King Dork (10 page)

But Fiona had already lost interest in that topic. She was scanning the room to see if there might be anyone else

around to liven up the conversation. There was no one, so

she started talking, in a distant way, about something or

other. But I was getting the feeling that she had started to realize what she was dealing with here and had reached the

conclusion that my fitness as a participant in any future

spooky telekinesis experiments was in serious question.

I sat there while she spoke, trying not to make it too ob-

vious how intently I was examining her, which I totally just couldn’t help doing. She had some really tight jeans on, and black boots. Shiny boots of leather. She mentioned how she was making all the costumes for some play she was in. She always ended up doing the costumes, she said, because she was such a good seamstress.

“You mean seamster,” I said.

She paused, and said, as though talking to herself, “Mmm,

that’s interesting.” Then she stared at me. The candlelight made her glasses glisten when she moved her head. At times 70

they looked almost like they were made of liquid. I suddenly noticed that she looked a little sad, or so it seemed to me, but maybe she was just stoned and sleepy. Maybe I was just

imagining the sadness for my own purposes—I always think

girls are prettier when they’re crying.

Now, Hillmont is known as Hellmont, or less commonly

as Swillmont. And most of the people at the party went to

CHS, so I’d have guessed they probably lived either in

Clearview or Clearview Heights. Queerview. So that’s why

Fiona said, “How are things in Hellmont?” And that’s why I said, in response, “Diabolical.”

She seemed to spring to life. A bit. I mean, she acted as

though she thought that was pretty funny. I was sitting there in silence trying to decide whether she was being sarcastic or not. Well, she was at least a little stoned. But I gotta say, her giggling like that in response to my powerful vocabulary,

THC-enhanced and sarcastic or not, was pretty fucking

charming.

She was hitting my arm. I guess she had said something

while I had been in my own world trying to psychoanalyze

her, mesmerized by her belly, which her T-shirt had been designed to reveal, but maybe not quite as much as was being revealed now that she was all stretched out on the couch, and which I couldn’t stop staring at. I mean, it was almost physically impossible to pry my eyes away from it. I did, though, which made a ripping sound, like Velcro.

I went: “?”

“Getting a good look, hand-jive?”

I drew back, mortified. But she was just kidding around,

still laughing and hitting my arm.

“Slut heaven,” she said. “Do slut heaven.”

Now I was really confused. I think I may have said,

“Um . . . ,” and half smiled so it would look like I knew what 71

was going on while I tried to figure out what was going on.

She grabbed my head on either side, put her face very close to mine, and said, slowly and deliberately, the way you talk to a retarded person or an ESL student:

“How. Are. Things. In. Slut. Heaven?”

It took me a beat, but I realized: she must be from

Salthaven, or possibly Salthaven Vista, not Clearview

Heights. Duh. I’d never heard that name for Salthaven, but it was a pretty good one, and this time my half-smile was at

least semigenuine.

But she was still nudging me.

“Slut heaven, going once, going twice . . .”

“Um, concupiscent?” I said.

See, I was a little slow, but I guess we had established the foundations of a game where she asked how things were in

a town, and I responded with the appropriate word from

30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary.
She shrieked and clapped her hands theatrically and gave me this admiring sort of smile that I had never, ever seen anyone direct my way

before. I swear to God, she did, and it didn’t even seem very sarcastic.

The beauty of this moment was slightly tarnished by the

fact that in the back of my mind I was thinking of Mr.

Schtuppe and how he might mispronounce “concupiscent.” In

fact, I’m not totally sure I didn’t mispronounce it. But I’ve got to say that I hadn’t previously grasped the true benefits of making words your slaves. Fiona was an unusual girl, though, not like any of the Hillmont High girls I’d observed. For one thing, what might cause an ordinary person to recoil, or at best make a mental note never to play Scrabble with you,

seemed to make her horny. Well, that and all the beer and

marijuana. I hadn’t realized I had one, but this was my kind of woman.

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So now we come to the weirdest part. I swear to God this

is exactly what happened.

Fiona grabbed my wrist and moved my hand over to her

belly so that my palm was on her stomach just to the right of her belly button and my fingers draped over her hip. I want to say I almost felt a physical electric-y shock from the feeling of her bare skin. It was so surprising. I knew I was supposed to kiss her, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it exactly.

She scrunched up to me like she was trying to smell my

shoulder and I leaned down and we started to rub our faces on each other in the general mouth area. She made this

quiet “mmm” sound and started pushing her tongue all the

way in my mouth and sort of swirling it in a circle.

Counterclockwise. I started to do that, too, after a fashion, but I knew she could tell I didn’t know what I was doing. I was in a clumsy, mentally deficient daze. I started to slide the tips of my fingers downwards just underneath the waistband of her jeans, so it was jeans-fingertips-underwear-skin with one fingertip poking slightly underneath the underwear layer, but she squirmed and said, all mumbly because she had her

mouth full: “Uh, no, mmm, baby . . .” Uh-oh, I thought, I blew it, I wasn’t supposed to do that yet or at all and the whole make-out scene was officially over, but then she said in a kind of whispery voice, “My tits, my tits.” I started to move my hand up the other way and reached her left breast underneath her shirt. I had never touched a breast before. She

seemed to shiver a little when I touched it. Somehow, I don’t know how, I knew that she wanted me to start pinching her

nipple, and then, when I had started squeezing it and rolling it between my thumb and forefinger and she started saying

“mmm” again and breathing a little laboriously I knew that she wanted me to squeeze it a whole lot harder. I was really digging into it with my nails, and twisting it back and forth 73

while still keeping up with the tongue rotation thing as best I could. Her breathing sounded more like wheezing than

breathing. I don’t know about the Frenching, but somehow I knew that I was doing the nipple thing right, how she wanted me to be doing it. Though it must have kind of hurt. Then

suddenly her head fell back and she leaned away from me.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper. She was still breathing a bit strangely and she didn’t look sorry. She looked—how?

Conspiratorial? “Look, I can’t do anything with you because my boyfriend’s friends are all here. In fact, we really shouldn’t be sitting here like this.”

I didn’t know what I should say.

She suddenly leaned in and bit me on the neck right

above the shoulder, and hopped off the couch and zoomed

out. I didn’t know what to do.

Eventually I got up and went upstairs and back into the

hallway. I scanned the clumps of drama mods, but I didn’t

expect her to be there. She had clearly intended to flee

the scene of the crime and was already gone. As I walked

through the house tunneling through the little clusters of drunk and stoned kids and to the front door and down the

walk and into the street and on my way home, I was really

glad I had my army coat, which is long enough to cover up

the front of my pants.

Otherwise, I might never have made it out of there.

SON, YOU GOT A BAD APTITU DE

Now, I’ve been avoiding this part, because I find the whole thing a little embarrassing, but I figure I might as well get it over with. I mean the Chi-Mo story.

Back in seventh grade they gave everyone this multiple-

74

choice test to determine what you were supposed to be when you grow up. The way it worked was, certain combinations of multiple-choice answers would point to, say, Medicine, meaning you should try to be a doctor. Or you would get Law,

meaning you were going to be a lawyer. There was Business, and The Arts, and both kinds of Technology, Food and

Computer. Some kids got Athletics, even though it seems like the wrong type of test to determine something like that, and quite a few got one called Counseling and Social Work. Which sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the counselors and social workers who designed the test, but never mind.

Everyone got two results, so you’d have something to fall

back on if the other one didn’t work out. No one took it that seriously, but it was supposed to be kind of fun to see what you ended up with. Answer some touchy-feely questions, sit back, and watch the machine reveal your future.

Somehow, I ended up with Medicine (which was nor-

mal) and Clergy. Which was not. Clergy was bizarre. I was

the only one to get Clergy. What the hell were they doing

saying “Clergy” to a seventh grader? My future had never

seemed to have much going for it, but this was a dark avenue no one had yet considered. It freaked me out.

There was a Peer Interaction and Response Segment where

everyone was comparing answers, and someone saw mine.

“Clergy!”

Most of the kids in the room hadn’t even heard the word

before. I played dumb, didn’t say anything. That can make

some situations go away, but not all.

Eventually, though, they figured it out and someone said

“Father Tom!” That wouldn’t have been too bad, as nick-

names go, though it still would have been pretty weird for a seventh grader. But then someone said: “child molester!”

Then everyone started saying “child molester.” That was

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shortened to Chi-Mo. And that got shortened to Moe. Or I

guess maybe it’s technically spelled Mo’.

The process only took around fifteen minutes, ending

when Mr. Bianchi threw an eraser at someone and said “set-

tle down” to signal the beginning of the Pause and Reflect Segment. But by the end of that fifteen minutes I was officially Moe, or Chi-Mo, or sometimes Mo-Ped, and that’s the way it was ever since.

So there you have it. My nickname is an abbreviation for

“child molester,” or just “molester,” whether the people who use it know it or not. As I was saying before, it’s just about the poorest excuse for an insult anyone could imagine. It

doesn’t even make sense. Still, anyone who calls me Moe,

even when they may mean no harm, is a potential enemy.

That’s just the way it is.

Another thing I’ve got to explain, and now is as good a time as any, is how I’ve got this reputation as a Guns and Ammo guy. Otherwise, some of the stuff that happened in the week or so following the party will be kind of hard to understand.

It started as a matter of necessity, more or less a ploy. I ended up getting kind of into it in spite of myself, I admit, but for the most part it’s still just a means to an end.

The whole thing goes back to early ninth grade, and it

started with this one specific incident at the beginning of the year. Matt Lynch and his friends, who had been hassling me as a sort of hobby ever since I can remember, had stopped

me as I was coming out of the boys’ bathroom and pushed

me back inside.

“Why do you look like a wet rat?” Matt Lynch said, while

his friends stood behind him blocking the door.

The question, like all the others of its type, didn’t have an answer. But he would keep asking it over and over to watch 76

you squirm and to see what you would do. Then he’d get

tired of that and move on to the conclusion: beating you

senseless, or as senseless as he had time for or thought he could get away with.

Biff Bang Pow. In the stomach, in the ribs or head after

they trip you over. Maybe stomping on the knees or wrist.

And finally maybe letting a slow, thin string of spit fall down on your face, if they were in the mood for worrying about

presentation. You know, like a garnish.

After I had finished vomiting in the toilet stall and cleaning myself up as best I could, I started to ask myself: how can a person prevent Matt Lynch and his retarded subhuman

sidekicks from asking you why you look like a wet rat all the time? I knew the answer had to lie not in trying to apply superior force, which wouldn’t have been practical, but rather in figuring out how to mess with his mind.

My idea, which had sounded far-fetched at first, ended up

working better than I could have hoped. I started to wear an army coat from the surplus store, and to carry around magazines like
Today’s Mercenary, Soldier of Fortune,
and
International
Gun.
I’d mention my interest in guns and military hardware and urban warfare techniques at strategic moments when I

knew I’d be overheard by people who would mention it to

other people who would mention it. And I practiced what I

hoped was a wild-eyed, crazy look in the mirror (just the

eyes—everything else frozen) till I could do it without thinking. It would have looked better without the glasses, I admit, but unfortunately, I needed them to see. In the beginning, I put on a big pentagram pendant as well, but that was overkill and made me look like a moron, so I ended up ditching the

pentagram and just concentrating on the military stuff.

People started to look at me funny. I mean, on the rare occasions that people noticed me at all, they started to look at me 77