Hello Groin

by Beth Goobie

  And, of course, there was also my friendship with Joc, my best-friend friendship that had been a core part of my life since grade three. She was part of the way I laughed and breathed. So if I walked up to her one day and said, “Joc, I’m in love with you, and I have a mad passionate urge to kiss you,” and it freaked her into a total funk and I lost her, well, it would be like losing part of my body. Like I said, we’d been friends for a long time, she was the way I breathed. I didn’t know how to lose that.

  So I couldn’t just up and tell her how I felt about her, unless I was absolutely sure of the reaction I would get. If only there was some way to figure out in advance what it would be. Because sometimes, in spite of the fact that she was dating Dikker, I could have sworn Joc was really attracted to me. Like I said, she was always hanging all over me. And there was that electric flash that occasionally leapt between us, as well as that moment in the soap spill haze when she’d almost started unbuttoning my shirt.

  But there was also, of course, Dikker.

  Monday morning, following the 7-Eleven catastrophe with Dikker, I got onto my bike and headed to Joc’s house the way I usually did. The weather had cooled somewhat since the weekend, but snow was still a ways off, so the neighborhood was dotted with adults clearing leaves off their cars and kids in windbreakers, walking to school. Normally everything I passed went by in a bright blur, simply an extension of my thoughts, part of the early morning buzz I felt biking toward Joc’s place. But this morning there was an odd feeling to the ride, as if things were out of sync. Joc hadn’t phoned last night the way she usually did, and I hadn’t called her. It was like a tradition between us, we always called each other Sunday night to plan the coming week.

  So when neither of us called, it was a sign that something was definitely off. My guess was that Joc had asked Dikker what had happened behind the store and he’d told her “Nothing,” but she was brooding over it anyway, working her way toward nuclear detonation. And of course I was still in a major funk, trying to figure out what exactly had made me storm back there the way I had. So when I got to Joc’s house, I coasted up to the curb and just stood with my head down for a bit, trying to figure out how to handle the next few minutes. Because if Joc was mad, the all-important moment with her was the first one. If you managed to pull the right grin or say the right thing, you had a chance of heading off a major explosion. If not, you were busy picking up the pieces for the next few days.

  Unfortunately she didn’t give me much time to mull things over. Almost the second I pulled up, the front door swung open, and there she was, leaning against the doorframe and watching me. And as soon as I saw her, it happened to me the way it always did—an electric shimmer that lit every nerve in my body so I was suddenly riding hyperspace.

  She was eating toast from one hand and drinking coffee from a Tweetie Bird mug in the other. Her hair wasn’t brushed and she still had to put on her makeup, but she was gorgeous, her large purplish blue eyes flat on me, watching and speculative. For a long moment neither of us spoke, just stood and stared at each other. Then Tim came barreling through the doorway, bumping Joc out of the way with his hip.

  “Hey, Dyl,” he called, coming down the porch stairs. “Want a lift downtown? That’s where I’m headed.”

  Tall and dark-haired like Joc, Tim had graduated from the Dief three years ago and now worked at an auto-body shop in the city’s west end. The rest of his time he spent tinkering with his friends’ cars. That, and pouring beer down his throat.

  “Can’t,” I called back. “The school thing, y’know?”

  “Prison!” he bellowed, punching his fist into the air. “Break free!”

  Getting into his car, he revved backward out of the driveway and took off down the street. Eyes fixed on his taillights, I watched for as long as possible, until the absolute tip of his muffler had vanished around the corner. Then slowly, very slowly, I turned back to Joc. As expected, I found her gaze still on me, heavy and loaded with meaning. Too loaded. Nervously my eyes flicked past hers and glued themselves to the wall beside her head. Guilt—I was crawling with it, the evidence all over my face. “Power blush” was what Cam called it.

  But then, all of a sudden, I just thought, Screw it! And I dumped the whole guilt thing. Because even if I didn’t know why I’d gone storming after Dikker at the 7-Eleven, it hadn’t been to hurt Joc. Besides, she’d started it. She called me a queen.

  “You coming or what?” I called, too loud, but definitely not ass-kissing eager.

  At that Joc’s eyes narrowed, and without responding she backed into the house, letting the door slam behind her. For a moment I just stood there, wondering if I was supposed to follow her in, or wait at the curb like a dog with its tail between its legs.

  Screw that too! I thought and dropped my bike onto the lawn with a melodramatic crash. Then I stomped into the house after Joc, letting the door slam behind me too.

  Immediately I was hit with the dense odor of cigarette smoke. Ms. Hersch, Joc’s mom, was a heavy smoker, and so were both her offspring. Officially, Ms. Hersch didn’t know Joc smoked, or that her frequent evening shifts at the local library branch gave her daughter unrestricted access to the household ashtrays. This was, of course, a very different situation from my undercover nicotine habit, since my mom happens to be the Clean Lungs Patrol.

  “Hey—go easy on the door, would ya?” called Ms. Hersch from the kitchen. “It works just as good if you close it gently.”

  “Sorry,” I called back and headed down the hall toward Joc’s room. The Hersches’ house was a bungalow, everything on one floor, with Joc’s and Tim’s rooms facing each other across a hall on the east side. When I got to Joc’s room, she was standing in front of her mirror, curling iron in hand.

  “You’re talkative today,” I said, flopping down onto the bed.

  Keeping her eyes fixed on her reflection, Joc shrugged. Slowly the silence ticked by, a grenade waiting for victims.

  “So,” I said finally, trying to kick-start a conversation, “what fascinating things did life bring you yesterday?”

  “What did it bring you?” countered Joc, rolling her bangs into the curling iron.

  “Took Keelie to the park,” I said. “Raked the lawn. Met Danny’s new girlfriend. Flavor of the week, y’know. They’re lining up for him.”

  “He’s gorgeous,” shrugged Joc. “No surprise, he’s your brother.”

  The compliment was so unexpected, coming at a time like this, that it sent me into an immediate funk, the heat crawling up my neck. Power blush. I hated doing the red thing.

  “We look a bit alike,” I said carefully, trying to put the brakes on my manic blood rush. “But I’m nothing—”

  “Guys are crazy for you, Dyl,” Joc said quietly, setting down the curling iron and picking up her mascara bottle. “Cam’s lucky to have you and he knows it.”

  “Oh yeah,” I mumbled, trying to ignore the heat stampeding across my face. Fixing my eyes on the ceiling, I thought about icicles up my butt, freezing cold showers, life in the Arctic—anything that would take me down ten or twenty degrees Celsius.

  “Even Tim’s gaga over you,” Joc continued as she cleaned her mascara brush with a Kleenex. “And Dikker’s friends are always asking about you. God, even the teachers watch you.”

  “Oh, come off it,” I snapped, sitting up. “Teachers watch everyone.”

  “Not like you,” said Joc. Leaning toward the mirror, she began applying mascara. “Not Queen Dyl—”

  A tsunami-sized wave of frustration slammed through me, yanking me to my feet. “Don’t call me that!” I yelled, the words pouring unchecked from my mouth. “Just because I’m going out with Cam. Just because he’s popular and Dikker’s—”

  “Cam!” Joc said incredulously. Mouth open, she stared at me. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Cam, Dyl.”

  “Then what?” I bellowed, the anger huge and hot in me. No, not anger. Fear. Fear like a trapped bird, its wings flapping desperately ins
ide my chest.

  “It’s just you,” said Joc, her eyes hard on me. “The way you are. As if everyone around you is your subject. We’re all here to please you.”

  “I am not...,” I spluttered helplessly, then just stood there, staring at her. I mean, I was speechless, a complete void.

  “If you think you can wait one minute,” Joc said airily, turning toward the door, “I’ve got to brush my teeth. Then I’ll be ready.”

  With that, she stalked out of the room. As she left, absolute chaos erupted in my head. Flopping back onto the bed, I listened to the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. Was it possible Joc was telling the truth? Did I really come across like that kind of snot? But how could I? I mean, I was hardly a candidate for sainthood. Anyone who half-knew me knew that. And lots of girls at the Dief were prettier than me, way prettier. I was lucky Cam wanted to go out with me. Joc made it sound as if it was the other way around.

  The thing was, Cam and I weren’t having sex. And the times I’d done it with Paul in the summer before grade ten were ancient history now. So it was probably my twelve-month stint of abstinence that was behind all this queen stuff Joc had been throwing at me lately. It made her suspicious, but she didn’t know what to be suspicious about, or maybe didn’t want to know. “Queen” was the only word she could come up with to define the situation. As usual, everything came down to the same old problem. Hormones, I didn’t have the proper hormones. I was out of sync, skewed, wrong.

  At the other end of the hall the bathroom tap shut off, and Joc’s sullen footsteps started toward the bedroom. Brushing her teeth obviously hadn’t cheered her up, and the situation called for emergency measures. I was going to have to cut deep, bleed a little. Maybe a lot. Taking a long breath, I waited until she reached the doorway, then said, “Okay, so I was pissed-off Saturday. Because you called me a queen, and I hated it. And...”

  I paused, racking my brains as I tried to come up with something she would believe. Something reasonable. “Αnd I guess I wanted to prove I wasn’t—a queen, I mean,” I added grudgingly.

  I kept my eyes glued to the ceiling. No way was I chancing a direct look. “So,” I said, taking another long breath, “that’s why I went storming after Dikker. To...”

  I paused again, trying to figure out the best way to put it. I mean, it just wasn’t the kind of thing I had to explain every day.

  “To...well...look at him peeing, I guess,” I said in a rush, my eyes still on the ceiling. “But I stopped myself before I reached the end of the side wall. And he was around the back. So I didn’t see him, I didn’t see it, I didn’t see anything. Nothing happened, okay? I just went crazy for a bit, and then I got over it.”

  Silence leaned down ominously onto the room, so close I could almost hear it breathing. Finally Joc said carefully, “You’re telling me you went back there to look at Dikker’s dick?”

  “Well,” I said, keeping my eyes on the ceiling, “not really. It was more to prove I wasn’t a queen, I think. But like I said, I got a grip and stopped halfway down the side of the store. So I didn’t see anything, anything at all.”

  She took a few hesitant steps into the room. “That’s what he said,” she said slowly. “But I wasn’t sure...”

  “Well, now you can be sure,” I said. Chancing a quick glance at her, I felt relief hit me flat out. Joc looked confused, a little on the astonished side, but nuclear detonation definitely wasn’t in the picture.

  “I mean, really, Joc,” I added dryly, “can you see Dikker and me, in a million years...?”

  A grin flashed across her face and she giggled. “No,” she said. “Not in a million billion centuries.”

  Darting across the room, she jumped onto the bed and began bouncing gleefully. “And he’s mine, he’s mine, he’s mine!” she crowed, knocking my head against the headboard with each bounce.

  “Great,” I said slowly. Problem solved, she was no longer pissed-off. Swallowing the very lumpy lump in my throat, I got to my feet and said, “We’d better get moving or we’ll be late.”

  “Yeah, all right,” said Joc. Quickly she stood and followed me to the door. But instead of walking directly into the hall, she stopped and said, “Hey, Dyl?”

  Hearing the wobble in her voice, I turned to find her watching me, an uncertain expression on her face. She blinked, her eyes flitting nervously, then said, “You’re sure...nothing happened?”

  “Nothing!” I said, my astonishment so obvious that she relaxed.

  “Okay,” she breathed, hugging herself. “What was I thinking? You’re my best friend, right? Besides, you’ve got Cam. C’mon, let’s get going.”

  A dazzling grin took over her face, she leaned into me and started force-walking me backward toward the front door.

  Two days later we were sprawled on the floor at the rear of the Dief’s auditorium, Joc curled into a semi-coma while I sat with my back to the wall and a book propped on my knees. Around us kids were scattered in various groups, their eyes focused on the stage. Classes had let out for the day, and we had all gathered to watch the first rehearsal for this year’s fall drama production, Hamlet. The curious crowd contained some distinctly non-drama types, here to support a distinctly non-drama-type member of the cast. Because to the absolute astonishment of everyone at the Dief, including Joc, Dikker Preddy had landed a part. It was just Marcellus, a soldier of the king’s guard, and a very minor part who did nothing more than walk on and off stage a few times, but still it was serious theater, real Shakespeare—Dikker in tights, quoting jokes that people had stopped laughing at several hundred years ago.

  Joc hadn’t made up her mind whether to be proud or pissed-off at Dikker’s success. After all, he hadn’t told her that he was auditioning for a part. She’d been abruptly introduced to the fact yesterday afternoon, when someone had called her over in the hall and pointed out his name on the cast list posted beside the drama room. An hour later, Dikker had been wearing cat scratches on his left arm, but the tiff had since been resolved and here we were, his loyal fans, sprawled at the back of the auditorium behind a scattering of Shakespeare groupies, several future recruits for the Hell’s Angels, and various cast members who were waiting to be called up for their scenes.

  “Hey, Joc,” said Gary Wainbee, another minor part sitting directly in front of us. Vicious acne had pockmarked the poor guy for life. He coped by hiding out behind long droopy bangs and shooting everyone shy sideways glances. “Wakey wakey,” he whispered, his gaze tiptoeing delicately around Joc’s dozed-out face. “They’re doing Dikker’s first scene.”

  “Wha—?” mumbled Joc, half-opening one eye.

  “Dikker,” I said, poking her with my foot. “The Shakespearean nutcase in your life.”

  Instantly she was on her knees, babbling, “Is he on, is he on?” Leaning heavily on Gary’s eager shoulder, she peered toward the stage just as Dikker swaggered out from the wings. Immediate ear-splitting whistles rose from the future Hell’s Angels, then subsided under the annoyed glance of Mr. Tyrrell, the drama teacher. Rolling my eyes, I glanced at Joc, who was still kneeling with her back to me and giggling with Gary. In the auditorium’s dim backlighting, her hair was a long dark river that ended an inch above a line of smooth skin that could be seen between the bottom of her T-shirt and the top of her jeans. For a second, then, in the room’s back shadows, while everyone else’s gaze was focused on the stage, I let it happen in me the way I never did—just let the feelings rise up through my body in a long liquid ache.

  Abruptly a girl sitting close by shifted, as if about to turn around, and I slammed the feelings back down. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the wall, ground my teeth and fought back everything that was begging to be released. When I opened my eyes again, Joc had scooted back to her position beside me on the floor, once again in a semi-coma. Dikker’s brief moment of fame was obviously over.

  “Call me the next time he’s up, Gary,” she mumbled, and he nodded enthusiastically, ducking another shy glan
ce at her from under his droopy bangs.

  “Sure thing, queen of Dikker’s dreams,” he mumbled back.

  “You’ve got that right,” said Joc, a pleased smile curving her lips.

  Queen. The word hit me just as she opened one eye and fixed it on me. For a fleeting second, I could have sworn she was gloating.

  “Why are you reading, Dyl?” she asked. “Can’t you tell we’re in the presence of great art?”

  “Yeah yeah, go back to sleep,” I replied, faking an enormous yawn.

  But she didn’t. Instead she kicked me lightly and asked, “What are you reading?”

  “The Egyptian Book of the Dead,” I replied, flashing her the cover of the book I was holding. “It’s for my history class.”

  “Cheery,” she mumbled, then closed her eye and started to slip back into her coma.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Especially ‘The Negative Confessions’.”

  “The negative what?” she asked without opening her eyes.

  “‘The Negative Confessions,’” I enunciated precisely. “It’s a list of things the ancient Egyptians were supposed to say before they died—a list of the sins they didn’t do while they were alive.”

  “Oh,” said Joc. “Short list.”

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “Very long.”

  “Short life then,” said Joc.

  “Boring life,” I said, “if this list is true. Let’s see, the first confession is about sin in general, as in ‘I have not committed sin.’ Then it gets more specific—robbery with violence, stealing, murder. Then stealing again, only this time it’s grain.”

  “I’ve never stolen grain,” Joc said lazily. “Does that mean I get to go to heaven?”

  “If you can recite it properly,” I said. “You have to include the god’s name, and each sin goes with a different god. Repeat after me, Jocelyn Hersch: ‘Hail, Neha-her, who comest forth from Rasta, I have not stolen grain.’”