Frank Portman - King Dork

“Some of the things you said the other day have been rat-128

tling around in the old brain box. Young men always think they know everything and that old men know nothing, and old men always think the same thing. But maybe the answer could be somewhere in between.”

Mmm, deep.

That’s what I thought, but what I said was “We’re cool, Big Tom.” Then I added, uncharacteristically, but because I knew he’d like it: “You’re not even that old.” I’m shameless.

He looked at me, still expecting something.

I held up two fingers at about shoulder level in a peace sign with what I hoped was the right attitude, slightly sardonic but good-natured.

His mouth crinkled just a bit at the left corner, and he did this little sniffy laugh while shaking his head. Then he rumpled my hair, which was the real sign that he was more or less satisfied with how things had concluded.

“Rock and roll,” he said as he went out, sighing just a bit, I think.

LADI E S’ WE E K?

I was starting to lose track of all of the mysteries. There was Tit’s code and the cryptic notes and documents associated with my dad’s teen library. There was my adult dad’s death.

There was Sam Hellerman’s unusual behavior. And above all, there was Fiona. I still had the sense that somehow all the puzzles were related and could solve each other if only one were to come undone. I also had the sense that that was crazy. At any rate, I thought about Fiona practically constantly, both as a context within which to experience my horniness and as a puzzle piece. I decided to write down everything I knew about her, imagining that it might be 129

useful one day if I ever gathered my possessions in a satchel, kissed my mom good-bye, and set off on a perilous journey to track her down and discover her secret. Like a hard-boiled detective. Or a hobbit.

I hardly knew anything about Fiona. I sure wished I had paid more attention to what she had been saying while I was ogling her like a sex maniac.

To summarize what I came up with:

Fiona was most likely a junior. She was in drama, acted in plays, made costumes and her own clothes, and was kind of hung up on vocabulary-level feminism but not in any way that mattered practically. She was interested in the occult and the paranormal, though in fact she had no psychokinetic or supernatural powers. She was nearsighted. She liked the Who. She had a boyfriend who was not at the party but who had friends who were. She wouldn’t go past second base with anonymous strangers in dark basements; or, the party had coincided with her period (ladies’ week, as my mom calls it).

She liked to smoke pot.

If she went to CHS, she was known by a name other than Fiona, and dressed and behaved so differently from how she had been at the party that no one who would have seen her at school recognized the description. But most likely she didn’t go to CHS. I had assumed she did because she had been at a party with lots of CHS kids, and having the Who shirt and being in drama had made it seem like she had to be one of the CHS drama mods. But that wasn’t necessarily the case. She could go to another high school but know some of the CHS drama mods well enough that she would be invited to their parties.

In fact, the Who shirt was the only definite mod-related thing about her, so maybe she wasn’t even a real fake mod at all. Maybe the drama people at her high school were all on 130

some other trip (though I don’t know what—crochet-core?) and the Who shirt was just random, or worn because she knew she’d be hanging out with CHS drama mods on that particular evening.

There was another reason I had assumed she went to CHS, though. Something in the back of my mind that had been bugging me, though I didn’t consciously realize what it was at first: somehow she had known I was from Hellmont.

I had instinctively assumed that she had reached that conclusion because she didn’t recognize me from school at CHS, which would have made it obvious. Most kids from Hillmont went to Hillmont High, though a small chunk, from the hills, mostly, went to CHS. No Clearview or Clearview Heights kids ever went to Hillmont, that I knew of—CHS was a much bigger school, and had kids from several towns. What I’m getting at is: if Fiona didn’t go to CHS herself, it wouldn’t have been at all obvious that I was from Hillmont. I mean, even if she knew a lot of CHS kids, she couldn’t have been positive that she could identify every one, especially a random dweeby one, if she didn’t go there. She would have assumed I went to CHS, like almost all of the kids at the party, right? She would have said “How’s tricks in Queerview?” And I would have said “Homoerotic.” And the pop-up devil-he—oh wait, that was before the devil-head started popping up. Those were simpler times.

Now, maybe she had just guessed right, or had mentioned Hillmont randomly. Maybe not, though. But I couldn’t figure out how or why she would have known anything about me. Man, maybe she was psychic after all.

So where did you go if you lived in Salthaven but you didn’t go to CHS? OMH (Old Mission Hills) possibly. I didn’t know a whole lot about the school system out there. I was going to have to do some research. Or maybe she wasn’t 131

even from Salthaven or Salthaven Vista. Sooner or later, thinking about all this, everything started to go in circles and I had to take a break.

In my fantasy, Fiona is still a mod, a real one, and she and I are living in a grimy, sweaty gray underground flat in Carnaby Street, London, listening to “Substitute” on a little gramophone. I’m standing in the doorway in a parka and she’s on a couch in a houndstooth miniskirt and go-go boots.

We’re both crying, but I can tell by how she’s looking at me through the tears that she wants it. The time, I mean . . .

I woke up the next morning feeling pretty stupid about all that “Fiona must have known who I was all along” crap. Who was I, Miss Marple? Sam Hellerman, please assemble all the guests in the drawing room, and you might want to take the precaution of bringing along your revolver. I rather suspect there may be trouble. Does that mean you have cracked the case, Aunt Jane? Oh my, yes. I have known for some time.

People can be very, very cruel. . . .

There was really only one blindingly obvious conclusion here: I was starting to lose my marbles.

I wondered how long this part was going to last. I mean, mooning over the mystery woman, wondering who she was, where she was, what she was doing and with whom, and why she was doing it, walking around feeling like I’d just been punched in the stomach. I was starting to get a little tired of it. Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoyed thinking about expressing my horniness in the context of the mystery woman. I did it all the time. And I still tended to feel fairly lovey-dovey and soppy and emotional when I thought of her, imagining what it might be like to be going out with Fiona and doing sweet, ordinary boyfriend-girlfriend things like going to the library 132

and making out, or going to the movies and making out, or ridiculing normal people at the mall. And making out.

Actually, you know what? I’m still not all that clear on what’s involved in doing sweet, ordinary boyfriend-girlfriend things. I just assume it’s a lot of making out and groping in public, sex in cars, blow jobs in public restrooms, going to movies, eating at restaurants, listening to the radio, arguing about trivia, and—what else? Do you help each other with your homework? Play Scrabble, build models, buy food at the grocery store and cook it for each other, meet at the Rec.

Center or at the beach for a game of volleyball with her Nair-commercial friends? Does she ask you which dress makes her look fatter, like Carol does with Little Big Tom? Does she throw a stapler at you and stop talking to you for days when you can’t figure out the right answer? Do you share your secrets and deepest fears with one another, or are those subjects still just as weird and awkward and best not brought up, maybe even especially to someone to whom you are constantly, incessantly, relentlessly giving the time?