk into the club, and neither of them even tries to say no, no, we don’t want to see the show without you.

Don’t get me wrong. The band is great. But being passed over for the band still sucks. Standing in line I hadn’t felt cold, but now it’s freezing. It’s miserable out, the kind of cold where breathing through your nose gives you brain freeze. And I’m out here alone with my worthless f**king hundred-dollar ID.

I walk back to Frank’s Franks, order a hot dog, and eat it slowly. But I know I can’t possibly eat this one hot dog for the two or three hours they’ll be gone—you can’t savor a hot dog. My phone’s on the table, and I just watch it, stupidly hoping Jane or Tiny might call. And sitting here, I only get more and more pissed. This is a hell of a way to leave someone—sitting alone in a restaurant—just staring straight ahead, not even a book to keep me company. It’s not even just Tiny and Jane; I’m pissed at myself, for giving them an out, for not checking the date on the stupid ID, for sitting here waiting for the phone to ring even though I could be driving home.

And thinking about it, I realize the problem with going where you’re pushed: sometimes you’re pushed here.

I’m tired of going where I’m pushed. It’s one thing to get pushed around by my parents. But Tiny Cooper pushing me toward Jane, and then pushing me toward a fake ID, and then laughing at the f**kup that resulted, and then leaving me here alone with a goddamned second-rate hot dog when I don’t even particularly like first-rate hot dogs—that’s bullshit.

I can see him in my mind, his fat head laughing. It’s totally worthless. It’s totally worthless. Not so! I can buy cigarettes, although I don’t smoke. I can possibly illegally register to vote. I can—oh, hey. Huh. Now there’s an idea.

See, across from the Storage Room, there’s this place. A neon-sign-and-no-windows kind of place. Now, I don’t particularly like or care about  p**n —or the “Adult Books” promised by the sign outside the door—but I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend my entire night at Frank’s Franks not using my fake ID. No. I’m going to the  p**n  store. Tiny Cooper doesn’t have the nuts to walk into a place like that. No way. I’m thinking about the story I’ll have when Tiny and Jane get out of the concert. I put a five on the table—a 50 percent tip—and walk four blocks. As I get near the door, I start to feel anxious—but I tell myself that being outside in the dead of winter in downtown Chicago is much more dangerous than any business establishment could possibly be.

I pull the door open, and step into a room bright with fluorescent light. To my left, a guy with more piercings than a pincushion stands behind a counter, staring at me.

“You browsing or you want tokens?” he asks me. I don’t have the first idea what tokens are, so I say, “Browsing?”

“Okay. Go on in,” he tells me.

“What?”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re not going to ID me?”

The guy laughs. “What, are you sixteen or something?”

He nailed it exactly, but I say, “No, I’m twenty.”

“Well, yeah. So that’s what I figured. Go ahead.”

And I’m thinking, Oh, my God. How hard can it f**king be to successfully use a fake ID in this town? This is ridiculous! I won’t stand for it. “No,” I say, forcefully. “ID me.”

“All right, man. If that’s what gets your maracas shakin’.” And then, real dramatically, he asks, “Can I see some ID, please?”

“You may,” I answer, and hand it to him. He glances at it, hands it back, and says, “Thanks, Ishmael.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, exasperated. And then I’m in a  p**n  store.

It’s kinda boring, actually. It looks like a regular store—shelves of DVDs and old VHS tapes and a rack of magazines, all under this harsh fluorescent glow. I mean, there are some differences from a regular video store, I guess, like A. At the regular video store, very few of the DVDs have the words guzzling or slut in them, whereas here the opposite seems to be the case, and also B. I’m pretty sure the regular video store doesn’t have any devices used for spanking, whereas this place has several. Also, C. There are very few items for sale at the regular video store that make you think, “I have no earthly idea what that is supposed to do or where it is supposed to do it.”

Other than Señor Muy Pierced, the place is empty, and I very much want to leave because this is possibly the most uncomfortable and unpleasant portion of what has heretofore been a pretty uncomfortable and unpleasant day. But the whole trip is completely worthless if I don’t get a memento to prove I was here. My goal is to find the item that will make for the funniest show-and-tell, the item that will make Tiny and Jane feel like I had a night of hilarity they can only glimpse, which is how I finally come to settle upon a Spanish-language magazine called Mano a Mano.