King Dork Approximately (11 page)

Sam Hellerman had left to go to the bathroom. And, well, his portable cassette player was just sitting there in plain view where he had left it, on the bed under his jacket, inside the little zip pocket of his backpack. What would you have done, with it staring you in the face like that? Well, just like you would have done, I’m sure, I hurried over, furtively unzipped the pocket, pulled out the device, put on one ear of the headphones, and got ready to push play, keeping the other ear open and an eye on the door for signs of Sam Hellerman’s return. I knew I probably had a bit of time: for whatever reason—which I am not at all interested in knowing—Sam Hellerman tends to take longer in the bathroom than your average dude.

I hesitated for a fraction of a moment before pressing play, pausing to consider the possibilities, knowing that once I knew what was on the tape, speculating on it—one of my favorite pastimes, if truth be told—would no longer be available to me as a recreational activity. What kind of music would it be? Could it be secretly recorded demos of songs written by Sam Hellerman himself? If so, what would such songs be about? The mind of Sam Hellerman is dark and obscure, a mysterious and no doubt frightening place, and there was no telling what might emerge from it in song form if such a thing were ever allowed to happen. Would it even sound like music at
all? My centipede was twitching in anticipation. But time was a-wasting. I had only a brief window. I pressed play and this is what I heard:

A kind of swirly, pulsing music, with lots of echo, like the sound track of a retro space movie, certainly not rock and roll. So this is what the mind of Sam Hellerman sounds like, I thought, and it seemed to fit. Kind of otherworldly.

Then I heard a deep, resonant Darth Vader voice saying this very slowly:

“You are strong. You are confident. You are in command of the situation. You are respected by your colleagues at work or school. Women like and admire you. They are interested in what you have to say, and you approach them with confidence—”

I heard a footstep in the hall and I quickly ripped the headphones off, wrapped them around the tape player, and shoved it all back in Sam Hellerman’s backpack, just as Little Big Tom’s trademark shave-and-a-haircut knock sounded on the door. False alarm.

Little Big Tom’s head emerged through the doorway at an angle, like some improbable hippie turtle with a gray mustache.

“I heard tell,” he said with great solemnity, “that there’s some hombres in here who might be interested in a pizza party.”

He shouldered his way into my room holding a pizza box in front of him on an outstretched palm, with cans of Coke arranged neatly on top of it. Sam Hellerman followed close behind, lured by the scent of pepperoni as the South American pizza moth (
Lymantria pepperonica
) is drawn to the pizza-shaped flames of traditional Peruvian torches. They got tangled up in each other in the doorway.

“Shall we dance?” said Little Big Tom, which is what he
always says when he is one of a set of people who get tangled up in each other in a doorway.

I’d expected, or rather hoped, that Little Big Tom would deposit the pizza and Cokes on the floor before dematerializing with a quick, parting comment like “Sustenance—what a growing boy needs!” or “Pizza pie—it’s like a pie, but made of pizza!” My hopes sank, however, as he came all the way into the room and settled with his back against the wall, emitting a deep sigh.

“Foodstuff,” he said. “It’s what’s for dinner!” Well, my prediction hadn’t been far off. But though the words were familiar, it seemed to me there was quite a bit less of an exclamation point at the end than there would ordinarily have been. In fact, I think that poor excuse for an exclamation point was one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard. Had my mom really found incriminating underwear in Little Big Tom’s gym bag, as Amanda had said? I still didn’t believe it, but if that was the cause of the marital strife, I really hoped he’d come up with a good excuse, and soon. If “That’s so weird, I don’t know how they got there” doesn’t work, expand your horizons. Send the lady some flowers; tell her you’re a secret transvestite and you’re sorry but you’ve got to be you; pass it off as historical memorabilia, some of Isadora Duncan’s frilly unmentionables, perhaps, that you won at auction, worth ten times what you paid for them—tell her it’s all to finance a holiday in Vegas for her birthday. And then actually take her to Vegas and get her drunk. Failing that, grovel. Because whatever you’re doing, little gray stepfather, it clearly isn’t working. And I, for one, just couldn’t take much more of this moping around.

“Half vegan, half arteriosclerosis,” said Little Big Tom, opening the pizza box and popping open one of the Coke cans so that its carbonation’s hiss coincided with his third heavy
sigh since his arrival. “So, boys,” he continued. “What’s happenin’?”

Sam Hellerman and I looked at each other. It was hard to know what to say. What was really happening, planning the surreptitious reprogramming of Shinefield’s abhorrent drumming, was too complicated to explain. Plus, I had in my head this bubbling pot of “You are strong, you are confident” whose boiling over was long overdue. Holding it to a simmer—that is, keeping it to myself—took all of my strength and concentration. I knew Little Big Tom was lonely and just wanted company, but the timing was really inconvenient.

No one was saying anything, so I said, “Just listening to Judas Priest … chief.”

“Sounds great,” said Little Big Tom, and he made a twirling gesture with his index finger on an imaginary turntable in front of him as if to say “Crank up the Priest, then, ye metal gods.”

Sam Hellerman flashed a helpless look my way but got up to do as Little Big Tom’s mimed turntable had directed.

There followed the strangest, most uncomfortable, and least likely heavy metal pizza party in recorded history. Little Big Tom was sitting with his back to the wall and his chin on one knee, eating his vegan pizza and nodding to the music intently, examining the screaming eagle on the album cover with serious-minded intensity, while Sam Hellerman and I, our appetites long vanished, looked on in perplexed horror.

“Screaming for vengeance,” said Little Big Tom. “What’s that they’re saying after that? I can’t quite make it out.”

“ ‘The world is a manacled place,’ ” Sam Hellerman and I said almost in unison, and in the same dry, robotic monotone. I don’t know about Sam Hellerman, but I was feeling pretty manacled myself at that moment.

Little Big Tom nodded, his face still in a frown, but with his
eyebrows raised as though to say “Hey, we’ve all been there, am I right?” “ ‘The world is a manacled place,’ ” he repeated. “ ‘Manacled.’ ” Then: “ ‘A manacled place.’ ”

Never mind the irony that Little Big Tom had tried to confiscate this very album twice before, on the grounds of its supposed “negativity.” That’s just typical parental hypocrisy hardly worthy of mention. They confiscate stuff, mostly because they can. But listening to
Screaming for Vengeance
in the presence of Little Big Tom was worse than any confiscation.

It’s hard to explain exactly why. I guess all I can say is that I’d become accustomed to a kind of wall of separation between Little Big Tom and Judas Priest. I’d taken this wall largely for granted. Without ever having had the occasion to notice it per se, I suppose I had assumed it would always be there for me. When it was breached, I was defenseless.

When “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ ” came on, Little Big Tom said “Good beat” and started kind of dancing side to side from the shoulders up. Then he started singing along under his breath with the chorus, curling his lip, and, I kid you not, appearing to play air drums with his index fingers. At this rate, he’d be kicking over the furniture, hitting us over the head with beer bottles, and screaming “Me-
tal
, me-
tal
, me-
tal
” while he banged his forehead to a bloody pulp on the floor before we reached the end of side two. (If it’s possible to bang your head to a pulp on shag carpeting. I’ve never tried it. Anyone?)

Something had to be done, and fast. I reached up to turn the volume knob down and said:

“Have you ever noticed how jeans have a little diagram of a penis embroidered on the front in gold thread?”

Sam Hellerman and Little Big Tom looked at me uncomprehendingly, and then we all looked down at our own individual embroidered penis diagrams. Then we looked up at each
other. And the pronounced awkwardness that had seemed just a moment ago like it could not possibly get any worse magically deepened into a vibrantly more vivid shade of awkward. It was enough, like a slap across the face to a hysterical person about to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. We were effectively, mercifully, moving on to the next scene, and not a moment too soon. Well, golden embroidered jeans penis: at least you’re good for something.

“Rock and roll,” said Little Big Tom in that resigned way of his, rising to his feet and backing toward the door. He rumpled my hair on the way out, the most despondent hair rumpling of his career.

“You know,” he said mournfully, pausing in the doorway, “I’m sure you can get this stuff on CD. Clear you out some space in here. Bonus tracks too.”

We looked back at him more in pity than in anger.

“What the heck was that?” Sam Hellerman said.

“That,” my eyes said, “is what happens when the wall comes down.”

Sam Hellerman gave me the look that says “For the love of God and all that is holy, pray never, ever mention the embroidered jeans penis again in my presence.” You know the look I’m talking about. And I knew he had a point.

“You have to admit,” I said nevertheless, in words, “that it puts Jeans Skirt Girl’s jeans skirt in a different light.”

Sam Hellerman was silent. I guess he didn’t have to admit it after all.

At any rate, it was clear there would be no more beat mining for the rest of the night. Little Big Tom’s reckless behavior had rendered the entire site unsafe; the mine was closed pending
the adoption of further safety measures, such as locking the door.

“Be right back, Hellerman,” I said, hating to leave the matter of the tape hanging but feeling I had no choice. I dashed out the door, brushing past Little Big Tom’s trudging, slope-shouldered figure in the hallway. He didn’t even ask me where the fire was. This is getting critical, I thought.

Amanda and an unfamiliar girl were sitting on the floor of her room when I burst in, hard at work gluing glitter and maybe rhinestones and leaves and God knows what else to little boxes.

“Don’t you knock?” said Amanda with studied petulance, if s. p. means what I think it probably has to mean.

“This has got to stop,” I said, knocking on the inside of the door sarcastically. “He just spent the last hour playing air drums to Judas Priest. He thinks the world is a manacled place. A manacled place!” And I sounded only half as hysterical as I actually was.

“My stupid brother,”
Amanda half whispered in response to her friend’s wide-eyed, questioning look. “What are you talking about?” she continued, to me. “Sam?” Then to the girl:
“Sam’s the other ‘nice-looking boy’ I was telling you about.”

Say what you will about Amanda, but whatever her flaws, she’s very good at conveying italics with her voice, and here she even managed to convey the quotation marks within the italics. Damn, she’s good.

“No, no, not Sam Hellerman. Big Tom,” I said, and waited
for her to whisper
“My mom’s so-called husband”
before resuming: “His moping around is seriously cutting into my private time, and he’s only getting worse.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” said Amanda. “It’s his own fault.” Her friend’s eyes widened further as she added:
“There was underwear in his gym bag.”
To me, she said, “I bet it’s someone from the theater group. And she’s super young, I bet, and I bet he’s taking advantage of her.”

I waved this away. Seriously, what female, young, old, or otherwise, would be interested enough in Little Big Tom to allow herself to be in any kind of position to be taken advantage of by him? I mean, well, except our mom, obviously, but she’s a unique case. She won’t eat certain tomatoes if she senses that they may have holes in their auras, which should tell you just about all you need to know about her judgment when it comes to whom to allow herself to be taken advantage of by.

“There are a lot of sick people in this world,” said Amanda, more or less correctly interpreting the series of facial expressions and eye movements that reflected my train of thought. “Anyway,” she added, “it was hot underwear. I saw it.”

My attention was temporarily thrown off course, because of the possibly decent band name. Hot Underwear: Jesus the Thong Burglar on guitar and vox, Hellerman Schmellerman on bass and vox, “Phil Rudd” on drums, first album
Wet and Loaded
. The album cover possibilities alone would … But I digress.

I mean, okay, I don’t know what I thought I would accomplish by bursting into Amanda’s room like that. Amanda’s dislike for Little Big Tom was the stuff of legend, and she seemed pleased enough with the present situation, and her hopes for further disharmony were pretty obvious.

“You know,” I said, changing tack, “he invaded our Judas
Priest. He could invade you, too. Don’t you understand? The wall is coming down.” When she didn’t seem to understand the significance of the wall coming down, I added: “He could easily come in with pizza and sit down right there and start trying to help you … do whatever it is you’re doing.” I tried to make my eyes imply that it was only a matter of time.

“It’s called letterboxing,” she said with the same studied petulance I described above. But I believe I detected a slight weakening in her resistance. Surely even Amanda preferred a Little Big Tom who issued inane comments only from within his own clearly defined territory. “Maybe there is something I can do after all,” she said thoughtfully.

That was a lot more than I’d expected from her. All I wanted was a return to the unsatisfactory situation that had existed before the even less satisfactory situation that had superseded it. How was that too much to ask?