Frank Portman - King Dork

friends about her, try to find out, um, I wasn’t sure exactly what. But could he ask around, find out what her deal was, in some way?

“Her deal?” said Sam Hellerman. He said “deal” mockingly, and did that thing where you put your hands up on either side in front of you palms out and wiggle your fingers sarcastically.

Sometimes it just means “ooh, I’m scared.” But sometimes it means, “the word that I am now quoting back at you is so absurd that the human voice alone is insufficient to convey the appropriate level of sarcasm, and therefore I must use my hands as well, as they used to do in the days of the silent cin-ema and in vaudeville where they had to make sure that everyone way in the back who couldn’t hear the dialogue would still get the point that the person being addressed is a total ass.”

It was in this sense that Sam Hellerman did the sarcastic hands thing on this particular occasion. I thought it was a bit over the top, frankly.

“Her deal?” he repeated. “You mean, other than the whole cock tease thing?” Again with the swearing.

88

Yeah, that’s what I meant, Hellerman. Thanks for breaking it down. I really didn’t get his attitude. So I just stared at him.

But I almost forgot to mention how the Fiona Deal was affecting the band like I said. (See what I mean? Making out with Fiona really seems to have poked permanent holes in my brain that I can feel even now. Plus, well, you don’t know about it yet—it happens toward the end of the year and I’ll explain it all when it comes up because I’m really trying to describe things in the order that they happened—but I’m still recovering from this massive head injury I got from this attempt on my life. What I’m saying is, for a variety of reasons, the Fiona Deal among them, my thinking tends to be a little fuzzy these days.)

Anyway, it wasn’t just that the Fiona Deal made Sam Hellerman act like a total dick. It had to do with the songs.

Sam Hellerman tended to like the topical songs the best.

He liked “Mr. Teone and His Lady Butt,” and “Matt Lynch Must Be Stopped (from Spawning and Generating Ungodly Offspring).” Political stuff like that. But he would tolerate the personal, sensitive tunes, too, even though I sometimes wondered whether he thought they were too corny. He liked

“World War B” and would even tolerate “I’m Only a Page of Zeros but You Are the One,” for example.

But somehow he could tell what “Trying Not to Believe (It’s Over)” was about, and it was way too Fiona oriented for his taste.

“We’re not doing that one,” he said.

Well, the difference between the ones we were “doing”

and the ones we were not “doing” was not easy to spot, as most of them didn’t yet have many or any lyrics, and very few of them had repeatable music yet. Even the ones with words 89

and music were—well, I’d play them on the guitar and mum-ble the words I had and say “mmm-mmm-mmm” for the ones I didn’t have and Sam Hellerman would play random notes on his clarinet.

What I’m saying is, I’m not sure the set list matters enough to take personally at this stage in a band’s career.

Luckily, I realized what was going on soon enough to refrain from telling him about “My Fiona” or “I’m Still Not Done Loving You, Mama.” He would have hit the roof. If it’s possible to hit the roof in the spirit of utter contempt and condescension.

I had wanted to keep the Stoned Marmadukes going for a little longer, mostly as a tribute to the band I said I was in during my one conversation with her. And also because of this very unrealistic line of thinking that went: were we to keep the name long enough that we would still have it when we finally got instruments and learned to play them, and were we to have a “gig,” and were that still to be our name even then, and were she somehow to find out about it, well, then she might remember me and my powerful vocabulary and decide to show up or something. (Rock legend in the making: “Who is this mysterious Fiona that Moe ‘Fingers’

Henderson puts on the guest list every night?” “No one knows. But she never shows up.” “And Moe is alone and silent with his mysterious pain?” “Yeah, that’s right.”) Now, even I could see how pathetic that was. But it was also kind of random and off-the-wall. Sam Hellerman was starting to develop a nose for the Fiona-related, though, and he could sniff out the vaguest hints of it. And he sure didn’t like how things were smelling lately at 507 Cedarview Circle, Hillmont, CA.

“Here’s an idea,” he said. “The Fionas. You on guitar and Fiona-phone, plus Sammy ‘I Heart Fiona’ on bass and Fiona 90

Reconstruction Therapy, first album F-I-O-N-A! What’s That Spell? I Can’t Hear You! Fiona! Fiona! Yay, team! ”

Hmm, I thought . . . but I knew he wasn’t being serious.

He was kind of funny even when he was being a dick, though, I’ll say that for him. I’ll admit also that he may have had just a teensy-weensy point. But it still left something to be desired attitudinally from my point of view.

“The. Name. Is. Ray. Bradbury’s. Love-Camel,” he said firmly, before walking out and slamming the door.

Then he had to come back because he had forgotten to take his clarinet case with him.

He left again silently. But two seconds later he came back again, stuck his head through the door LBT style, and said very quickly: “Ray Bradbury’s Love-Camel, you on guitar, Scammy Sammy on bass and calisthenics, first album Prepare to Die. ”

Which made me feel a bit better.

JAN E GALLAG H E R AN D AMAN DA

H E N DE RSON

Meanwhile, I still didn’t quite know what to make of the CEH library. I had all but given up trying to interpret the scribbles, the dates, the whole tits/back rubs/dry cleaning puzzle. There was a story there, presumably, or at least an explanation, but there just wasn’t enough information available to figure out what it was. It was lost in the past, for good, probably.

Still, I had developed this crazy idea that by reading the books my dad had read at my age, I could get to know him better retroactively. Maybe reading his books would provide some insight into his character, an indication of the kind of 91

person he had been and the sorts of things he had been interested in and had thought about. Now, in one way, this insight was something I desperately wanted. In another way, though, I wasn’t sure I wanted it badly enough to go through the ordeal of reading A Separate Peace again. I had been forced to read it last year and had found it to be among the most annoying of all of the state-mandated novels about disaffected East Coast prep school juveniles. Was anything worth that?

On the other hand, Brighton Rock looked promising. I decided to start there and save A Separate Peace for last.

Of course, while I was reading Brighton Rock on my own and rereading Catcher in the Fucking Rye for the zillionth time for Mr. Schtuppe’s class, I was also obsessing about Fiona.

This turned out to be a pretty weird setup. Mr. Schtuppe would mispronounce something from Catcher, and it would spur cascades of competing thoughts of my dad’s teenage years and of the mystery girl’s breasts at the same time.

Particularly when the subject was sex, which turns up quite a lot in Catcher in the Rye, though it tends to be expressed rather quaintly. And particularly when the girl being talked about was Jane Gallagher, because of the underlined Jane Gallagher back rub passage in my dad’s Catcher.

Mr. Schtuppe’s tests were always true-false or multiple choice, except for the last question, which was an essay question. An essay question is a multiple-choice question with the multiple choices left off, and three wide-spaced lines where you’re supposed to write the answer.