"Now again," she instructed.
I did it again.
"Now again," she repeated.
I did. A soft haze began to gather around me. I felt like I was floating.
"Now is your headache better?"
Gingerly, I found I could move it a bit without agony.
"There," she said. "You see the benefit of being educated about some things." She took a couple puffs and then put the pipe aside. "We don't want you stoned," she said, "as I have to talk to you."
"I don't want to seem ungrateful," I said, feeling oddly disconnected, "but you better leave." I was sure
the relief was temporary and the headache maybe even would come back aggravated.
"No. I do not know enough," she said.
"It seems you know too (bleeped) much for your age," I said.
"Well," said Teenie, "I'm not like other teen-agers you know. I'm different. I have a mental problem."
"I'll bet you do," I said.
"You see," she said, "I lost my parents when I was eight. They were sent to the electric chair for murdering my grandparents so they wouldn't have to pay the rest home fees. I became a charge of the court and they appointed a wino as my guardian and he used to beat me and lock me in a closet when I couldn't find enough in garbage cans for us to eat. But that wasn't what my mental problem was."
"For Gods' sakes," I said, "then what WAS your mental problem?"
"Hyperactivity. You see, I was very fond of sports and took them all up. I was on every school team I could get on and I even won a championship skateboarding. The school psychiatrist noticed it one day and he was very alarmed. He diagnosed it very quickly and in the nick of time. Hyperactivity. And he said I needed lots of sex to keep me calm. He told them I couldn't continue in school unless I got competent professional care. He even gave me the first treatment himself. He showed me how to go down on him and I did."
"Wait a minute," I said. "That's interfering with a minor. That's punishable by law."
"Oh, no. You don't understand. My guardian-he drank himself to death three years ago and they never appointed another, due to the usual legal delays-told the judge the treatment was making me so tired I couldn't
look in garbage cans. I was there. The judge explained that psychiatrists and psychologists are professionals and they are not bound by ordinary law: they can even murder people and nothing is done about it because they actually work with the government and courts and, like them, are above the law. They can do anything they want with anyone placed in their care. Even murder them. I was surprised when my guardian questioned it because we were always taught in school that psychiatrists and psychologists are kind of sacred. But that's just a bunch of horse (bleep). I know that now."
"Hey, whoa," I said. "You're too young to know what you're talking about!"
"I am not! It's just like Pinchy says. They're a bunch of chauvinistic pigs. They lie!"
"About what?" I said with a superior air. The idea of this teen-ager talking about my most sacred subjects made my blood seethe, marijuana or no marijuana. "They are the very epitome of truth! You don't understand: they deal with SCIENCE! They never lie."
"The hell they don't!" said Teenie. "Listen to this: That psychiatrist turned me over to the school psychologist to carry on the treatment and the psychiatrist repeated the same thing-he'd told me every time since the first, I was not to swallow it or I would get pregnant. But I couldn't help it sometimes. And then the school psychologist, when he treated me, would say the same thing but I couldn't help swallowing. And I didn't get pregnant."
"Now listen," I said sternly, oblivious of the fact it was probably the marijuana talking, "such men usually are sterile. They've been operated on so as not to embarrass husbands whose wives they treat. So you've just proved nothing!"
"Oh, yeah?" she said, in her turn very superior. "So try this on for size, buster. The school psychologist had a lot of very mentally sick boys in the school. They were classified as oversexed. And he used to line them up in his office and go down on them to cool them off. And every day or two he'd get an overload of cases and he'd send and get me excused from class so I could come in and help. He'd stand and watch. There were so many of those boys sometimes that I could hardly get my breath from one before another had to be done. It was a fast clinical line, let me tell you. And some of those boys were fifteen and sixteen and pretty foamy. You just couldn't help swallowing! And I never got pregnant once, so there!"
I dazedly seemed to realize that she had a point.
"But that wasn't what I had against that (bleeped) psychologist," she said. "Oh, yes, when I was through he would kiss me and tell me what a good girl I was and give me my own treatment, which was doing it to him. BUT, never one God (bleeped) time did he offer the least word of criticism, coaching or anything. He'd just stand there watching and holding himself. So I never got real top-grade education. A thing like that requires coaching.... You're not listening to me again."
The marijuana had not worked. Or if it had, this rat-tly (bleep) was making it worse. "I feel terrible," I said. "Please leave."
"Hey," she said, "there's other things which make you feel good. I may never have had proper education in it but experience counts for something."
Before I realized what was happening she had come over, knelt in front of me and was peeling back my robe. She looked at me with her oversized eyes and said, "This therapy will help."
I looked down at her, not realizing at first what she was actually doing.
Then suddenly I had an awful thought. "Utanc!" I cried. "I must not betray you!"
I leaped out of my chair as though I were shot from a catapult.
Teenie was thrown backward on her (bleep) with an awful jolt.
She looked at me woundedly. "You see," she said, "I'm not even well enough trained to do that!"
"GET OUT OF HERE!" I bellowed at her.
She just sat there, staring at me.
I was baffled, and frightened, too. There was no telling what this teen-age female monster might do next.
I backed up. I tripped over a footstool and landed flat on my spine.
She was up off the floor like a leaping panther.
She sprang astraddle of me!
I gave her a tremendous shove!
She flew across the room, hit the wall and sat down at the bottom of it with a crash.
She got up. She walked around in a very fidgety way. She looked at me a little crossly and then she went into the front room and put on another record.
The drums were booming hard enough to lift my aching hair half an inch each stroke!
A whiny, high-pitched voice came on. A man? A woman? Who could tell? Amongst the whang and wow of guitars and the echoes of a chorale, the song went:
Don't stop me (bleeping)!
Don't clog my plumbing
With too much chumming.
Keep that thing thrumming!
Keep your hips drumming!
I know I am bumming,
And it ain't becoming.
But it is so numbing
When you stop my (bleeping)!
The piece ended with a pistol shot and the thud of a body falling. And a spoken, hoarse voice said, "It served 'em right!" After the mangling effect the drums had had on my brain, I felt like the shot had gone straight through my tortured skull.
Teenie came back in, switching her ponytail. "Now, how is that? Is your headache all gone now?"
I was too much in pain to get off the floor and find a gun and shoot her. "God (bleep) you," I grated in a deadly voice. "Get the Hells out of here and now, now, now!"