BOY MINUS GIRL: Chapter One

 Seductive Exercise Number 1

The seductive man knows his tongue is an invaluable erotic instrument, which must be exercised daily.  Stick it out as far as it will go then pull it back deep into your mouth.  Do this ten times rapidly.  Next, flutter your tongue like the wings of a humming bird for three minutes.  Soon, you'll be ready to pleasure her with the Velvet Buzz Saw.

***

Mom, Dad and I sit at the oval kitchen table, trying to eat Mom's meatloaf.  In the window above the sink, the yellow lace curtains frolic in the hot May wind, diluting the strange scent wafting off the meat. To my right, Mom, in her starched nurse's uniform and her checkered red apron, primly sips her iced tea.  To my left, Dad, in his shirt and tie, chews while reading the Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper beside his plate.

"Dad," I say, "the talent show is one week from night."

"Uh-huh," Dad says to the newspaper.

"And the vanishing box is, well, not even close to being done."

"Not tonight, son, I'm bushed."

Beneath the table I'm fondling a red grape with my right hand, massaging the soft skin with my fingertips.  This is an exercise recommended by The Seductive Man – a book my crazy best friend Howard is loaning me – to condition my hands for a woman's nipples.  Someday I intended to be performing this task expertly on Charity, my dream girl. 

Dad points at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper lying beside his plate. "You know, mother, I've been watching the reports on those radio active particles out of Russia."  He is referring to the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown's fallout. 

"Terrible, isn't it?" Mom says.

"Far as I can tell they look to be headed straight for Kansas," Dad says.  "I don't mean to alarm anyone but if they're picked up by a storm system or dip into a tornado – heck, this state could look like Hiroshima."

Dad fears for us all, all of the time -- nuclear fallout, rabid skunks, ticks carrying Lyme Disease, mosquitoes whose bites will make our brains swell up and burst. To Dad the whole world is a virtual landmine of deadly diseases and impending disasters. 

Mom nods at him reassuringly.  "But you'll have the tornado shelter well stocked."

I pipe up with, "Then maybe this would be a good time for us to go on a trip.  Get out of the vicinity of the particles. Y'know, in two weeks my summer vacation starts. What if we all went to Florida?"

"Florida?"  Dad looks at me as if I had just suggested we vacation at Chernobyl itself. 

  "The Schneiders are driving to Epcot Center for their summer vacation," I offer.

"You don't say," Mom says. "The Schneider's still owe your father a hundred dollars for setting Tommy's broken arm last January.  But I guess for some people Disneyland is more important than paying their debts."

Dad shakes his head.  "I can't leave town, got a hospital full of patients. Besides, Florida is too hot in the summer and your mother's prone to heat stroke."

"Speaking of hot, when can we turn on the air conditioning?" I ask Mom, unbuttoning my shirt a notch to drive home the point. "It's like an oven in here."

"We can easily get by with fans for at least another month," Mom, the family accountant, announces. "I refuse to pay any more of the electricity rates this town charges than I have to. Why, it's highway robbery!"

"But you're prone to heat stroke," I say.

"You know, Les," Mom continues, "you make it sound as if air conditioning is your birthright.  You kids today don't appreciate how spoiled you are with all your luxurious conveniences."

What luxuries?  We are the only people on the block without a dishwasher or cable TV or a garbage disposal.  The only reason we have a microwave is because Mom won it at a raffle at the I.G.A.  She drives a ten year old Buick she inherited from her Great Aunt Irma and we live in the small house Dad grew up in.  Although you'd never know it by the way Mom talks, we aren't poor:  Dad has a very busy medical practice, and Mom works, too.

As I stare at the meatloaf and massage the grape, I try to imagine Dad fondling Mom's titties.  How could they ever get past the rising cost of groceries and the constant threat of salmonella enough to get in the mood?  Yet, here I am.  How?  Was I adopted? If I was, who are my real parents?  Do they go out to eat now and then, unlike us?  Do they like to travel and socialize and go shopping?  Maybe they live in a high rise in New York City, like the Jeffersons, and stay up late with their glamorous friends, trading witticisms over martinis and discussing the latest Broadway shows.  If only.  I look at my mother and see we have the exact same light blue eye color; I look at Dad and see my big honker.

God, I have nothing to look forward to this summer.  We're in a slump.  I need something to remind me I'm still alive.  I need drama.  Big time.

The phone rings.

"Got it!" I grab the wall-mounted phone by the fridge. "Ekhardt residence."

"Who's this?" A deep, male smoker's voice asks, from what sounds like a pay phone on the side of a busy highway.

"It's Les."

"Lester the Molester!  Hell, this is your Uncle Ray!  Remember me?!"

Remember him?  The last time I saw him he was passed out face-down drunk on our lawn, which really pissed Mom off.

 "Hi, Uncle Ray!"

Dad smiles while Mom puts her hand to her mouth.  My Uncle Ray is Dad's only sibling.  He was here last for Grandpa Ekhardt's funeral to which he wore a black leather jacket, torn blue jeans, and no tie.  His girlfriend wore purple eye-shadow, and a low-cut dress that barely contained her gigantic bazookas.  I was in the fifth grade and had never seen someone drunk before (or since).

"Your old man around?!" he shouts over a passing truck horn. 

"Uh, sure, Uncle Ray, one sec."

I hand the phone to Dad. "How the hell are you, little brother?!"

I see Mom wince at Dad's obscenity.

"Uh-huh… right…" Dad nods and smiles, wrapping the phone cord around his index finger. "Well, that would be just fine, Ray. Look forward to it. We'll leave the light on for ya, as they say."

I'm wondering – hoping! – Uncle Ray is going to bring his generously-endowed girlfriend with him.

Dad hands me the phone and I hang it up.

"Ray's on his way here," Dad announces. "'Says he'd like to stay with us for a while."

"Is he… coming alone?" I ask.

Dad nods and takes a bite of meatloaf.

"What does he want?" Mom asks.

Dad gnaws, then wipes the corner of his mouth with the cloth napkin and says,

"Just to visit.  We are his only family after all."

"I wish you had asked me before you told him 'yes'," Mom says. "We just don't have the room since we got rid of the bed in the spare room to make way for your new ham radio."

"He can sleep on my bottom bunk," I volunteer.

"That settles it," Dad says.

Was this the drama I had been aching for?  Perhaps Uncle Ray had ESP and  picked up on my plea.  Or, maybe Jesus decided to throw me a bone for not jerking off for the past two days.  Uncle Ray was by far my favorite relative.  Over the years, I had picked up little snippets of conversation between my parents concerning him:  he was a lady's man, a professional guitarist, he drank way too much, had lived all over and done all sorts of un-Christian things.  My cool uncle.  I popped the grape in my mouth and chewed on the possibilities.

***

"I'm telling you," Howard says to me over the phone, "Lurch is Thing."

"He is so not," I say as I dry the last of the dinner plates.

"First, have you ever seen Lurch and Thing in the same room together?  I haven't.  Secondly, look at the thumbs.  Lurch and Things have the same big thumbs."

"But the end credit for Thing is 'Itself'," I say. "Not 'Lurch'."

"Duh!  Of course they're not going to say 'Lurch,' that would take away the mystique of Thing."

"I don't know, How, I'm thinking I've seen 'em in the same room together."

"Well, I haven't and I've seen every episode," he says. "What're you doing tonight?  Wanna come over and play Space Invaders?"

"Can't," I say and close the cupboard. "I have to clean my room for my uncle."

"Lame-o." Then dial tone.

I tie off the kitchen garbage bag and lug it out to the garage, dropping it beside the wooden frame of what is supposed to be my Chinese Vanishing Box.   About five months ago, when I signed up to do a magic act for Eighth Grade Talent Night, Dad promised me he'd build the phone-booth sized plywood contraption.   So much for promises.

  ***

Up in my sloped-ceiling top floor bedroom, I put fresh sheets on the bottom bunk for Uncle Ray, while singing along to "I heard it through the grape vine" on the radio.  I usually don't like adults in my space, but I didn't think of Uncle Ray as a normal adult. 

The state news comes on the radio:  last night a topless bar owner in Kansas City was shot dead in his club and fifty grand is missing from the wall safe.

"The assailant, believe to be a tall, dark-haired Caucasian male in his mid-thirties, is considered armed and dangerous." The sonorous baritone voice announces.  "Authorities are urging people to be on lookout – "

I clear off the top of my dresser except for the second-place trophy I won at the Tri-County 4-H Fair Talent Show last year.  I'm hoping Uncle Ray will ask me what I'd won for, and then I'll proceed to dazzle him with my magic tricks.  After dusting my framed autographed picture of David Copperfield, my idol, which hangs on the sherbet green wall beside the window, I empty my top two dresser drawers for Uncle Ray's things, and relocate my secret stash of nudie pictures to the back of my closet.  My collection is mostly bra-wearing models from Mom's nursing uniform catalogs and topless African women from Dad's National Geographic.  Man, some of those native women…

  I spray the room with Mountain Mist air freshener then settle on my bean bag and open my biology book.  Tucked inside is The Seductive Man by M.   I pick up where I left off.  Page 62:  "Think of your tongue as an electric eel causing a slight shock sensation wherever it touches her.  Run it over her ear lobes, neck, mouth, nose and eyes.  Dwell on her nipples and breasts, swirling and sucking as you go…"

Close my eyes, try to imagine myself doing this to Charity.  Oh, Charity. Oh, God.  Run to the bathroom, lock the door, reach under the sink, behind the towels,  remove my special empty bottle of Skin So Soft.  Yeah, the fit is just right.  Afterward, lying on the floor, I am disgusted with myself as usual.  I silently ask Jesus for forgiveness, then offer him a deal:  "Dear Jesus, if I don't jerk off for a whole week would you please make me brave enough to talk to Charity?  I humbly beseech you in Your Name.  Amen."   

After my shower, I stare at my naked body in the bathroom mirror and flex my arm muscles. I must gain weight. I'm built like Mr. Salty.  Maybe I should start doing push-ups again to bulk up. I turn and glance at my side and back.  Man, am I white. Like Elmer's Glue.  Gotta get a tan this summer. Who would want to fool around with an albino? Now my profile – ugh! My honker is humungous.  I look like a toucan.  Next, my smile -- braces on my top and bottom teeth.  A year and a half before they come off.  And last but hopefully not least, my pecker, normal? Too small? It looks like a Little Smoky with two acorns.  In the shower in gym class, I think I look smaller than some of the other guys.  But how about when I have a boner? My boner feels big.  Will Charity ever find my Little Smoky and acorns sexy?

   While doing pushups in my room, I hear my parent's muffled voices reverberating through the floor vent (their bedroom is right below mine).  Can't make out anything they say so I hop down and press my ear to the grate.

  "You know Ray only comes here when he wants something," Mom says.

"If my brother wants to visit he's always welcome." Dad sounds very tired. "It's been four years, Bev."

"He better not ask you for money again. And I don't like that he's staying in Les's room.  Heaven knows what diseases he's carrying."

Br-ring!  Br-ring!  Dad answers: "Hello.  Uh-huh… Get an EKG and vitals.  I'll be right over." I hear Dad leave for the hospital.

I switch on my little clamp light and try to learn more about the female g-spot, but I can't concentrate.  Mom has a point: it is weird that Uncle Ray is suddenly coming to visit after all these years.  And then it hits me:  could Uncle Ray be the assailant the authorities are looking for?  The description certainly fits.  Is he coming here to hide out?  You're crazy, I assure myself:  Uncle Ray is a lover, not a killer.

There's a knock on my door and Mom appears in her floor-length blue satin nightgown, her hair wrapped in pink curlers. "Les, it's almost time for Johnny Carson."

Mom and I are seated on the living room sofa stuffing popcorn into our mouths and cracking up to Billy Crystal's "Dahling, you rook mahvelous" routine.  For all of Mom's disdain for obscenities, she loves to laugh and stay up late to watch The Tonight Show.  It's been a ritual for us for the past couple years.  During the commercial, I turn down the volume, stand in front of the TV, put on Grandpa's old cowboy hat and do my best Ronald Reagan impersonation: "Well, Nancy, the evil empire is trying to destroy the fabric of what makes this nation great."

I remove the cowboy hat and switch to the shaky high-pitched voice of Katherine Hepburn:  "No, Ronny, it's me, Katie.  Nancy sent me to tell you she's leaving you for Gorbachev.  She finds his birthmark irresistible."

Now I'm Reagan: "Well, in that case I think I'll take a nap."

Mom cracks up -- nothing makes me happier than when I make Mom crack up.

After the show, once Mom goes to bed, I try to stay up for Uncle Ray by   practicing some new magic tricks in front of my dresser mirror. Can't stay awake, too sleepy.  I scribble a note and place it on the top of the dresser: "Welcome, Uncle Ray!  Bottom bunk is all yours – I even cleaned the sheets!  Sorry I wasn't awake when you got here. –Love, Les."   

© 2008-2012 Richard Uhlig. All Rights Reserved.