Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“See, you’ve upset the bells. The little bells are crying out. Now, stop backing away from me.”

“I’d better go home,” I said.

“If you leave, then I will fail you and you’ll never graduate from high school and you’ll never get into college and you’ll waste away on the street until you turn to drugs and die hopeless, helpless, and alone.”

“All of that from turning down a blow job?”

“You’d better believe it.”

“You can’t do that,” I said, not so much worried about the picture she had painted, but offended on principle.

“Can and will.”

“I’ll report you,” I told her.

“Go ahead, report me. Who will they believe? Me, teacher of the year, or you, a kid without a proper name, angry because he couldn’t live out his fantasy with the hot teacher?”

“It’s ‘whom.’ ”

“What?”

“It’s ‘whom will they believe.’ ”

“Shut up and take off those pants. Be a good boy and I’ll pretend none of this silly stuff ever happened.”

I unfastened my belt, understanding at that moment how what was happening had nothing to do with sex, only and simply power, watching as she approached me like the predator she was. She reached out and grabbed the waistband of my khakis, pushed them down past my thighs. My penis hung there unimpressive and unimpressed. Beatrice dropped to her knees and took me into her mouth. Hormones got the better of me and I began to swell, at least my penis did, but before I could get completely hard she’d start in with her teeth and my organ would retreat. It went like that for a bit, back and forth, pleasure and pain, arousal and repulsion, erection and deflation. She sucked away like a maniacal vacuum and I stared down at her, hating her for threatening to fail me, while not caring actually if she did fail me, fearing her for her clumsy teeth and my compromised position.

I had nothing to do but watch and so I leaned into my Fesmer gaze. She seemed turned on by my staring, reading it as intensity, and so she sucked harder. The sight of her working away like that was somewhat comical. What came with her increased excitement was, sadly, more employment of teeth, but I focused and stayed with it, and my suggestion was mainly the cessation of biting. The gnashing and gnawing did subside, and I believed I had put her under, so to speak, and so I encouraged her rather strongly to give up the idea of failing me in history.

Without the chewing and chomping, the fellatio became pleasurable in that animal way that any kind of genital manipulation is pleasurable to a teenage boy, in spite of her name being Beatrice, in spite of the audience of dinner bells, in spite of my being a victim.

The biting stopped, but I was bitten nonetheless. Beatrice Hancock flunked me and I sat there, dumbfounded, feeling more or less exactly like someone who might actually flunk history. I didn’t like the feeling, though I was momentarily fascinated by it. She gave me a look when I glanced up from my report card, as if she’d been aware of my attempt to manipulate her mind. I wondered if sexual arousal or distraction had served to diminish my Fesmeric thrust. Perhaps with my penis already in her head there was no more room for any more of me, including my unspoken and poorly formed mental suggestions. The failing mark was certainly an attack, perhaps even an insult, and still it meant little to me. However, it was now a matter of principle, a matter of fair play, decent behavior, and so I found myself marching down the corridor to the principal’s office.

The principal was a squat, bell-shaped man named Clapper. Mr. Clapper had been made hard and tough by years of dealing with abuses to his name. He or the custodian or both were ever vigilant in erasing the Clapper-driven graffiti from the walls of the crapper.

He did not stand when I walked in. He looked at me with his good eye. “Why are you in here, Not Sidney Poitier?” He called everyone by his or her full name to show off his memory.

“I have a complaint,” I said.

“You know you’re looking more and more like that Sidney Poitier every day.” He tilted his head as if to get a better view. “Yes, very much like him. Tall and dark like him. Thick red lips like his.”

“Mr. Clapper.”

“What kind of complaint?”

I looked at the open door.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said.

“It’s about Miss Hancock.”

“Have a seat.” When I was seated, he said, “Go on. What did Miss Hancock do?”

“She failed me.”

“That’s her job,” he said.

“I did A-grade work.”

“That’s not for you to say.” He leaned forward and interlaced his fingers on his desk, staring at me. Had I not known better, I might have guessed he was trying to Fesmerize me.

“She took me out to her house, supposedly to move bags of topsoil and manure, and then she—” I found myself unsure about how to proceed with my accusation. I could not say blow job to the principal and neither could I say to him that Beatrice Hancock had given me head or fellated me, so I landed, like a blind roofer, on rape. “She raped me,” I said, regretting it before I had uttered the final word.

I never heard such laughter. Mr. Clapper turned beet red, his tongue rolled into a tube and pushed out of the O of his mouth as he coughed, and tears trickled down his corpulent face while he pointed at me. I think he said, that’s rich, or maybe, you wish, or that bitch, which made no sense. But it was clear, clearer than clear, that he did not believe me.

I got up and walked from his office into the outer chamber and looked at all the wide-eyed potato faces of the staff who had evidently overheard the exchange. They didn’t laugh out loud, but they found me plenty amusing.

As much as I didn’t want to care, I was unable to let the matter rest. The whole thing gnawed at me, much in the manner of Miss Hancock. Things were of course made worse by the story buzzing through the entire school. I was used to the pointing and laughing, the insults and beatings, but somehow, in that strange universe of high school, my universe of high school, that abuse made sense. But now what lay at the core of my ridicule was a lie. Even Eddie Eliazar turned against me; I had either lied about his beloved Beatrice Hancock or, worse, been with his beloved Beatrice Hancock. He was obliged to hate me either way. One thing surfaced through this, a kind of bodily discovery. I realized that I was not small. At just over six feet and looking much like Sidney Poitier, I was becoming a man. One of the usual bullies approached me in the cafeteria.

“You gonna eat that cupcake?” he asked.

I was sitting alone, in my usual place, wherever there was an empty seat alone. “Why, do you want it?”

“Yeah, I want it.”

I looked at the yellow-and-white-topped cupcake. I never had any intention of putting the heavily buttercream-iced sawdust in my mouth, but I said, “I think I’ll keep it.” I looked up at him, surprising myself that I had not even thought to attempt Fesmerization. And then I stood. As it turned out I was a good three or four inches taller than the bully.

I saw retreat in his eyes, but he was pushed forward by the pressure of his friends and everyone else in the cafeteria, for that matter.

“I think I’ll eat it.” I took a bite of the awful thing.

“I’m gonna fuck you up,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Fuck me up.”

Now even his friends were nervous. The bully turned to his backup singers and said, “Let’s go.” And they went.