Frank Portman - King Dork

Panchowski on drums, percussion, acoustic and semiacoustic drums, cymbals, tambourines, cowbells, chimes, gongs, toms, shaker eggs, bongos, stick clicks, wood blocks, percussion, percussion and more percussion. First album Our Drummer Is Kind of Full of Himself.

I looked at him dubiously. How could we ever get on it?

You had to submit an audition tape to this group of normal students supervised by Mr. Teone. A tape of us actually playing, I was pretty sure, would automatically disqualify us, maybe even permanently, from playing anywhere, even with a more sympathetic panel of judges. Anyway, it sounded like a Festival of Insufferable Tedium and Aggravation to me. Did we even want to get in on it?

“We do,” said Sam Hellerman, “and we can.” And he 181

gave me that “leave it to me” look. So I figured he had a plan.

At the time, I found it difficult to see how any good could come of such a thing. And as it turns out, I guess I was mostly right.

DR. H EXSTROM

My first “therapy” appointment was also during that first week of November. My mom insisted on driving me there, even though I wanted to ride my bike. That was to make sure I wouldn’t duck out, which was a valid concern. She checked me in with the receptionist but didn’t stick around to see the shrink with me—maybe that was against the rules or something.

The psychiatrist was Dr. Judith Hexstrom. My plan had been to give her the old freaky-youth-genius treatment and try to unnerve her with silence and unreadable facial expressions. I was thinking maybe if I could convince her I was legitimately crazy I could at least get some medication that I could give to Sam Hellerman for a Christmas present. It didn’t work out that way, though.

For one thing, to my surprise, I kind of liked Dr.

Hexstrom. She wasn’t young or pretty, but there was something about her face that I liked, even though it was my considered opinion that her whole profession wasn’t much more than a shameless racket. And she was by far the most intelligent adult I’d ever talked to.

Here’s how sharp Dr. Hexstrom was: I happened to mention Mr. Teone’s “naked day of zombies” comment, as an example of his bizarre behavior and of how weird normal people can be. “Pretty strange, huh?” I said.

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“Not really. If you were wearing that shirt.”

I looked down at my T-shirt, then raised my head and gave her the look that says “how so?”

Dr. Hexstrom said: “ Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet. It’s Latin for ‘Kill them all, and God will know his own.’ From the Middle Ages, the Crusades.”

Damn. I had been wearing my “Kill ’em All” shirt that day, and he had made me turn it inside out. And Dr.

Hexstrom’s phrase did sound kind of like what Mr. Teone had said, allowing for his speech impediment. It made more sense than “day of suicide-osity,” anyway, though I’d still classify it as a bizarre episode, especially with all that laughing.

I looked at Dr. Hexstrom, and my look said: “how the hell did you figure that out?”

Then, when she didn’t respond, I said, out loud, if I remember correctly: “How the hell did you figure that out?”

“It’s well known,” she said imperiously.

It’s well known. Not by me it wasn’t. I’m not sure she was able to pick it up, but I gave her the look that said: “well, la-di-da.”

I had expected Dr. Hexstrom to plunge into the suicide thing right away, but instead, the first thing she said was,

“That’s an unusual book.”

She was talking about The Doors of Perception, CEH 1966.

I know I said that the next CEH book on the reading list was Slan. I had started it, and it was pretty cool. It was about this freaky kid whose dad is dead. He and his mom are members of a mutant alien species called slans that have telepathic powers because of tendrils on their heads, which they try to disguise by hiding them in their hair-dos. But the normal people still pursue them and try to exterminate them. They got the dad already when the main slan was a little kid, and 183

they get the mom, too, right at the beginning of the book. I could totally relate.

But there had been a change in plans since I solved the Catcher code and gained a new interest in underlining, so I put Slan aside temporarily. Only two of the books had a whole lot of actual underlining: The Doors of Perception and The Naked and the Dead. The Naked and the Dead was the one that had been inscribed only CH with no date, so I wasn’t even sure it belonged with the others. However, it was the one where the markings had seemed the most codelike.

There were individual words underlined, sometimes very in-significant ones like “of ” or “very”; some were circled and sometimes only parts of words were underlined or circled. If there was an encoded message in there, though, I couldn’t find it. And I had spent hours and hours trying.

I had originally shied away from this book because I was worried it had to do with the Grateful Dead and nudity, and, well, let me put it this way: if you can imagine a more alarming combination, your imagination is quite a bit better than mine. Then I realized it was about war, and it was more like naked people and dead people, two of my favorite subjects, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Now, this book was by a guy named Norman Mailer, and he was a piece of work. You know how Holden Caulfield said

“giving her the time?” Well it was the same with Norman Mailer. He said “fug.” I kid you not. Like “this is a fugging nightmare!” or “go fug yourself.” You know, it’s no wonder everyone was all crazy and weird in the sixties, if everything was being run by prissy grandma types like Holden Caulfield and Norman Mailer.

In the end I couldn’t take much of The Naked and the Dead, and I put it aside for later. It wasn’t like it was even a real CEH book anyway. I went for The Doors of Perception in-184

stead, because it had a lot of underlining, too, though admittedly it didn’t look very code-y.

The Doors of Perception is about this guy who takes a lot of drugs to try to see what it’s like to be a crazy person. It’s kind of interesting, but the guy is pretty full of himself and a bad writer, too. He seems to forget what he was going to say around halfway through many of his long, complicated sentences, and then he tries to cover it up by spattering the page with highfalutin words that I swear he just made up. 30 Days to a More Annoying Vocabulary. If Holden Caulfield were to read it, he’d say something like “Gee, Wally, that’s swell and junk, but I feel all crumby on account of how it’s so phony and all.”

Still, I got a kick out of watching the drug guy try to pretend he was doing his drugs for some noble purpose rather than just indulging himself and getting high and trying to show off how with-it he was. It’s cool if you want to do drugs, but if you go around claiming it’s like discovering Antarctica or curing cancer you’re not fooling anyone but yourself.

Believe it or not, that’s pretty much what Dr. Hexstrom and I talked about, and she even kind of seemed to see what I was getting at. She was the only adult I had ever met who was Catcher aware but not necessarily Catcher devoted. She said she thought HC needed medication, and we had a good laugh about that one. She was all right.

Dr. Hexstrom was very interested in the CEH reading list, which I hadn’t intended to tell her about, but somehow I couldn’t stop myself in the end. I didn’t mention Tit or the Catcher code, of course, but we did talk a lot about Brighton Rock and even a little about the guy I accidentally beat up (though I downplayed it a bit and left out most of the blood, in consideration of the sensibilities of my audience). It was nice to talk to someone about a book without being worried 185