Frank Portman - King Dork

On one of the tests, the essay question was “What was the cause of Holden’s fight with Stradlater on page 43?” By some entirely characteristic oversight, the identical question had also appeared above in the multiple-choice part of the same test. The answer to the m-c version was (b) Jane Gallagher. The answer Mr. Schtuppe was looking for in the 92

essay question version was Jane Gallagher without the (b), or possibly something like “the cause of Holden’s fight with Stradlater on page 43 was Jane Gallagher.”

The real answer is that Holden Caulfield had the hots for this girl, Jane Gallagher, though he was too scared to try anything. And he was worried that his roommate might have hooked up with her before he got the chance to. But in the quaint world of Catcher in the Rye, the phrase they use for fucking is “giving her the time.” I kid you not. Giving her the time. Another one is “crumby,” which is how they spell crummy, but which you can tell from the context really means fucked-up. Seriously. It’s like this thing was written by Sam Hellerman or something.

Actually, it’s kind of cute.

Just to amuse myself, instead of writing “Jane Gallagher”

in the essay-question space like I was supposed to, I wrote: Jane Gallagher had wanted to know

what time it was, but for some reason

Holden Caulfield hadn’t wanted Stradlater to tell her. When Stradlater refused to

tell Holden Caulfield whether or not he

had told Jane Gallagher what time it

was, Holden Caulfield became enraged and attacked him in a fit of horological

savagery, possibly because he was

mentally ill and hated anyone but him

knowing what time it was.

I thought I’d get the question wrong, but when Mr.

Schtuppe handed back my test, I got a hundred. The name Jane Gallagher had been circled and the circle had been checked. I guess he only needed to read the first two words.

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I was sad for a few minutes that my brilliant humor had gone unappreciated, but then I got over it.

Now, everybody’s favorite guy, Holden Caulfield, has a younger sister named Phoebe. I’ve never found her very believable. She’s way too sweet and loving and Holden-o-centric. She’s nothing like my sister, Amanda, that’s for sure.

On the other hand, if Phoebe Caulfield had had a crazy mom, a dead father, a goofball stepfather, and a King Dork brother, and if she had grown up in blank, characterless Hillmont instead of rich, atmosphere-laden, fancy-pants Manhattan, who knows how she might have turned out?

Also, HC makes no secret of the fact that he is a patho-logical liar, so the real Phoebe may not have been all she was cracked up to be. (Some might say I’m one to talk, but I’m really not a p. l. like HC. I’m more of an exaggerator than a liar, really, and unlike Mr. Wonderful, I don’t do it as a sick compulsion or a recreational activity.)

Amanda is hard to peg, though. She has many modes, some of which seem to be battling for supremacy over the others. There’s her Harriet the Spy mode, where she’s kind of a grumpy, introverted oddball, constantly scribbling and drawing weird stuff on these notepads that she won’t let anyone see.

And then there’s the budding bitch-princess mode, where she and her friends seem to be going through training exercises to prepare for when they finally emerge as full-fledged sado-psychopathic normal girls. She’s a pretty girl, and all indica-tions are that, when she grows up just a little more, she’ll be a knockout. The thing is, she’s way too intelligent, and—what?

individualistic?—to pull off the normal mode very convincingly for too long. And I’m not kidding about the intelligence: she doesn’t always express it perfectly in words, but she’s supersmart, 94

and in a sort of deep-thinking philosophical way that is nothing like my clever and glib but shallow preoccupation with sex and trivia. Sometimes she’ll say these simple yet unexpectedly true things that make me want to consider giving away all my worldly possessions, taking a vow of celibacy, and devoting my life to studying at her feet. But then she’ll spoil it by doing the nose-forehead slide or mimicking my walk. Honestly, I find her clumsy attempts at normalcy more cute than insulting, but you know: it does kill the Yoda mood.

I do wonder if she’ll make it as a normal person in the end—though simple hotness can make up for a lot of other deficiencies, it’s true. The worry is that she’ll have to over-compensate by being even meaner and more psychotic than usual in order to draw attention away from her Harriet the Spy–ness and pass as normal psychotic. If that’s what she ends up wanting to do with her life.

Protonormal Amanda doesn’t seem to think too highly of me and isn’t too fun to be around. I prefer the HtS Amanda, because I can relate to her better. We don’t interact much, but generally we get along okay.

There’s one more Amanda mode I have to mention, the mode she assumes whenever anything has to do with our dad. In those situations, she suddenly turns into a Phoebe-like little girl. She’ll cry, and sniffle, and reach out to hug me.

Sometimes she’ll put her arms around my neck and squeeze so tightly that it seems as though her little arms could make permanent indentations. She doesn’t have anyone else to talk to about him. My mom is crazy and best avoided, and she hates Little Big Tom, so I guess I’m it. In fact, though, we never actually do much talking. We just hold on to each other and cry. Well, she does.

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F I LLI NG I N TH E SO

My mom has this funny habit of ending practically all of her sentences like this: “[ Random sentence]. So . . .”

There’s another part that comes after the so, but it’s either so obvious that it’s not necessary to say it, or she doesn’t quite know what it is and gives up trying to figure it out.

“I’ve got to get to work early tomorrow. So . . .” That means “I’ve got to get to work early tomorrow. So I’m going to bed early and I don’t want anyone making too much noise.” Or possibly: “ . . . so I’m taking this big glass of bourbon into the bedroom and I do not wish to be disturbed and I’m seriously considering giving you the silent treatment for the next couple of weeks starting now.”

More interesting, and sometimes more disturbing, are the mysterious ones where you can’t figure out exactly what’s supposed to come after the “so.”

“Elaine [old lady down the street] said she’s sorry she decided to have children after all and wishes she had spent the money on herself instead. So . . .”

“When I was growing up, they didn’t expect you to go to college. High school was enough. So . . .”

“Well, they do say if you ignore something, it goes away on its own in ninety percent of all cases. So . . .”

I bring this up because of the following: Sam Hellerman had somehow talked his parents into giving him an advance on his Christmas present and had mail-ordered a bass from the Guitarville catalog. Now I needed to get my act together and get an electric guitar. I was currently playing my dad’s old nylon-string folk guitar, which I cher-ished because of my respect for him but which really wasn’t the right tool for heavy rock. If Silent Nightmare (me on gui-96

tar, Samson on bass and gynecology, first album Feel Me Fall) was ever going to get off the ground, we needed pro gear.

Somehow, I couldn’t see the Christmas present advance concept being comprehensible to Carol Henderson-Tucci, but I figured it was worth a shot.

I brought it up with a great deal of subtlety, mentioning that Sam Hellerman’s parents had given him a bass as an early Christmas present and that it had been very easy to order it from the Guitarville catalog. I let my voice trail off.