Todd hadn’t felt any of the things he was supposed to feel at a time like that Kissing her lips was like kissing warm but uncooked liver. Having her tongue in his mouth only made him wonder what kind of germs she was carrying, and sometimes he thought he could smell her fillings — an unpleasant metallic odour, like chrome. Her breasts were bags of meat. No more.
Todd had done it twice more with her before Dussander’s heart attack. Each time he had more trouble getting erect In both cases he had finally succeeded by using a fantasy. She was stripped naked in front of all their friends. Crying. Todd was forcing her to walk up and down between them while he cried out: Show your tits! Let them see your snatch, you cheap slut! Spread your cheeks! That’s right, bend over and SPREAD them!
Betty’s appreciation was not at all surprising. He was a very good lover, not in spite of his problems but because of them. Getting hard was only the first step. Once you achieved erection, you had to have an orgasm. The fourth time they had done it — this was three days after Dussander’s heart attack — he had pounded away at her for over ten minutes. Betty Trask thought she had died and gone to heaven; she had three orgasms and was trying for a fourth when Todd recalled an old fantasy… what was, in fact, the First Fantasy. The girl on the table, clamped and helpless. The huge dildo. The rubber squeeze-bulb. Only now, desperate and sweaty and almost insane with his desire to come and get this horror over with, the face of the girl on the table became Betty’s face. That brought on a joyless, rubbery spasm that he supposed was, technically, at least, an orgasm. A moment later Betty was whispering in his ear, her breath warm and redolent of Juicy Fruit gum: ‘Lover, you do me any old time. Just call me.’
Todd had nearly groaned aloud.
The nub of his dilemma was this: Wouldn’t his reputation suffer if he broke off with a girl who so obviously wanted to put out for him? Wouldn’t people wonder why? Part of him said they would not He remembered walking down the hall behind two senior boys during his freshman year and hearing one of them tell the other he had broken off with his girlfriend. The other wanted to know why. ‘Fucked ‘er out,’ the first said, and both of them bellowed goatish laughter.
If someone asks me why I dropped her, I’ll just say I fucked her out. But what if she says we only did it five times? Is that enough? What?… How much?… How many?… Who’ll talk?… What’ll they say?
So his mind ran on, as restless as a hungry rat in an insoluble maze. He was vaguely aware that he was turning a minor problem into a big problem, and that his very inability to solve the problem had something to say about how shaky he had gotten. But knowing it brought him no fresh ability to change his behaviour, and he sank into a black depression.
College. College was the answer. College offered an excuse to break with Betty that no one could question. But September seemed so far away.
The fifth time it had taken him almost twenty minutes to get hard, but Betty had proclaimed the experience well worth the wait. And then, last night, he hadn’t been able to perform at all.
‘What are you, anyway?’ Betty had asked petulantly. After twenty minutes of manipulating his lax penis, she was dishevelled and out of patience. ‘Are you one of those AC/DC guys’?’
He very nearly strangled her on the spot. And if he’d had his.30-.30‘Well, I’l1 be a son of a gun! Congratulations, son!’
‘Huh?’ He looked up and out of his black study.
‘You made the Southern Cat High School All-Stars!’ His father was grinning with pride and pleasure.
‘Is that so?’ For a moment he hardly knew what his father was talking about; he had to grope for the meaning of the words. ‘Say, yeah, Coach Haller mentioned something to me about that at the end of the year. Said he was putting me and Billy DeLyons up. I never expected anything to happen.’
‘Well Jesus, you don’t seem very excited about it!’
‘I’m still trying (who gives a ripe fuck?) to get used to the idea.’ With a huge effort, he managed a grin. ‘Can I see the article?’
His father handed the paper across the table to Todd and got to his feet ‘I’m going to wake Monica up. She’s got to see this before we leave.’
No, God -I can’t face both of them this morning.
‘Aw, don’t do that You know she won’t be able to get back to sleep if you wake her up. Well leave it for her on the table.’
‘Yes, I suppose we could do that. You’re a damned thoughtful boy, Todd.’ He clapped Todd on the back, and Todd squeezed his eyes closed. At the same time he shrugged his shoulders in an aw-shucks gesture that made his father laugh. Todd opened his eyes again and looked at the paper.
4 BOYS NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS, the headline read. Beneath were pictures of them in their uniforms — the catcher and left-fielder from Fairview High, the jigaboo shortstop from Mountford, and Todd to the far right, grinning openly out at the world from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He read the story and saw that Billy DeLyons had made the second squad. That, at least, was something to feel happy about DeLyons could claim he was a Methodist until his tongue fell out, if it made him feel good, but he wasn’t fooling Todd. He knew perfectly well what Billy DeLyons was. Maybe he ought to introduce him to Betty Trask, she was another sheeny. He had wondered about that for a long time, and last night he had decided for sure. The Trasks were passing for white. One look at her nose and that olive complexion — her old man’s was even worse — and you knew. That was probably why he hadn’t been able to get it up. It was simple: his cock had known the difference before his brain. Who did they think they were kidding, calling themselves Trask?
‘Congratulations again, son.’
He looked up and first saw his father’s hand stuck out, then his father’s foolishly grinning face.
Your buddy Trask is a yid! He heard himself yelling into his father’s face. That’s why I was impotent with his slut of a daughter last night! That’s the reason! Then, on the heels of that, the cold voice that sometimes came at moments like this rose up from deep inside him, shutting off the rising flood of irrationality, as if (GET HOLD OF YOURSELF RIGHT NOW) behind steel gates.
He took his father’s hand and shook it. Smiled guilelessly into his father’s proud face. Said: ‘Jeez, thanks, dad.’
They left that page of the newspaper folded back and a note for Monica, which Dick insisted Todd write and sign: Your All-Star Son, Todd.
22
Ed French, aka ‘Pucker’ French, aka Sneaker Pete and The Ked Man, also aka Rubber Ed French, was in the small and lovely seaside town of San Remo for a guidance counsellors’ convention. It was a waste of time if ever there had been one — all guidance counsellors could ever agree on was not to agree on anything — and he grew bored with the papers, seminars, and discussion periods after a single day. Halfway through the second day, he discovered he was also bored with San Remo, and that of the adjectives small, lovely, and seaside, the key adjective was probably small. Gorgeous views and redwood trees aside, San Remo didn’t have a movie theatre or a bowling alley, and Ed hadn’t wanted to go in the place’s only bar — it had a dirt parking lot filled with pick-up trucks, and most of the pick-ups had Reagan stickers on their rusty bumpers and tailgates. He wasn’t afraid of being picked on, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an evening looking at men in cowboy hats and listening to Loretta Lynn on the jukebox.
So here he was on the third day of a convention which stretched out over an incredible four days; here he was in room 217 of the Holiday Inn, his wife and daughter at home, the TV broken, an unpleasant smell hanging around in the bathroom. There was a swimming pool, but his eczema was so bad this summer that he wouldn’t have been caught dead in a bathing suit. From the shins down he looked like a leper. He had an hour before the next workshop (Helping the Vocally Challenged Child — what they meant was doing something for kids who stuttered or who had cleft palates, but we wouldn’t want to come right out and say that, Christ no, someone might lower our salaries), he had eaten lunch at San Remo’s only restaurant, he didn’t feel like a nap, and the TV’s one station was showing a rerun of Bewitched.