Boy Minus Girl (2 page)

Seduction Tip Number 2:

The Breast Test

Mom’s voice: “Les dear, it’s time to get ready for school.”

Sunlight pours in through the beige curtains, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m in my sleeping bag on the floor in my parents’ bedroom. I slowly remember why: in the middle of the night Dad shook me awake.

“Your mother and I got to worrying,” he said. “With this Kansas City killer at large, we’d feel better if you slept in our room tonight.”

I remember grunting and turning away from him, but he grasped my shoulder and turned me back. “Remember those Clutters. Can’t be too careful.”

The Clutters, a Kansas farm family, were robbed and slaughtered in their house one night by some drifters—
almost thirty years ago.
Someone even wrote a book about it. I don’t think Dad has had a sound night’s sleep ever since.

In the painfully bright morning light Mom hovers over me, smiling, her red apron over her nurse uniform. “Your breakfast is almost ready.”

“Did Uncle Ray come?”

Mom’s smile drops. “At four-thirty this morning. Tell me, what kind of guest shows up at four-thirty in the morning? Now hop to.”

I push open my bedroom door to the scent of tobacco and musky-smelling aftershave, and the sound of deep, male snoring. There’s my uncle Ray, all six feet three of him. He’s lying on his back, his right arm slung over his eyes, his mouth hanging open, face looking kind of whiskery. A small silver loop hangs from his right earlobe, and his long sideburns are flecked with gray. A manly forest of black hair carpets his bare chest, and on his upper left arm a red dragon tattoo spews flames. On the floor beside the bed stand a pair of stylish, low-sided black boots with big silver buckles.

I walk to the window, go to drop the blinds, and see, parked in front of our house, a kick-ass sky-blue 1960s convertible. The sun reflects off its sleek chrome, and I pray Uncle Ray will take me for a spin in it.

Tiptoe to the closet, reach for my clothes, and spot four classy-looking shirts, all in deep colors, hanging perfectly on wooden hangers. And there on the floor of my closet sits a large black suitcase. What is making it bulge so much? Fifty thousand stolen dollars? I reach down to grab my sneakers and spot a big bottle of brown liquid with a Jack Daniel’s label behind his suitcase.

In the kitchen Mom turns the sputtering bacon. Seated at the table, his hair plastered down, in his usual white shirt and tie, Dad stares pensively at the front page of the Wichita paper. “A Pentagon spokesman is quoted as saying: ‘A Soviet nuclear missile could strike anywhere in the U.S. with only a fifteen-minute warning.’ ”

I sit across from him and say, “Isn’t Uncle Ray’s convertible awesome?”

“Convertibles are nothing but foolish,” Mom grouses. “When they flip over, there’s not a thing to protect you.”

Dad drops the newspaper and says to me, “Last night you said you wanted to go on a family vacation this summer. Well, I think I’ve come up with just the place.”

“You have?”

He nods. “Rock City.”

“Huh?”

“It’s this big field filled with massive rocks—some as big as our house!—formed millions of years ago before the Ice Age. Can you imagine?”

“So . . . it’s just . . . a bunch of rocks?” I ask.

“Not
just
a bunch of rocks. Big
geological
rocks. Some shaped like birdbaths and turtles. It’s the only place on earth to see such a thing and—get this!—it’s right here in Kansas. Only about an hour’s drive from here.”

“That sounds
terrific,
honey!” Mom says, setting the plate of bacon on the table. “That way we won’t even have to pay for a motel room.”

“I mean, why go all the way to Florida when Kansas has such a fascinating and educational landmark?” Dad asks. “You can’t go wrong if you stick to your own backyard.”

We’re still in Kansas, Toto. Forever.

Twenty minutes later I’m on my way to school, coasting my Dirt King bike down Tripp Street hill, when I hear a familiar voice coming at me from behind: “Hey, Leth-bian!”

Shit! My heart speeds up and I pedal like a madman. “What’th your hurry?! Y’got a boyfriend waiting?!”

I pump harder, but Brett the Brute’s Sting-Ray bike churns up effortlessly on my left.

“I’m talking to you, faggot!”

I swerve right, cutting through the vacant gravel lot of the Phillips 66 station. When I veer onto Broadway, Brett is right there, greeting me with: “Nith try, cock breath!”

He sticks out his big black sneaker, and the next thing I know, I’m sprawled on my back on the grass of Flood & Son Mortuary. There Brett straddles me, his butt pressing painfully into my abdomen. I try to wriggle free, but the lard ass must weigh 250 pounds. Brett has been held back several times and is twice the size of a normal eighth grader. The terror of Harker City Junior High, Brett once broke my best friend Howard’s nose in gym class. He has threatened several of our teachers, and Principal Cheavers is frightened to death of him. Last summer he stole a car and was put in juvie.

Brett’s meaty, callused hands press my face sideways into the dewy grass.

“When I thay you pull over, you do it, y’hear me?!” Brett isn’t a patron of deodorant or hand-hygiene. “Y’hear me, Dickhardt?!”

Through the grass blades I spot a yellow school bus. Staring out the window at me, gape-mouthed, is Charity Conners.

Brett shoves my head harder into the grass. “Thay you’re thorry.”

“I’m thorry!”

He eases up. “That’th more like it. Now, I have thomething for ya.” His rough lips stretch into a devilish, snaggletoothed grin. He digs his butt into my abdomen and rips the loudest, longest fart in Dickerson County.

When I look up, the school bus and Charity, my Charity, are gone. Alas. And—
crap
!

“ ‘At’ is not a place, people!” declares Mrs. Crockmeister, her narrow-set little eyes glimmering as she holds up a red-inked paper. “Who lives at ‘at’? No one! How many times do I have to tell you this?!”

I’m staring three seats ahead and one row to the left—where
she
sits. Her shiny, helmet-like black hair hangs to her ears and contrasts beautifully with her white skin. I very much want to kiss that long, long neck. Among the many obstacles: I haven’t said one word to her since the fifth grade, three years ago, when I called her “Turkey Tits.”

You see, in elementary school I found Charity Conners totally annoying: she was always the first to finish her schoolwork, made the best grades, and acted real superior to everyone. In Mrs. Olsen’s fifth-grade class, we were assigned neighboring desks and pretty much ignored each other. Then, one Friday afternoon during the
Weekly Reader
current-events filmstrip, I whispered something to Howard, who sat on the other side of Charity. She turned to me and said, “Hush up, Lester, I’m trying to listen.”

“Why don’t
you
shut up, Turkey Tits.”

She blinked twice, then flipped me the bird. When I came into school the following Monday, Charity’s desk was empty and Mrs. Olsen informed us she had moved to St. Louis with her folks. Good riddance, Turkey Tits. Or so I thought.

Then, a month ago, there I was, seated in this very room, when the door opened and Principal Cheavers ushered in the sexy new girl with the cool haircut. My breath was taken at the sight of her swimming-pool-blue eyes and pillowy lips. I was instantly in love. She was so . . . not Harker City.

“Everyone, this is Charity Conners,” he said. “You might remember her; she lived here a few years back. Please make her feel welcome.”

I couldn’t believe it. Where was that annoying girl with long black braids and the clacking retainer?

“Ahoy, mateys, it’s my goil, Olive Oyl,” Howard whispered over the top of his opened
Guinness Book of World Records
upon seeing her tallish frame step through the doorway.

“I think she looks . . . exotic,” I said.

“She has a face like one of my mom’s lady-head planters,” Howard retorted.

I silently, vehemently disagreed; she was pretty—really pretty—just not in the usual cheerleadery way.

“Still doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do her,” said Howard as he made a little hip-thrusting motion under his desk. With his Bugs Bunny teeth, marshmallowy body, and incessant spouting of trivia, Howard stands even less of a chance of getting laid than I do.

Plus, I think, he overcompensates for the fact his dad is the ultra-uptight Reverend Bachbaugh.

Charity Conners doesn’t dress like the other girls, either. No jeans and white canvas sneakers. She wears long black dresses, strings of pearls—and worn bowling shoes! Word has it her dad is an engineer on the railroad and was transferred back to Harker City.

Every time I approach Charity, I feel my face heat up and I scurry like a scaredy-cat in the opposite direction. Talking to cute girls has always made me nervous, but this particular girl—she might very well recall that I’m the guy who once called her Turkey Tits.

Last week I was down at Ratcliff’s Pharmacy getting a root-beer float with Howard when I spotted a new men’s cologne called Instinct. “Made from the musk of wild boars!” the label declared. “Men, let pheromones do the work for you. Warning: women may violently throw themselves at you.”

“Please, please don’t tell me you’re going to buy that,” Howard said.

“Says here it’s scientifically proven to make females go wild,” I said, uncapping the bottle and sniffing.

Howard cringed. “Smells like Aqua Velva Barnyard. The only thing you’re going to attract with that are sows.
Soo-eeee.
”

But I believe in science, and I instantly forked over the ten bucks. The next day I dabbed it behind my ears and on my wrists and made a point of standing behind Charity in the cafeteria line. She sneezed. Twice. The following day I splashed it on my chest, arms, and legs.

“Oink!” Howard ran up to me at my locker and started dry-humping my leg. “I love you! Oink! I must have you! Oink!”

Now, back in English class, I look at Charity, who is reading the biggest magazine I’ve ever seen, something called
Interview.
Soon, soon, soon, I
will
talk to her!

After third period, at the first-floor water fountain, I glance at the sign-up sheet for the eighth-grade talent show taped to the wall and see a new entry: “Howard Bachbaugh—break dancing.” I beeline to Howard’s locker, which is chock-full of books containing pointless facts:
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Mind-Boggling Facts
,
The Book of Lists, This Will Surprise You
.

“What is this about you break-dancing?” I ask.

“That’s correct,” Howard says, a little snootily. “I’ve perfected my moonwalk. Among other things.”

“Such as?”

“You’ll see next Friday night.” And he saunters off, kinda cocky-like. Very un-Howard.

I turn to walk away just as Mom, in her nursing uniform and little winged hat, strides past, her white orthopedic shoes squeaking on the red linoleum floor. I spin back to the sign-up sheet, pretending not to see her. Sometimes she comes over to my locker “just to chat” or to bring me something for lunch—once she kissed me in front of everyone! Mom is our school nurse. But there are barely ninety kids in the entire junior high, so she only comes in on Mondays or when there’s an emergency. The rest of the week she works at Dad’s office.

Please understand that I don’t blame my lack of popularity on the fact that my dad has touched the scrotum of nearly every guy in school, or that my mom shows sex-ed films and gives guest lectures about menstruation and nocturnal emissions in health class. No, I know that I am unpopular because I am not a jock. Football, the sport that determines where one stands in the food chain, is simply “too dangerous” according to Mom, and according to me. I hate the idea of wearing all those pads and slamming into someone. At Dad’s urging I went out for basketball in the sixth grade. I didn’t make a single basket the entire season, never mastered a layup, and resented having to stay after school and miss
The Andy Griffith Show.

Barney Fife is my hero. Skinny, awkward, eyes bulging out like a fish. And he
still
manages to have a girlfriend. Thelma Lou, and sometimes “sweet” Juanita.

When I get home that afternoon, Uncle Ray’s Corvette still gleams in front of our plain little house. I open my bedroom door, and once my eyes adjust to the dimness, I freeze at the sight of Uncle Ray lying on the bottom bunk, reading
The Seductive Man
. Blood rushes to my face. Has he been snooping through my stuff? Did I leave it out?

I clear my throat. “Hey, Uncle Ray!”

He turns to me. “Lester the Mo-lester!”

Tossing the book aside, he wraps his hand around the rail of the upper bunk, pulls himself up, swinging his legs to the floor, and stands.

“Lookit you!” He bear-hugs me, pulling me off the floor, then sets me down. “You must be the star of the basketball team.”

“Not even close.”

“Say, thanks for letting me crash in your room.”

“No problem.”

“And hey, you need privacy to jerky the old turkey, just give me the word and I’ll make myself scarce.”

It takes me a moment to figure out what he means, and then I try hard not to look shocked. My parents never joke about stuff like that.

“So, tell me, kid, you got a girlfriend?”

“I’m working on it.”

He holds up
The Seductive Man
. “Yeah, well, don’t you believe any of this new-age, sensitive-guy bullshit. It won’t get you halfway to first base.” He flips to the back cover and the soft-focus photo of the author: a bald, middle-aged man with a gray beard and black turtleneck, his sensitive face tilted a little, his caterpillar eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully. All he needs is a pipe to look like Mr. Sanderson, my science teacher—and a permanent bachelor.