I Was a Teenage Dwarf

by Max Shulman

  “But it will come to the Bijou in a few months,” I pointed out.

  “I want to see it now!” said Tuckie.

  “All right,” I sighed. “Get your bike and let’s go.”

  “A girl does not go to see Montgomery Clift on a bicycle,” she declared.

  “Streetcar?” said I.

  “Oh, I suppose so,” she answered crossly. “Why don’t you ask your father to buy you a car?”

  That kept me laughing all the way downtown in the streetcar—fare, fifteen cents apiece—and then we went to the movie—tickets, sixty cents apiece. At the movies Tuckie had a candy bar for six cents, and I weighed myself four times with the change.

  I had forty cents left in my pocket when we came out of the movie, of which thirty cents was needed for carfare. “Look!” cried Tuckie. “There’s the Yum-Yum Sweet and Soda Shop right across the street. All the gay Central High crowd goes there!”

  “Gee, I don’t know, Tuckie,” I said doubtfully, but she wasn’t listening. She was propelling me across the street and into the glittering spa. The place was jampacked with heirs and heiresses consuming costly dishes. “No booths,” said I, much relieved.

  “Here’s one,” said Tuckie and shoved me in it. “Ah,” she said, examining the list on the jukebox selector in our booth. “Here’s Rosemary Clooney singing ‘The Maladjusted Mambo.’ Give me a nickel.”

  “Tuckie—” said I.

  “Quickly,” said she.

  I gave her a nickel. That left thirty-five cents, of which thirty cents had to go for carfare. What, I wondered, could I do with the extra nickel? My question was soon answered; Tuckie wanted to play “The Maladjusted Mambo” again.

  A waiter came over. “Oh, I’m simply famished!” cried Tuckie, snatching a menu. “What should we have, Dobie?”

  “Here is our choice,” said I. “We can have a modest snack and walk home, or nothing and ride.”

  “Well, I never!” she said hotly, and she would have said a lot more, only at this moment, Murder McIntyre’s pointy head came peeping over the back of the booth.

  “Hiya,” he said.

  “Why, Murder!” said she, batting her eyes like a madwoman.

  “Who you with?” said he.

  “Nobody really,” said she, and then he reached over and plucked her out of the booth and that’s the last I saw of her that evening.

  I walked home instead of taking the streetcar; I wanted to save my thirty cents to buy a gun and kill her. But by the time I got home I wasn’t sore any more—just feeling miserable and left out and unwanted.

  I didn’t feel much like sleeping; instead I went next door to see if Red Knees was still up. I peeked in the window. She was cowering behind the sofa, so I knew her folks had left her home alone again. “It’s me,” I called, and she let me in.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” she cried, grabbing me. “I’ve been so scared tonight. Strange noises all over the house.”

  “You mean besides the sea gulls?” I said. “Probably burglars. They must have heard about all the money you’ve got hidden.”

  She whacked me over the head. “Don’t you joke about that,” she said angrily. “You know how scared I am to be home alone.”

  “All right,” I said, “but don’t you whack me any more. I had enough lumps tonight.” I told her all about Tuckie. “That rotten gold digger,” I said, concluding my remarks.

  “No,” said Red Knees.

  “No what?”

  “She’s not a gold digger. She’s just too old for you.”

  “Are you nuts?” I said. “She happens to be exactly my age. In fact, three weeks younger.”

  “That’s just the point,” said Red Knees. “She’s too old for you.”

  “I don’t dig.”

  “Listen,” she said. “There’s something called puberty—”

  “Don’t you mention that loathsome custom to me,” I said with a rush of feeling.

  “All right, let’s call it maturity—emotional maturity.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that girls mature earlier than boys. Tuckie is a woman—or almost, anyhow. You’re still a boy. You’ve got nothing in common any more.”

  “Aaah!” said I.

  “No, really, Dobie. It’s a scientific fact. Girls reach emotional maturity about two years ahead of boys. That’s why they prefer older men; they have more in common with them.”

  “Aaah!” said I.

  “What you need is a girl at your own emotional level. In other words, a girl two years younger than you.… Like me, for instance,” she said, climbing into my lap.

  “You are a beast,” I said, dumping her, “and if you don’t stop pawing me, I will go away and leave you all alone.”

  “All right,” she said. “But don’t forget what I told you.”

  Which I didn’t. In the weeks that followed I often wondered if Red Knees hadn’t been right about Tuckie. I couldn’t make any headway at all with her. She just kept running around with Murder McIntyre and paying me no mind, even when I tripped her in the hall. Once I came to her with eight dollars in my hand which I had wormed out of my stingy father by threatening to get all Fs again. “Look, Tuckie,” I said, “let us go out and spend all these riches in one evening of mad abandon.”

  “No, thank you,” she said politely and went off clutching Murder McIntyre’s bulging arm.

  “You see?” said Red Knees, who is always skulking around watching me. “What’d I tell you? She’s no gold digger. She’s just too old for you.”

  At this point it looked like Red Knees was right, which made me so depressed that I went out and spent the eight dollars on a new klaxon horn for my bike to cheer myself up.

  But then the very next day I knew Red Knees was wrong. Because Tuckie came up to me in the cafeteria and said, “Dobie, would you like to take me on the Moonlight Excursion?”

  Well, sir, I thought my eyeballs were going to pop right out of my head. Do you know what the Moonlight Excursion is? Only the most important social affair of the entire Central High School year, that’s all. I mean when you take a girl on the Moonlight Excursion, you’re practically telling the world that you’re going steady. I mean that’s how important it is.

  The way it works, there’s this old side-wheeler steamboat. It’s all painted up nice and the decks are decorated with Japanese lanterns and all kinds of scam like that, and they get two orchestras so that anywhere you go on the ship there’s music and dancing. You take a three-hour cruise down the river, sailing along the shore so you can see the lights, and then you cruise back again. And all the time you’re dancing and eating refreshments. Also smooching when you can get away from the chaperons.

  The chaperons are teachers and they watch you like a bunch of hawks. In fact, they keep an eye on you even before the Moonlight Excursion; nobody can go who’s fallen below a C average in his studies. But it’s such a terrific affair that everybody studies like a maniac so they can be eligible.

  Well, sir, when Tuckie asked me to take her, I knew that Red Knees was full of hot air about that emotional maturity scam. Sure, things had been bad for a while between me and Tuckie, but it was all fixed now. Otherwise why would she ask me to take her to this terrific affair? “You bet your pretty neck, I’ll take you,” I told Tuckie, and gave her a big pinch and ran home to shine my shoes although the Moonlight Excursion was more than a week away.

  While shining my shoes a dark thought occurred to me; the usual dark thought: money. Tickets to the Moonlight Excursion were one dollar and twenty-five cents apiece. That made two dollars and fifty cents. Then there was a corsage for Tuckie—another three dollars. Then there was Sen-Sen, ten cents. I would need about six dollars, counting tips and miscellaneous.

  And where would I get six dollars? Not from my father—not after just squeezing eight dollars out of him the day before. And not from my mother either. And not from my kid brother who uses his full allowance to buy six ice-cream bars at the school cafeteria ev
ery day at lunch. There was only one place in the world for me to get six dollars—Red Knees.

  But she would never lend it to me—especially not to take Tuckie to the Moonlight Excursion. How, then, could I separate six dollars from Red Knees? I thought and I thought and then I came up with one of the vilest schemes the mind of man has ever devised. Believe me I wouldn’t have pulled it on anybody but a skunk like Red Knees.

  I went over to her house that night where she was sitting, as usual, alone and scared while the sea gulls bombarded her house with clam shells. “Hiya, Red Knees,” I said. “Read the paper tonight?”

  “No. What’s in it?”

  “Bit of crime wave. Burglars, robbers, and prowlers all over the city. It’s terrible.”

  “Crikey!” she breathed and clutched my arm.

  “Well, so long, Red Knees,” I said, starting away.

  She held on. “Where you going?” she asked.

  “Oh, just out.”

  “Stay with me, Dobie. Please stay,” she begged.

  I sprung my trap. “For how much?” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “If I’m going to be a sitter for you,” I said, “I want to be paid like a sitter.”

  “Why, this is highway robbery!” she yelled.

  “Yeah?” I yelled right back. “And what have you been doing to me all these years? How about the time you charged a dime apiece to tell me the provinces of Canada? How about the forty cents for the Pythagorean theorem? How about—”

  “How much do you want to sit?” she interrupted.

  “The regular baby sitter’s rate—seventy-five cents an hour.”

  “Never!”

  “All right, fifty cents. But that’s my final price.”

  “Never!”

  “Good night, Red Knees.” I started out.

  “All right, you win. But—” she swore a mighty oath—“I’ll get you for this!”

  For three nights she sat and glared at me, which made me feel like an even bigger louse than I was. I kept telling myself that I was only getting some of my own back, but it didn’t do any good. That Red Knees is so scrawny and helpless-looking that half the time I feel like crying when I see her. The other half the time I feel like laughing. Any way you look at her, she’s a mess.

  After three nights I decided I couldn’t charge Red Knees any more. Anyhow, I already had six dollars and fifty cents. I bought the tickets for the Moonlight Excursion and ordered a corsage and got a pair of garters so my sox wouldn’t drag while I was dancing, and I went over to Red Knees’ house. I could see her folks were away; their car was gone. The house was locked and all the blinds were drawn right down to the bottom. I rang.

  After a minute the door opened just a crack and Red Knees peeked out. “What do you want?” she said.

  “I want to sit with you,” I said.

  “No, thanks.”

  “But this is for free.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Red Knees,” I said. “You know you’re scared to be alone.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” said she. “What makes you think I’m alone?”

  “Who’s in there?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she said and slammed the door in my face.

  I went home feeling pretty upset. Not jealous, mind you. Just upset. I mean the thought of being jealous about Red Knees, who I hate like poison, is too ridiculous even to think about. But I was pretty upset.

  I was even more upset the next night and the night after that when the same thing happened. I climbed way up on the trellis and peeked in every window to see who was sitting with Red Knees, but the blinds were pulled tight. And she’d never tell me who was with her either. It was pretty upsetting.

  But I soon stopped brooding about it. I mean, I had other things on my mind. The Moonlight Excursion was on Friday night, and by then I had to make my cowlick stay down and stop biting my nails.

  At five o’clock Friday afternoon the phone rang. It was Tuckie. “I’m very sorry, Dobie,” she said, “but I can’t go on the Moonlight Excursion with you tonight. I have just come down with a dread virus.”

  “You looked all right at school this afternoon,” I said, which she did.

  “This just came on,” she said. “It’s one of those terrible twelve-hour things.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling about as miserable as a man gets. “Well, drink plenty of water. That’ll flush out your system.”

  “I will. ’Bye.”

  “’Bye,” I said and dragged my gloomy bones over to Red Knees’, where I usually go when I am low in my mind. “Tough,” she said, when I had told her the whole dreary story. “But why don’t you take me to the Moonlight Excursion?”

  “Hah!” I replied.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” said I, “you are thirteen years old and a beast into the bargain.”

  “Is that so?” she said. “You wait right here.”

  Then she ran upstairs and came down in a few minutes in the first long dress I had ever seen her wear. I won’t say she looked good, but at least she had her scabby knees covered, and the dress had lots of ribbons and tassels and scam like that which was very fetching. Also she seemed to be sticking out just a trifle in the front which I had never noticed before.

  “And look here,” she said. “They come off next week.” The braces, she meant. She pulled them off and showed me her teeth, and I’m bound to admit that you’d go a long way to find straighter teeth.

  “Oh, all right,” I said and took her on the Moonlight Excursion.

  About ten minutes after we sailed, I was dancing with Red Knees and not having too much fun because she likes to lead, when all of a sudden across the dance floor, I spotted Tuckie in the arms of Murder McIntyre. I gave a full-throated cry and clenched up my fists and went shooting across the floor.

  Red Knees stopped me. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I am going,” I said, “to take that rotten Tuckie and throw her overboard.”

  “You are not!” declared Red Knees, putting herself right smack in front of me. “You are not going to make a fool of yourself because I won’t let you. I respect you too much. You are the sweetest darlingest boy in the United States and much too good for old Tuckie.”

  “Me?” said I, looking at her askance.

  “You! I love you and I mean to have you so you might as well quit fighting because I am ten times as smart as you and will outwit you at every turn.… And besides I am the right age for you and next year I will have my puberty and you will have more money because even a psychopathic miser like your father will have to agree that a boy of sixteen can’t get along on a dollar a week. So come and drink a glass of punch and hold my hand and forget about old Tuckie.”

  So I went and had a glass of punch and held her hand and looked at her face in the moonlight and thought, “She is a beast all right, but she is less of a beast every year. Maybe I will go along with her.”

  Then I had another thought and dropped Red Knees’ hand like it was burning. “Red Knees,” I said, “you are the most treacherous girl I ever knew.”

  “What do you mean?” said Red Knees.

  “I just figured it out,” I said. “In order to go on the Moonlight Excursion you have to have a C average. True?”

  “True.”

  “Murder McIntyre is the dumbest kid in Central High School. Maybe on the North American continent. True?”

  “True.”

  “He didn’t have a C average. So Tuckie couldn’t go on the Moonlight Excursion with him. So she chose me as a consolation prize. True?”

  “True.”

  “So somebody must have tutored Murder McIntyre, worked on him till he got his average up to a C. And then he was eligible and Tuckie dumped me and came with him. True?”

  “True.”

  “Red Knees,” I said, “these last few nights—the nights when you wouldn’t let me into your house—who was sitting you?”

/>   Red Knees grinned up at me.

  “Red Knees,” I said, “if you got to grin at me, be good enough to take off your braces.”

  Which she did. Then I grinned back. Then I gave her a smooch, which was pretty good. Not great, you understand. But pretty good.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I LOVE R. G. SPENCER

  by Dobie Gillis, aged 15½

  My new girl’s real name is Helen Spencer, but I call her R.G. That stands for Rotten Girl, which is exactly what she is. She’s the rottenest girl in town, and I’m here to tell you that if there’s one thing I know about, it’s girls. I’ve been going with girls for more than six years which maybe doesn’t seem very long to you, but it’s pretty long when you only happen to be fifteen and a half years old, which is what I only happen to be.

  When I first started going with girls, the guys in the gang called me a sissy and a pantywaist and like that, but I’m here to tell you they’re singing a different tune now. Why, my best friend, Nate Gahagan, who only started on girls with Alma Gristede when he used to live next door to me, this Nate came up to me the other day and he said, “Dobie, I’m here to tell you that if I’d of known girls were so great, I’d of started taking them out when you did.”

  Well, that’s a proven fact—girls are great. I keep telling my brother Dan—he’s ten—that he ought to start taking them out. “Dan,” I keep telling him, “you don’t know what you’re missing. Girls are the end—the living end!” But Dan won’t pay any attention to me. He just keeps hanging around the gym all the time.

  Not that I have anything against the gym. In fact, I’m all in favor of athletics and calisthenics and like that. I happen to have a very good built myself. I mean it’s kind of a short built, but a good one. I keep in shape with hand grips which develop the flexor muscles, and dumbbells which develop the biceps and triceps, and a set of 75-pound bar-bells which develop the trapezius muscle and the latissimus dorsi muscle and the pectoralis major muscle. The bar-bells also develop the muscles of your leg. I don’t know their names.

  But to get back to girls, I’m here to tell you that there isn’t much I don’t know about them. I’m not trying to make out I’m a big operator or like that; I’m just telling you a proven fact. I know all about girls because I learned it the hard way. I made every mistake in the book, as you can see from having read thus far in this one. You should of seen some of the weird girls I used to take out. Talk about weird—wow! You should of seen the first one I ever took out. She was the weirdest one of all. Edna her name was, and she had some kind of mysterious scalp condition. They had to shave all her hair off and she used to come to school with a whole bunch of gauze wound around her head. One day one of the guys, he saw that the end of the gauze was kind of loose, so he gave it a yank and the whole thing came off. Boy, when I saw that naked skull, I flipped! I thought it was the living end! I started going with Edna that very same day, and I went with her till her hair grew back in.