King Dork

by Frank Portman

  She seemed to spring to life. A bit. I mean, she acted as though she thought that was pretty funny. I was sitting there in silence trying to decide whether she was being sarcastic or not. Well, she was at least a little stoned. But I gotta say, her giggling like that in response to my powerful vocabulary, THC-enhanced and sarcastic or not, was pretty fucking charming.

  She was hitting my arm. I guess she had said something while I had been in my own world trying to psychoanalyze her, mesmerized by her belly, which her T-shirt had been designed to reveal, but maybe not quite as much as was being revealed now that she was all stretched out on the couch, and which I couldn’t stop staring at. I mean, it was almost physically impossible to pry my eyes away from it. I did, though, which made a ripping sound, like Velcro.

  I went: “?”

  “Getting a good look, hand-jive?”

  I drew back, mortified. But she was just kidding around, still laughing and hitting my arm.

  “Slut heaven,” she said. “Do slut heaven.”

  Now I was really confused. I think I may have said, “Um…,” and half smiled so it would look like I knew what was going on while I tried to figure out what was going on. She grabbed my head on either side, put her face very close to mine, and said, slowly and deliberately, the way you talk to a retarded person or an ESL student:

  “How. Are. Things. In. Slut. Heaven?”

  It took me a beat, but I realized: she must be from Salthaven, or possibly Salthaven Vista, not Clearview Heights. Duh. I’d never heard that name for Salthaven, but it was a pretty good one, and this time my half-smile was at least semigenuine.

  But she was still nudging me.

  “Slut heaven, going once, going twice…”

  “Um, concupiscent?” I said.

  See, I was a little slow, but I guess we had established the foundations of a game where she asked how things were in a town, and I responded with the appropriate word from 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. She shrieked and clapped her hands theatrically and gave me this admiring sort of smile that I had never, ever seen anyone direct my way before. I swear to God, she did, and it didn’t even seem very sarcastic.

  The beauty of this moment was slightly tarnished by the fact that in the back of my mind I was thinking of Mr. Schtuppe and how he might mispronounce “concupiscent.” In fact, I’m not totally sure I didn’t mispronounce it. But I’ve got to say that I hadn’t previously grasped the true benefits of making words your slaves. Fiona was an unusual girl, though, not like any of the Hillmont High girls I’d observed. For one thing, what might cause an ordinary person to recoil, or at best make a mental note never to play Scrabble with you, seemed to make her horny. Well, that and all the beer and marijuana. I hadn’t realized I had one, but this was my kind of woman.

  So now we come to the weirdest part. I swear to God this is exactly what happened.

  Fiona grabbed my wrist and moved my hand over to her belly so that my palm was on her stomach just to the right of her belly button and my fingers draped over her hip. I want to say I almost felt a physical electric-y shock from the feeling of her bare skin. It was so surprising. I knew I was supposed to kiss her, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it exactly. She scrunched up to me like she was trying to smell my shoulder and I leaned down and we started to rub our faces on each other in the general mouth area. She made this quiet “mmm” sound and started pushing her tongue all the way in my mouth and sort of swirling it in a circle. Counterclockwise. I started to do that, too, after a fashion, but I knew she could tell I didn’t know what I was doing. I was in a clumsy, mentally deficient daze. I started to slide the tips of my fingers downwards just underneath the waistband of her jeans, so it was jeans-fingertips-underwear-skin with one fingertip poking slightly underneath the underwear layer, but she squirmed and said, all mumbly because she had her mouth full: “Uh, no, mmm, baby…” Uh-oh, I thought, I blew it, I wasn’t supposed to do that yet or at all and the whole make-out scene was officially over, but then she said in a kind of whispery voice, “My tits, my tits.” I started to move my hand up the other way and reached her left breast underneath her shirt. I had never touched a breast before. She seemed to shiver a little when I touched it. Somehow, I don’t know how, I knew that she wanted me to start pinching her nipple, and then, when I had started squeezing it and rolling it between my thumb and forefinger and she started saying “mmm” again and breathing a little laboriously I knew that she wanted me to squeeze it a whole lot harder. I was really digging into it with my nails, and twisting it back and forth while still keeping up with the tongue rotation thing as best I could. Her breathing sounded more like wheezing than breathing. I don’t know about the Frenching, but somehow I knew that I was doing the nipple thing right, how she wanted me to be doing it. Though it must have kind of hurt. Then suddenly her head fell back and she leaned away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper. She was still breathing a bit strangely and she didn’t look sorry. She looked—how? Conspiratorial? “Look, I can’t do anything with you because my boyfriend’s friends are all here. In fact, we really shouldn’t be sitting here like this.”

  I didn’t know what I should say.

  She suddenly leaned in and bit me on the neck right above the shoulder, and hopped off the couch and zoomed out. I didn’t know what to do.

  Eventually I got up and went upstairs and back into the hallway. I scanned the clumps of drama mods, but I didn’t expect her to be there. She had clearly intended to flee the scene of the crime and was already gone. As I walked through the house tunneling through the little clusters of drunk and stoned kids and to the front door and down the walk and into the street and on my way home, I was really glad I had my army coat, which is long enough to cover up the front of my pants.

  Otherwise, I might never have made it out of there.

  SON, YOU GOT A BAD APTITUDE

  Now, I’ve been avoiding this part, because I find the whole thing a little embarrassing, but I figure I might as well get it over with. I mean the Chi-Mo story.

  Back in seventh grade they gave everyone this multiple-choice test to determine what you were supposed to be when you grow up. The way it worked was, certain combinations of multiple-choice answers would point to, say, Medicine, meaning you should try to be a doctor. Or you would get Law, meaning you were going to be a lawyer. There was Business, and The Arts, and both kinds of Technology, Food and Computer. Some kids got Athletics, even though it seems like the wrong type of test to determine something like that, and quite a few got one called Counseling and Social Work. Which sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the counselors and social workers who designed the test, but never mind.

  Everyone got two results, so you’d have something to fall back on if the other one didn’t work out. No one took it that seriously, but it was supposed to be kind of fun to see what you ended up with. Answer some touchy-feely questions, sit back, and watch the machine reveal your future.

  Somehow, I ended up with Medicine (which was normal) and Clergy. Which was not. Clergy was bizarre. I was the only one to get Clergy. What the hell were they doing saying “Clergy” to a seventh grader? My future had never seemed to have much going for it, but this was a dark avenue no one had yet considered. It freaked me out.

  There was a Peer Interaction and Response Segment where everyone was comparing answers, and someone saw mine.

  “Clergy!”

  Most of the kids in the room hadn’t even heard the word before. I played dumb, didn’t say anything. That can make some situations go away, but not all.

  Eventually, though, they figured it out and someone said “Father Tom!” That wouldn’t have been too bad, as nicknames go, though it still would have been pretty weird for a seventh grader. But then someone said: “child molester!” Then everyone started saying “child molester.” That was shortened to Chi-Mo. And that got shortened to Moe. Or I guess maybe it’s technically spelled Mo’.

  The process only took around fift
een minutes, ending when Mr. Bianchi threw an eraser at someone and said “settle down” to signal the beginning of the Pause and Reflect Segment. But by the end of that fifteen minutes I was officially Moe, or Chi-Mo, or sometimes Mo-Ped, and that’s the way it was ever since.

  So there you have it. My nickname is an abbreviation for “child molester,” or just “molester,” whether the people who use it know it or not. As I was saying before, it’s just about the poorest excuse for an insult anyone could imagine. It doesn’t even make sense. Still, anyone who calls me Moe, even when they may mean no harm, is a potential enemy. That’s just the way it is.

  Another thing I’ve got to explain, and now is as good a time as any, is how I’ve got this reputation as a Guns and Ammo guy. Otherwise, some of the stuff that happened in the week or so following the party will be kind of hard to understand.

  It started as a matter of necessity, more or less a ploy. I ended up getting kind of into it in spite of myself, I admit, but for the most part it’s still just a means to an end.

  The whole thing goes back to early ninth grade, and it started with this one specific incident at the beginning of the year. Matt Lynch and his friends, who had been hassling me as a sort of hobby ever since I can remember, had stopped me as I was coming out of the boys’ bathroom and pushed me back inside.

  “Why do you look like a wet rat?” Matt Lynch said, while his friends stood behind him blocking the door.

  The question, like all the others of its type, didn’t have an answer. But he would keep asking it over and over to watch you squirm and to see what you would do. Then he’d get tired of that and move on to the conclusion: beating you senseless, or as senseless as he had time for or thought he could get away with.

  Biff Bang Pow. In the stomach, in the ribs or head after they trip you over. Maybe stomping on the knees or wrist. And finally maybe letting a slow, thin string of spit fall down on your face, if they were in the mood for worrying about presentation. You know, like a garnish.

  After I had finished vomiting in the toilet stall and cleaning myself up as best I could, I started to ask myself: how can a person prevent Matt Lynch and his retarded subhuman sidekicks from asking you why you look like a wet rat all the time? I knew the answer had to lie not in trying to apply superior force, which wouldn’t have been practical, but rather in figuring out how to mess with his mind.

  My idea, which had sounded far-fetched at first, ended up working better than I could have hoped. I started to wear an army coat from the surplus store, and to carry around magazines like Today’s Mercenary, Soldier of Fortune, and International Gun. I’d mention my interest in guns and military hardware and urban warfare techniques at strategic moments when I knew I’d be overheard by people who would mention it to other people who would mention it. And I practiced what I hoped was a wild-eyed, crazy look in the mirror (just the eyes—everything else frozen) till I could do it without thinking. It would have looked better without the glasses, I admit, but unfortunately, I needed them to see. In the beginning, I put on a big pentagram pendant as well, but that was overkill and made me look like a moron, so I ended up ditching the pentagram and just concentrating on the military stuff.

  People started to look at me funny. I mean, on the rare occasions that people noticed me at all, they started to look at me in a slightly different funny way than the funny way they used to look at me when I wasn’t trying so hard to induce them to look at me funny. I was still a nonentity. But I believe I managed to introduce enough uncertainty about my stability into the equation to give at least some would-be harassers pause when they might otherwise have pushed me back into the boys’ bathroom without a second thought.

  What I learned was this: people like to pick on people of lower status whom they believe they understand. But if something freaks them out enough, it can plant seeds of self-doubt, and sometimes that can be enough to inhibit action, even when you present no real threat to them. Some people are more easily rattled than others, and everyone has a different threshold. But it sure seemed like Matt Lynch’s personal self-doubt threshold was such that his self-confidence started to erode involuntarily when confronted with the guns and ammo trip. I had accidentally stumbled on his number. I lucked out.

  There are a lot of factors in the situation, and the gun-freak act may have been only one of them. All I know is that when I started to wear the army coat and carry Today’s Mercenary under my arm and talk about precision sights and shot group training methods and cordite and so on, Matt Lynch seemed to lose interest in trying to push me into bathrooms and beat me up. Though I’m sure he still participated avidly in the anonymous locker exploits and gum throwing and derogatory Chi-Mo graffiti and so forth. He’s only human. In a manner of speaking.

  DAZED AND OBSESSED

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Fiona and her mysterious ways. I could still feel her teeth marks on my neck, from the inside and from the outside. I began to notice this distant, yet somehow intense, constricted feeling in my chest whenever I thought of her, which was—well, a lot.

  I don’t want to leave the impression that I was obsessed with Fiona, walking around in a Fiona-addled daze. The reason I don’t want to leave that impression is because it would be pathetic. But I don’t know who I’m trying to fool here: of course I was dazed and obsessed.

  The Fiona couch episode had been the most successful interaction with a female in my life, surpassing many of my least plausible dreams. A case could be made that it had been my only genuine interaction with a nonrelated female ever, the previous ones having taken place in my head as pure fantasy or in the real world where I had been an object of amusement rather than a true participant.

  How could I not be obsessed? It was the most significant event in my life so far. By far.

  But there was a lot about it I didn’t get. She was a mystery. I’m not going to go into all the different angles from which I tried to examine the Case of the Disappearing Fake-Mod Girl. But the central, most important question was: why had Fiona decided to kiss on me and everything, when no previous girl I’d ever come in contact with would have been caught dead in that situation?

  I came up with six points, or topics for discussion, which I present in ascending order of validity (one being the most valid) along with some of my notes.

  Six: She was impressed with the band.

  True, she hadn’t seemed too interested. But when I first mentioned the Stoned Marmadukes she said, “Yeah?” and there was something about that “yeah” that seemed a little more fascinated than other “yeah’s” I had experienced in my life. Dubious, yet possible.

  Five: She was captivated by my masterful command of the English language.

  By my count, I had said no more than twenty-one words to her, and that’s only if you count “um.” And my first bit of dialogue had been nothing less retarded than “I’m cool.” But clearly my ability to make words my slaves had had some comedic effect. And girls dig guys who can make them laugh. At least, they do according to scripts written by TV and film comedy writers. Likely, but not necessarily crucial.

  Four: She had no idea who I was, and hadn’t figured out that I was an Untouchable.

  Lack of accurate information had to have been a factor. And anonymity. I only knew her first name and she didn’t know any of my names. But was that enough? The mere fact that my reputation had not preceded me? Could I have come off as some kind of Cool Dude when disassociated from Chi-Mo, the dork, the myth, the legend? Hardly. I still radiated me-ness, I’m sure. Relevant, but insufficient.

  Three: Fiona prefers dorks.

  I’ve heard that there are girls with this fetish. It’s a complicated matter that I don’t completely understand, but I’d guess it mainly applies to girls who for one reason or another can’t do any better and who persuade themselves that settling for a degree of dorkiness is better than nothing. Are there any girls as hot-looking as Fiona in this category? No way. But maybe her instinctive alterna-ness (in her capacity as a CHS dr
ama mod) made her more tolerant of dorkiness, less repelled by it, even when it radiated from the anonymous King of the Superdorks.

  Two: She knew no one was watching.

  This one almost goes without saying.

  One: She was totally high.

  Well, obviously.

  MR. JANISCH’S UNDERGROUND BUNKER

  I was mulling over some of these points in Geometry that Monday when I felt an eraser hit me on the forehead.

  “Somewhere else you’d rather be, Thomas Charles Henderson?” said Mr. Janisch. He always calls people by their full names as they appear on the roll sheet. Just to be a dick.

  “No, of course not, Mr. Janisch. Copying these problems and their proofs from the front and back sections of this book respectively is the realization of a lifelong dream.”

  Of course, I didn’t really say that.

  What I did was: I gave him a look that was intended to convey the impression that I had been contemplating the mysteries of the world of Pure Geometry and that I had been on the verge of discovering an Important Truth that would have been a boon to humanity and would also have had considerable commercial value had my concentration not been shattered by his supremely ill-timed, inappropriate, and possibly actionable eraser assault.

  But at the same time, I was in no mood for Mr. Janisch’s foolishness, so I’m not surprised that my look may also have managed to convey the sentiment “No duh, Einstein.”

  Six of one, half dozen of the other, really.

  The punishment for this sort of low-level insubordination is usually that you are made to copy out something, typically a dictionary page, onto a sheet of notepaper. This is no big deal. There is little difference between this penalty and the other assignments they give you as part of your “academic” work. The only difference is the thing you’re copying. A dictionary page is preferable to a chapter from The Catcher in the Rye, even, because, well, at least the chances are good that it will be a page you’ve never copied before and that’s special.