by Max Shulman
“I’ll be right over,” I said and ran like the wind to her house.
“Dobie,” she said, big tears standing in her big eyes, “what you did was the finest thing I ever heard of in my whole life, and if you will have me, I am yours.”
“Alma, I will have you,” I said and kissed her beautiful face.
Well, I suppose you’re thinking this grim and grisly story has a happy ending after all. Well, you are wrong by a country mile. Ahead lays tragedy. I mean real tragedy. I mean all the disasters I have told you about so far are like summer showers compared to the calamity which hit me next. I mean in case you think I am exaggerating my troubles and you don’t really believe there is a curse on me, just read on, that’s all.
My tragedy happened the very same night. I spent all Saturday afternoon with Alma, nuzzling and smooching and like that, and when I got home I was a serene and fulfilled man. But the minute I walked into the house I knew something was amiss. I looked around. Then I saw what it was: Pa was not in his contour chair. He was standing up. Ma was standing up too, but she was standing behind Pa, which is not where you usually find her. Also my kid brother was quiet, a condition which is not normal to my kid brother, or anybody else’s, either.
“Hello, Dobie,” said my father. This was maybe the second or third time he ever spoke to me.
“Hello, Pa,” I said, looking around warily.
There was a silence of three or four minutes, and then Ma poked Pa in the back and then he spoke. “Dobie,” he said, “your mother and I have been discussing your case, and we have come to a conclusion, so please do not argue because your mother has made up our mind.”
“Yes?” I said, getting scareder by the second, knowing in my bones that I was not put on this earth to be happy. And I was right because here is what Pa said. I quote:
“Dobie,” he said, “you are a member of the shook-up generation, as evidenced by your last report card and your vandalism in the locker of Nate Gahagan. Therefore, for your sake and the safety of society, your mother and I have decided to send you away to a military academy, so you will kindly go upstairs and start packing because you leave first thing in the morning.”
I looked at Pa and I looked at Ma behind him, and I knew argument was no use, so I gave one loud, hoarse animal cry and went upstairs and packed and today I am at a military academy on the banks of the Monongahela, three hundred miles from Alma Gristede.
Life is barren and I would have hurled myself into the Monongahela long ago, but one slim hope sustains me. There is a bridge near the school that is getting rickety and I cling to the slender possibility that maybe the town will decide to build a new bridge and maybe they will call Alma Gristede’s father to build it and maybe she will be mine again.
But, like I say, it’s a small, small chance, and I better not depend on it. What I better do is get good marks, so I can get lots of off-duty time and buy a sledge hammer and start hacking away at the supports of the bridge. I mean, the Lord helps those who help themself.
CHAPTER THREE
PUBERTY IS HERE TO STAY
by Dobie Gillis, aged 15
Puberty is when boys start turning into men and girls start turning into women, and if you want to know the truth, I don’t understand it at all.
I understand all right about the changes that happen to your body. My father explained that to me very carefully on one of our Palship Walks. He explains everything to me very carefully once I can get him to talk. I mean I can go up to him any time and ask him about internal combustion engines or the solar system or all kinds of scam like that, and he’ll always come up with the answer. He’s a very generous man with information; it’s money that he’s stingy and loathsome with.
I know these are hard words to say about your father, but what else can you say about a man who thinks you can get along on a dollar a week? I often point out to him that this insane stinginess mars an otherwise darling character, but he only snarls and says, “I am not going to raise your allowance. If Red Knees Baker can get along on a dollar a week, so can you.”
Red Knees Baker is the girl next door. When I came home from the military academy—(Ma took me out after one semester; she couldn’t stand it without somebody around the house whose back she could get on. Of course, she had my kid brother Dan and my father, but that wasn’t very satisfactory because Dan just kind of vagues off when Ma starts riding him and Pa gets into the contour chair and glazes up or, when it gets too tough, he goes down to the hospital and makes rounds, even when he has to wake up his patients to do it)—well, like I was saying, when I got home from the military academy, I found a family named Baker living next door. The sea gulls had finally driven Nate Gahagan’s folk kooky and they moved out and these Bakers moved in with their daughter, if you could call her that, named Red Knees.
Her real name is Alice, but to me she is Red Knees because I have never seen her without a scab on her knees. Usually they are actively bleeding. She is definitely not the right person to compare me with, and I say so to my father. “Sir,” I say, “in the first place Red Knees is only thirteen and I am fifteen. In the second place, Red Knees does not get along on a dollar a week. She gets most of my allowance too.”
Which is true. Red Knees has got a very massive brain. Although she is only thirteen years old, she is already in my grade at school. What’s more, she knows practically everything there is to know. I mean she knows algebra and plane geometry and the subjunctive mood and the passive voice and the names of state capitals and the kings of England and all kinds of scam like that. I’m always going next door to ask her questions about my homework, because since having girls on my mind I don’t like to clutter it up with facts, and anyhow I have discovered there is no sex appeal in an A average—except maybe to your mother. Well, Red Knees is always ready with the answers—for a price. This girl wouldn’t give you the time of day for nothing. She charges a nickel to find a square root, seven cents to parse a sentence, and a dime to tell you where the Orinoco River is. Sometimes when you’re really in trouble—like who fought in the Hundred Years War—she sticks you for seventy or eighty cents. Red Knees is one of the genuinely greedy women of our generation.
I argue with her. “Red Knees,” I say, “we have been friends ever since you moved into that sea gull refreshment stand. Why do you keep gouging me?”
And she says, “Because I need the money.”
And I say, “What for?”
And she says, “To buy things.”
And I say, “What things?”
And she says, “Girl things.”
And I say, “Like what?”
And she says, “Like black lace underwear.”
And I say, “You can’t wear black lace underwear. Your mother will kill you.”
And she says, “I know it. But some day I will be allowed to wear black lace underwear, and when that day comes, buster, I mean to be ready!”
Well, black lace underwear is not the whole story. I mean this monster has been cutting my throat for several semesters now, and even if she’s gone and bought a whole store full of black lace underwear, she’s still got about a million dollars left. But she won’t lend me a penny of it. I keep asking her, but she keeps saying no. She says I’ll never pay her back, which is true. I figure anything I can squeeze out of her is rightfully mine anyway.
I hate Red Knees like poison, but I’ll tell you a funny thing: sometimes I kind of like her. I mean sometimes I can’t help it, she’s so cuckoo. She’s got the biggest braces on her teeth of any girl I ever saw, and her hair is a million laughs because she keeps cutting it with a nail clippers. Sometimes when I look at that comical hair and the braces and the red knees which she keeps skinning because she is always running and falling down, I can’t help myself, I just have to bust out laughing. This gets her pretty sore, and she calls me a moron and hits me over the head, which I let her do for a little while and then I grab her and hug her to calm her down. That’s the only time Red Knees is really quiet—when I
am hugging her.
Well, enough talk about Red Knees. What I started to tell you about was puberty, which is a subject that does not concern Red Knees because if she is having any puberty, it sure is not visible to the naked eye.
I was saying that I don’t understand puberty. I understand all right about the changes that happen in the body. Some of them are pretty unlikely, but just the same, I understand them. What I don’t understand is the changes that happen in the mind. I mean the mind of girls, not boys. What happens in the mind of boys is very simple: they start thinking about girls all the time. But what do girls think about? What strange, mysterious, evil thing happens that makes them so goofy? Why can you never tell what they’re going to do next?
I’ll give you a perfect example: Tuckie Webb. Last spring at John Marshall Junior High, after my reprieve from military academy, Tuckie and I had a romance that warmed the heart of the entire school. I mean Alma Gristede had been just a feeble flicker by comparison. Every time we walked down the hall holding hands everybody would smile and say, “Here comes Tuckie and Dobie walking down the hall holding hands.” Even Mr. Knabe, the tin shop teacher, would say it, and he hated me like poison because I once used up fourteen feet of sheet brass trying to make a charm for Tuckie’s charm bracelet.
Tuckie and I were together all the time. We came to school together every morning. We went to classes together. After school we got on our bikes and went to the Sweet Shoppe together for a lime Coke, Dutch treat. Every Wednesday night we went to the early show at the Bijou, Dutch treat, and Friday night we went to the late show at the Bijou, Dutch treat. Saturday mornings I picked her up at ten and we played tennis, or went to the beach. Saturday night there was always a party at one of the kids’ houses, and we ate little tiny sandwiches and looked at television and kissed each other. Tuckie only let me kiss her on Saturday night, which was all right with me because kissing really takes it out of a guy.
All this was last spring. On June 17 we graduated from John Marshall, which was the next-to-the-last time I kissed Tuckie. The last time was Saturday, our regular kissing night. I tried to kiss her Sunday morning at the station too but her father kept giving me hostile looks. Her whole family was down at the station to put her on the train to New Hampshire where she was going to spend the summer as counselor at a girls’ camp.
Myself, I don’t go to camp. I hate greenery. I think trees are nowhere, and grass is about as dull as it can get. To tell you the honest truth, I wouldn’t mind if the whole world was paved.
But Tuckie likes that kind of scam, so she went up to New Hampshire and spent the summer pulling little girls out of poison ivy, and I just stayed home and laid around all summer carving my initials in things. At night I would usually go next door and chew the fat with Red Knees Baker. Red Knees’ parents leave her home alone nearly every night because they have to go out on business. They’re interior decorators. They’ve got this spooky antique shop on the Post Road, all made out of cruddy old barn siding, and they get about four million dollars apiece for brass door knockers and wooden fire-screens and hobnail glasses and all kinds of Early American scam like that. At night they go over to people’s houses to advise them on decoration. What they do, they come into your house and look over your furniture and keep giving you a kind of pitying smile and shaking their heads and clicking their tongues. Pretty soon they get you so shaky that you can hardly wait to run down to their store and stock up on brass door knockers.
While her mother and father go out sneering at people’s furniture, Red Knees stays home alone, and I’ll tell you something you won’t believe: she’s scared. Wouldn’t that snow you? This girl who knows where the Orinoco River is, who’s got more money than Fort Knox, who won’t let man or nature stand in her way when she makes up her mind to go after something—this tiger is afraid to stay home alone at night. On the nights last summer when I couldn’t go over and keep her company, she would barricade the doors and crouch all night behind the sofa.
Well, naturally, I came over as often as I could. I hate to think of any girl crouching behind a sofa all night. And, besides, I didn’t have too bad a time. We played a lot of Scrabble, at which she would always beat me, but on the other hand, I was six times as good as she was at darts and smoking. Her folks would get home about ten, and we’d all go into the kitchen and take out some cottage cheese and Sally Lunn bread and have Early American Sandwiches.
So it wasn’t too bad—for a fill-in, that is. Naturally, I didn’t intend to make this a steady thing. I mean spending my evenings with Red Knees. It was only a way to kill time till Tuckie got back from camp. Then, thought I, we would pick up right where we left off—the star-crossed lovers of John Marshall Junior High. Only we wouldn’t be at John Marshall any more; in fall we were going up to Central High School. But that wouldn’t make any difference, I felt sure, because our love, Tuckie’s and mine, was deep and strong and abiding and would easily survive the journey from John Marshall to Central.
Hah! That’s all I knew about it.
Tuckie came home from camp the day after Labor Day, and I was down at the station to meet her. She got off the train looking absolutely smashing. She was tanned and bright-eyed and much rounder than when she left. Obviously she’d had a lot more puberty during the summer.
My heart gave a big leap when I saw her, and I yelled, “Tuckie! Tuckie!” and went running over to her, all ready to give her about four hundred kisses. Then I stopped dead in my tracks because Tuckie was not getting off the train alone. She was getting off with Murder McIntyre.
Murder McIntyre is this monstrous kid who lives over on Ashland Avenue. He is seventeen years old, weighs about six hundred pounds, stands at least nine feet tall, has hands like a pair of clam rakes, and a forehead so small that you can’t get the edge of a ruler between his eyebrows and his hairline. And here he was walking out of the train with Tuckie, carrying both of their suitcases in one hand.
“Oh, hello, Dobie,” said Tuckie to me—casual-like, as though I’d just left her fifteen minutes ago. “You know Murder McIntyre, of course.”
I knew him all right; he was practically a tourist attraction in our neighborhood. “Hello,” I said.
“Hiya,” he said, giving my hand a squeeze that I can still feel in damp weather.
“Murder was counselor this summer at a boys’ camp right next to mine,” said Tuckie. “Weren’t you, Murder?”
He nodded his big bulbous head.
“Did you know,” said Tuckie to me, “that Murder set the New Hampshire state speed record for eighteen-foot canoes this summer?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said truthfully.
“Well, thank you very much for helping me with my luggage, Murder,” said Tuckie, smiling up at him tenderly. “And thanks for all those dreamy nights on Lake Widgiwagam.”
“Duh,” said Murder. Conversation is not his long suit.
“When will I see you again?” asked Tuckie.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Coach says we got to go in training right away.” That was the longest speech I ever heard him make.
“Call me,” said Tuckie and leaped up and kissed him on the cheek. He grunted with pleasure several times and then turned red and ran all the way home—a distance of four and a half miles.
Well, sir, I won’t pretend that I wasn’t concerned about Murder McIntyre. Lumpy and retarded as he was, he’d still had a whole summer alone with Tuckie, and that was something I couldn’t shrug off. But just the same, I wasn’t in any panic. I figured that as soon as Tuckie and I got back into our old routine, I’d blot out the whole ugly memory of Murder McIntyre.
Hah! That’s all I knew about it.
Our old routine was something that Tuckie wanted no more part of, which I learned on the very first day of school. After classes I took Tuckie, the way I used to, to the Sweet Shoppe for a lime Coke. The man brought our lime Cokes and I put down my dime, but Tuckie didn’t make a move toward her purse. “Tuckie,” I said, “the man is waiting
to be paid.”
“So pay him,” said Tuckie.
“But we always go Dutch treat,” said I, which we did.
“Look,” said she. “Did you or did you not ask me out on a date?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So pay the man,” said she. “That’s what you do on dates—buy things for girls.”
“You mean,” I said, my heart sinking, “there’ll be no more Dutch treat for us?”
“Certainly not,” she answered. “In the first place, it isn’t done in our set. That’s junior high school stuff. In the second place, I need my money.”
“For what?”
“For lipsticks and pancake and nail polish and barrettes and nylons.”
“And black lace underwear?”
“Well, if you must know,” said Tuckie, “yes.”
I heaved a great sigh. An era was ending; things would never be the same again. Still, I was not in despair. It would not be easy, but I felt sure that somehow, somewhere, I would raised enough money to finance the wooing of Tuckie Webb.
Hah! That’s all I knew about it.
I did manage to scrape up enough to take Tuckie to the movies on Wednesday night. By clutching my cruel father around the knees and weeping piteously, I finally persuaded him to let me have two weeks’ allowance in advance. Rich and happy, I rushed to Tuckie—to heap upon her such expensive pleasures that at the evening’s end she would be mine forever and ever.
The trouble began immediately. “Where are we going?” asked Tuckie as I pedaled up to her porch.
“To the Bijou,” I replied. “Where else?”
“I don’t want to go to the Bijou,” she said. “I want to go to the Rivoli.”
“Whatever for?” I gasped. “The Bijou is three blocks from here; the Rivoli is way downtown. The Bijou costs thirty-five cents; the Rivoli costs sixty.”
“Because,” answered Tuckie, “I do not wish to see Roy Rogers in The Scourge of the Mesa. I wish to see Montgomery Clift in The Gentle Passion of Roger Mayhew.”
