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