Fran Ross - Oreo

She was once inadvertently in the state of hwip-as when she was riding in her uncle’s car. A man standing on a corner as the car passed had seen her and had made sucking noises to denote his approval of her appearance. Oreo did not consciously know she had heard these primitive sounds, but as she was getting out of the car, she was in such an advanced state of hwip-as that when she yanked at the ashtray, mistakenly thinking it was a door handle, she heedlessly created for her uncle the only three-door club coupe in America.

Half WIT

Oreo’s tutors were on vacation. She needed something to do to occupy her fourteen-year-old mind for a few weeks, so she put an ad in the papers. Three days later, she received a phone call from what sounded like a young white man.

“May I speak to Miss Christine Clark?” he asked.

“This is Christine Clark.”

“Are you the girl who advertised in the Situations Wanted column of the Inquirer ?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Dr. Jafferts. I’m the medical examiner for district five. I was wondering if I could interest you in a job?”

“I hope so.”

“Your ad said you’re a recent college graduate.”

“Yes, it did say that.”

“And your field was Chinese history?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” he said. “Well, let me tell you a little about the job we have in mind. In this job, you’d be negotiating government contracts.”

“Chinese history doesn’t exactly prepare—”

“That’s all right,” he said generously. “We would train you. This job doesn’t come under civil service. You’d be working with another woman. The job involves some traveling within a hundred-mile radius of the city. Do you drive?”

“Yes.”

“The job pays ninety-five to start and gas-mileage money. The hours are nine to three-thirty, five days a week. How does that sound?”

“Fine.”

“Now, here’s the catch. Would you submit to a medical examination for the job?”

“Certainly. Where’s your office?”

“Well, I don’t exactly have any particular office. I have to travel all over the district. I can give you the examination over the phone.”

Aha, thought Oreo. “Over the phone?” she asked.

“Yes. You’d be surprised at how thorough a phone examination can be.” He paused, then said, “Do you have a house or an apartment?”

“House,” said Oreo.

“And where is that located?”

She gave him her address.

Are you alone?”

Oreo decided to go along with him. “Why, yes.”

“I just asked because some of the questions may seem highly personal. But this is a combination psychological and medical exam, so don’t be alarmed.”

“I promise,” said Oreo.

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” lied Oreo.

“Are you a virgin?”

Which answer is better for a shmuck like this? she wondered, and, having decided, said, “No.”

“Would you mind telling me the color of your underclothes?”

Oreo covered her mouth to keep from giggling.

“I mean, are they white or different colors like pink, blue?” “All white,” said Oreo.

“Um-hmm. And what material are they? Silk, rayon, cotton?”

“Nylon.”

“I see. Now, would you mind telling me all the words you know that mean sexual intercourse?”

With a wicked smile, Oreo said, “Certainly. Procreation, cohabitation,coition, coitus .”

“No, no!” He sounded terribly disappointed. Then, clearing his throat, he said calmly, “I don’t mean… scientific terms. I mean just any words that might come to mind or that you might hear on the streets, for instance.”

“I’m sorry,” Oreo said. “Those are the only ones I can think of right now. Could I come back to that question?”

“Of course, of course,” he snapped. “Now, have you ever admired your body in a mirror?”

“Sure. Often.”

“Have you ever been roused? Does music ever make you want to—?” He broke off, then he said, “I’ve finished the psychological examination. Now I want you to take off your clothes and give yourself the medical.” After a few moments he said, “Are they off?”

“No,” said Oreo, “I’m having trouble with my wedgies.” The doctor continued, oblivious to her anachronistic answer. “Rub along the inside of your thigh and tell me when you get wet.”

Oreo put down the phone and went over to water her begonia, then she came back and coughed into the phone to let the doctor know she was there.

“Are you wet yet?” he said wistfully.

Oreo said, “You know, doctor, the trouble with masturbation is you come too fast. There’s no one for you to give directions to. You know, like ‘No, not like that, like this. No, yes, no, harder, softer, up, down. No, no. I’m losing it. Yes, yes, that’s it, stay there, right there. No, no, not like that — the way you were doing it before. Yes, that’s it.’ And there’s no one for you not to give directions to. You know what I mean, doctor?”

There was a moan at the other end of the line. “I’d like to come over and give you a complete examination,” said the moaner hoarsely.

“Why don’t you do that,” said the moanee sweetly.

“I’ll bring my tools with me,” the doctor said, in one last effort at pretense.

“Tools?” said Oreo. “One will be enough. Oh, by the way, doctor, I’ve finally thought of some words. I don’t know how they slipped my mind before.” Oreo said a lot of words that begin with p and c and t and x , that rhyme with bunt and pooky and noontang .

The doctor let out a gasp as big as Masters and Johnson and said he could be at her place in an hour. Oreo told him that she would wait for him on her front porch and that she would be wearing a begonia leaf.

She went immediately to a house three doors down from her and told a neighbor, Betty Williams, that she wanted to play a trick on an acquaintance. Betty was the neighborhood nymphomaniac. For two cents she would fuck a plunger. In fact, the story of Betty and the plumber’s friend was a West Philadelphia legend. Anyone who thought that the shibboleth friend referred to a person was known to be an outsider and was therefore the object of xenophobic ridicule and scorn. Betty agreed to help her young friend Oreo.

So it was that when Dr. Jafferts came panting down the street, already slavering, it was Betty who, wearing the begonia leaf, waylaid him, as it were, on Oreo’s porch and led him to her house, where Oreo was in hiding.

After a few preliminaries involving the you-sounded-different-over-the-phone routine, the doctor — a young shmegegge who looked like the kind of person who doted on tapioca pudding, and ergo propter hoc , whose favorite Marx Brother was Gummo — was seated in a chair cruelly sited to give him a view up Betty’s short skirt. Sitting on a high stool, Betty began a rhythmic opening and closing of her legs, revealing and concealing a tangle of pubic hair. The sweat stood out on the doctor’s head after the first two open-close, open-close beats. After a while, he seemed in danger of drowning in his own juice.

But Oreo’s plan was without mercy. Simultaneously with the rhythms she was laying down from her stool, Betty began telling the doctor one of her favorite jokes. “It’s about this man and woman who go down to Florida on their fifteenth wedding anniversary. They get up in their room, and the first thing they do is take off all their clothes.”

The doctor licked his lips in anticipation, his eyes fixed on Betty’s open-close, open-close.

Betty was beginning to overheat from hearing her own story, but she went on. “And the man says to the woman, says, ‘Honey, we been married all these years now and we always do it the same way. Let’s screw new a way this time. Now, you stand over in that corner, and I’ll stand over here. Then we’ll run toward each other and meet in the middle.’ So they go to the different corners and start running toward each other. But they miss and run right past. The man is going so fast, he goes sailing out the open window. His room is on the tenth story, but he’s lucky ’cause he falls in the swimming pool. But he’s afraid to come out ’cause he don’t have no clothes on. Everybody seems to be running to the hotel and nobody’s paying him no mind, but he’s still afraid to come out the pool buck naked. Then he sees this bellhop ready to go in the hotel, and he calls him over. He says, ‘Say, bellhop, I want to get out the pool, but I can’t ’cause I ain’t got no clothes on.’ The bellhop don’t even look surprised. He says, ‘That’s all right, sir, nobody’ll pay no ’ttention to you. You just come on out.’ The man says, ‘What do you mean nobody’ll pay no ’ttention to me? I’m buck naked!’ The bellhop says, ‘I know, sir, but most of the people are up on the tenth floor trying to figure out a way to get a woman off a doorknob.’”