“What do you think?” Harley asked William, the Godmother of their GM.
William shrugged. He had warned Matt this would be a train wreck. “It’s Devil’s turn. Let’s move this along.”
Matt felt defiance boiling up within him. One didn’t easily become striker on a soccer team. The striker was the guy deepest in the enemy lines, the guy whose job it was to score a goal, damn the consequences. The referee could call a foul after the fact.
Matt, the striker, did what strikers do.
“Devil yields his question to me,” Matt declared. “Don’t you?” he asked Kevin. Yielding time was a parliamentary trick Matt had learned in SGA, which was ironic considering it had been William who had encouraged him to run for office, and now Matt was using parliamentary procedure to defy William’s decision.
Kevin nodded meekly, yielded his question.
Matt pressed on. He dared anyone to challenge him. “Does your dad call you R2-D2?” heasked Paul again.
Paul shot Matt a wry smile. “Since you’re taking Devil’s turn, you must ask ‘Truth or Bare.’ I must choose ‘bare’ this time. I’ve chosen ‘truth’ twice in a row. Those are the rules.”
Paul removed his other sock, tossed it aside triumphantly.
Matt was undeterred. He turned his stormtrooper glare towards Luke in his Princess mask.
“Your turn,” Matt said to Luke. “Yield it to me?” Less of a question, more a command.
Luke looked to Harley for guidance. Harley looked to William.
“We don’t have a rule against yielding time, so you can do what you want,” William said. “Stormtrooper specializes in finding loopholes around our rules.”
“Then I yield my time to Stormtrooper,” Luke said.
Matt addressed Paul: “Does your dad call you R2-D2?”
Paul sighed. “Dad’s the one who started it. He’s the one who makes the family call me that. He tells church members to call me that. He goes to Open House at the school and tells the teachers to call me that. Everyone does what he asks since he’s a preacher. Only my family knows what it stands for.”
“Your dad changes churches often. Like every other year or so. What does he say in these new churches, when he’s introducing his family?”
Paul blinked back tears. He was not going to cry. He squared his shoulders, summoning inner strength. His voice, when he spoke, was dead.
“‘Hi everyone! Let me introduce my family. This is Sarah, my wife. As pretty as the day I married her! (Chuckle, chuckle.) This is our oldest. We call him R2-D2, like the robot. (short chirping, machine noises.) You can call him that, too. (Chuckle, chuckle.) This is our son, Aaron. He’s the athlete of the family. Junior varsity! Next is our son, Mark. He’s only eleven, but you can tell he’s gonna be a looker, a ladies’ man! (Chuckle, chuckle.) Finally, there’s my daughter, Elizabeth. Ain’t she a beauty?’”
Paul finished his impersonation. He sat, shoulders hunched, breathing noisily. He had paid a heavy emotional toll.
“Thank you for trusting us enough to tell us that story,” Matt said to Paul. And he meant it. “We have a tradition here. When an interviewee shares something painful like that, we show our solidarity by removing an article of our clothing.” Matt was already shirtless. He removed both his shoes, set them aside.
The rest of the members peeled off their shirts, careful not to dislodge their masks.
Matt watched Todd remove his dress shirt. The twink with the dark, curly hair. Todd now sat bare-chested, the red necktie draped loosely around hiscollar bone, hanging limply between his flat nipples, pointing like a flashing red arrow to the garter belt and fishnet stockings.
Todd must have sensed Matt’s scrutiny. He looked over his shoulder at Matt, graced him with a half-smile.
Matt’s cock stirred impatiently. It wanted this interview to end.
Paul studied the eight shirtless guys and smiled for the first time since the interview had started.
“Pirate, it should be your turn now,” Matt said to Evan. “Yield?”
“I yield my question to Stormtrooper,” Evan said.
Matt resumed questioning Paul. “I hate to ask you this. I know the word is offensive. Are you retarded?”
Paul shook his head. “I’ve been diagnosed with mild Asperger’s Syndrome. Bill Gates has Aspergers. So did Alan Turing.”
