Frank Portman - King Dork

All the references to “my friends” threw me at first. Had he really failed to notice that I had no friends other than Sam Hellerman? Then it hit me that he was assuming that some of the band members in the Sam ’n’ Moe bands I’d written about in my notebook were actually real people. (What tipped me off: he mentioned a Debbie, and I was like “who’s Debbie,”

until I realized he was talking about Li’l Miss Debbie, the imaginary nurse-slut vocalist of Tennis with Guitars. It’s a 101

good thing he didn’t realize that some of “my friends” were really me: it might have turned his mind into a pretzel.) All this from Stratego and a few fantasy blades? Un. Real.

At one point my mom chimed in: “Baby, all we’re saying is you have to try to find harmony between your masculine and your feminine natures.” I heard a tremendous guffaw from Amanda in the other room. Thanks for that, Mom. I knew I’d be hearing about my feminine nature from Amanda, and till the end of time.

The one bit of reality in the whole scene did come from my mom, however, though it was the kind of connection to reality that reveals an even deeper disconnection from it.

“Are you having trouble with the kids in school?” she asked.

Bingo. Well spotted. Give the lady a cookie. But on the other hand, how could anyone who knew me or anything about me even have to ask that question? The mind reels.

The whole sorry affair wrapped up like this: we wheeled and dealed for the stuff. Little Big Tom kept the magazines, the “Kill ’em All” shirt, some of the albums, and the throwing stars, nunchakus, and decorative weapons (all except for the bowie knife, which I was allowed to keep for sentimental reasons). I got the books, the coat, most of the videos, the notebooks, some of the albums, and the games. He agreed to respect my privacy and I to respect his values from that point forward. If you’re thinking that that sounds like a joke, well, you’re right, but one of the unspoken terms of the truce was that we couldn’t actually laugh at it till we were out of the room.

My mom said, “Baby, if you ever need to talk, we’re always here.” I gave her a little “right back at ya, babe” salute.

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Little Big Tom, under the impression that he had achieved something by accusing me of being criminally insane and taking half my stuff, rumpled my hair and said,

“Growing up is rough for everybody. Even old geezers like me. I’d like to think I’m not above learning a thing or two myself sometimes.” That was supposed to be self-deprecating and lighthearted and philosophical and tension relieving.

Hey, I’ll take it. Anything’s better than getting in touch with your feelings in show trial form.

I knew he had fully snapped back to his old self when he turned his head slightly sideways, handed me my notebook, and said, “Some righteous tunes in there! Very creative!” I thought I heard him sighing heavily as I walked out, but of course, that was normal too.

TH E H E LLE R MAN EYE-RAY TR EATM E NT

There’s a scene in movies and situation comedies where the main kid starts to be “interested in girls” and the dad is supposed to take the kid aside and give him a lecture that used to be called “the birds and the bees” but is now usually referred to as “the sex talk.” The dad doesn’t want to do it and has to be goaded into it by the mom. If there’s no dad, the mom finds some dad substitute to do it. The dad or replace-ment dad module is nervous and dances around the subject and uses funny euphemisms and analogies, and the joke is that the kid is already very knowledgeable, a thirteen-year-old Hugh Hefner or Prince. Sometimes the kid will even be shown in an armchair wearing pajamas and a robe and smoking a pipe while the dad figure is squirming. And the live stu-dio audience laughs and laughs.

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It hadn’t occurred to me, but when I told Sam Hellerman about Little Big Tom’s Stratego Sex Inquisition, he pointed it out: I had just been a participant in the most retarded version of the sitcom sex talk the world had ever seen.

So maybe my mom had heard the cock tease discussion and had told LBT he had to talk to me about sex. He was reluctant but couldn’t refuse. And in the course of his research he got sidetracked by Stratego and—boom! My sexual awakening was suddenly all about Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Sam Hellerman still seemed bent out of shape about my Fiona obsession. And I still couldn’t figure out why. It seemed like more than just being bored by the subject, which I tended to go on about: that I would have understood. Was it related to his Serenah Tillotsen experience, in which he had felt the rejection so keenly that any description of a less than totally available and compliant female would push mysterious buttons and automatically send him into a blind fury at the injustice of love and those who snatch it from the mouths of the needy? And would ignite a fiery desire for revenge on behalf of all unfortunate lonely hearts, or at least on behalf of those lonely hearts he happened to be in bands with? That sounded pretty good. Maybe so. But I had to wonder if he knew something he wasn’t telling.

So why didn’t I just ask him if he knew something he wasn’t telling?

Not a bad idea.

“Do you know something you’re not telling?” I asked.

I suspected that this was just the kind of question that would send Sam Hellerman into another furious spasm of over-the-top sarcasm, and I wasn’t wrong. He no longer needed to resort to words. He just stared at me with bugged-out eyes that he appeared to be trying to spin in opposite di-104

rections. I believe his line of thinking went something like this: maybe if I stare at this creature long enough with these supersarcastic eyes, his head tentacles will eventually retract into his head, his back tentacles will retract into his back, his leg tentacles will shrivel up and drop off, and the external lung in the polyp on the side of his neck will burst, depriving the alien brain pod of needed oxygen and forcing the mother ship to relinquish control of the mind and body, after which the host organism will come out of its coma, rub its eyes, and say, “who’s this Fiona everybody’s always talking about, anyway?”

Well, it was worth a shot. Maybe Sam Hellerman didn’t know more than he was telling after all. All I knew was, I was feeling a little feeble and vulnerable after that intense Hellerman eye-ray treatment. It’s a killer.

In fact, however, despite Sam Hellerman’s persistent bad attitude about a certain faux-mod seamster who had one breast that had experienced just a little less of this life than the other, he was still my friend by alphabetical-order relationship, and that means something.

So, to my surprise, it turned out that he had asked his CHS friends about her for me.

But none of them knew a drama mod named Fiona. In fact, as far as anyone could tell, there was no one named Fiona in the CHS student body at all. There were, of course, many hot brunettes with sexy stomachs, but that wasn’t much help. And no one recognized the most unusual feature, the funky homemade denim and yarn jacket.

But what about the little black glasses? That should nar-row it down. Hot b. with s. s. and l. b. g.?

“I’m sorry, man,” said Sam Hellerman, because we had started to say man recently. “She doesn’t exist.”

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P ROTE ST SOM ETH I NG

They had managed to make Foods of the World in

“Humanities” last several weeks. We were well into October, on the Monday following Little Big Tom’s Sex/Stratego cam-paign, when we finally left the gifted and talented snacking behind and moved on to the Turbulent Sixties. The first assignment was, I kid you not, “protest something.” So of course, the entire class just didn’t show up the following day.