King Dork Approximately

by Frank Portman

  The answer to that question was no, at any rate. Sam Hellerman’s father, Sam Hellerman said, was even less likely than my parents to go to any great lengths to make it easier for him. Our parents were all of one mind in this; they seemed to regard discomfort, apprehension, and even terror as important parts of growing up that they could not in good conscience deny us.

  “Also,” Sam Hellerman added, “he won’t be unhappy that we’re going to different schools. He sees you as a bad influence.”

  A bad influence on Hillmont’s own scheming-est, manipulating-est, secretive-est and possibly evilest puppet master? Moi? It’s true I usually don’t know what to say, but this took not knowing what to say to a new, as-yet-unmapped and even more silent level. In fact, it’s a wonder I ever spoke again.

  Sam Hellerman told me not to worry, which is a bit like telling a dog not to slobber. But he had his mind on more pressing matters, and therefore what he required of me was to shake my mind’s Etch A Sketch to blankness so he could start to use it for his own designs, unimpeded by what had previously been on it. I did my best, like a good, faithful dog with an Etch A Sketch for a head.

  We trundled the new records into my room, and Sam Hellerman immediately dived in and snatched up APLPA-016. I’d had a feeling there might be a bit of a squabble over who was going to be the official owner of that one, though it made little practical difference: Sam Hellerman kept most of his records in my room because his father ruled Hellerman Manor with a fist of iron and forbade the playing of music of any kind but classical or jazz, and even then, he himself was the only one allowed to do it. Any record that failed to comply would be ruthlessly taken into custody and eliminated without mercy. Sam Hellerman had lost too many good records over the years to risk APLPA-016, that’s for sure.

  So I was expecting him to put forth an argument as to why APLPA-016 should be placed in the Sam Hellerman pile rather than filed into my collection, but what he said instead came as a total surprise.

  It was: “Fiona.”

  Now, Sam Hellerman had engineered the entire fake Fiona operation from its obscure Dud Chart beginnings (about which, see my previous explanations—I don’t have the energy to go into it now). Despite that, he had no patience for my continued obsession with the imaginary girl and still tended to bristle when I even so much as said the name. He only ever brought up the topic to tell me not to raise it. But evidently, we had entered a new era of Fiona tolerance on Sam Hellerman’s part.

  He ignored my puzzled eyes and put the record on, side one, track four: “Live Wire.”

  “Think of Fiona,” he said, holding his finger up as though to say “Wait for it” and seeming to mumble to himself internally as the slow-building intro of the song unfolded. I was mystified but I did as I was told, thinking of Fiona, that is, of Celeste Fletcher in character as Fiona, her glasses, her hat, her too-small Who T-shirt, her yarn jacket, her underwear, that one nipple, her heavy breathing.… Though I now knew that the whole thing had been at my expense, an elaborate Make-out/Fake-out designed mostly to humiliate me, the thought of all that still got me going. Is that surprising, or weird? I can’t even tell anymore. But I was lost in a world of glasses and nipples, because it doesn’t take much to get me lost, obviously.

  Sam Hellerman’s finger came down at the chorus and he started singing:

  “Fiona,

  Fiona,

  Fiona,

  I wanna own ya.”

  Oh, that “Fiona”! It was the chorus of one of my old songs from my Fiona Period, during which I had half written dozens of songs about her being hot and me being sad. It wasn’t the right notes, it wasn’t the right chords, and it arguably wasn’t the right “feel,” but it certainly was the right beat.

  And of course, I could see where Sam Hellerman was going with this. “Fiona,” though unfinished, wasn’t a bad song. With a little tweaking, the “Live Wire” drumbeat could certainly be made to work with it, and it would be far better than anything Shinefield would come up with on his own. So we get Shinefield to play the “Live Wire” drum parts to “Fiona” was the apparent idea.

  “But we’ve tried that before,” I protested. “Since it’s one of our songs, he’ll just gradually mess it up like all the others, won’t he?”

  “Not if we don’t tell him,” said Sam Hellerman, with his face as close to a grin as anything ever gets on that thing.

  I gave him the look that says: “Won’t he notice?”

  “Not if we’re careful,” said Sam Hellerman. “Not,” he added thoughtfully, “if we’re careful.”

  Sam Hellerman’s plan was simple: we would tell Shinefield we were playing “Live Wire” as usual, but while we played it, in our heads we’d be rehearsing the “Fiona” chords and singing the “Fiona” words with the “Fiona” melody. And then, if it ever came time to perform it for an audience, we’d pull the old switcheroo and play “Fiona” outright while Shinefield was still playing “Live Wire.” At that point, it would be far too late for Shinefield to come up with any fancy drummer stuff to ruin it. Result: “Fiona” with the “Live Wire” drums, the only way that was ever going to happen.

  “And if it works,” added Sam Hellerman, “we can do it for all our songs. We just have to find the right song to tell him we’re playing for each one.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to records with an ear toward finding the appropriate drum parts for each of our songs, with Sam Hellerman taking copious notes. It was not all that long ago that he had refused to participate in any Fiona songs as a matter of principle, but as I said, we had now entered a new era. Because this wasn’t about any particular girl or song. It wasn’t even about us. We were talking about solving the Drummer Problem, for the world, forever. If this worked, rock and roll would never be the same. We were doing it for humanity.

  And best of all, it was far easier than kidnapping Shinefield’s family and holding them all hostage in a basement somewhere on the edge of town.

  I wasn’t sure we could pull it off. But if we could, well, it was so crazy it just might wind up turning out pretty much all right, as the saying goes. A more Hellermanian plan could not have been imagined.

  I stared at Sam Hellerman, genius, with the look that says “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

  THE THING

  Now, I’ve decided I’m going to have to tell you the thing that I was going to spare you from earlier, because this other thing happened when Sam Hellerman was over that day and the thing that I was going to avoid mentioning came up during it. But I still advise you to skip it. True, you’ll miss out on the explanation for Sam Hellerman’s obsessive Jeans Skirt Girl stalking, as well as a pretty good chance to laugh at his expense. But in return, you will have retained the ability to continue your life in blissful unawareness of the thing. It is said that you can’t put a price on peace of mind, but in this case you must decide how much your future peace of mind is worth to you. I will tell you, if it helps, that missing out on this bit will only slightly detract from the rest of the story. I’m pretty sure. So the choice is yours. If you’d rather not risk it, skip ahead to this page. No judging here.

  For those who have elected to stay to hear about the thing, here it is.

  It’s about jeans.

  As you may have noticed, a whole lot of people in our contemporary society wear jeans. On a typical day, you see most people, and maybe close to all of them, going about their business wearing them. They are everywhere. Jeans: the American original.

  Well, have you ever noticed that jeans have a little diagram of a penis, usually stitched in gold thread, in the appropriate place on the crotch? So all the jeans-wearing people, male and female, are walking around with what are in effect embroidered penises on the front of their pants?

  I’m sure the jeans-making industry will tell you it is just a coincidental visual effect of necessary reinforcement stitching or something, but take a good look: this stitching is way too penislike to be an accident. Clearly, Mr. Levi Strauss
, the inventor of jeans, if I am correctly informed, was some kind of crazy pervert. Either that or the funniest practical joker since the guy who invented the keytar. Salvador Dalí himself couldn’t have done it better.

  If you’re thinking it’s not such a big deal, just go outside and look at people while trying not to notice it. It’s like everybody is wearing a penis uniform, with a penis insignia like a crotch badge marking the place where the real-life penis can, presumably, fifty percent of the time, be found underneath. It’s weird enough on guys, kind of ridiculous and funny, especially because they’re unaware of the fact that there are big golden penises embroidered on their pants as they go around shopping, picking up their kids from school, eating sandwiches, playing golf, and standing in front of a class of teenagers to lecture them about the quadratic formula, STDs, or Holden Caulfield. There is pretty much no activity that is not made sillier, weirder, or more questionable by virtue of being performed by a man with a diagram of a penis embroidered in gold thread on the front of his pants.

  But as weird as that is, the girl-jeans penises are just downright disturbing. Girls are, I’m sure, largely unaware of the golden penises on the front of their pants or skirts, even as they stand around talking to each other about whatever girls talk about and trying to look sexy. Granted, they almost always succeed in this (looking sexy, I mean), but when they do, it is always in spite of their gold embroidered penises. What I mean is, the penises aren’t helping them in this endeavor. The penises aren’t helping anybody.

  As for me, I believe noticing this may well have tainted girl watching for me forever. It is just bizarre enough and preposterous enough to distract you from what you want to be thinking about when admiring a beautiful woman. Hint: it’s not a great big golden penis.

  Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate. Perhaps. It’s still pretty weird, though, don’t you think? I first noticed it on one of Sam Hellerman’s Jeans Skirt Girl stalking photo close-ups, and, if nothing else, it had complicated my enjoyment of the way she looked in that skirt. And it had also complicated the process of writing the song I was writing about her. In fact, I doubted I would ever be able to finish it, and it turned out I was right about that.

  OF PIZZA AND METAL

  So now that you know about the penises, we can move on.

  Sam Hellerman and I had begun to examine the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in our beat-scavenging project, moving from Saxon to Diamond Head, and finally settling on FC 38160, Screaming for Vengeance. The Judas Priest catalog had lots of strong contenders.

  Sam Hellerman had left to go to the bathroom. And, well, his portable cassette player was just sitting there in plain view where he had left it, on the bed under his jacket, inside the little zip pocket of his backpack. What would you have done, with it staring you in the face like that? Well, just like you would have done, I’m sure, I hurried over, furtively unzipped the pocket, pulled out the device, put on one ear of the headphones, and got ready to push play, keeping the other ear open and an eye on the door for signs of Sam Hellerman’s return. I knew I probably had a bit of time: for whatever reason—which I am not at all interested in knowing—Sam Hellerman tends to take longer in the bathroom than your average dude.

  I hesitated for a fraction of a moment before pressing play, pausing to consider the possibilities, knowing that once I knew what was on the tape, speculating on it—one of my favorite pastimes, if truth be told—would no longer be available to me as a recreational activity. What kind of music would it be? Could it be secretly recorded demos of songs written by Sam Hellerman himself? If so, what would such songs be about? The mind of Sam Hellerman is dark and obscure, a mysterious and no doubt frightening place, and there was no telling what might emerge from it in song form if such a thing were ever allowed to happen. Would it even sound like music at all? My centipede was twitching in anticipation. But time was a-wasting. I had only a brief window. I pressed play and this is what I heard:

  A kind of swirly, pulsing music, with lots of echo, like the sound track of a retro space movie, certainly not rock and roll. So this is what the mind of Sam Hellerman sounds like, I thought, and it seemed to fit. Kind of otherworldly.

  Then I heard a deep, resonant Darth Vader voice saying this very slowly:

  “You are strong. You are confident. You are in command of the situation. You are respected by your colleagues at work or school. Women like and admire you. They are interested in what you have to say, and you approach them with confidence—”

  I heard a footstep in the hall and I quickly ripped the headphones off, wrapped them around the tape player, and shoved it all back in Sam Hellerman’s backpack, just as Little Big Tom’s trademark shave-and-a-haircut knock sounded on the door. False alarm.

  Little Big Tom’s head emerged through the doorway at an angle, like some improbable hippie turtle with a gray mustache.

  “I heard tell,” he said with great solemnity, “that there’s some hombres in here who might be interested in a pizza party.”

  He shouldered his way into my room holding a pizza box in front of him on an outstretched palm, with cans of Coke arranged neatly on top of it. Sam Hellerman followed close behind, lured by the scent of pepperoni as the South American pizza moth (Lymantria pepperonica) is drawn to the pizza-shaped flames of traditional Peruvian torches. They got tangled up in each other in the doorway.

  “Shall we dance?” said Little Big Tom, which is what he always says when he is one of a set of people who get tangled up in each other in a doorway.

  I’d expected, or rather hoped, that Little Big Tom would deposit the pizza and Cokes on the floor before dematerializing with a quick, parting comment like “Sustenance—what a growing boy needs!” or “Pizza pie—it’s like a pie, but made of pizza!” My hopes sank, however, as he came all the way into the room and settled with his back against the wall, emitting a deep sigh.

  “Foodstuff,” he said. “It’s what’s for dinner!” Well, my prediction hadn’t been far off. But though the words were familiar, it seemed to me there was quite a bit less of an exclamation point at the end than there would ordinarily have been. In fact, I think that poor excuse for an exclamation point was one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard. Had my mom really found incriminating underwear in Little Big Tom’s gym bag, as Amanda had said? I still didn’t believe it, but if that was the cause of the marital strife, I really hoped he’d come up with a good excuse, and soon. If “That’s so weird, I don’t know how they got there” doesn’t work, expand your horizons. Send the lady some flowers; tell her you’re a secret transvestite and you’re sorry but you’ve got to be you; pass it off as historical memorabilia, some of Isadora Duncan’s frilly unmentionables, perhaps, that you won at auction, worth ten times what you paid for them—tell her it’s all to finance a holiday in Vegas for her birthday. And then actually take her to Vegas and get her drunk. Failing that, grovel. Because whatever you’re doing, little gray stepfather, it clearly isn’t working. And I, for one, just couldn’t take much more of this moping around.

  “Half vegan, half arteriosclerosis,” said Little Big Tom, opening the pizza box and popping open one of the Coke cans so that its carbonation’s hiss coincided with his third heavy sigh since his arrival. “So, boys,” he continued. “What’s happenin’?”

  Sam Hellerman and I looked at each other. It was hard to know what to say. What was really happening, planning the surreptitious reprogramming of Shinefield’s abhorrent drumming, was too complicated to explain. Plus, I had in my head this bubbling pot of “You are strong, you are confident” whose boiling over was long overdue. Holding it to a simmer—that is, keeping it to myself—took all of my strength and concentration. I knew Little Big Tom was lonely and just wanted company, but the timing was really inconvenient.

  No one was saying anything, so I said, “Just listening to Judas Priest … chief.”

  “Sounds great,” said Little Big Tom, and he made a twirling gesture with his index finger on an imaginary turntable in front
of him as if to say “Crank up the Priest, then, ye metal gods.”

  Sam Hellerman flashed a helpless look my way but got up to do as Little Big Tom’s mimed turntable had directed.

  There followed the strangest, most uncomfortable, and least likely heavy metal pizza party in recorded history. Little Big Tom was sitting with his back to the wall and his chin on one knee, eating his vegan pizza and nodding to the music intently, examining the screaming eagle on the album cover with serious-minded intensity, while Sam Hellerman and I, our appetites long vanished, looked on in perplexed horror.

  “Screaming for vengeance,” said Little Big Tom. “What’s that they’re saying after that? I can’t quite make it out.”

  “ ‘The world is a manacled place,’ ” Sam Hellerman and I said almost in unison, and in the same dry, robotic monotone. I don’t know about Sam Hellerman, but I was feeling pretty manacled myself at that moment.

  Little Big Tom nodded, his face still in a frown, but with his eyebrows raised as though to say “Hey, we’ve all been there, am I right?” “ ‘The world is a manacled place,’ ” he repeated. “ ‘Manacled.’ ” Then: “ ‘A manacled place.’ ”

  Never mind the irony that Little Big Tom had tried to confiscate this very album twice before, on the grounds of its supposed “negativity.” That’s just typical parental hypocrisy hardly worthy of mention. They confiscate stuff, mostly because they can. But listening to Screaming for Vengeance in the presence of Little Big Tom was worse than any confiscation.

  It’s hard to explain exactly why. I guess all I can say is that I’d become accustomed to a kind of wall of separation between Little Big Tom and Judas Priest. I’d taken this wall largely for granted. Without ever having had the occasion to notice it per se, I suppose I had assumed it would always be there for me. When it was breached, I was defenseless.

  When “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ ” came on, Little Big Tom said “Good beat” and started kind of dancing side to side from the shoulders up. Then he started singing along under his breath with the chorus, curling his lip, and, I kid you not, appearing to play air drums with his index fingers. At this rate, he’d be kicking over the furniture, hitting us over the head with beer bottles, and screaming “Me-tal, me-tal, me-tal” while he banged his forehead to a bloody pulp on the floor before we reached the end of side two. (If it’s possible to bang your head to a pulp on shag carpeting. I’ve never tried it. Anyone?)