Authors: Richard Uhlig
Boy Minus Girl
CONTENTS
To my mother
—R.U.
PART ONE
Seduction Tip Number 1:
Tongue Twister
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 hummingbird 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 meat loaf. 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 red-checkered apron, primly sips her iced tea. To my left, Dad, in his dress shirt and tie, squints at the
Wichita Eagle-Beacon
lying beside his plate.
“Uh, Dad,” I say, “the talent show is a week from Friday.”
“Uh-huh,” he says to the newspaper.
“And, well, my magical vanishing box is nowhere near done.”
“Not tonight, son, I’m bushed.”
Beneath the table I’m fondling a red grape, massaging the soft skin with my fingertips. This is an exercise recommended in
The Seductive Man
by M.—a book my best friend, Howard, is loaning me—to condition my hands for a woman’s nipples. Someday soon I will be performing this task expertly on Charity Conners, my dream girl.
Dad points to the newspaper but looks at Mom. “Says here this could be the worst tornado season in decades.”
“Mmm,” Mom says absently. (We are quite used to this sort of announcement from Dad.)
“After dinner I’ll go down and make sure the shelter is stocked with enough provisions to last us a couple weeks,” Dad says. “In case the house is blown away,” he adds.
Dad fears for us all, all of the time—natural disasters, nuclear war, rabid skunks, Lyme disease–carrying ticks, mosquitoes whose bites will make our brains swell up and burst. To Dad the whole world is a virtual land mine of deadly diseases and impending disasters.
I pipe up with: “Maybe this would be a good time for us to go on a trip. Get out of the vicinity of the twisters. Y’know, in three weeks my summer vacation starts. What if we all went to Florida?”
“Florida?” Dad looks at me as if I had just suggested we pitch a tent on Mount Saint Helens.
“The Schneiders are driving to Epcot Center for their summer vacation,” I offer.
“You don’t say,” Mom says. “The Schneiders still owe your father a hundred dollars for setting Tommy’s broken arm last January. But I guess for some people a luxurious vacation is more important than paying their debts.”
Dad shakes his head. “I can’t leave town. I’ve got a hospital full of patients. Besides, Florida is boiling hot in the summer and your mother’s prone to heatstroke.”
“Speaking of hot, when can we turn on the air-conditioning?” I ask Mom, unbuttoning my shirt a notch to drive home the point.
“We can easily get by with fans for at least another month,” Mom, the family accountant, announces. “I refuse to pay for any more electricity than I absolutely have to. The electricity rates this town charges, why, it’s highway robbery!”
“But, Mom, I’ve heard your very own personal physician say that you’re prone to heatstroke,” I remind her.
“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.”
Luxuries? We are practically the
only
people in town without a dishwasher or cable TV or a garbage disposal. Dad won’t allow a microwave in the house for fear of radiation leakage, and the only reason we have a new TV is because Mom won it at a raffle at the IGA. She drives a ten-year-old Buick she inherited from her great-aunt Irma, and we live in the same humble house Dad grew up in. And we aren’t poor: Dad has a very busy medical practice, and Mom works, too.
As I stare at the meat loaf and massage the grape, I try to imagine Dad fondling Mom. 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 ever eat in restaurants? 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. I look at my mother and see we have the exact same light-blue eye color; I look at Dad and see my big brow.
God, I have nothing to look forward to this summer. God, I’m in a slump. God, I need something. Something more. Big-time.
Brring-ring.
“Got it!” I grab the wall-mounted phone by the fridge. “Eckhardt 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 Mo-lester! Hell, this is your uncle Ray! Remember me?!”
Remember him? The last time I saw him, he was passed out, facedown drunk, on our lawn!
“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 Eckhardt’s funeral, at which he sported 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 anyone 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 coarse language.
“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.”
Uncle Ray is coming! Will he bring his generously endowed girlfriend with him?
Please please please please please.
Dad hands me the phone and I hang it up.
“Ray’s already on his way here,” Dad announces. “Says he’d like to stay with us for a while.”
“Is he . . . coming alone?” I ask hopefully.
Dad nods and takes a bite of meat loaf.
“What does he want?” Mom asks.
Wiping the corner of his mouth with the cloth napkin, Dad 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 space since we got rid of the bed in the spare room.”
“He can sleep on my bottom bunk,” I volunteer.
“That settles it, then,” Dad says.
Is this the drama I have 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 is by far my favorite relative. Over the years I have absorbed 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 Ray. I pop the grape in my mouth and chew 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? Don’t think so. Secondly, look at the thumbs. Lurch and Thing have the same 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 have seen ’em in the same room together.”
“Well, I haven’t and I’ve seen
every
episode,” he concludes. “What’re you doing? 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.” Click, 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. It’s supposed to be the highlight of my act.
***
Up in my slope-ceilinged, top-floor bedroom, I put fresh sheets on the bottom bunk for Uncle Ray while singing along to “We Are the World” on the radio. I usually don’t like adults in my space, but Uncle Ray isn’t a normal grown-up.
The state news comes on the radio: late last night a nightclub owner in Kansas City was shot dead in his club, and fifty grand is missing from the wall safe.
“The assailant, believed to be a tall, dark-haired Caucasian male in his late thirties, is considered armed and dangerous,” the sonorous baritone voice announces. “Authorities are urging people to be on the lookout for . . .”
I clear everything 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 won for, and then I’ll proceed to dazzle him with my magic tricks. After dusting off my framed autographed picture of David Copperfield, my idol, which hangs on the 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 models from Mom’s nursing-uniform catalogs and the topless African women from Dad’s
National Geographic
s.
I spray the room with Mountain Mist air freshener, then settle on my beanbag and open my biology book. Tucked deep inside is
The Seductive Man
. I pick up where I left off before dinner. Page 62: “Think of your tongue as an electric eel causing a slight shock sensation wherever it touches her. Run it over her earlobes, 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 Conners.
Oh, Charity. Oh God. Oh
—I run to the bathroom, lock the door, reach under the sink behind the towels, remove my special, empty Skin So Soft bottle. Yeah, fits just right. Afterward, lying on the floor, I am disgusted with myself.
Dear Jesus . . . please forgive me. 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.
Must gain weight. I’m built like a Popsicle stick. Maybe I should start doing push-ups 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 humongous. I look like a toucan. Next, my smile—the braces—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 huge. Will Charity Conners ever find my Little Smoky and acorns sexy?
While doing push-ups in my room, I hear my parents’ muffled voices reverberating through the floor vent (their bedroom is right below mine). I lie down and press my ear to the grate.
“You know Ray only comes here when he wants something,” Mom insists.
“If my brother wants to visit us, he’ll always be welcome.” Dad sounds very tired. “It’s been almost four years, Bev.”
“Well, 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’ll bring with him, the way he lives.”
Brring-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 the radio announcer gave certainly fits. Is he coming here to hide out?
You’re crazy,
I assure myself.
Uncle Ray is a lover, not a killer.
Still . . .
There’s a knock on my door, and Mom appears in her floor-length, cat-print cotton 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 over 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 our ritual for years. During the commercials I turn down the volume, stand in front of the TV, put on Grandpa’s old cowboy hat, and do my best President Reagan impersonation: “Well, Nancy, the evil empire is trying to destroy the very fabric of our great nation.”
I remove the cowboy hat and switch to the shaky voice of Katharine Hepburn: “No, Ronnie, it’s me, Katie. Nancy sent me to tell you she’s leaving you for Gorbachev. She finds his birthmahk irresistible.”
Now I’m Reagan: “Well, in that case I think I’ll take a nap.”
Mom laughs so hard she snorts a little—nothing makes me happier than when I make Mom crack up.
After
The Tonight 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 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