We had gone to Alamogordo High School together, becoming lovers in our senior year. We talked about college, Maisy and I, mostly about the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, or New Mexico State in Las Cruces. Maisy’s “reach” school was USC, but although her parents made a lot more money than mine, I never thought it was a real possibility.

I mean, I love Maisy and all, but I was actually counting on going to Las Cruces because I wasn’t sure Maisy was going to get into Albuquerque. Neither of us were “All-Stars,” she was a bit more athletic and I was a bit more academic.

What I didn’t know at the time was that her parents knew some dude in Newport Beach, California. They had money and they paid this dude to do a bunch of illegal stuff to get USC to accept Maisy by bribing USC’s admissions testing officials, their athletics staff, and one of their coaches. They made sizable “charitable donations’’ to a nonprofit this dude owned and the organization bought stuff for the officials.

Maisy was told about this when she was going to retake the ACT. This dude in California bribed some psychologist Maisy never met to say she had a learning disability that hadn’t been accommodated. Now I’m no shrink and maybe Maisy has a disability, maybe I do too. Like Maisy says, the school didn’t test either of us. I mean the system is pretty arbitrary. She got all the extra time she needed because she has “test anxiety.”

Shiiit, except for a couple brainiacs, EVERYBODY dislikes tests. So while what was written on the paper might be true ... And keep in mind that I ain’t a Rabbi. The fact that her dad paid some dude two states away five grand to get a report from a shrink she’d never seen in Colorado saying that she had an undiagnosed disability so she could retake the ACT in Texas just didn’t smell kosher to me.

I know she was losing sleep over this. Her dad had already paid the money without asking her. USC was her dream, now it might be attainable. She printed off stuff for me from a couple of small colleges near USC and asked me to apply. Us making out in a shared Las Cruces dorm room seemed very far away.

Her parents figured that our relationship ... That we were a “phase” that Maisy would outgrow. While we could roll room and board into loans at NMSU, or UNM, Maisy’s parents weren’t going to pay halfsies for her to have an off-campus apartment she shared with me, and USC wasn’t going to let a non-student stay in their dorm. Our, or at least my future was falling apart.

When Maisy was told that she would have to fly to Houston to retake the ACT, she literally got sick to her stomach. Her dad yelled at her. Then he talked to the dude in California He paid him another four grand to have some “ghost” pretend to be Maisy. All “real Maisy” had to do was give her dad her Driver Licence and Student ID so the dude could give it to “fake Maisy.”.

I’m not William Fucking Kunstler but I’m no dummy. I didn’t get on so good with Maisy’s dad before. He is one of those two-faced guys who pretends to be a liberal. Supporting LGBT rights all while wanting his daughter to be “normal,” meaning not a dyke. “Not that ther is anything wrong with that.” Now I hated him. He made my lover a criminal co-conspirator in a federal crime.

She wanted to go to USC, but she didn’t want to do it by cheating. I’m not Doctor Joyce Brothers but I think that it really hit home ... It really hurt when he said that she “couldn’t get in on (her) own but he could buy (her) way in.” They had a fight, he taunted her and told her “if (she) didn’t like it (she) should go ahead and turn him in.” She never would, but she told me about it.

We talked to her dad together. He was pisssssed that Maisy had told me. He offered to broker the same sort of deal to “try” to get me into USC, “no promises.” Had he ever looked at our class rankings? I was the one over at their house ignoring his “evil eye” while helping Maisy pass all of her math and science classes. But I guess his offer to me came from his loving her.

But I didn’t trust him. I knew he didn’t really want me to go. My folks would never shell out money for USC when I could get into UNM or NMSU. His plan seemed stupid. I wondered if it was all for show. But I said okay, Maisy’s dad supposedly talked to the dude in California and for eight grand he would talk to my swimming coach and fabricate some primo athletic credentials.

Maisy’s dad said that it was a great plan. He said that if I talked to my mom and dad, and got them to shell out eight grand, I would get a full athletic scholarship to pay tuition and supplies. I would just have to borrow money for room and board. I knew it was ethically wrong, but hey, I’m not Mother Thresa. I didn’t want to be at USC, but I wanted to be at USC if my lover was at USC.

I almost went along with it, but Maisy’s dad balked when I said something about him explaining it to my dad. “Christ, are you that friggin’ dumb? It’s a conspiracy, I’m not going to explain it. If you want to go ... I know that you want to be a man, so then man-up and do it. But if you don’t or if you do and you don’t get in you can’t ever say anything. If anyone talks, Maisy goes to jail, not me, not you, Maisy.”

Now I’m not David Hume, but I don’t think that was right. I’m sorry, I meant to say that I know it isn’t ethically right and I don’t think it’s factually correct. I talked to Maisy. She felt trapped; her dad had just returned her ID to her. They had probably scanned her ID in Houston. It could be proven that someone other than her took the ACT using her name.