The World of Normal Boys

by K. M. Soehnlein

  Jackson is suddenly there in the doorway, wide-eyed. “Holy barf bag!” he exclaims. Robin spins around and glares at him.

  Clark speaks without looking at him, “Why don’t you go back to sleep, kiddo?”

  Dorothy heaves again and sends out another splash. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Puke-o-rama,” Jackson announces.

  “Dad, could you tell Howard Cosell his services are not needed?” Robin says.

  “Where’d Larry go?” Jackson asks.

  Robin says, “We put him out with the trash.”

  Clark slaps his hand on his thigh. “Can you guys just put the sibling rivalry on hold? Jackson, go to your room. Robin, wipe Mom’s face again.”

  “Oh sure, Robin gets to have all the fun,” Jackson says before splitting.

  “We’re gonna lift you now, Mom, OK?” Robin says softly into her ear, but she does not respond.

  “She’s out again,” Clark says. Robin can hear the disgust in his father’s voice. He feels it, too, but not for her. His mother this far out of control—this just can’t be her fault. Someone else is to blame.

  “I saw Mom do the Technicolor yawn.” Jackson’s voice is an excited whisper in the dark. Robin stares up from his bed to a crack in the ceiling.

  “Don’t talk about your own mother that way,” Robin says.

  “Oh, give me a break. That was a pisser.”

  “I’m sick and tired of your attitude.”

  Jackson breaks out into laughter. “Why do you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Talk like Mom. I’m sick and tired of your attitude.”

  The words sting. Robin rolls on his side, faces the wall. “You don’t understand anything the way I do.”

  “All I know is nobody wants some kid their own age talking like their dumb mother. Why do you think Larry’s always bothering you? You ask for it, Robin.”

  Robin feels his eyes watering. Maybe Jackson’s right. Maybe he does provoke the trouble that finds him. But how could he explain to Jackson the look that Larry gave him when he wagged his dick at Robin, the way he knew Robin was staring at his dick, the way he turned it against him? How can he explain himself to Jackson when they don’t even seem to speak the same language?

  He finally speaks of the only thing he understands: his idea of the far-off future. “I’m going to move to the city one day and live in a penthouse, and all of this will be some funny thing in the past if I even remember that much of it.”

  “Yeah, right. You and Mom can move off together and talk to each other like a couple of old ladies and drink until you puke.” Suddenly he throws back the covers. “I gotta take Petey for a pee.”

  “You have a name for your dick?”

  “Yeah, me and Larry. His is Freddy.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s funny. What’s your problem?”

  He shuts his eyes so tight that neon bleeds into the blackness. He doesn’t understand how this works. Larry and Jackson get naked and name their dicks, but when Larry sees him staring at “Freddy,” it’s a bad thing. He says a little prayer. God, give me a new life. This one isn’t working for me. He waits for a merciful bolt of lightning to strike his brain, to offer him some clue as to how it all works, this whole world of normal boys.

  Chapter Three

  The next day, after school, he goes to a place that he has been warned against. At the east end of the reservoir, where he regularly rides his bike on Sunday afternoons, is an unpaved road. You’d hardly notice it driving a car; its entrance is a sharp right turn past some high trees just where the main road loops left. At school Robin has overheard kids mention a hidden pond at the end of that road—they call it the Ice Pond and talk about it as a place where every illicit thing happens, a place where adults don’t venture. Robin mentioned it once to his mother, who dismissed it as local lore: “Oh, just another one of those fabled lovers’ lanes.”

  “You should hear the stories about what goes on there,” Robin told her, immediately regretting the wondrous tone of his voice.

  “What’s the big interest?” she asked, staring suspiciously.

  “No biggie.”

  “I suggest you stay away. I’m sure it’s positively seedy. Soused-up, hormonal bullies trying to impress their girlfriends.”

  The story that Robin cannot forget, that compels him this early October afternoon to steer his ten-speed impulsively down the road toward the Ice Pond, was whispered just a few days before, in the locker room after his phys. ed. class. Donny Meier and Seth Carter were talking about a contest: the two of them and a couple others drinking beer and then trying to knock the cans off a stump with the force of their piss. Donny saying, “That was really fucked up,” and Seth saying, “We should do it again, for a goof,” and Donny agreeing, “Yeah, we gotta get Danniman to come along again. He’ll probably put a hole through the can.” And then they both laughed, and Seth said, “Long Dong Danniman,” and Donny said, “Aw, man, that’s fucked up.”

  Robin usually ignores locker room conversations. He can rarely find a way into the back-and-forth of them, the language and rhythm that boys his age all seem to understand instinctively. He does not give himself a reason that this one is different, but simply lets the picture form: the boys, their pants around their ankles, the elastic bands of their underwear tugged beneath their dicks. He hears the air split by the hissing streams, the ruffle of piss on dry leaves, the ping as cans are struck and topple. Donny Meier’s laughing mouth, and Seth Carter’s brown bangs feathered across his excited eyes, and Billy “Long Dong” Danniman with it in his hand. He lets this picture form and then, when he gets to what he most wants to see, snaps it off guiltily.

  He speeds toward the pond as if outrunning a pursuing authority. The dirt road is just wide enough for a car to get through, with crisscrossing tire treads layered deep. In the stillness of the woods, his bike’s chain is loud as a motor. The wheels kick up pebbles and stiff clumps of dirt that smack him in the back—each nick almost pleasurable, a small hardship to reinforce the adventure of this unplanned ride.

  He reaches a clearing strewn with litter: empty beer containers, mangled newspapers, cast off, soiled clothing. No cars—he is relieved, and vaguely disappointed. He dismounts, sets his bike on its kickstand in the soft, trodden earth and follows the edge of the pond toward a place where granite boulders are piled as high as his shoulders. In the charred remnants of a campfire, a piece of ripped, colored foil gleams among the cigarette butts, the word “Trojan” embossed upon it. He’s only ever heard of Trojans; he scans the ground for what was once inside this wrapper, not sure exactly what a rubber even looks like. Seeing nothing that fits the description, he pockets the wrapper, a souvenir of his visit.

  Water laps at the silty shore; crows squawk from treetops. All else is silence. Robin removes his shoes and socks, lets his feet dangle from a rock into the pond. The water isn’t icy at all—it’s warm, soothing. He hikes up his pants and glides in to his ankles, the pond’s bottom soft as mashed potatoes. Do the kids who hang out here ever go swimming? He conjures up late-night skinny-dipping parties, the sexual laughter of older teenagers, a bonfire glowing upon wet bodies and aluminum beer cans and foil Trojan wrappers. Todd Spicer might come to a party like that.

  He is gripped by the sudden, terrifying notion that someone is watching, but scanning the pond’s perimeter, he sees no one. Not a soul. The rarity of this solitude makes him giddy—when is he ever completely alone? And then, before even comprehending the action, he is back on shore, impulsively tugging off his clothes. He wades into the water, naked, mud squishing up through his toes. He holds his balance and keeps walking, pausing, with a gasp, when his balls hit the water’s surface. He doesn’t want to get his hair wet—doesn’t think he could explain it to his mother later—but he lowers himself down to his shoulders.

  He touches his dick under the water, grabs it between his fingers, wiggles until it stiffens. He hops up and down, careful at fir
st not to slip, and feels his hardness cutting through the water. A quick fear of a fish biting him there makes him stop, and then he laughs at the thought—Yeah, right, like Jaws lives in the Ice Pond. He laughs out loud, his laughter surrounding him, free and unleashed. The sound fills the air for a few moments—all he can allow himself before fear of discovery closes in again.

  He makes his way back to the shore, hiding himself behind the boulders, and shakes himself off like a dog. His dick is still hard—with his hand he presses it against his belly, then looks around again, expecting someone to be nearby. He is still alone; he rubs himself some more, letting the warmth build underneath his palm until it travels through his body. He keeps at it until the friction is too much and just as he thinks he should stop—What am I doing? Someone might drive up—he finds he is so weak against his own will that he can’t not continue. He looks at the mud streaking down his legs and the beer cans around his feet, he thinks of the pissing contest, Donny and Seth and Long Dong Danniman—longer than himself, longer than this thing in his hand—their pissing contest happened right here, at the Ice Pond. They stood side by side, as he’s seen them in the locker room, pissing next to each other the way he and Jackson have done at home, crossing streams into the toilet. He sees himself doing that with Todd Spicer—standing right here, feet planted in the garbage and the Trojans, their streams crossing, the two of them with their things in their hands, Todd without underwear, just his skin and his bushy hair under his open fly and his hand shaking out the piss, his strong hands, his arms with their definite muscles, shaking the piss out of his thing right next to Robin, making him shiver and gasp—Robin is gasping, he is standing but it feels like falling, falling through thick humid air. He braces his back against the rocks behind him and watches the pink tip of his dick open up and shoot out something that is not piss. It lands on the garbage at his feet—a wet, white shower on the char-black ashes.

  He has a moment of stunned disbelief that he let this happen, out here where anyone could see. Sweat trickles down his ribs. He breathes deep, he feels as if he hasn’t breathed for hours, that time has bent around him. Disbelief gives way to shame: he hurries back into his clothes and onto his bike, his untucked shirt flapping as he pedals away.

  On the dirt road a car is approaching, a guy at the wheel, a girl snuggling up next to him. Robin panics—just a few minutes earlier and they would have seen him!—and loses his grip on the handlebars, skidding to the side, his wheel grinding into a spindly bush. The driver stares at him quizzically as he passes. Robin snaps a branch from his spokes and continues his escape, all the way home imagining that guy and girl discovering his white goop on the ground amid the garbage. He imagines that they could read the splatter like tea leaves and discern what he was thinking while it happened. They could chase him down and have him arrested for being a pervert in public.

  All that is left is the embarrassment of returning with a secret. The leaves above him are shiny with diamonds of light breaking through, the sun falling lower in the sky, stretching across the front yard as he turns into the driveway. He’s rehearsing a quick speech for his mother, something designed to spare him too much explanation—I rode into town to play Asteroids—when he recognizes Uncle Stan’s car in the driveway.

  As he swings open the screen door, his mother stands at the counter, an oven mitt on one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

  Stan’s voice carries above the clamor of the nightly news from the living room TV set. “Come on, Dottie. If it’s ready, let me have a piece now.”

  Dorothy faces Robin, but raises her voice loud enough to carry to the living room. “I thought your uncle came over to apologize for his boorish behavior last night, but he seems to be doing nothing but barking orders.”

  “I’m hungry,” Stan says.

  “Well, if your son wasn’t keeping my son out playing through dinnertime, maybe we’d be able to sit down and eat.” She turns off the oven and leaves a tray of lasagna on the stove. “And where have you been?”

  “Nowhere. Just riding my bike.” A chill moves along his skin, and he wonders if he’ll catch a cold from having been naked in the water. Or if maybe he did something bad to himself by touching his thing like that.

  Dorothy flicks her head to the side in exasperation and throws up her hands, sloshing liquid over the lip of her glass. “Fine, everyone just run around and play while I try to get dinner ready. Don’t offer any help. Fine. ”

  “Where’s Ruby?” he asks.

  “I sent her out to fetch Larry and Jackson. I think they’re at the playground.” She glances at the clock on the stove. “She should have been back already.”

  Smelling the lasagna, Robin realizes how hungry he is. “Well, if it’s done, maybe we should just start.”

  Dorothy sighs at last and gulps down a mouthful of wine. Robin watches her throat move above the soft depression between her collarbones. Her chest is flush. He has a flash from the night before—her skin was ghostly white then, her face a morbid contortion as the vomit dripped from her lips. “Do you still feel sick?”

  “Just fed up,” she says. “I’m trying to make dinner and no one’s around. Your father’s coming home late. Here, bring your uncle some dinner and let him eat in there by himself. What do I care anyway?” She takes off her apron and picks up her purse. “I’m going to have a cigarette.”

  “Really?” He’s stunned—smoking at home! He’s only ever seen her smoke in the city.

  She pulls her Pall Malls from her purse and walks to the screen door. “Everyone else is doing what they want.”

  Robin follows her with his eyes; through the screen door, she looks grainy, like a newspaper photo. Taking a drag of her cigarette, she raises her nearly empty wineglass and calls out, “Clark MacKenzie, you poor excuse for a family man, where the hell are you?”

  Robin carries the lasagna and a fork to his uncle. “I’m so hungry I could eat a pigeon at a Chinese restaurant,” Stan says, spearing the fork into the pasta before Robin’s fully let go of the plate.

  Robin’s own appetite seems to have instantly disappeared. “Where’s Aunt Corinne tonight?”

  “She’s at one-a those meetings again, getting brainwashed into selling vitamins,” his uncle blurts out angrily. “There’s a load of quackery if I ever heard of it. Not to mention a conspiracy to undermine the American family farmer.”

  Robin scowls. Uncle Stan is always putting Aunt Corinne down. For years, she was sort of quiet, almost mopey at times. If you asked her for anything she complained that everyone took from her and no one gave back—the way his mother sounded a minute ago. But lately she’s been in a better mood. She’s started selling vitamins, and it seemed to make her happy to have something to do besides wait on Stan and Larry. She’d even begun wearing streaks of pink and purple blush on her cheeks. “For contour,” she told Robin, “to thin out the face.”

  Robin has come to like his aunt; he feels the need to come to her defense. “I read in Time magazine that researchers are discovering vitamins and other nutrients are more important than anyone ever knew.” It was actually his mother who read the article and told him about it, and as he parrots back her words he worries about Jackson’s accusation that he talks too much like her.

  “Well, if you look at who’s selling vitamins, it’s all Jews. Like that guy Goldberg who got my wife hooked. You get all the nutrients you need if you eat three square meals a day. My mother never took vitamins and she’s a hundred years old and big as a house.”

  The fact that Stan is actually his mother’s brother, that they were created by the same chemistry, is always a difficult leap for Robin’s imagination to make; he tends to think of his uncle as a weird neighbor who shows up for a free dinner from time to time. He tries to picture his mother and Stan growing up in the same house—Nana’s old place on Route 7, near Northampton. Robin can still remember it, back when Grampa Leo was alive: the front porch with the broken railing, the dusty pantry under the staircase, where you
could hide and jump out at someone to scare them, those smelly chicken coops in the backyard with the crusty turds along the edge. Dorothy tells a story about Stan as a child, peeing into the coop and a chicken taking a nip at his wiener. It is one of the few stories he has heard his mother tell about their childhood.

  He squints his eyes at Stan, looking for a physical resemblance at the very least. The nose, maybe: it’s a good nose, really, not too big but definitely not a pug like Larry’s. And the cheekbones have that same curve as on his mother’s face, enough to create a decent smile without looking like a chipmunk. He could even imagine that Stan was a handsome guy before he grew up and his stomach bloated from too much beer and his face got rubbery around the jaw.

  He watches the lasagna piling up behind Stan’s thin lips, mush shoveled in upon mush, suddenly fascinated by the grotesqueness of it all.

  “Your mother just doesn’t know how to get it right,” he is saying as he chews, “with the spices and everything. I tell you, I’m a lucky SOB, having a mother who cooks for a living. Only time I ever see my wife in the kitchen is when she’s raiding the fridge. Women today, terrible cooks.”

  “Aunt Corinne makes that Jell-O cake for my birthday. That’s pretty good,” Robin says. “With the different colors and the Cool Whip holding it together.”

  “Yeah, you and that Jell-O cake. Damn thing would fall apart after one bite. I’d say, ‘Corinne, how ’bout a pumpkin pie,’ and she’d say, ‘I’m making Jell-O cake. It’s Robin’s favorite.’ If it wasn’t for you and that Jell-O cake I might have had a decent dessert once and a while.”

  Robin decides he has had enough and begins to stand. He spits out a phrase he has heard his mother say a thousand times, whenever he or his brother and sister complain too much: “I didn’t know I caused you so much grief.”

  Stan drops his fork and leans forward. “Sit down, Robin,” he commands. “Let’s have a talk.”

  Robin buckles under the authority in Stan’s eyes and lowers himself onto a chair.