Junot Díaz
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (excerpt A)
Jenni was her real name, but all her little goth buddies called her La Jablesse, and every standard a dude like me had, this diabla short-circuited. Girl was luminous. Beautiful jibara skin, diamond-sharp features, wore her hair in this super-black Egypto-cut, her eyes caked in eyeliner, her lips painted black, had the biggest roundest tits you’ve ever seen. Every day halloween for this girl, and on actual Halloween she dressed up as- you guessed it- a dominatrix, had one of the gay guys in the music section on a leash. Never seen a body like that, though. Even I was hot for Jenni first semester, but the one time I’d tried to make on her at the Douglass Library she laughed at me, and when I said Don’t laugh at me she asked: Why not? Fucking bitch. So, anyway, guess who decided that she was the love of his life? Who fell head over heels for her because he heard her play Joy Division up in her room and, surprise, he loved Joy Division too? Oscar, of course. At first, dude just stared at her from afar and moaned about her “ineffable perfection.” Out of your league, I snarked, but he shrugged, talked to the computer screen: Everybody’s out of my league. (182)