King Dork (14 page)

And so was Stratego from Milton Bradley. Plus, I think he was embarrassed, worried that some of his PC friends might see me wearing the wrong shirt or something.

His version of my life was pretty hilarious, at any rate. I wasn’t treating “my girlfriend” with enough respect. I didn’t understand how sex was spiritual as well as physical. “My

friends” and I were in a “space” of negativity and aggression, which wasn’t healthy. The music he had confiscated was

mostly metal, since those were the album covers and song titles that fed into his theory. But he left the Rolling Stones alone: see, they stopped the Vietnam war, too.

All the references to “my friends” threw me at first. Had

he really failed to notice that I had no friends other than Sam Hellerman? Then it hit me that he was assuming that some of the band members in the Sam ’n’ Moe bands I’d written about in my notebook were actually real people. (What tipped me

off: he mentioned a Debbie, and I was like “who’s Debbie,”

until I realized he was talking about Li’l Miss Debbie, the imaginary nurse-slut vocalist of Tennis with Guitars. It’s a 101

good thing he didn’t realize that some of “my friends” were really me: it might have turned his mind into a pretzel.)

All this from Stratego and a few fantasy blades? Un. Real.

At one point my mom chimed in: “Baby, all we’re saying

is you have to try to find harmony between your masculine

and your feminine natures.” I heard a tremendous guffaw

from Amanda in the other room. Thanks for that, Mom. I

knew I’d be hearing about my feminine nature from Amanda,

and till the end of time.

The one bit of reality in the whole scene did come from

my mom, however, though it was the kind of connection to

reality that reveals an even deeper disconnection from it.

“Are you having trouble with the kids in school?” she

asked.

Bingo. Well spotted. Give the lady a cookie. But on the

other hand, how could anyone who knew me or anything

about me even have to ask that question? The mind reels.

The whole sorry affair wrapped up like this: we wheeled

and dealed for the stuff. Little Big Tom kept the magazines, the “Kill ’em All” shirt, some of the albums, and the throwing stars, nunchakus, and decorative weapons (all except for the bowie knife, which I was allowed to keep for sentimental reasons). I got the books, the coat, most of the videos, the notebooks, some of the albums, and the games. He agreed to

respect my privacy and I to respect his values from that point forward. If you’re thinking that that sounds like a joke, well, you’re right, but one of the unspoken terms of the truce was that we couldn’t actually laugh at it till we were out of the room.

My mom said, “Baby, if you ever need to talk, we’re al-

ways here.” I gave her a little “right back at ya, babe” salute.

102

Little Big Tom, under the impression that he had

achieved something by accusing me of being criminally in-

sane and taking half my stuff, rumpled my hair and said,

“Growing up is rough for everybody. Even old geezers like

me. I’d like to think I’m not above learning a thing or two myself sometimes.” That was supposed to be self-deprecating

and lighthearted and philosophical and tension relieving.

Hey, I’ll take it. Anything’s better than getting in touch with your feelings in show trial form.

I knew he had fully snapped back to his old self when he

turned his head slightly sideways, handed me my notebook,

and said, “Some righteous tunes in there! Very creative!” I thought I heard him sighing heavily as I walked out, but of course, that was normal too.

TH E H E LLE R MAN EYE-RAY TR EATM E NT

There’s a scene in movies and situation comedies where the main kid starts to be “interested in girls” and the dad is supposed to take the kid aside and give him a lecture that used to be called “the birds and the bees” but is now usually referred to as “the sex talk.” The dad doesn’t want to do it and has to be goaded into it by the mom. If there’s no dad, the mom finds some dad substitute to do it. The dad or replace-ment dad module is nervous and dances around the subject

and uses funny euphemisms and analogies, and the joke is

that the kid is already very knowledgeable, a thirteen-year-old Hugh Hefner or Prince. Sometimes the kid will even be

shown in an armchair wearing pajamas and a robe and smok-

ing a pipe while the dad figure is squirming. And the live stu-dio audience laughs and laughs.

103

It hadn’t occurred to me, but when I told Sam Hellerman

about Little Big Tom’s Stratego Sex Inquisition, he pointed it out: I had just been a participant in the most retarded version of the sitcom sex talk the world had ever seen.

So maybe my
mom
had heard the cock tease discussion and had told LBT he had to talk to me about sex. He was

reluctant but couldn’t refuse. And in the course of his research he got sidetracked by Stratego and—boom! My sexual

awakening was suddenly all about Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Sam Hellerman still seemed bent out of

shape about my Fiona obsession. And I still couldn’t figure out why. It seemed like more than just being bored by the

subject, which I tended to go on about: that I would have understood. Was it related to his Serenah Tillotsen experience, in which he had felt the rejection so keenly that any description of a less than totally available and compliant female would push mysterious buttons and automatically send him

into a blind fury at the injustice of love and those who snatch it from the mouths of the needy? And would ignite a fiery desire for revenge on behalf of all unfortunate lonely hearts, or at least on behalf of those lonely hearts he happened to be in bands with? That sounded pretty good. Maybe so. But I had

to wonder if he knew something he wasn’t telling.

So why didn’t I just ask him if he knew something he

wasn’t telling?

Not a bad idea.

“Do you know something you’re not telling?” I asked.

I suspected that this was just the kind of question that

would send Sam Hellerman into another furious spasm of

over-the-top sarcasm, and I wasn’t wrong. He no longer

needed to resort to words. He just stared at me with bugged-out eyes that he appeared to be trying to spin in opposite di-104

rections. I believe his line of thinking went something like this: maybe if I stare at this creature long enough with these supersarcastic eyes, his head tentacles will eventually retract into his head, his back tentacles will retract into his back, his leg tentacles will shrivel up and drop off, and the external lung in the polyp on the side of his neck will burst, depriving the alien brain pod of needed oxygen and forcing the mother ship to relinquish control of the mind and body, after which the host organism will come out of its coma, rub its eyes, and say, “who’s this Fiona everybody’s always talking about, anyway?”

Well, it was worth a shot. Maybe Sam Hellerman didn’t

know more than he was telling after all. All I knew was, I was feeling a little feeble and vulnerable after that intense Hellerman eye-ray treatment. It’s a killer.

In fact, however, despite Sam Hellerman’s persistent bad

attitude about a certain faux-mod seamster who had one

breast that had experienced just a little less of this life than the other, he was still my friend by alphabetical-order relationship, and that means something.

So, to my surprise, it turned out that he
had
asked his CHS friends about her for me.

But none of them knew a drama mod named Fiona. In

fact, as far as anyone could tell, there was no one named

Fiona in the CHS student body at all. There were, of course, many hot brunettes with sexy stomachs, but that wasn’t

much help. And no one recognized the most unusual feature, the funky homemade denim and yarn jacket.

But what about the little black glasses? That should nar-

row it down. Hot b. with s. s. and l. b. g.?

“I’m sorry, man,” said Sam Hellerman, because we had

started to say man recently. “She doesn’t exist.”

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P ROTE ST SOM ETH I NG

They had managed to make Foods of the World in

“Humanities” last several weeks. We were well into October, on the Monday following Little Big Tom’s Sex/Stratego cam-paign, when we finally left the gifted and talented snacking behind and moved on to the Turbulent Sixties. The first assignment was, I kid you not, “protest something.” So of

course, the entire class just didn’t show up the following day.

You can get away with stuff like that in AP, as long as you can write a couple of sentences afterward explaining how your

class cutting is analogous to marching from Selma to

Montgomery. I’m sure the teachers kind of expected it and

enjoyed the free period, too.

I was on my own for my “protest.” Sam Hellerman hadn’t

made it into Humanities, so he was stuck in normal social

studies, copying God only knows what from some inane text-

book, no doubt.

I decided to go off on my own to read
Brighton Rock,

which I was beginning to think was the best book ever written. I was getting to the end and I was excited to find out what was going to happen. So I went out to a deserted part of the school grounds, the slope behind the outfield of the baseball diamond, and lay on the grass to read. It was damp, but a pale sun was out, and I had on my waterproof all-weather army coat, so it didn’t faze me.

One thing I did while I was reading was pause every now

and then and turn back to the inside front cover to look at the

“CEH 1965.” Then I would try to imagine what the circum-

stances were when my dad had read it. Listening to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “Help

Me, Rhonda” on the radio? Riding the streetcar wearing neat but rumpled midsixties student-type clothes, with older men 106

in suits with skinny ties and women wearing gloves and little hats? At the dinner table, with my
I Love Lucy
grandma hitting him on the head and telling him to cut it out already? In the few photos I had seen of him from that time, he looked kind of Beach Boys–collegiate, so that was how I pictured

him, with a little button-down short-sleeved shirt, floods, and Brian Wilson hair, sitting on the curb waiting for the bus,
Brighton Rock
open on his knees. It was kind of fun to do that.

It was all bullshit, too. But in spite of myself, I had this feeling like I was getting to know him in a way I never had. I would get to a good part and I’d think, where was he and

what was he doing when he read it? What did he think about the fact that Pinkie said he didn’t believe in anything yet was totally convinced he was damned? That kind of thing.

It wasn’t only the story but the physical object that did

something to me. Just being aware that I was holding it made me feel kind of—what? Spooky? Reverent? If I started to think about it, I’d get kind of dizzy sometimes, and start to have this ringing in my ears, and I felt almost like my mind was spinning, rising backwards toward the sky. Maybe I
am
crazy, I thought. For real, I mean, not as a ploy.

The lunch bell rang, but I was pretty into the story, so I stayed where I was and continued reading.

Before too long I was down to the last few pages, and it

was really exciting and suspenseful. I was feeling spacey because of the spooky thing I mentioned before (and maybe

even more than usual because there were a lot of priests and so forth in the book and that always adds to the spookiness).

And then a shadow suddenly fell on the page. I saw an elongated shadow head and shoulders on the grass in front of me and felt the presence of someone behind me. Then, and this was all in just a second, not how long it’s taking me to describe it, I saw some stuff splashing on the page, though first 107

I think I heard the sound of it hitting the page, which was very, very loud in my ears.

“The fuck?” I said, and turned around. It was Paul Krebs,

one of Matt Lynch’s pals and as psychotic a normal person

as ever there was, pouring Coke out of a can onto my book

and giggling like a simian maniac.

Now, this all happened in a split second, like I said. Paul Krebs was up there on the crest of the slope giggling, doing this little taunting dance, like a boxer or something. My ears were ringing so loudly I couldn’t hear much else, and I was seeing little multicolored blobs that started small but expanded to obscure my field of vision slightly before they dissipated and new ones would take their place. Little circles of green, yellow, and red. A liquid kaleidoscope. I got up and he kind of danced away from me, still giggling and yammering. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I started to chase him, and somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to trip him and pull his legs upward so that he fell down on to the rough gravel path. He must have hit his head pretty hard on one of the bigger rocks that lined the pathway, because there was a tremendous amount of blood seeping from a cut near his hairline. I had fallen in a big patch of mud in the process. I scrambled to get up, sliding around a bit, but he was just lying there blubbering and bloody.

I grabbed his hair and smashed his head into the gravel as hard as I could. Then I stepped on his neck and said, “I will kill you.”

And we both knew I totally meant it.

While I had been chasing him, I had still had
Brighton
Rock
in my hand, but I had dropped it when the whole head-smashing thing was happening. It was lying open on the

path, with little splotches and splatters of Paul Krebs’s blood on it, reflecting the sun, shining on the page. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking, stupidly, maybe this is how
The Catcher in the Rye,
CEH 1960, got bloodstains on it.