“Stop,” a man yelled, waving his hands at me.
“Why?”
“Don’t you know?” he said. I shook my head. He was a man who knew the list, who probably had his own personal copy. He had based his life on it, on trying to explain it to others.
He spoke, he drew diagrams, splintering poles of chalk as he put pictures on a blackboard. He tried to tell of the things he knew. He tried to talk but did not have the language of the teacher.
I breathed deeply and thought of Chin San number twenty-eight. “If you begin and it is not the beginning, begin again.”
“I will begin again,” I announced. Because I had stated this and had not asked for a second chance, because I was standing and he was seated, because it was still early in the evening, the man who had stopped me nodded, all right.
“Things You Should Know,” I said.
“Good title, good title,” the man said. “Go on, go on.”
“There is a list,” I said, nearing the end. “It is a list you make yourself. And at the top of the page you write, ‘Things You Should Know.’”
THE WHIZ KIDS
In the big bathtub in my parents’ bedroom, he ran his tongue along my side, up into my armpits, tugging the hair with his teeth. “We’re like married,” he said, licking my nipples.
I spit at him. A foamy blob landed on his bare chest. He smiled, grabbed both my arms, and held them down.
He slid his face down my stomach, dipped it under the water, and put his mouth over my cock.
My mother knocked on the bathroom door. “I have to get ready. Your father and I are leaving in twenty minutes.”
Air bubbles crept up to the surface.
“Can you hear me?” she said, fiddling with the knob. “Why is the door locked? You know we don’t lock doors in this house.”
“It was an accident,” I said through the door.
“Well, hurry,” my mother said.
And we did.
Later, in the den, picking his nose, examining the results on his finger, slipping his finger into his mouth with a smack and a pop, he explained that as long as we never slept with anyone else, we could do whatever we wanted. “Sex kills,” he said, “but this,” he said, “this is the one time, the only time, the chance of a lifetime.” He ground his front teeth on the booger.
We met in a science class. “Cocksucker,” he hissed. My fingers were in my ears. I didn’t hear the word so much as saw it escape his mouth. The fire alarm was going off. Everyone was grabbing their coats and hurrying for the door. He held me back, pressed his lips close to my ear, and said it again, Cocksucker, his tongue touching my neck. Back and forth, he shook a beaker of a strange potion and threatened to make me drink it. He raised the glass to my mouth. My jaws clamped shut. With his free hand, he pinched my nostrils shut and laughed like a maniac. My mouth fell open. He tilted the beaker toward my throat. The teacher stopped him just in time. “Enough horsing around,” she said. “This is a fire drill. Behave accordingly.”
“Got ya,” he said, pushing me into the hall and toward the steps, his hard-on rubbing against me the whole way down.
My mother came in, stood in front of the television set, her ass in Peter Jennings’s face, and asked, “How do I look?”
He curled his lip and spit a pistachio shell onto the coffee table.
“Remember to clean up,” my mother said.
“I want you to fuck me,” he said while my father was in the next room, looking for his keys.
“Have you seen them?” my father asked.
“No,” I said.
“I want your Oscar Mayer in my bun,” he said.
He lived miles away, had gone to a different elementary school, was a different religion, wasn’t circumcised.
My father poked his head into the room, jiggled his keys in the air, and said, “Got ’em.”
“Great tie,” I said.
My father tweaked his bow tie. “Bye, guys.”
The front door closed. My father’s white Chrysler slid into the street.
“I want you to give it to me good.”
“I want to watch Jeopardy,” I said, going for the remote control.
“Ever tasted a dick infusion?” he asked, sipping from my glass of Dr. Pepper.
He unzipped his fly, fished out his dick, and dropped it into the glass. The ice cubes melted, cracking the way they do when you pour in something hot. A minute later, he put his dick away, swirled the soda around, and offered me a sip.
“Maybe later,” I said, focusing on the audio daily double. “‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon.’”
“I’m bored,” he said.
“Play along,” I said. “I’ve already got nine thousand dollars.”