Later encounters—there had been five of them (five and a half, he supposed, if you wanted to count last night)—hadn’t been so good. They had, in fact, gotten worse at what seemed an exponential rate ... although he didn’t believe even now that Betty had been aware of that (at least not until last night). In fact, quite the opposite. Betty apparently believed she had found the battering-ram of her dreams.
Todd hadn’t felt any of the things he was supposed to feel at a time like that. Kissing her lips was like kissing warm but uncooked liver. Having her tongue in his mouth only made him wonder what kind of germs she was carrying, and sometimes he thought he could smell her fillings—an unpleasant metallic odor, like chrome. Her breasts were bags of meat. No more.
Todd had done it twice more with her before Dussander’s heart attack. Each time he had more trouble getting erect. In both cases he had finally succeeded by using a fantasy. She was stripped naked in front of all their friends. Crying. Todd was forcing her to walk up and down before them while he cried out:
Show your tits! Let them see your snatch, you cheap slut! Spread your cheeks! That’s right, bend over and SPREAD them!
Betty’s appreciation was not at all surprising. He was a good lover, not in spite of his problems but because of them. Getting hard was only the first step. Once you achieved erection, you had to have an orgasm. The fourth time they had done it—this was three days after Dussander’s heart attack—he had pounded away at her for over ten minutes. Betty Trask thought she had died and gone to heaven; she had three orgasms and was trying for a fourth when Todd recalled an old fantasy ... what was, in fact, the First Fantasy. The girl on the table, clamped and helpless. The huge dildo. The rubber squeeze-bulb. Only now, desperate and sweaty and almost insane with his desire to come and get this horror over with, the face of the girl on the table became Betty’s face. That brought on a joyless, rubbery spasm that he supposed was, technically, at least, an orgasm. A moment later Betty was whispering in his ear, her breath warm and redolent of Juicy Fruit gun: “Lover, you do me any old time. Just call me.”
Todd had nearly groaned aloud.
The nub of his dilemma was this: Wouldn’t his reputation suffer if he broke off with a girl who obviously wanted to put out for him? Wouldn’t people wonder why? Part of him said they would not. He remembered walking down the hall behind two senior boys during his freshman year and hearing one of them tell the other he had broken off with his girlfriend. The other wanted to know why. “Fucked ’er out,” the first said, and both of them bellowed goatish laughter.
If someone asks me why I dropped her, I’ll just say I fucked her out. But what if she says we only did it five times? Is that enough? What? ... How much? ... How many? ... Who’ll talk?
...
What’ll they say?
So his mind ran on, as restless as a hungry rat in an insoluble maze. He was vaguely aware that he was turning a minor problem into a big problem, and that this very inability to solve the problem had something to say about how shaky he had gotten. But knowing it brought him no fresh ability to change his behavior, and he sank into a black depression.
College. College was the answer. College offered an excuse to break with Betty that no one could question. But September seemed so far away.
The fifth time it had taken him almost twenty minutes to get hard, but Betty had proclaimed the experience well worth the wait. And then, last night, he hadn’t been able to perform at all.
“What are you, anyway?” Betty had asked petulantly. After twenty minutes of manipulating his lax penis, she was dishevelled and out of patience. “Are you one of those AC/DC guys?”
He very nearly strangled her on the spot. And if he’d had his .30-.30—
“Well, I’ll be a son of a
gun!
Congratulations, son!”
“Huh?” He looked up and out of his black study.
“You made the Southern Cal High School All-Stars!” His father was grinning with pride and pleasure.
“Is that so?” For a moment he hardly knew what his father was talking about; he had to grope for the meaning of the words. “Say, yeah, Coach Haines mentioned something to me about that at the end of the year. Said he was putting me and Billy DeLyons up. I never expected anything to happen.”
“Well Jesus, you don’t seem very excited about it!”
“I’m still trying
(who gives a ripe fuck?)
to get used to the idea.” With a huge effort, he managed a grin. “Can I see the article?”
His father handed the paper across the table to Todd and got to his feet. “I’m going to wake Monica up. She’s got to see this before we leave.”
No, God
—
Ican’t face both of them this morning.
“Aw, don’t do that. You know she won’t be able to get back to sleep if you wake her up. We’ll leave it for her on the table.”
“Yes, I suppose we could do that. You’re a damned thoughtful boy, Todd.” He clapped Todd on the back, and Todd squeezed his eyes closed. At the same time he shrugged his shoulders in an aw-shucks gesture that made his father laugh. Todd opened his eyes again and looked at the paper.
4 BOYS NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS, the headline read. Beneath were pictures of them in their uniforms—the catcher and left-fielder from Fairview High, the harp south-paw from Mountford, and Todd to the far right, grinning openly out at the world from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He read the story and saw that Billy DeLyons had made the second squad. That, at least, was something to feel happy about. DeLyons could claim he was a Methodist until his tongue fell out, if it made him feel good, but he wasn’t fooling Todd. He knew perfectly well what Billy DeLyons was. Maybe he ought to introduce him to Betty Trask, she was another sheeny. He had wondered about that for a long time, and last night he had decided for sure. The Trasks were passing for white. One look at her nose and that olive complexion—her old man’s was even worse—and you knew. That was probably why he hadn’t been able to get it up. It was simple: his cock had known the difference before his brain. Who did they think they were kidding, calling themselves Trask?
“Congratulations again, son.”
He looked up and first saw his father’s hand stuck out, then his father’s foolishly grinning face.
Your buddy Trask is a yid!
he heard himself yelling into his father’s face.
That’s why I was impotent with his slut of a daughter last night! That’s the reason!
Then, on the heels of that, the cold voice that sometimes came at moments like this rose up from deep inside him, shutting off the rising flood of irrationality, as if
(GET HOLD OF YOURSELF RIGHT NOW)
behind steel gates.
He took his father’s hand and shook it. Smiled guilelessly into his father’s proud face. Said: “Jeez, thanks, Dad.”
They left that page of the newspaper folded back and a note for Monica, which Dick insisted Todd write and sign
Your All-Star Son
,
Todd.
22
Ed French, aka “Pucker” French, aka Sneaker Pete and The Ked Man,
also
aka Rubber Ed French, was in the small and lovely seaside town of San Remo for a guidance counsellors’ convention. It was a waste of time if ever there had been one—all guidance counsellors could ever agree on was not to agree on anything—and he grew bored with the papers, seminars, and discussion periods after a single day. Halfway through the second day, he discovered he was also bored with San Remo, and that of the adjectives small, lovely, and seaside, the
key
adjective was probably
small.
Gorgeous views and redwood trees aside, San Remo didn’t have a movie theater or a bowling alley, and Ed hadn’t wanted to go in the place’s only bar—it had a dirt parking lot filled with pickup trucks, and most of the pickups had Reagan stickers on their rusty bumpers and tailgates. He wasn’t afraid of being picked on, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an evening looking at men in cowboy hats and listening to Loretta Lynn on the jukebox.
So here he was on the third day of a convention which stretched out over an incredible four days; here he was in room 217 of the Holiday Inn, his wife and daughter at home, the TV broken, an unpleasant smell hanging around in the bathroom. There was a swimming pool, but his eczema was so bad this summer that he wouldn’t have been caught dead in a bathing suit. From the shins down he looked like a leper. He had an hour before the next workshop (Helping the Vocally Challenged Child—what they meant was doing something for kids who stuttered or who had cleft palates, but we wouldn’t want to come right out and say that, Christ no, someone might lower our salaries), he had eaten lunch at San Remo’s only restaurant, he didn’t feel like a nap, and the TV’s one station was showing a re-run of
Bewitched.
So he sat down with the telephone book and began to flip through it aimlessly, hardly aware of what he was doing, wondering distantly if he knew anyone crazy enough about either small, lovely, or seaside to live in San Remo. He supposed this was what all the bored people in all the Holiday Inns all over the world ended up doing—looking for a forgotten friend or relative to call up on the phone. It was that,
Bewitched,
or the Gideon Bible. And if you did happen to get hold of somebody, what the hell did you say? “Frank! How the hell are you? And by the way, which was it—small, lovely, or seaside?” Sure. Right. Give that man a cigar and set him on fire.
Yet, as he lay on the bed flipping through the thin San Remo white pages and half-scanning the columns, it seemed to him that he
did
know somebody in San Remo. A book salesman? One of Sondra’s nieces or nephews, of which there were marching battalions? A poker buddy from college? The relative of a student? That seemed to ring a bell, but he couldn’t fine it down any more tightly.
He kept thumbing, and found he was sleepy after all. He had almost dozed off when it came to him and he sat up, wide-awake again.
Lord Peter!
They were re-running those Wimsey stories on PBS just lately—
Clouds of Witness, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors.
He and Sondra were hooked. A man named Ian Carmichael played Wimsey, and Sondra was nuts for him. So nuts, in fact, that Ed, who didn’t think Carmichael looked like Lord Peter at all, actually became quite irritated.
“Sandy, the shape of his face is all wrong. And he’s wearing false teeth, for heaven’s sake!”
“Poo,” Sondra had replied airily from the couch where she was curled up. “You’re just jealous. He’s so
handsome.”
“Daddy’s jealous, Daddy’s jealous,” little Norma sang, prancing around the living room in her duck pajamas.
“You should have been in bed an hour ago,” Ed told her, gazing at his daughter with a jaundiced eye. “And if I keep noticing you’re
here,
I’ll probably remember that you aren’t
there.
”
Little Norma was momentarily abashed. Ed turned back to Sondra.
“I remember back three or four years ago. I had a kid named Todd Bowden, and his grandfather came in for a conference. Now
that
guy looked like Wimsey. A very
old
Wimsey, but the shape of his face was right, and—”
“Wim-zee, Wim-zee,
Dim-zee, Jim-zee,”
little Norma sang.
“Wim-zee, Bim-zee,
doodle-oodle-ooo-doo-”
“Shh, both of you,” Sondra said. “I think he’s the most
beautiful
man.” Irritating woman!
But hadn’t Todd Bowden’s grandfather retired to San Remo? Sure. It had been on the forms. Todd had been one of the brightest boys in that year’s class. Then, all at once, his grades had gone to hell. The old man had come in, told a familiar tale of marital difficulties, and had persuaded Ed to let the situation alone for awhile and see if things didn’t straighten themselves out. Ed’s view was that the old
laissez-faire
bit didn’t work—if you told a teenage kid to root, hog, or die, he or she usually died. But the old man had been almost eerily persuasive (it was the resemblance to Wimsey, perhaps), and Ed had agreed to give Todd to the end of the next Flunk Card period. And damned if Todd hadn’t pulled through. The old man must have gone right through the whole family and really kicked some ass, Ed thought. He looked like the type who not only could do it, but who might derive a certain dour pleasure from it. Then, just two days ago, he had seen Todd’s picture in the paper—he had made the Southern Cal All-Stars in baseball. No mean feat when you consider that about five hundred boys were nominated each spring. He supposed he might never have come up with the grandfather’s name if he hadn’t seen the picture.
He flicked through the white pages more purposefully now, ran his finger down a column of fine type, and there it was. BOWDEN, VICTOR s. 403 Ridge Lane. Ed dialed the number and it rang several times at the other end. He was just about to hang up when an old man answered. “Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Bowden. Ed French. From Santo Donato Junior High.”
“Yes?” Politeness, but no more. Certainly no recognition. Well, the old guy was three years further along (weren’t they all!) and things undoubtedly slipped his mind from time to time.
“Do you remember me, sir?”
“Should I?” Bowden’s voice was cautious, and Ed smiled. The old man forgot things, but he didn’t want anybody to know if he could help it. His own old man had been that way when his hearing started to go.
“I was your grandson Todd’s guidance counsellor at S.D.J.H.S. I called to congratulate you. He sure tore up the pea-patch when he got to high school, didn’t he? And now he’s All-Conference to top it off. Wow!”
“Todd!”
the old man said, his voice brightening immediately. “Yes, he certainly did a fine job, didn’t he? Second in his class! And the girl who was ahead of him took the business courses.” A sniff of disdain in the old man’s voice. “My son called and offered to take me to Todd’s commencement, but I’m in a wheelchair now. I broke my hip last January. I didn’t want to go in a wheelchair. But I have his graduation picture right in the hall, you bet! Todd’s made his parents very proud. And me, of course.”