The Downside of Being Up (5 page)

“Um . . .”

“Go ahead. Va-so-con-ges-tion.”

“Vahz-oh-con-jest-chee-un.”

“Good. Now let's look at some penile charts. Of the four penises that you see, can you identify which of the following penises are flaccid?”

A screen came down on the wall behind her, and suddenly there was a slide show.

Aarrgh!
I jumped back in my seat. The detailed biological images in front of me freaked me out.

“The penis consists of three cylindrical masses, two corpora cavernosa and a third cord, the corpus spogiosum urethrae. The expanded distal end of the corpus cavernosum forms the glans, while this part extends to the urethra and is covered by a sheet of skeletal muscle, the bulb cavernosus.”

I stared at the screen on the wall, frozen and terrified, having no clue what the heck this woman was talking about. Using a wooden pointer, my correctional erectional therapist explained the precise science behind a human erection. Truth is, right at that moment, I believed that correctional erectional therapy was gonna work perfectly, because after ten minutes with this skinny lady explaining all of this horrible information, I doubted I would ever have another boner in my life again.

“Here,” she continued, “let me show you what it looks like from a different point of view.”

She changed the slide.

“Don't worry,” she said with a laugh. “It won't bite.”

I'd never seen such a twisted-looking hoffenschlonger. I think it was an inside-out point of view.

Blood rushed to my head. I felt dizzy. “Can I be excused?”

“Now, Bobby,” she answered, adjusting her thin eyeglasses. “If you want to get better, you are going to have to make an effort. I can't do all the work myself. Puberty is a challenging time, and knowing the science behind your body is the first step toward helping your mind grow more comfortable with who you are. Please, work with me. We still have forty-three more minutes.”

“But—”

“And you know, Mr. Hildge is expecting a report on this,” she interrupted.

“A report?” I said.

“A full report,” she answered. People with arms as thin as hers should always wear long sleeves, not sleeveless tops like the one she had on.

I decided to stop protesting. She switched slides.
Eeeeee!

For the next forty-three minutes I was given large quantities of penile information. Information about crowns, shafts, testes . . . There should be a law against those kinds of words. Then, when my session was finally over, she handed me a business card and explained our meeting schedule.

“We'll see each other every Tuesday and Thursday immediately after school for the next eight weeks and . . .” She stopped speaking. “What?” she asked.

“Ms. Cox?” I said, looking at the business card.

“Dr. Cox,” she answered.

“Is that, um, what I call you?” I asked.

“Yessss,” she said, stretching out the word. “It's my name, Bobby. Why, is there a problem?”

She glared at me over the rim of her skinny glasses.

“A problem? Um, no. No problem, Dr. Cox.”

“As I was saying,” she continued. “We'll meet twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays immediately after school.”

“Yes, Ms. Cox.”

“Dr. Cox.”

“Oh yeah, sorry.”

She stared at me, daring me to make fun of her name. I didn't have the guts. But me and this Dr. Cox woman talking twice a week about peckers, I mean, wasn't there a better way?

“We're done for the day, Bobby,” she said. “You may leave.”

I wasted no time getting out of that office and stumbled home.

Walking down the street, a squirrel crossed my path. A moment later I had a pipe in my pants. Why the sight of a fluffy rat would make my pecker get stiff was something I'd never understand. But whatever. At least I was alone when it happened.

Perhaps if I concentrated on something else, my erection would go away? I thought about purple monkeys dancing with green parrots.

Nope, still stiff. Hmm . . . what to do, what to do?

I reached down my jeans, adjusted my equipment and continued toward home. At least boners didn't make you walk any different. They were like farts in that way. You could just cruise down the street without breaking stride and no one would ever know that you had just practically crapped your pants.

A few minutes later, I was at my front door. A front door that stuck ever since my dad had painted it green.

Ah, green,
I thought,
the color of Allison's eyes.
My plan was to daydream the rest of the afternoon away, maybe eat a few chips and play a few video games to erase the torture of the psycho psychologist from my mind. But then there was a knock. I shouldn't have answered.

“So, did your therapist straighten out your boner?
He-hurrggh, he-hurrggh
.”

“Go away, Finkelstein.”

Finkelstein had brown hair in a bowl cut, a few randomly splattered freckles across his cheeks and big ears. A person couldn't make a bigger dork if they had a middle-school-doofus-making machine.

“Aw, just messin', bro,” he said.

Finkelstein was not only my classmate, he was my neighbor two doors down, my Little League teammate ever since T-ball and the son of my mother's favorite car-pool partner. We were even born in the same hospital the same week, delivered by the same doctor. The only time I am without Finkelstein in my life for long stretches of time is when he goes away to summer camp in North Carolina for six weeks every year.

Except last summer he came home early due to bee stings. For some reason, Finkelstein wanted fresh honey. It was a twelve-year-old boy in shorts and a tank top versus forty thousand angry honeybees in the middle of a hot summer day. They even stung his armpits. Alfred ended up having to be medevaced out of camp and was wrapped in special ointment gauze like some kind of mummy boy for three weeks. To this day, he does all he can to avoid even the thought of bees. It gives him flashbacks and stuff.

“Ya know, Bobby, the secret to erection management is duct tape,” Finkelstein said, pulling out a roll of thick, silver tape. “I brought you some.”

Duct tape? For a second, I actually thought about wrapping up my willie good and tight so that it wouldn't give me any more “pop up out of nowhere” problems. But just for a second.

“Leave, Finkelstein.”

“Yeah, leave, zit face,” Hill said, appearing from the kitchen with a glass of cranberry juice. Though my sister was only four foot eleven and eighty-seven pounds, ever since this school year started she had the attitude of a grumpy rhinoceros.

“I'll leave once you grow boobs, Hill. Oh, wait, guess that means I'll be staying another twenty-six centuries.
He-hurrggh, he-hurrggh
.”

“Metal mouth,” she responded.

“Flat chest,” he answered.

“Acne face!”

“Pipe cleaner!!”

“Will you two shut up?!” I shouted. Hill stuck out her tongue at Finkelstein. To show how mature he was, Finkelstein returned the tongue gesture and then he jammed a finger in his nose, another finger in his ear and stood on one foot doing some crazy hula dance like a pinheaded moron with a hamster in his underwear.

Hill shook her head and walked out of the room.

“Yeah, well, I gotta go finish anyway,” Finkelstein said as he took his finger out of his nose and picked up a folder he had set down on the table. “Yep, just gotta go finish hanging up these flyers.”

I ignored him.

“Aren't you gonna ask what flyers, Bobby?”

“No.”

“Go ahead, ask.”

“No,” I repeated.

“Bet you will,” he said.

“Bet I won't,” I answered.

“Bet you will.”

“Bet I won't.”

“They're about you,” he said.

“Whaddya mean, they're about me?” I shot back. “What are they?”

“See, I told ya you were gonna ask.
He-hurrggh, he-hurrggh
.”

“Shut up, Finkelstein!” I said, snatching the folder from his hands. I looked down and read the flyer.

“Um, Finkelstein . . .”

“Yeah.”

“How many of these did you hang up?”

He paused. “Not many.”

“How many?” I asked.

“Ten or so.” He paused again. “Okay,” he confessed. “Two hundred and sixteen.”

“Finkelstein!!”

“What? All guys get erections,” he said. “This'll be a show of solidarity. Fat Matt already said he'd DJ the event and his belly is so big, he's probably never even seen his pecker. This could be major!”

I quickly put on my shoes. “Let's go.”

“Where are we going?”

“We gotta take 'em down!”

“All of them?” Finkelstein asked.

“Yes, all of them.”

“And the website, too?”

“Finkelstein!!”

I grabbed him by his collar and we dashed out the door. There was no time to waste.

“There, all done,” I said once we finally had the last of them.

“Wellllll . . . ,” Finkelstein said.

“Well, what?” I said as I crumpled up the flyer. Why Finkelstein was posting boner flyers on the bulletin board of our local church was beyond me. I mean God'll throw a lightning bolt at you for that kind of stuff.

“Wellll . . . there's still one left,” he said.

“Where?” I asked. “We'll go get it.”

“Wellll . . . that might be tough.”

“Why?”

“Wellll . . .”

I grabbed Finkelstein by the ear.

“Talk, Finkelstein!”

All the green grass around the church made me think that perhaps this place had a cemetery in the back where I could just go murdalize and bury Finkelstein right then and there.

“It's the original.
Ouch,
” he answered. “Don't twist! I forgot about the original.”

“So, where is it?” I demanded. “Give it to me.”

“
Ouch,
I can't,” he squealed. “Stop!”

“What do you mean, you can't?” I let him go.

“That really hurt, Bobby,” he complained. “You know I have a sprained ear from the time I got my head stuck in the bars at the zoo.”

“Finkelstein!” I was ready to rip his face off. “Where is the original?”

“I left it in the copy machine.” He paused. “The copy machine at school.”

Finkelstein covered his ears with both hands waiting for me to shred him.

“Let me get this straight. You left the original copy of the First Annual Bobby Connor Bone-a-Thon flyer in the school photocopy machine?” I said. “You're not serious?”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded. “I snuck into the faculty lounge when no one was looking.”

“Finkelstein!!”

“What?” he said. “I was just trying to help.”

“We gotta get it.”

“Impossible,” he answered. “It's like a fortress in there. I was lucky to break in the first time.”

“Finkelstein,” I said. “You better figure out a way to get lucky again or else I am going to tear off your ear and staple it to your nose so you can smell your own pain.”

“He-hurrggh, he-hurrggh,”
he laughed. “You heard that on the wrestling channel.”

“Shut up, Finkelstein!” I said. “And figure out a way for us to get back that original.”

I dropped my head just thinking about it.

“Oh, what's the point?” I said, ready to give up. “I bet somebody already found it.”

“Doubt it,” said Finkelstein. “I did it after school and most of the cars were already gone from the teachers' parking lot.”

“You think there's a chance it's still there?”

“Most definitely,” he said.

Finkelstein rubbed his chin. “Okay, I got a plan,” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “We'll wear black. All black. That way we can be inconspicuous.”

The next morning Finkelstein and I set our alarms to get up at four forty-five so we could be at school by five twenty a.m. It was so dark, even the roosters were still asleep. But campus, we knew, would be open. That's because teachers are freaks, and a few of them were always around preparing new ways to torture students, even at five thirty a.m.

“Why aren't you wearing black?” I asked when I met Finkelstein on his front lawn.

“I was out of black,” he answered. “So then I went for green, but it didn't match with brown, so I decided purple would be good, but it didn't match with red, so—”

“You're wearing bright yellow!”

He looked down as if he was seeing himself for the first time that morning.

“Not so inconspicuous, huh?”

“You look like a friggin' bumblebee,” I exclaimed.