Mickey And Delia (4) "Have you heard this song Dandy that they do?" "No," he answered puzzled. "I don't think so." "They played it on the radio today, the god awfulest thing you could ever hope to hear. They go all through this song saying how bad this dandy fellow is for playing around with all these woman and then at the end they say, 'You're all right'. I mean what's the point?" "I don't know, I've never heard it. Where did you hear it?" "On the radio this morning." "I thought you listened to that talk radio stuff." "They play music sometimes. They play some of this wacky stuff so we will know what you kids are up to." That night after dinner Mickey asked his mother if he could have five dollars for every A on his report card. His mother said no, she was not going to pay him for what he should want to do for himself. As Mickey dawdled over his homework he thought of how little motivation he had to work hard at school. Mickey did not care for the drudgery of school, it was so uninspirational. They were stuffing his head with facts and figures but was he really learning anything? He wanted something practical, he wanted to earn money now but they were preparing him for college so he could go to school longer. His parents would have gotten a lot of work out of him for five dollars an A, he wondered why could they not understand a simple reward system. That night Mickey lay in his warm bed thinking about girls he had seen and touched, thinking about some of the places his fingers had been. His erection reached up to his navel on his flat stomach. He reached down and touched his penis and it felt good so he ran his hand up and down until it ejaculated and filled his navel with sperm. He picked up a sock from the floor and cleaned himself. His mother liked the song Roaman in the Glomming, Mickey thought of masturbation at night as Spuming in the Glooming. He wondered what it would be like to come in a woman as he rolled over to sleep. Wednesday 11-02-1966 At school David said to Mickey, “Don’t jerk off so much, you’ll get women.” “I can tell by your bad skin you jerk off too much,” said Hank to Mickey. “You’re a walking embarrassment.” "Hey, I represent that," Mickey said giving the traditional reply to an insult by Curly of the Three Stooges. Mickey wondered if it was really so obvious that he had masturbated the night before. Maybe he should stop just so that people would not say rude things to him anymore. David said to Mickey, "So who do you like?" "I kind of like Lilly, I don't know, there is something really nice about her." "You could get her if you wanted to," David asserted. "You could take that skinny wimp Rod that she's been going with." "Who is Rod?" Mickey asked, he did not know that Lilly had a boy friend. "Some pud from Richmond high, believe me, you're much better than he is." "How do you know this?" "I'm tight with her brother." Mickey ran into Lilly and walked along the courtyard talking with her on the way to class. They were talking slowly and carefully, keeping everything intellectual. Mickey liked Lilly, she was tall, Chinese and had long straight black hair. Her clothes were very fashionable and she seemed very straight but Mickey was interested in her. They walked to the glass double door and she reached down to open it as he reached down to open it and she turned toward him and his hand, going for the door handle, squashed her left breast flat against her chest. Mickey was completely flustered and apologized profusely. When Lilly recovered from her shock she apologized and said it was her fault. Mickey got the door open and Lilly walked quickly in the opposite direction that Mickey was going. Mickey walked to class feeling torn between elation and complete embarrassment. All during class he tried to remember how his hand had felt on her breast and tried not to think about it at the same time. He did not like getting erections in class, what if he had to write an answer on the chalkboard, they were too hard to hide. He was so ashamed that he had accidentally touched her and was amazed at how soft her breast was and how it had squashed flat. Walking to his next class, Mickey passed Linda. "How are you?" she asked coolly. "I feel dead on my feet," Mickey felt like he could die from nervous exhaustion, he had been up to late the night before. "Same old Mickey," she said as if he had told a joke and she walked away. 'Same old Linda,' Mickey thought dismissively and tried to forget about her. That evening after dinner Mickey sat in a chair in the living room. One of his knees was up and his other leg was outstretched as he slouched. One arm rested on the chair arm and the other one was holding up his leaning head. The TV was on but he was not really watching it. He was replaying his run in with Lilly and thinking that he had no luck at all. In utter despair and hopelessness, he felt that nothing in his life was ever going to work out. His mother came in the room and took a picture of him, she said he epitomized teenage angst and if he just saw the way he looked he would change himself. Mickey just glared at her from his state of gloom. “You look like you have the luck of the Irish,” she said to him, meaning that he had no luck at all. "Maybe if you cut that shaggy hair off things would go better for you." "I don't want to cut my hair," Mickey said as if it was one more thing out to ruin him. "Girls like me with long hair." "As soon as you're out of high school you can grow your hair as long as you like," she answered. "Finishing high school will be your ticket to travel and freedom." Thursday 11-03-1966 Mickey was sitting on the small lawn at the school reading on his lunch break. His tight pants cut into him but he never minded the pain. His large chest hung over his sunken stomach made him look like he was holding his stomach in all the time. When some of the boys started teasing him about holding his stomach in, Mickey unbuttoned his shirt. His skin was so deeply tanned on his stomach that he almost looked black. Mickey showed them his thin waist. “I’ll show you what it’s like when I hold my stomach in,” Mickey said and he sucked in his gut until it outlined his stomach and organs under his skin. “That’s sick,” one of the guys said and they all got up in revulsion and left. As Mickey buttoned up his shirt he thought, ‘Yeah, but can you do it?” His only example of seeing people do what he had done had been yoga masters on the television travelogues. Mickey was lean but he weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. He liked the solid feeling of his body. Friday 11-04-1966 At school Mickey had been letting guys hit him in the stomach, it did not hurt because his stomach muscles were very strong. “Watch this,” said Hank to his friend. Hank wound up and really punched Mickey hard. Mickey did not double over, he stood his ground, “Thought I had him that time,” said Hank and then he walked off with his friend. Mickey could feel that his internal organs seemed bruised and decided to quit doing this. After school on Friday Tim asked Mickey if he would like to come over to his house for awhile. Mickey had never been there before even though it was only a few blocks from the school. They walked past the school parking lot. Mickey felt jealous that so many students had cars, the Belair seemed to be very popular even though it was kind of plain looking. Mickey's father had said he could have any car he wanted when he turned sixteen, as long as Mickey paid for it. If he had any choice in it he would like a Jaguar XKE or an MG TD but the chances of that happening were as far away as the stars. They cut across the ball field, past the back stop that some students said a cheerleader had gotten pregnant behind by a football team member. They walked through the track field which was only paths pounded out of a weed covered slope by tennis shoe clad feet. Mickey had never been to this part of the school grounds before and did not even know it had existed as it was down a slope and below the horizon of the school. He thought it was kind of neat, a person could get lost back there in the tall weeds, it was like a maze. They followed the street and crossed over a creek on a small bridge that had washed out one winter and taken the life of someone who had tried to drive across anyway. Tim’s house looked like an old run down one-story farmhouse, set back from the road. Inside Tim took off his cap and wiped the sweat off his brow. He showed Mickey his room and they talked of things they felt they had in common. They were both against the war in Vietnam, both liked the art and music of their times and were curious about the drug culture because of the open expression of alternatives it represented to them. Neither was very happy in school, both had bad self-images and were treated as insignificant losers by others. Tim was short and stout. He had a broad intelligent forehead, short brown curly hair and looked like a Greek fisherman under stress in normal times and had a sort of wild, trapped look during difficult times. He was treated somewhat as a half wit or ‘special person’ by many, but he was known to be kind and gentle. They were both dressed in blue jeans and plaid shirts. Tim showed Mickey a book of cartoons by Ron Cobb. One cartoon showed two people sitting on a bench smoking. The smoke of the old cigarette smoker made evil patterns in the air, the smoke of the young marijuana smoker made psychedelic designs. Another cartoon showed an ocean of lysergic acid eating away at the shore of reality. Tim went into his older brother’s room and came back with a record, it was Freak Out by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. “Did you ever hear this before?” Tim asked. “No,” Mickey replied. “Let’s go in the back and listen to it.” They walked to the back yard where there was a barn with a small shed attached. The shed held straw and they went in there. It had one room that was half-finished and another room that had a brick and dirt floor with some old rugs laid down. It was sparsely furnished but there were a few battered chairs and an old couch. “This is nice,” said Mickey, “away from everyone.” Tim put the record on the old and beat up record player in the half-finished room. “Yeah, that’s why I like it.” Tim started the double record on side one and explained the songs as they played. Hungry Freaks, Daddy was about Mr. America who refused to see that there were alternatives in society. Who Are the Brain Police? was about people noticing that others had been turned into plastic and chrome by the strictures of modern reality. It interested Mickey, antiestablishment songs with paranoid science fiction themes, he had never heard anything like it. Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder sounded to Mickey like basic fifties doo-wop. “This was the kind of stuff Zappa was doing and it got rejected so often that he started doing the weird stuff,” Tim said. At Tim’s suggestion they retired to the straw room. Tim rooted around in the straw and came up with a small tin box which he opened and took out a corn cob pipe and a matchbox. “Wanna smoke some marijuana?” asked Tim in a casual happy tone of voice. “Is that what you’ve got? What does it do to you? I don’t know. Where did you get it?” Mickey asked nervously. “From a friend,” said Tim inscrutably. Tim took a pinch of the damp green spongy plant material from the matchbox and stuffed it into the pipe. He kept trying to light it and the matches would just burn down, it was too wet. He kept trying and finally got some great clouds of smoke going. Tim took in a big breath from the pipe and handed it to Mickey. Tim’s face turned bright red and the smoke exploded from him with much coughing and hacking. Mickey had been smoking cigarettes but he had never tried anything like this before. Mickey drew on the pipe cautiously. Hot dry smoke rushed down into his lungs, he breathed it right back out again and coughed. “This is harsh,” Mickey complained. “Yeah, a little,” Tim wheezed as he took the pipe back and puffed large clouds of smoke again. Mickey did not feel anything. He took the pipe back when offered it and wiped the spit off the end and sucked in more smoke. The hot blast caught in his lungs and came burning right back out again. He coughed and coughed and spit out some phlegm that had covered his throat. “You shouldn’t have done that,” admonished Tim. Mickey teary eyed from coughing and pain asked, “Why not?” Tim, smoking on the pipe said, “You spit out your protective coating.” He handed the pipe back to Mickey who drew in some smoke which really burned his raw and unprotected throat. He coughed it out again, his throat hurt and he was starting to feel lightheaded. “You’re not keeping much down,” said Tim holding it in his lungs like a pro before dissolving into a coughing fit. Mickey took the pipe back and gently inhaled a small amount of smoke and held it in his lungs despite the pain. The room began to get hazy and dark, he let the smoke out, “I think something’s happening,” he said. “Good,” Tim replied. The pipe had gone out again so Tim put it back in the box. Mickey was glad and disappointed, he felt dizzy and strange. Tim turned the record over and was bouncing around and singing some of the lyrics to the song Wowie Zowie like, ‘I don’t even care if your dad’s a heat’. Tim sang “’You’re probably wondering why I’m here and so do I,’ that’s how I feel sometimes,” he said to Mickey. Mickey’s mind was racing. The song Trouble Every Day came on and Mickey could hear that it was based on the Watts riot and its coverage by the media. When Help I’m A Rock played, the violent musical overtones in it began to scare Mickey. When The Mothers started singing some nonsense lyrics Mickey asked, "Are they Mexican?” He was trying to figure out who these people were and where they came from while he looked at the cheesy record cover. “They’re just a bunch of freaks from L. A.,” Tim said. Tim kind of liked Return of the Son of Monster Magnet and pointed out the Suzy Cream Cheese segment with its female singer breathing orgasmicly. The music was pushing and pulling Mickey’s mind into places he had never been before. Mental visions with flashes of sexual images and colored sparks of light spontaneously appeared and just as suddenly left his brain. When the record ended Tim looked at his watch and said, “Well you should probably go now. You don't want to be here when my brother comes home.” Mickey felt dizzy and high and upset at being cast out into the world and elated at being in a much different state of mind than he had ever been in before. He walked the several miles home fairly quickly and hardly noticed because his mind was wandering here and there. He did not want to ride the bus or hitchhike because he wanted to air out and try to come down from the smoke before he got home for dinner. Dinner was very strange for Mickey. He was still a little high and happy, yet he was also somewhat paranoid. His father sat opposite of him at the table and ate while his mother served him and neither of his parents noticed his state of mind as being out of the ordinary. He drank a lot of milk to ease his sore throat and enjoyed the taste of the food but ate as surreptitiously quick as he could so he would not have to stay at the kitchen table too long. He retired to his room after dinner and felt wondrous as he read and thought.
Copyright © 2007 Michael Potter |