A virtue
Just like other villagers of East Village, Nomi and her family are Mennonites. As far as Nomi knows, they are “the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager.” “Five hundred years ago in Europe” a man named Menno Simons “set off to do his own peculiar religious thing” and “he and his followers were beaten up and killed or forced to conform all over Holland, Poland and Russia.” The irony is that the man who “believes in complete humility” names “a group of people after himself” and uses “his first name.”
The mystery of alphabet
Mennonites are not supposed to listen to modern music, for it is associated with sin. “Satan is tempting you, do you know that?” To tempt innocent souls, he uses everything, even music. One time the Mouth came over to talk and pray with Trudie “about her fondness for guys like Kristofferson and Billy Joel.” He told her that “in dictionary hell comes after rock’n’roll.” The irony is that the Mouth lies but is not concerned about “damnation” at all.
The meeting
“Be mysterious,” Nomi told herself. She’d been going after that “laughing-on-the-outside, crying-on-the-inside look for a while.” It all had to do with “the eyes and the mouth and certain pauses in your speech.” According to her, it is “kind of tragic and romantic.” Though she wasn’t very good at it, the girl liked “the bullshit bravado of it.” She wanted to impress Travis that evening, so she asked him to say his name “again,” pretending that they were two strangers. Nomi repeated it, “making a big exaggerated point of trying to remember.” The irony was that she had known his name “for years.”
