On Archimedes Street (16 page)

“No, Say-Say.”

“What is sauce Colby?” asked Mimi. She’d already dipped a finger into the sauce and could not believe it.

“Yes, Say-Say.”

“It has a meat glaze reduced with wine, shallots, and tarragon, miss. Here at Anton’s we add a tomato reduction rather than lemon juice.”

“This has tomato in it? I’d never have known!”

“No, Say-Say.” Dutch motioned for his glass to be refilled. Googs was stuffing his mouth like there was no tomorrow.

“Yes, Say-Say. Love you too. Bye.”

Flip and Googs exchanged glances. They were thinking the same thing. Never had one evening been so much fun, and it wasn’t over yet. Googs was pretty sure Dutch would ask him to give Mimi a ride home. She wouldn’t fit in the two-seater Triumph Dutch always drove, not with Flip along.

Chapter 21

“G
OOGS
,
CAN
you explain the basis for the system of blood classification?” asked Honoria.

“Uh, A, B, and O,” croaked a hungover Googs. Mimi and Flip were looking pretty green around the gills as well after four bottles of Dom Perpignan and the rich food at Anton’s.

“Well, not exactly. Although you did manage to name the major blood groups. But what is the basis for those groups? Anyone?”

Silence. “Dutch?”

Dutch jiggled his knee. “The basis for those groups is the presence of glycoproteins on the surface of the plasma membrane of the red blood cell.”

“Yes.” The class seemed especially dull and lethargic today, thought Honoria. “Those proteins are called antigens and sometimes agglutinogens, and when they are accompanied by plasma proteins called antibodies—also known as agglutinins—they set the stage for certain reactions. Can anyone explain how these reactions occur?”

Dutch telegraphed a silent threat with his eyes.
Don’t call on me again.

“The reaction is the clumping of blood cells, called agglutination,” Flip offered groggily.

“True, but not what I asked. Agglutination occurs when antibodies react with red blood cells bearing
different
antigens. It’s for this reason that blood is typed before transfusion of whole blood or packed cells. So that the blood won’t clot in the recipient’s vessels, causing death.”

Mimi was dragging tail. A transfusion sounded pretty good right about now. Maybe it would put some pep in her step.

“In today’s exercise, you will determine not only your ABO blood group but also your Rh group. You’ll see from the materials list that you will need microscope slides, anti-A, anti-B, and anti-Rh sera, lancets, alcohol swabs….”

Dutch and Flip worked at their bench in the back. Flip had already swabbed his finger and drawn a drop of blood with the lancet. Mother-effer hurt like hell. It felt strange to purposely wound oneself, and he fought a slight feeling of nausea. He wiped off the first drop, per the instructions, and waited for a drop of blood to well up again. He then placed a drop on each side of the first slide and a drop on the second slide. He walked over to the sharps disposal bin and dropped in the lancet.

Dutch flinched when he lanced his finger. He watched mesmerized as the drop of blood oozed onto his fingertip. And then he began to see funny.

His field of vision narrowed down to the dark red, and he seemed to see nothing in the periphery, nothing but that glowing red dot. Then the dot multiplied itself and he saw a whole field of red dots. As he watched, intrigued, the dots began to dance, first jigging to the left and then jigging to the right. Dutch cocked his head curiously.

As he looked in fascination, the dots also began to move toward him as they zigged and zagged. The dancing dots grew larger and larger as they approached him, and the dots at the edge disappeared as the field of dots came nearer. Finally, there were only four; and at the next zig, two; and finally only one, flooding his retina in red. At the final zag, Dutch fell blissfully into that red dot.

Flip was walking back from depositing his lancet in the sharps container and glanced up to see Dutch, standing and looking at his finger. He held his hand about a foot and a half from his face and stared at his finger with glazed curiosity. Honoria happened to look up, saw Dutch, and recognized the symptoms.

“He’s going down! Catch him, Flip!” Just at that moment, Dutch’s eyes rolled back in his head and he began to topple.

Flip was right there. He scrunched down, and bent and braced his knees in preparation before taking Dutch’s full weight. He caught the big man, staggered, and circled his arms around him. A pliant, inert Dutch crumpled into him, armpit to Flip’s nose.

Flip hoped his shaking would be attributed to the strain of having to hold up a very heavy Dutch. He breathed tentatively into Dutch’s armpit, and then he just let himself. Dutch would never know. He took breath after deep breath of the most intoxicating scent he’d ever experienced. He was embracing Dutch, and he realized how desperately he’d wanted to embrace him for weeks now.

As the other students came up to offer assistance and help lay Dutch flat on the floor, Flip looked at the handsome, softly breathing form.

He realized he no longer wanted to hide from himself. His mind inventoried his desires with newfound candor: He wanted to lick every inch of Dutch’s body, inhale him totally. He wanted to sniff the stupid show-off from his toes to his ears, with a long detour midway. He wanted to do to Dutch’s crotch just what he’d just done to his armpit.

The cock-lust was upon him.

“Give him room! Give him air! Prop his feet up!” yelled Honoria. Then, with a satisfied smirk: “It’s always the big lugs who faint at the sight of their precious drop of blood.”

Chapter 22

W
AILIN
’ E
LWOOD
came to the next evening lesson dressed in baggy clothes that revealed little. His hope of derailing the lessons had dwindled to zero, and he faced the Family of It with grim resignation. Nothing could dissuade Special Ed from his ill-considered, doomed mission to educate him, Elwood now knew.

Elwood had already said howdy-do to
bit
,
fit
, and
hit
, and then Special Ed shone the laser on
J
.

“Jit!” Before Special Ed had the chance to introduce
kit
, Elwood stopped the lesson.

“Dat say
jit
?”

“Yes.”

“Gimme a pencil. I wanna write it.” Clumsily but with great deliberation, Elwood limned the letters. He paused to look at the completed word. “Dat really say
jit
?”

Special Ed frowned. “Yes. What
is
jit
, anyway?”

Elwood let out a low-pitched cackle and looked at his handiwork. “Jit,” he said in wonder. Then he rumbled in merriment again. “Jit what you get when you wank it.”

The light dawned.
Regional variant of
jism
. Interesting.

At
mit
, Special Ed explained that it was spelled with two
t
’s, but Elwood kept glancing at the paper with the scrawled
jit
.

After
sit
, Special Ed laser-pointed to the
T
with apprehension. This could really derail the lessons.

“Tit!” said Elwood, with delight. “Tit, tit, tit,” he savored the word as he tossed his beanbag from hand to hand. Then
tit
joined
jit
on Elwood’s paper, described in the same clumsy block letters. “Tit!” he marveled, and again that rumble of glee. Special Ed reflected on how seldom he had heard Elwood laugh.

After
zit
: “What say ‘fuck’?” Elwood sounded like a child asking for his Christmas toy.

“Fuck is in the Uck Family. Are you sure you can handle another family tonight?”

“Yeah.”

Elwood didn’t have long to wait. Only two familiars—
buck
and
duck
—stood in the way of the eagerly anticipated introduction. “Heee-heee-heee!” Elwood was beside himself. He reached for his paper and added
fuck
to the X-rated family. To his gratification, the Uck Family contained an unexpected member—
suck
. Elwood added it to his list with zeal, then reconsidered and scratched it out. He wrote instead “SUCK + FUCK.” “Suck an’ fuck!” he wheezed through his laughter, pounding the table. As soon as
tuck
had made its way into the family circle and Elwood had rejected
uuck
,
vuck
,
wuck
,
xuck
, and
zuck
—and Special Ed had explained about
yuk
and
yuck
—Elwood made another demand.

“What say ‘fart’?”

Dinner that night was spaghetti with a sauce of ground beef and tomatoes, which Elwood called “red gravy.” Dinner was late, because the lesson had gone overtime. Elwood had insisted on meeting not only the Art family but also the Ock, Ick, and Unt families. He also learned that
sh
is the written representation of the palato-alveolar fricative necessary for the verbal production of
shit
and
shat
, new and valued members of the It and At “Famblys.” As he reduced and browned the tomatoes into a brick color—“red gravy sometime call’ brick gravy; brownin’ bring out the sugah in the tomatis”—Elwood smiled and sometimes chortled to himself, as if relishing some private joke.

While Elwood stirred his red gravy and chuckled to himself, Special Ed washed the lettuce and prepared the cucumbers according to Elwood’s instructions. He sliced off the end and circled it over the place it used to occupy on the cucumber. The cucumber, phallic to begin with, released a transparent goo reminiscent of clear slick dripping from a hard dick—“Dat draw out the bittah,” Elwood had said. Then Special Ed removed most of the rind but left a few green stripes of cucumber rind “so dat you don’t belch.” As he sliced the cucumber into rounds, Special Ed ruminated on tonight’s lesson. In his other life, most of his students had been boys. They were no different from other boys in relishing the profane. Ed smiled inwardly at the notion of a lesson based on cuss words, and on the furor that would have surely ensued.

After dinner, Special Ed got some flash cards and populated them with the new words. Elwood nailed every one.

“Tit! Hee-heee-heee!”

“Cock! Hee!”

“Shit! Ha-ha.”

When Special Ed flashed
dick
, Elwood groped himself lewdly, pushing his balls and penis up and out under the fabric of his sweats. Then he lunged at Ed and grabbed him by the balls. “Hee-hee-hee!” Special Ed, beginning to lengthen and thicken, squirmed and tried to retreat.

Suddenly Elwood squeezed Ed’s balls and looked at him voraciously. He dropped his hand.

“What say ‘balls’?” he demanded.

The word-lust was upon him.

Chapter 23

F
RENCHY
LAID
it all out for Dr. Gupta, omitting nothing. His hunger for Manny, the discovery of the magazine, wank sessions with Dominic, his humiliation, and his conflicted feelings after Manny’s rejection.

“And this man is how old?” asked Dr. Gupta. She was squat and fat, with a big mole on her nose and a red spot on her forehead. A diamond nose ring pierced her right nostril. She reminded Frenchy of a somehow attractive toad, and her manner was girlish and flirtatious. She must be ancient, thought Frenchy. Forty.

“Thirty-one,” said Frenchy.

“Hmm, fourteen years. The perfect age difference for a couple. My Amit and I married when he was thirty and I sixteen! Oh, how passionate he was! So masterful as he entered me! And I so innocent but so eager to learn!” She giggled. “It falls to the older to initiate the younger into the arts of love,” she confided. “And I see that you are, as I was, very
eager
to be initiated. Ah, what bliss awaits you as you are possessed, as I was! Ah, passion!” Dr. Gupta succumbed to her memories.

Frenchy couldn’t think of what to say. Surely psychiatrists never said anything like that, did they? The woman must be some sort of quack. And his mind recoiled at the image of the toad-like Dr. Gupta being “possessed” by “her” Amit.

“So, why doesn’t he ‘possess’ me now, if it isn’t wrong? He thinks I’m ugly!”

“He thinks nothing of the sort,” she snorted. She spoke with an Indian lilt Frenchy found very pleasing. “You are very handsome, and I’m sure he’s dying to fuck you!”

Frenchy reddened. He scanned the walls, but saw no evidence of framed medical diplomas.

“Then why doesn’t he? You married at sixteen, and I’m already a year older than you were then. Surely you can’t deny that I’m old enough to know what I want.”

She shrugged. “It’s all a matter of cultural context. In my culture, sixteen is already, as you say”—she smiled—“long in the tooth. In yours, sixteen-year-olds might as well wear diapers, as far as the mores are concerned. And as for the person, it’s variable. Some people know their sexual minds at fourteen and are able to make good decisions. You are one of those people.”

For all that he found Dr. Gupta strange, Frenchy felt vindicated.

“Then, again, in your culture, some nineteen-year-olds are emotional babies and should not be allowed to give free consent. People who take advantage of them simply because they are of the age of consent should be sent to jail anyway. But society has to draw the line somewhere, and your society draws it at eighteen.”

“What does that mean?” Frenchy asked. This was
not
helping.

“It means you have chosen well,” she said with a trace of boredom. “You have chosen a man who puts your welfare above his desires, who respects the rules of society.”

“But what do I
do
?”

“Do? Nothing. You are seventeen. Society says you must wait until eighteen. Wait.”

Yes, Frenchy realized. He would wait. He’d get buff. Maybe Dr. Gupta was right.