Grouper's Laws

by D. Philip Miller

Blondie couldn’t get over it. He’d seen bare breasts in men’s magazines, but she was showing it all. It didn’t make him horny, though. She was too much of a heifer.

  “Outstanding!” Dispatch exclaimed.

  When she was done, the comic came back out and told the audience the woman’s name was Samantha and that she’d been voted Snatch of the Year — in 1933! Blondie found himself despising the man.

  The band provided a more rousing introduction to the next act. To a few more chuckles, the comic told the near-empty house that this was the moment they’d all been waiting for — the “climax” of the whole performance.

  “All the way from Pittsburgh,” he said, his voice rising, “the eighth wonder of the sexual world, that peerless piece of pulchritude, Pamela, with her snake Lickety-Split.”

  Someone clapped.

  Blondie was astounded when a beautiful young woman stepped from behind the curtains into the flat circle of light. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five and she had a centerfold’s body. In the right clothes, she could’ve been a campus queen. She wasn’t dressed that way. She wore an outfit like her predecessor’s, only in blue, and carried a wicker basket.

  Blondie wondered if she would take everything off like the older woman. He hoped so. She was gorgeous. Tan, unwrinkled skin. Long raven hair. Firm thighs. Bounteous breasts straining at the bra she wore.

  “Take it off,” a geezer in front yelled. “Show us your snake.”

  “I’ll show you my snake,” one of his cohorts answered.

  Blondie held his breath. He felt he’d die if he saw her totally nude — but he was willing. She removed her bra. Her breasts were sublime.

  “For Christ sakes, breathe, Blondie,” Feller whispered.

  She removed her G-string. Blondie was mesmerized by her dark, feathery crotch. He told himself it was only hair, but it promised succulent delights.

  He began to feel lightheaded. Just when he thought he’d maxed out on lust, Pamela raised the ante. She removed the top of her basket and pulled out a six- or seven-foot python. It was iridescent brown and chartreuse, maybe five inches thick in the middle. She held the snake in her right hand, its body coiled around her arm.

  The music grew more seductive. Pamela swayed in apparent ecstasy. She moved the snake’s head along her body, its tongue flickering over her skin. Still swaying, Pamela shoved the snake’s head into the soft fur of her groin.

  “Wow!” Dispatch exclaimed.

  “Taste good?” one of the front-row denizens inquired.

  Pamela wrapped the python around her waist and pulled its tail through her legs so it wiggled out from between them.

  “It’s gotta be in her crack,” Dispatch said.

  “What I’d give to be that snake,” Blondie muttered.

  By the time Pamela disappeared behind the curtains, Blondie was exhausted. He’d never felt such desire. Nessie ached.

  Blondie wasn’t the only one who’d been so affected. Feller and Dispatch were more than willing to wait the hour and a half it took to see her again, suffering through a procession of burlesque queens well past their primes. When Pamela reappeared, Blondie howled like a coyote.

  “Again?” Dispatch asked when she was through.

  “Yeah,” Blondie whispered.

  “No. No.” Feller said in a hoarse voice. “It’s already four-thirty. We’ll be lucky to get home much before dinner now.”

  Dusk was peeking over the rooftops when they exited. They hurried toward the alley where they’d left the P-mobile. As Dispatch fumbled with the ignition, something clattered onto the street beside them. A broken brick lay beside the front tire.

  CRASH! An object struck the car.

  “What the hell!” Dispatch exclaimed.

  “Motherfucker,” someone yelled.

  Blondie couldn’t see anyone at first. Then he saw movement in the shadows at the end of the street. A couple black kids were standing by a pallet of bricks.

  Blondie didn’t understand.

  “What’s the matter?” he yelled. “Why are you throwing those bricks?” “Get in the car,” Feller ordered. He slid into the back seat as Dispatch got behind the wheel.

  “There must be some mistake,” Blondie shouted at their attackers. “We don’t even know you.”

  “Honky jerk offs, go back where you belong,” came the reply.

  A brick hit the P-mobile again. A sliver nicked Blondie’s neck.

  Feller reached out and grabbed Blondie’s jacket as the P-mobile roared to life.

  “Get your ass in the car before we all get killed.”

  A brick exploded against the back windshield, spreading a spider web across it. Blondie jumped into the car.

  Dispatch rolled down the window.

  “Jungle bunnies!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  “Christ, Dispatch,” Feller said. “Would you get moving?”

  Bricks rained down around them. Dispatch gunned the throttle and the P-mobile shot down the street. Blondie looked back. Now there were six or seven black youths running after them, bricks in hand.

  “Faster,” Feller urged.

  Dispatch shot through a red light at the end of the street, forcing a yellow Oldsmobile onto the curb. After a mile or so, he slowed down. They were silent for another three or four minutes.

  “Why’d they do that?” Blondie asked.

  “Because we’re white,” Feller answered.

  That was it? Just because they were white. Blondie felt baffled, offended, betrayed. He always stuck up for black kids. They’d been his classmates at every Army school he’d attended. How could they attack him?

  “You’re late tonight,” Blondie’s mother observed when he got home.

  “Yeah, I went up to the bowling alley after school with Feller and shot a few games of pool.”

  “Are you sure the bowling alley is a proper place for you to be spending time?”

  If you only knew, he thought.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Oh God, oh God … ” Blondie repeated to himself as the Bear lurched along in front of him, his broad shoulders thankfully shielding Blondie from the prying eyes of his classmates. He didn’t have to guess where the Bear was going … or what the subject of the forthcoming discussion would be. He needed a defense. But what could it be? That he’d needed a day off to catch a once-in-a-lifetime strip act?

  The bear shoved open the office door, smashing Mrs. Spritz into a file cabinet. She yelped.

  “Sorry,” Bear muttered.

  He knocked on Clapper’s door, then eased it open.

  “Got another one,” he said to Clapper. “Do you want me to handle him, too?”

  “Oh yes, certainly,” Clapper said, looking mystified.

  Bear led Blondie down a short hallway to the teacher’s lounge. It contained a Coke machine, a table littered with magazines, several metal-and-plastic chairs, and an aging sofa. Seated on the last item were Feller and Dispatch.

  Bear nodded toward the sofa. Blondie sat down beside his comrades. Mr. Bearzinsky put his foot up on one of the chairs. He snarled, exposing his canine teeth, then produced a metal ruler from behind his back. He began brandishing it like a sword.

  “Okay,” he said, “Who wants to be the first to fess up?”

  Feller stared at him and said nothing. Dispatch looked out the window.

  “Where’s your note, Reimer?”

  Note? Had Feller and Dispatch brought notes?

  “I don’t have one, sir,” Blondie said as placating as he could.

  “Well, at least I won’t have to add forgery to your list of offenses.”

  List? Was Bear still holding the mouse episode against him?

  “Does anyone care to speak before I suspend you all?”

  Dispatch opened his mouth, then shut it when Feller pushed his knee into his thigh.

  “I admit it looks coincidental,” Feller said, “but we apparently all got sick the
same day.”

  “Next,” Bearzinsky said. “Something more creative?”

  He wanted creative?

  “I think I may be diabetic,” Blondie looking at the Bear to see if he was on the right track. ” Just as I was leaving the house, I went blank. I don’t remember yesterday at all.”

  “Not bad, Reimer,” the Bear said.

  He rubbed his chin and Blondie relaxed a little.

  CRACK! Bearzinsky smashed the ruler down on the table.

  “They don’t pay me enough for this job,” he lamented, lifting his gaze toward the heavens. “Now listen up, you three. Do I need to call your parents at work — and make them twice as angry — or will you accept your suspensions without any more discussion, effective immediately?”

  Dispatch and Feller looked at each other. Then, they looked toward Blondie.

  “I’d rather you didn’t call my folks,” Blondie said.

  “Deal,” Feller said.

  Dispatch grunted assent.

  “I’m not finished. Before you even think of coming back to school, I want a note from your parents guaranteeing you won’t be absent again. Of course, I’ll compare any handwriting with your own.”

  “Of course,” Feller nodded as if that were assumed.

  “Now, get out!” Bear growled.

  Outside, dead leaves tossed like tiny galleons on the frigid wind. The sky was a piece of dry ice.

  “That faggot,” Dispatch griped. “We should have called his bluff.”

  “He wasn’t bluffing,” Feller said.

  “I don’t care. It’s the principle of the thing that bothers me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Who fingered us?” Blondie wanted to know.

  “Farber,” Feller answered. “He noticed both of us gone. He was joking with me before class today like he knew what we’d been up to and it was okay. So I kinda admitted it.”

  Blondie moaned in frustration.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “Let’s write each other’s notes,” Dispatch suggested.

  “Didn’t you hear what the Bear said?” Feller asked him. “He’ll be watching for that.”

  “Not if we write each other’s.”

  “I don’t know,” Blondie said. “He’s likely to call our parents no matter what. I think we’re going to have to tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” Feller asked. “That we sneaked into a strip joint to see a woman make love to a snake?”

  “Well, I’m not telling my old lady,” Dispatch said. “I couldn’t stand to listen to her lecture.”

  “So what do we do?” Blondie asked.

  “We could go up to Shady Lanes and shoot some more pool,” Feller suggested.

  Blondie couldn’t get up for that.

  “You guys do what you want. I’d just as soon go home.”

  Dispatch was happy to drop him off, but Blondie felt strange being home so early on a school day. Everything in the house seemed an accusation of his villainy. He cursed himself for being so parent-whipped. Why couldn’t he just look his mom in the eyes and say, “Write me a note, will you? I had a little run-in with the vice principal and got suspended. No big deal.” After all, he was seventeen. He had a right to fuck off once in a while, didn’t he?

  Nothing told himself alleviated his sense of wrongdoing. Then he remembered something Feller had told him once. He’d called it Muggerood’s Theorem: that a male has but one main artery and that it goes directly from his penis to his brain.

  “It’s a question of which head is in control,” he’d explained. “You can’t maintain a hard-on and worry at the same time.”

  Obviously, then, what Blondie needed in this moment of crisis was a gigantic boner. The catch was that he was already worried, so how was he going to get it up? Perhaps the proper environment would do it. He headed for the shower. Soon, he stood behind the glass door, limp member in hand. As the first fingers of warm water began massaging his skin, he searched his mind for a suitable fantasy. His old standby came to mind — an isolated cabin with two horny coeds. However, he’d discovered over the years that the staying power of any fantasy was only three or four showers in a row, and he’d already run out the string.

  He ran several other possibilities through his mind: a day at a nudist camp, a peephole into the girls’ shower at school, a reprise with Linda Lapidus. Nothing was working.

  “You’re behaving like a worm,” Blondie scolded his organ. He quickly apologized. He’d never get hard undermining Nessie’s self-esteem. Then he remembered an oldie but goodie. Once long ago — through a crack in a window shade — he’d seen a friend’s sister masturbating. Nessie immediately began to show a little spine and, within minutes, Blondie reached a satisfactory climax. The tension flowed from his body.

  After donning a fresh pair of jeans and a clean shirt, he stood before the mirror, transformed. This was no wimp staring back at him, no cowering goody two-shoes afraid to confront his own parents. It was the reincarnation of James Dean, a rebel with a cause — that cause being to stand up to his parents.

  After wolfing down a twin-pack of Twinkies for lunch, Blondie felt ready for anything. The feeling lasted until his parents arrived home. As if out of a bad dream, his mother went directly to the bathroom and noticed that her facial towel was still damp.

  “Did you take another shower today?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, I was still sweaty after Phys. Ed.”

  She found the Twinkies’ wrapper in the waste can not more than fifteen minutes later.

  “Why were you eating junk food just before dinner?” she asked.

  “Don’t get excited. I ate it a couple hours ago,” he replied without thinking.

  “You were home early? Why? Were you sick?”

  What should he do? Should he tell her he’d been sick? What about his suspension? Blondie felt beads of moisture on his forehead.

  His dad turned toward him.

  “You haven’t answered your mother, Bernard.”

  “Well, yeah, I came home early.”

  His voice came out small and squeaky.

  “Why, Bernard?”

  His dad’s tone was much sharper than his mom’s.

  Think of James Dean. What would he do?

  “Nothing’s going on at school,” he said with a burst of bravado. “It’s a drag.”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t go to school because it isn’t entertaining enough?”

  Blondie cringed at the quantum rise in his dad’s tone.

  “Did you think I didn’t show up at reveille on days I thought there wasn’t going to be any war?”

  His dad was getting into his military thing: duty, honor, country.

  “I didn’t feel good,” Blondie amended himself.

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” his mom said. She gave him a look of concern.

  Oh God, he was wimping out, playing for sympathy.

  “Well, you look all right now,” his dad said. “So I expect you’ll be at school tomorrow.”

  “That’s going to be a problem,” Blondie said.

  “Why?” his dad asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “I got suspended.”

  Blondie didn’t remember all that happened after that, although it felt like three hours in a sauna with a pack of wolves. The low points of the drama were a teary reproach from his mother and a stern lecture from his father. There were no high points.

  Later, his mother gave him a groveling note apologizing to Mr. Bearzinsky for “Blondie’s unfortunate and never-to-be-repeated transgression” and begging “his forbearance in allowing her contrite son” to return. Blondie felt like puking. He was going to have to deliver this obsequious piece of crap to the Bear. But at least he hadn’t been grounded. His mother had talked his dad out of that.

  Still, as he lay in bed that night, staring at the moonlight
that fell on the foot of his bed, he judged his encounter with his folks a total defeat.

  “James Dean my ass,” he muttered to himself. Then he begged Nessie’s forgiveness.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Blondie was snatched from a dream — he remembered only that it was unpleasant — by scraping outside. He leaned across his bed and looked out his front window. Winter had painted everything white. Mr. Potter, fattened by a bulky black parka and floppy galoshes, stabbed at the snow on his driveway with a red shovel.

  Blondie slipped on his jeans and slippers and went out on the front porch. The world seemed fresh and pure, open to possibility and free of threat. Potter looked his way with a hostile expression. So much for a threat-free world, Blondie thought.

  It was Saturday, the last shopping day before Christmas. Blondie had accepted his mom’s invitation to accompany her into town. He had nothing better to do. Besides, he needed to get presents for his parents. That night, he was planning to go out with the gang — except for Feller who’d been grounded by his dad for cutting school. Grouper had insisted upon driving, saying that he hadn’t been carrying his share of the “chauffeuring burden.” He told Blondie he’d pick him up in his dad’s Chrysler. Blondie recalled Feller’s warning about Grouper’s driving: “He’s blind as a cave fish but not nearly so coordinated.”

  As soon as they reached town, Blondie excused himself from his mom and loped up the street, slipping frequently on the slushy sidewalk. He shoved his way into a gaggle of frenzied shoppers at the Variety Store and grabbed a wallet for his dad. What to get his mom, though?

  She liked knickknacks and the Bonanza was full of them: glass balls filled with snow scenes, fake cuckoo clocks, porcelain figurines, silver-plated thimbles. It was too confusing. He bought her a box of chocolates, praying she wasn’t on a diet. The odds were fifty-fifty.

  On his way out, Blondie saw Bobby Clements in the sporting goods section. He was perusing a set of golf clubs. Working up his nerve, Blondie approached him.

  “Do you play?”

  Bobby turned his head slowly and gazed at Blondie.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said. Blondie wondered if Bobby remembered his name. “Not very well,” he said, responding to Blondie’s question.