King Dork Approximately

by Frank Portman

  His aroma was particularly biting on this day, and it was interfering with my powers of concentration.

  Sam Hellerman raised his arm and sniffed his armpit, nodding as though satisfied with the results. I suppose that was a kind of answer. Sam Hellerman came with several drawbacks, obviously, and here was yet another, and by no means the worst of them, was how I chose to look at it. You take your geniuses as you find them.

  Of course I wanted a second opinion on the legal matter. It took over an hour of pleading and cajoling along with a bit of outright whining to persuade Sam Hellerman to allow me to present the matter to his father. After all, Herr Hellerman was an actual lawyer. Moreover, as the story of The Secrets of Women Revealed had seemed to indicate, he had once been one of us. He might have clawed his way into normalcy, but he certainly hadn’t been normal at our age. Perhaps there was still, buried in that dark, villainous, normal shell, a spark of humanity that could be kindled into a generous, helpful flame. Sam Hellerman wasn’t buying it, but one of many important lessons I’d learned from Amanda is that the easiest way to get people to do what you want is to make them feel that just about anything would be a relief if only you would shut up for five minutes. And though I am certainly no great talker, this I endeavored to do, with, as it happened, complete success.

  “All right, all right,” said Sam Hellerman at last, in the tone that I imagine the bullied boys of yesteryear used to use when saying uncle. He coughed and suppressed a shudder. “It won’t be nice, though. He’s not a nice guy. He can melt the skin from your face with a single glance.” But I was undeterred. If I wound up with a bit of melted face skin, so be it, was my attitude.

  There was a long silence. This gave way to another, even longer silence.

  “You’re going in too, right?” I said, just making sure.

  Sam Hellerman looked at me, startled. He hadn’t considered that to be part of the deal. But he reluctantly and shudderingly agreed. Ultimately, it seemed, Sam Hellerman would do anything to help out a pal. Even talk to his own father. That meant a lot.

  There were several more long, uneasy silences, till we finally heard Herr Hellerman’s car snap, crackle, and pop its way onto the gravel of the Hellerman Manor driveway. Sam Hellerman recommended we give him twenty minutes to settle in with his predinner martini before attempting to solicit an audience with him.

  “Make it thirty,” I said, blanching slightly and mindful of my mom’s own after-work cocktail schedule.

  In response to Sam Hellerman’s discreet knock, we were invited into Herr Hellerman’s study. Herr Hellerman was at his large, unnaturally tidy desk, a martini glass before him in its center. He waved us forward, and then made a “have a seat” gesture.

  “Now,” said Herr Hellerman pleasantly enough. “What can I do for you young men?”

  “Tom has a, a legal question matter, sir, a legal legal, a legal …” That was the best Sam Hellerman could do under the circumstances. My heart went out to him.

  Herr Hellerman turned his skin-melting eyes on me.

  I stood up and gave him a brief summary of my lawsuit plan, with some nervousness but thankfully no stuttering. I displayed my centipede and my documents, including the Catcher Code square, and read the list of indictments as clearly and as distinctly as I could, beginning with conspiracy and ending with crimes against humanity. I realized halfway through the reading of this list that I didn’t have a specific question. I just wanted it to happen somehow.

  “So,” I ended a bit lamely, reseating myself. “What do you, you know, think, and whatever?”

  Remember that string of uneasy silences I referred to just moments ago, when we were waiting for Herr Hellerman to arrive? Well, that was nothing compared to the uneasiness of the silence that followed the delivery of my comprehensive indictment of Normalism in the thoroughly unsettling presence of Herr Heinrich Hellerman, Esq. Sam Hellerman was twitching. I was willing my face not to melt, long ago having failed in my initial resolution to retain eye contact with Herr Hellerman, surely the most unnerving entity I’d ever encountered at such close range.

  His eyes behind their steel-rimmed spectacles darted methodically from one of us to the other, back and forth, lingering longer each time.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “Get out of here,” he said.

  Well, you can bet we got out of there, scrambling over our chairs and each other and whimpering like drowning kittens, I mean, like drowning kittens seem like they might have whimpered if I’d ever drowned any.

  “Satisfied?” said Sam Hellerman when we had fled to safety, his voice sounding almost “Crimson and Clover”–y, that is to say, shaky.

  Well, “satisfied” wasn’t exactly the word, but for better or worse, I did have my second opinion. “Get out of here” says it all, really. And if nothing else was clear in this notoriously murky world, it was this: Herr Heinrich Hellerman had no concealed spark of humanity waiting to be kindled into a flame of warmth and generosity; he was, on the contrary, normal through and through. It was a bit sad, but mostly simply alarming, because if it could happen to Little Hitler Hiney Hellerman, it could happen to anyone. Even us.

  SAINT ASS

  Queerview High School. It’s harder to describe than I expected it to be. In some ways it’s quite different from Hellmont High, but in other ways it’s not too different at all. One thing I can say without reservation is that, for whatever reason, Clearview is not in as advanced a state of degeneration as Hillmont was, probably because Hillmont’s s. of d. was very advanced indeed, leaving the degeneration of all other regional high schools in the dust.

  In Hillmont’s final phase, during which I attended it, the benign façade of the traditional American high school had long since fallen away. All the niceties—the clubs, the activities, the sports, the school customs and institutions, and most especially the “classes”—stood brutish and naked, revealed as nothing more than an organized schedule of feeble pretexts for harassment, hazing, and other senseless savagery. Even the highest-ranking normal people didn’t bother with the euphemisms and pretty lies anymore, and the teachers and administrators gave them no more than the most cursory lip service. Where once the “Math Club,” say, was claimed with a straight face to be a gathering of the mathematically inclined that by pure coincidence happened to attract the brutal attention of the occasional bully or hopped-up delinquent, now it was simply known as a convenient corral, clearly labeled and scheduled, where the most defenseless members of the student body would be herded for the convenience of any normal psychotic who might like to practice his skills upon them. And if the aforementioned normal psycho might wish, on a given day, to incorporate a bit of bizarre homoerotic sexual humiliation into his routine, he had only to consult his class schedule and pay a visit to the boys’ locker room, once, it was claimed, merely an innocent place for showering, but now revealed as little more than a corral similar to the “Math Club,” except that everybody in it is, by order of the state, naked as well as helpless.

  But at Clearview, well, they still pretended that the Math Club was actually a math club, and that the showers were really there for people to take showers in. This appeared to be true from top to bottom, throughout the school. The teachers still pretended they were there to teach people things, the drama department actually put on plays, and the marching band, so it was rumored, really marched. At Hillmont no one, and I mean absolutely no one, not the principals or the teachers or the students of any rank, not even the “athletes” themselves, cared to any degree at all about the football team or the football games, and you could say the same about the “cheerleading” or the “career counseling” or the “dances” or whatever they happened to label each successive pretext for preying on the defenseless and smoking dope. But in the halls of Clearview, on the contrary and to my genuine surprise, there was everywhere a frankly nauseating miasma, if “miasma” means what I think it does, of “school spirit.”

  This is why, in my first homeroom period as
a Clearview student, the girl seated in front of me (the person in the Sam Hellerman position, alphabetically speaking) said, first thing:

  “How does it feel to be a badger?”

  I was stumped, mystified, and, what’s the other one, with the “f”? Flummoxed. I think that’s it. I was stumped, mystified, and flummoxed. And my s. m. and f. status must have been visible on my face, because she shook her head in an “oh, what’s to become of us?” way and pointed to her shirt, which said “Clearview Badgers” in big cursive letters and had, near the right shoulder, a little puffy image of what I supposed was a badger, which is evidently some kind of animal.

  I’ll tell you what I replied, but stop for a moment and think about this. This was just a regular person, not normal to any great degree, as far as I could tell, wearing a school shirt on the first day back at school, apparently of her own free will. Not only that, but she went around referring to herself as a Badger with no sarcasm or mockery, and assumed that all the other students, even new ones from other schools, thought of themselves primarily as Badgers too. I was to learn that this bizarre behavior was quite usual at Clearview High School. At the orientation assembly later that day, at which our old friend Dr. Elizabeth Gary had given a repeat performance of her now familiar Caring, Healing, and Understanding speech, sans banners, of course, the principal of the school, one Dr. Tadich, affectionately (I kid you not) known among the student body as T-Dog (I kid you not), jogged onstage and bellowed “Helloooooooooooo, Badgers!” I kid you not. And unlike at Hillmont, where such a thing would never ever occur in any of its particulars by the wildest stretch of even the most vivid imagination, the student body erupted in thunderous applause, fervent cheering, whistling, and a deafening chant of “Badgers! Badgers! Badgers!…” I kept looking for the sarcasm and failing to find it. It was deeply unsettling, even while I had to acknowledge that I felt physically quite a bit safer. Hillmont may have been something of a concentration camp, it’s true. But this, this was Nuremberg.

  Anyway, what I said to the badger girl was:

  “I don’t know.”

  Then, because Badger Girl seemed to expect more from me, I added: “How do you feel?”

  “Great,” she said with disconcerting sincerity. She actually meant she was feeling, literally, great. About “being a Badger.”

  “We’ve got a great team this year,” she continued, “and we’re going to really kick some saint ass.” Well, after a bit more of me being s. m. and f., it was revealed: she was referring to the Mission Hills Saints, Clearview’s “rivals.” I resisted the urge to invite her down to the soda fountain for a malted and to tell her to make sure to bring Skippy, Squirt, and the Big Moose along because later we were all going to the sock hop and we were going to … you know.… It’s like the fifties, the way you’re being, don’t you get it? The fifties, like you’re all fifties, you know, zombies, for God’s sake. Doesn’t anyone realize what’s happening here?

  Well, that’s one urge I’m glad I resisted, anyway.

  I still couldn’t get my mind around the idea that anyone in the real actual world cared about this kind of thing. I mean, yes, you see it in movies and old TV shows, this “school spirit” and eagerness on the part of high school students to try to “fit in” by doing every single asinine thing that was expected of them, but I’d never expected to encounter it in real life. It was like I was talking to Marcia Brady without the short skirt and overall hotness. So right, this chick was some kind of school spirit sports girl. I’d never met one in the wild, but okay, I don’t get out much. I guess they exist, and I don’t care one way or the other. But I’m not kidding when I say she was not identifiably normal. She was a bit nerdy, a bit freckly, a bit small, a bit spindly, a bit patches-on-the-backpack-y. If any of the normal person’s standard-issue cruelty and hostility lurked within, she certainly kept it well hidden. They’d have made mincemeat of her at Hillmont High, just chewed her up and spit out the bones and danced around them in gleeful abandon before leaving them scattered in the grass on Center Court as a grim reminder: BEWARE OF THE NORMAL GIRLS. But here she was, seemingly unminced.

  She said her name was Roberta Halloran.

  “Ah,” I said. “The female Robert.”

  “Oh,” she said, after a pause, and I thought I’d possibly offended her. But then: “Yes, the female Robert. I am the female Robert!”

  I gave her the look that says “Settle down, now,” and I told her my name too, when prompted.

  “I had a cat named Thomas,” said the Female Robert.

  And at that point there really didn’t seem to be much more to say.

  It had been a deeply disturbing exchange, in its way, but I suppose I had also passed a sort of test. Strange as they were, these Queerviewians, it was possible to walk among them. I had a brief flash of an alternative future, one in which I would learn their ways, feign enthusiasm for their customs, and thus manage to make it through the next two and a half years unscathed and in one piece. Every time I was hassled by normal people, I would shout “Badger! Badger! Badger!” and they would leave me alone. I would, in essence, become a Badger, hiding my true self deep, deep inside. I doubted I could pull it off, what with having a personality of my own and hating everything they stood for and all, but it was beginning to seem like the least worst option.

  “Yay, school. Yay, sports,” I said to myself, trying it out. I had to admit, it needed work.

  Of course, I had no illusions. My inability to spot the normal people at Clearview didn’t mean they didn’t exist. It just meant that there were different cues, different identifying behaviors, and that I would have to identify them and try to evade the most threatening among them. I needed to learn the code.

  My brief conversation with Roberta the Female Robert had been an eye-opener. If the world I’d glimpsed through her eyes was indeed real, a world of school spirit and team rivalries and sincerely attended pep rallies and “varsity,” whatever that was, well, maybe the old representations of teenage life that I had always dismissed so casually might reflect reality as well. If this received wisdom, the validity of which I hadn’t even considered believing in just moments ago, was anything to go by, the most vicious normal people in this kind of environment would turn out to be the “jocks.” These “jocks” would mainly attack the “nerds.” The “hoods,” on the other hand, might be dangerous but frequently had hearts of gold and would defend a worthy “nerd” on occasion from the predations of the “jocks” if he be true of spirit. But surely it couldn’t be that simple, or that weird. I resolved to make a study of them, the major texts: The Brady Bunch, Archie comics, Happy Days, Grease, Revenge of the Nerds, Carrie, Straw Dogs … I was sure there were others. I would have to do some serious research.

  Sam Hellerman’s genius would have penetrated these mysteries without nearly as much trouble as I was probably going to have. And yet, though it was decidedly unpleasant to be out there on my own, my first day at Clearview persuaded me that I was in little immediate danger. There was sure to be senseless brutality lurking in hidden corners, s. b. that was possibly all the more brutal for its being hidden, but it was beginning to look like these hidden brutal corners would be easy to avoid. Moreover, as puzzling as these strange creatures and their unfamiliar ways were to me, it was a safe bet that I was just as puzzling to them. That is, whereas at Hillmont I had had “victim” written all over me, the Clearview normal people couldn’t read my cues. They were bound to figure me out eventually, but for the time being, I was golden.

  You could see it throughout the school grounds. The Hillmont transfers in the student population were easily spotted, the normal as well as the decent, stumbling in bewilderment, trying to figure out their place in the new pecking order. It amused me to no end, thinking how it would gradually dawn on the former Hillmont normal psychos that entering the top tier of sadistic tormenters in this brave new Clearview world would entail doing things like wearing gay little “letterman” jackets, going to pep rallies, calling e
ach other Badgers, and learning to confine their student-on-student violence and psychological harassment to hidden, out-of-the-way nooks and crannies rather than carrying them out in plain sight under the approving eye of teachers and administrators. Slow-witted as they were, this bitter realization would no doubt take some time to hit them, but when it did, well, you know, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

  Now, if you people from the future have spotted the fact that the Clearview High School I have described sounds and looks quite a bit like “Millmont High” from Halls of Innocence, well, good for you. It sure does. That’s what I’m saying: it was so obviously fake and ridiculous that you’d never believe it if you saw it on TV, and yet here it was in real life, and at the time it sure was hard to believe it wasn’t some kind of elaborate hoax.

  Any hopes I might have had that the Alphabet Gods would see fit, in their wisdom, to provide me with a suitable Sam Hellerman substitute for use during this Clearview ordeal were dashed on the rocks of homeroom’s roll call. As I explained, the person before me in alphabetical order—in the Sam Hellerman slot—was the Badger girl: nice enough, but hardly a genius. If I ever happened to need any advice on how to get “pumped” and “psyched” for the “game,” she’d be the one to consult. Otherwise, I couldn’t see how she’d be much use. The student behind me was a guy named Bill Henderson, no relation, and he looked as slow-witted and normal as they come. He was wearing one of those “letterman” jackets that still looked like a costume to me, and had that typically normal air of vapid peevishness, which means always being pissed off for no reason, I think. But he made no threatening moves. It was like he was on hold, a subhuman psycho machine on standby, yet to be activated by headquarters. At least he couldn’t call me Hender-queer. But that was the best that could be said of him, I was sure.

  Now, anyone who has followed my previous explanations might well be wondering: where are all the Clearview drama mods? Couldn’t I make friends with them?