The fifth time it had taken him almost twenty minutes to get hard, but Betty had proclaimed the experience well worth the wait. And then, last night, he hadn’t been able to perform at all.
‘What are you, anyway?’ Betty had asked petulantly. After twenty minutes of manipulating his lax penis, she was dishevelled and out of patience. ‘Are you one of those AC/DC guys’?’
He very nearly strangled her on the spot. And if he’d had his.30-.30‘Well, I’l1 be a son of a gun! Congratulations, son!’
‘Huh?’ He looked up and out of his black study.
‘You made the Southern Cat High School All-Stars!’ His father was grinning with pride and pleasure.
‘Is that so?’ For a moment he hardly knew what his father was talking about; he had to grope for the meaning of the words. ‘Say, yeah, Coach Haller mentioned something to me about that at the end of the year. Said he was putting me and Billy DeLyons up. I never expected anything to happen.’
‘Well Jesus, you don’t seem very excited about it!’
‘I’m still trying (who gives a ripe fuck?) to get used to the idea.’ With a huge effort, he managed a grin. ‘Can I see the article?’
His father handed the paper across the table to Todd and got to his feet ‘I’m going to wake Monica up. She’s got to see this before we leave.’
No, God -I can’t face both of them this morning.
‘Aw, don’t do that You know she won’t be able to get back to sleep if you wake her up. Well leave it for her on the table.’
‘Yes, I suppose we could do that. You’re a damned thoughtful boy, Todd.’ He clapped Todd on the back, and Todd squeezed his eyes closed. At the same time he shrugged his shoulders in an aw-shucks gesture that made his father laugh. Todd opened his eyes again and looked at the paper.
4 BOYS NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS, the headline read. Beneath were pictures of them in their uniforms — the catcher and left-fielder from Fairview High, the jigaboo shortstop from Mountford, and Todd to the far right, grinning openly out at the world from beneath the bill of his baseball cap. He read the story and saw that Billy DeLyons had made the second squad. That, at least, was something to feel happy about DeLyons could claim he was a Methodist until his tongue fell out, if it made him feel good, but he wasn’t fooling Todd. He knew perfectly well what Billy DeLyons was. Maybe he ought to introduce him to Betty Trask, she was another sheeny. He had wondered about that for a long time, and last night he had decided for sure. The Trasks were passing for white. One look at her nose and that olive complexion — her old man’s was even worse — and you knew. That was probably why he hadn’t been able to get it up. It was simple: his cock had known the difference before his brain. Who did they think they were kidding, calling themselves Trask?
‘Congratulations again, son.’
He looked up and first saw his father’s hand stuck out, then his father’s foolishly grinning face.
Your buddy Trask is a yid! He heard himself yelling into his father’s face. That’s why I was impotent with his slut of a daughter last night! That’s the reason! Then, on the heels of that, the cold voice that sometimes came at moments like this rose up from deep inside him, shutting off the rising flood of irrationality, as if (GET HOLD OF YOURSELF RIGHT NOW) behind steel gates.
He took his father’s hand and shook it. Smiled guilelessly into his father’s proud face. Said: ‘Jeez, thanks, dad.’
They left that page of the newspaper folded back and a note for Monica, which Dick insisted Todd write and sign: Your All-Star Son, Todd.
22
Ed French, aka ‘Pucker’ French, aka Sneaker Pete and The Ked Man, also aka Rubber Ed French, was in the small and lovely seaside town of San Remo for a guidance counsellors’ convention. It was a waste of time if ever there had been one — all guidance counsellors could ever agree on was not to agree on anything — and he grew bored with the papers, seminars, and discussion periods after a single day. Halfway through the second day, he discovered he was also bored with San Remo, and that of the adjectives small, lovely, and seaside, the key adjective was probably small. Gorgeous views and redwood trees aside, San Remo didn’t have a movie theatre or a bowling alley, and Ed hadn’t wanted to go in the place’s only bar — it had a dirt parking lot filled with pick-up trucks, and most of the pick-ups had Reagan stickers on their rusty bumpers and tailgates. He wasn’t afraid of being picked on, but he hadn’t wanted to spend an evening looking at men in cowboy hats and listening to Loretta Lynn on the jukebox.