Slam

Sam’s mother had him when she was 16. He remembers a day he went skating with his friends Rubbish and Rabbit at a vacant concrete pond they call “the Bowl.” Rabbit asked Sam if his mother was single and guessed that she was around 22 years old. Sam couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of Rabbit’s calculations but felt embarrassed by this and many similar interactions. Sam thinks that each generation of his family seems to fail at their attempts to live a normal life. He considers himself to be the failure of his parents’ lives and wants to be the first person in his family to finish school.

Sam meets Alicia after his mum was invited to a party by Alicia’s mother, Andrea. Sam is told that Alicia wanted to meet him but couldn’t see why that would be the case—upon hearing that Alicia’s mum is turning 50, he assumes Alicia must be in her 30s. When they arrive at Alicia’s house, Sam notices it’s much larger and older than the flat he and his mum live in. He thinks about his future and how he hopes to have a large house but to live alone. When he is introduced to Alicia, who is his age, she “[acts] like the most boring evening of her life just took a turn for the worse” (20). Sam imitates her sulking behavior, which makes Alicia laugh. Sam notices how beautiful she is. They joke back and forth, and she admits to Sam that she hates when her parents throw parties because she prefers to just watch TV on her own. When Sam gets up to leave, she makes fun of him for wanting to talk to his mum. Sam gets frustrated and accuses Alicia of degrading people because she knows how pretty she is. Alicia approaches him a few moments later to apologize for behaving rudely. They start to talk about music. Sam starts to wonder if Alicia is interested in him or just wants to be friends, but then she invites herself to watch him skate at Grind City and see a movie together. Alicia explains that she just broke up with her boyfriend because he was pressuring her to have sex. Then she asks Sam up to her bedroom, which confuses Sam. He recently went through a similar experience in which a girl he was seeing was pressuring him to have sex and he refused. It turns out that Alicia just wants to watch a movie, and she passes Sam her number before he leaves for the night.

The next day, Sam tries to go skating but is distracted by thoughts of Alicia and worries of getting injured before his date. Rabbit is no help, and Sam chooses to go home and talk to his poster instead. Sam calls Alicia and they set up their date, but never make it to the cinema. Instead, they have coffee and talk for hours before going to Alicia’s bedroom. Sam is not ready to have sex and is unsure of Alicia’s intentions; he wonders if she is just using him for revenge against her ex-boyfriend. When Sam admits he doesn’t carry condoms, Alicia goes to find one in her parents’ room. Sam hoped that his first time having sex would be planned and romantic. When Alicia senses his hesitation, she tells him to leave, then begins to cry. She tries to tell Sam that she likes him, and Sam is still unsure what to think, but he has sex for the first time with Alicia that night.

Sam finds that he spends all of his time thinking about Alicia and waiting to be with her again. They spend all their free time together, and Sam’s mum, annoyed at never seeing him, decides that she’s going to spend the evening with him whether he likes it or not. They get pizza and see a movie, and Sam’s mum meets a man named Mark. Later Sam’s mum asks him if he’s having sex with Alicia and warns him about what might happen if they’re not careful. Sam feels like his birth ruined his mother’s life in a sense, and he thinks she feels the same. He voices this, saying, “Yeah, yeah. It fucked up your life” (59), which he hopes will make his mum feel guilty and stop asking questions. Sam’s mum apologizes and asks if she can at least meet Alicia. Sam realizes, looking back, that his mother’s worries were all warranted.

Sam describes spending a day and a half waiting to see Alicia as torture, “like not breathing” (53). When he does get the chance to call her, she doesn’t answer, and he starts wondering if she is cheating on him, but it turns out she just lost her phone charger. When they meet up again, they try having sex without a condom for the first time, and Sam experienced premature ejaculation. Sam looks back on that as the night they conceived. He marvels at how one risk, in a very small window of time, changed his entire life. When Alicia comes to dinner, she asks Sam’s mum about what it was like having a child as a teenager, but Sam doesn’t yet pick up on what has happened.

Over time, Sam slowly becomes bored of Alicia, as they never seem to do anything but have sex. He has stopped skating as much or doing anything else, and as he slowly rediscovers his interest in those things, his interest in her begins to wane. Her parents, meanwhile, are nice enough to him, but they seem to think his life isn’t going anywhere. During one conversation, they suggest that Sam is disadvantaged due to his upbringing, and Sam inwardly disagrees, believing he was raised well and provided for. Sam feels sick of Alicia and her family and goes skating to figure out how to tell her he wants to break up. He decides that having sex isn’t worth everything he’s losing—his hobbies, his family, and his self-respect. Sam goes home and finds his mum hanging out with Mark from the pizza place. Mark tries to buddy up to Sam, but Sam isn’t buying it. He admits that he wants to break up with Alicia, and his mum advises him to do so as soon as possible. Instead, Sam ignores Alicia, hoping the problem will disappear on its own. Alicia continues to text and call.