King Dork Approximately

by Frank Portman

  And that’s just the good stuff: the music most normal people like is simply beyond redemption, or comprehension. If you like that sort of thing, you deserve each other.

  Anyway, Little Big Tom just gave me the old sympathetic yet taken aback “get a load of my oddball stepson” look and rumpled my hair. In other words, it worked as planned.

  “How’s the song coming?” he asked, meaning how was I doing in my attempt to learn how to fingerpick the song about the Irish guy and the hula girl.

  “ ‘O’Brien Is tryin’ to Learn to Talk Hawaiian’?” I said. “Okay.”

  Actually, it was going terrible. Even though I grasped the concept (your thumb has to do alternating bass notes with runs back and forth, while your other fingers “roll” in the spaces and play notes and partial chords), I couldn’t make it happen, no matter how hard I tried. My right hand was made for hitting, not plucking, and it didn’t look like I’d ever be able to instruct it to make the h. to p. transition. The Chet Atkins book I’d checked out of the library only made things worse by spelling out and comprehensively cataloguing all the things I would never have a prayer of doing. What guitar playing ability I did have seemed to erode with each page.

  Perhaps sensing the frustration behind the word “okay” despite my efforts to mask it, Little Big Tom had one more bit of wisdom to impart.

  “I think you’ll find,” he said, with lips slightly pursed, “that if you keep at it, there will be one moment where you suddenly realize you’re doing it without even thinking. That’s how it works in the old brain box.” Then he added, with a thumbs-up, a nod, and that little clicking sound he makes with his tongue on his upper molars: “The human head: check it out.”

  Well, that exhausted my daily ration of patience for hearing about things that Little Big Tom thought I would “find,” so I saluted him and sauntered off with my research materials. I was still embarrassed from before, and my centipede was still twitching, and I ached for Fiona, and I was still mystified and futilely angry about the whole jacket thing, and I still knew in my heart of hearts that I’d never, ever be able to play “O’Brien Is tryin’ to Learn to Talk Hawaiian”—but I had avoided an unsolicited back rub, and that’s what really matters.

  I had a lot to think about, that’s for sure. I headed upstairs to take a long, soothing shower and get my thoughts together. I do a lot of my best thinking in the shower. And by thinking, I mean masturbation.

  BOOK READER

  Now, Little Big Tom had said, or rather mimed, that Pride and Prejudice was “brutal,” and I knew what he meant, but in the end, I found I didn’t quite agree. I mean, I could not be less interested in the trials and tribulations of silly families trying to marry off their silly daughters to silly rich guys in silly olde England. But once you got used to their strange way of talking, it was actually pretty funny in places, like the author was kind of subtly making fun of the characters and their weird, awkward, money-grubbing world. Most of all, though, there was something impressive and, I don’t know, satisfying about how the sentences would go off in all sorts of different directions and then manage to land everything safely and with a kind of unexpected neatness right at the end. This chick was a good writer, better than a truckload of Pynchons and Salingers. If only she hadn’t chosen such a lame subject. If she had written about, say, spies, or juvenile delinquents, or ghosts, or hobbits, or space worms, or even about paranoid druggies who think garbage cans are mailboxes, there’d have been no stopping her.

  Seeing my dad through this book’s eyes, or even imagining he had read it, wasn’t happening, obviously. I didn’t even try. This definitely put the book in the second tier as far as I was concerned, but you know: they can’t all be Brighton Rock.

  So yeah, not my thing, really, except for the sentences. But as I’ve said, females seem to like it a lot, as I learned when the book fell out of my backpack during lunch on the Quad with the “pep band” people, and the girls around who saw it kind of shrieked and started mumbling “Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy,” like they couldn’t help themselves. That’s what they always do when this book is mentioned. Try mentioning it around some girls sometime and see. (Mr. Darcy is the name of the ten-thousand-a-year rich guy who’s kind of a dick.)

  “Why are you reading that?” said this near-normal girl named (kidding you not) Blossom van Kinkle, in an accusing yet mildly amused tone. That was unfortunate, as she was probably the second- or third-hottest girl in the “pep band,” and truth be told, I’d been hoping I could, somehow, take advantage of my current neutral status and apply the secrets of women revealed in such a way as to induce her to enter into a ramoning-type situation with me. I could feel my precious neutral status, and any chance at ramoning anyone, draining away rapidly as it began to dawn on all in the vicinity, band people though they were, that I was some kind of book reader.

  This was not good, the most King Dork moment I’d had since my time at Clearview began.

  I guess it’s a pretty unusual book for a guy to read, but it’s unusual for a guy to read any book at all. You can get away with doing it, but not if you look like you’re enjoying it too much: that enrages normal people like almost nothing else. Openly flaunting enjoyment of a book at Hillmont High would mark you as a target for an immediate game of involuntary “smear the queer” with the book as the “ball” and a subsequent lifetime of extra physical and psychological abuse. True, I have used books to shut out the world and deter human interaction, but in a high school environment this tactic must be used sparingly. If word gets out, rest assured, they will hunt you down. Then you can kiss your book, and possibly your very ass, goodbye. I had been careful to conceal my book-reading habit as much as I could at Hillmont, but I suppose the relatively lax atmosphere of Clearview had made me sloppy.

  They were staring at me. I didn’t know what to say.

  It could have been ugly. But in the end I was saved by the Robot.

  “Oh, it must be for Pizzaballa’s list,” she said, and I believe I noticed her wink at me, though I could have been imagining it.

  There were sympathetic groans and all was suddenly back to the way it had been before. Mrs. Pizzaballa’s “reading journal” list was notorious, evidently, and all appeared to have been forgiven in the wave of empathy caused by the very thought of it. Blossom van Kinkle was even smiling at me now, which I’d never noticed her doing before. Thanks, Jane. I owe you one.

  Sam Hellerman would have advised, I’m sure, remaining aloof from Blossom van Kinkle, but remaining aloof on purpose just ain’t my bag, baby.

  “I play guitar,” I said. “In a band.” “And,” my eyes added, “I should deem it an honour propitiously fulfilled indeed were my esteem to meet with reciprocation in your tender, discerning heart.”

  And I couldn’t be sure, but I believe those words kindled a little extra light in Blossom van Kinkle’s delicate amber eyes. At least, she didn’t turn away or spit on me or anything, which was good, and she wasn’t all the way across the street like Jeans Skirt Girl either, which was even better.

  I mentioned Mrs. Pizzaballa’s list already, that big handout she distributed on the first day of class. It turned out to be more than a simple reading list, as I’d initially assumed. It was instead an annotated list of what seemed like just about every school-approved book there was, with a little paragraph describing each one and a score from one to ten on each as well, representing how important or difficult Mrs. Pizzaballa thought it was. The assignment was to select and read a given book and write a brief review or comment in your “book-reading journal,” which she would collect and grade at the end of each week, giving you some portion of the book’s total points, depending on how much she liked your review. The problem with the whole thing, and the reason for all the groans from the “pep band” people when the Robot mentioned it, was that she was a very harsh grader if she didn’t like what you wrote, and to pass her class you needed to have accumulated at least 100 points by the end of the term. A few weeks and eleven “revi
ews” in, I had a grand total of zero points. I had no idea what she wanted, but it wasn’t the usual three sentences about how Holden Caulfield was the voice of a generation and a genuine authentic personality that exploded off the page fully formed just waiting for you to worship him.

  “Passing a class” at Hillmont had been a mere formality requiring no particular effort, but they seemed to take it a bit more seriously here, so I wasn’t sure what to do, or what would happen if I kept getting zeros.

  After that first week of zeros, I’d stayed after the piano-bell and asked Mrs. Pizzaballa for a little clarity as to what she expected in a book-reading journal review.

  “The worms crawl in,” she replied. “The worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle on your snout.”

  That was, of course, absolutely no help. But I was glad she said it nonetheless. Applying any attention at all to schoolwork was unfamiliar territory for me, but here was a puzzle, a question for the ages: what did Pizzaballa want? I began to set about the business of racking my brain for an answer. Perhaps, I thought, there’s something important about books that school could teach me after all, and Mrs. Pizzaballa’s methods, unorthodox as they are, will ultimately lead me there. Perhaps I will look back on this time as the moment when literature came alive for me, thanks to the teacher who made a difference. I sincerely doubted it, but, you know, it was a thought nevertheless.

  But if you’ve noted how petty, how superficial, how downright minor this is as a high school worry, well, you’re not wrong. Because by and large, Clearview High was a cakewalk. Sure, maybe you’ll have a tough time figuring out what a given teacher wants, and you certainly have to endure an atmosphere thick with noxious “school spirit” jacket-varsity fumes, and perhaps having to pretend to be something you’re not each and every day will eventually take its psychological toll. But it’s hard to describe what it feels like just to sit on the grass at lunch without having to brace yourself for a savage, life-threatening attack. I had a circle of sort-of friends to eat lunch with, including a few I could almost say I genuinely liked, and I didn’t have to worry about any of them ever trying to kill me. Which, frankly, was more than I could say for Sam Hellerman with complete confidence. The normal people at Clearview were comparative pussycats. Even PE wasn’t too bad, and I’m not even exaggerating all that much.

  I could get used to this, I thought, though thinking that made me hate myself a little. I was maybe halfway used to it already, if truth be told.

  SCIENCE BE DAMNED

  The sudden absence of Celeste Fletcher from her former spot in the red beanbag in Shinefield’s basement during our band practices was a source of unspoken tension. At our second practice without her, Shinefield finally ventured to break the silence and ask me about her.

  “Chi-Mo, my man,” he said, because he said things like “my man” and Chi-Mo was one of my old nicknames, as you’ll know if you are acquainted with my previous explanations. “What’s the deal with Celeste?” According to Shinefield, he had seen her only once since the semester had begun and hardly talked to her at all; most of his many calls to her had gone unanswered. When he had reached her, she had informed him that she was busy with school and had a lot going on in her life, and when he’d pressed her on the matter, she’d told him not to flatter himself and that she needed space.

  “Do you think she’s messing around with some other guy?” he asked plaintively.

  Well, Einstein, I thought, what do you think it means when a girl says she “needs space”? God, these math geniuses can be dumb. I was in a bit of a quandary, if a quandary is what I think it is. On the one hand, I did have information that Shinefield wanted, perhaps needed, and I was, technically, his sort-of friend. But on the other hand, we were engaged in a delicate experiment in drum conditioning in which he was the subject, and I didn’t want to introduce data that could complicate the results. This was a matter of Science. But now you have to imagine that I have another hand growing out of my forehead, say, or perhaps we could just use one of my centipede’s feet, because on the third hand, I was pretty pissed off at Fiona all on my own, so in the end I said “Science be damned” and threw caution to the wind.

  “Science be damned,” I said, to Shinefield’s puzzlement, though Sam Hellerman had seemed to follow my train of thought and twitched warningly. I plunged in, however, and told Shinefield about Todd Dante and the jacket.

  “Jesus,” said Shinefield, powerfully affected, and if I was reading his face correctly, his expression said something like: “A ‘letterman’ jacket? Seriously? What kind of terrible Bye Bye Birdie/Grease sound track/Happy Days/Revenge of the Nerds/Leave It to Beaver place are they running over there?”

  These were good questions. Shinefield was looking wounded.

  “Radio silence,” said Sam Hellerman, out of the blue, sparking yet more puzzlement, this time from both of us.

  He went on: “That’s the only possible way to salvage a relationship with a girl who says she needs space.” He said he was serious: no calls, no messages, no contact whatsoever. Give her time to figure out that she misses you and make her wonder what you’re up to. Then, he continued, when the thing with the jacket guy crashes and burns—which it will—and she’s feeling sad and vulnerable just like you are right now, wait for her to come to you begging for comfort, reassurance, and attention, which she probably will. “At that point,” he concluded, “it’s up to you how to proceed. But if you have another girlfriend when it happens, and you manage to leave the impression that you like the new one more, you’ll basically have her for life. If you still want her.”

  It was the tapes talking. But Sam Hellerman, to one’s surprise, sounded like he made a lot of sense, and both Shinefield and I stared at him in a kind of wonderment. Because that was pretty fucking Machiavellian, we were thinking. And to see and hear such Machiavellianisms emerging from the mouth of the slight, bespectacled, cell-phone-holstered, eminently socially unsuccessful Sam Hellerman, well, it was a curious and arresting experience, to say the least. Remain aloof, the tapes said. It was inexpressibly dumb with regard to Jeans Skirt Girl and Sam Hellerman, but with Celeste Fletcher and Shinefield, it seemed to have a bit more oomph.

  The thing about Celeste Fletcher was that she had seen the lay of the land, so to speak, at Clearview: she had realized that for her, there was no real downside to going full-on normal in this environment. As I’ve said, she had always flirted with normalcy, ever since I’d known her, though she had kept her options open, through her involvement with the subnormal Hillmont drama-hippies and not least through her association with me, Sam Hellerman, and Shinefield. That was a dangerous game, but she could get away with it because, well, mostly because of her ass, let’s be honest; if you’re a girl and you’re sexy enough, you really don’t have that much to fear from normal people, even when they’re the extreme variety of normal featured at Hillmont High School. To the degree that the shifting sands of her personal philosophy could be interpreted on the basis of her choice of guy-she-mainly-hangs-out-with, Shinefield had been a good choice for the circumstances. He was normal enough not to arouse the senseless anger and resentment of the normal establishment, but not normal enough to threaten or frighten off any of her less-than-normal associates. But things change, and at Clearview High, boy, did they ever.

  As far as I could tell, status at Clearview, as elsewhere, was pretty straightforward for girls: basically, it was based one hundred percent on looks. If you arranged them all in a line, the prettiest ones at the top, progressing downward from there—maybe aided by some of Sam Hellerman’s metrics—you’d have a fairly clear picture of where any given girl stood, status-wise. There were cutoffs, obviously, a line dividing the normal girls from the subnormal, and another one dividing the subnormal from the abnormal. It was those lines that were hard for a non-native Clearviewian like me to draw.

  Occasionally, it’s true, a given girl could move beyond her station, by being especially mean, or loud, or funny, or by sucking up to the h
igher-ranked girls. But there was a limit, and such upgrades in status were usually no more than temporary. It was kind of like you were on probation: one false move and back down the ladder you went. I’d add that trying to be attractive to boys seemed to be only a tiny part of this system. Many of the most important markers of “prettiness” go largely unnoticed by any guy, and some of them are actually actively disliked (flip-flops, the pulled-back hairstyles, and some of the more substantial clothes, for example). Of course, “getting guys” was part of it, but only a part of a bigger game the girls seemed to play largely among themselves. The worst thing a normal girl can say about another is “She’s not even that pretty.”

  For guys at Clearview, status seemed to be mostly a matter of size, though as at Hillmont, being especially cruel or dumb could raise your stock considerably in the eyes of the normal masses. Behavior mattered, much more than it did for girls. Being cool, funny, or especially mean or violent could bump your stats way up. So could having a nice car, or, a car. If you ranked them by size, however, you’d still get a broadly accurate picture of where everyone stood, though you’d have to filter out the fat guys and some of the freakishly tall, beanpole-geek types, obviously. Not too different from Hillmont, in other words, with this difference: pretty much every dude above the normalcy cutoff was some kind of sports guy, and the entire student body, all the way down the scale, was solidly in favor of them. Hillmont High, as an institution, if it stood for anything, stood for raw, naked, senseless brutality; at Clearview you had a more refined version, a kind of institutional sports cruelty, supported by everyone, even its victims, with improbable, unfathomable enthusiasm. I mean, look at the Female Robot: what did a girl like that, well outside the main scale of normalcy, possibly think she could achieve with her embrace of a status quo that sought only to demean and marginalize her? I would never get that.