Kick Me (16 page)

But I never did.

The hour somehow passed. I didn’t hear a word Mr. Parks said the entire time. Everything in the room sounded like a foreign language to me. And all I kept thinking was how I wished I hadn’t done this.

The thing is, if you’re a kid and you have a crush on a girl and you never do anything about it, I think you ultimately enjoy it more. You can enjoy the thoughts of what might have happened with her and what you would have done with her and how cool you would have been with her, when in reality, you know you never would have done any of the things you thought about. You would have ended up talking to her and not having much in common and finding out that she had friends that you couldn’t stand and a big brother who didn’t like you and that you could never muster up the nerve to even hold her hand, let alone kiss her. She’d think you were a goofball and that you were boring and that your friends were immature and she’d start looking around at other guys and then you’d start to feel all jealous, even though you really didn’t want her to be your girlfriend anymore. And you’d end up not talking to her after a few days and then you’d have to spend the rest of your junior-high and high-school career avoiding her in the hallway and answering the question “Hey, weren’t you and Yvonne going together for a while?”

“Well, yeah, but we broke up.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you? She’s a fox.”

You know what’s wrong with me. I’m a loser, that’s what.

Well, Yvonne never did talk to me or thank me for the necklace or give me the time of day after that, and I avoided her more diligently than I avoided the bullies who wanted to beat me up. My romance had ended before it even started. Which was fine with me, because I started listening in class again and actually ended up learning stuff.

Once, however, a couple of months later, some friends and I put together a band for a class project and played an extremely terrible rendition of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” during homeroom. During it, I looked out at the class and saw that Yvonne was staring at me. Trying to be cool, I made an “oh, brother, these guys are bad and if I had some better musicians up here with me I’d really wail on this guitar” face at her. She gave me a smile and an expectant look that made my heart skip a beat and realize why guys are in bands. But then Mr. Parks asked me if I wanted to cut loose and jam on my guitar and I realized that I couldn’t and Rick McBane jumped up on stage and took my guitar and played an incredible version of the guitar solo from Chicago’s “25 Or 6 To 4.” The class rocked out and I saw that Yvonne’s eyes were filled with passion for Rick. Of course. And that was the last time she ever looked at me.

The next year, when I got to high school, I heard that Yvonne and her family had moved away and no one knew where they went.

And my mother never asked me what happened to her necklace.

I guess when you give an eighth grader an heirloom for his girlfriend, you’ve just got to figure that you’re not going to get it back.

RESUSCI-ANNIE

I
heard a story once, when I was around eight years old, about how Frank Zappa was so outrageous that at one of his concerts he passed an empty cup around the audience and told each of the crowd members to spit into it. They did, and when the cup was full, it was brought back up onto the stage and Frank Zappa drank the whole thing.

I don’t know if that story was true and I tend to doubt that it was, especially since Frank Zappa was famous for not taking drugs and, let’s face it, only a person on drugs could even conceive of doing something like that, let alone seeing it through to completion.

But the story affected me profoundly. I had nightmares for years after that, fever dreams in which I was onstage with Frank, and when the spit cup would come back up to him after making its rounds through the audience, full and warm and sloshing over the sides, Frank would hand it to me and say, “Here, you drink it tonight. I’m not feeling so hot.” And then the band would force me to guzzle it down in one long gulp.

A nightmare for anyone, to be sure. But for me, the thought was immobilizing.

When I was a kid, I was germ conscious.
Really
germ conscious. But I’m not sure if it was actual germs I was conscious of or if it was really just the thought of other people’s spit that made me feel like passing out.

You see, much of childhood is set up as one big germ- and spitspreading activity. And it seemed as if all of my grade-school peers were more than willing to put their mouths on whatever it was that I or anyone else happened to be consuming at any given moment during the day. Other kids just didn’t seem to care about germs or spit—or dirt or bugs or worms or anything else that made my skin crawl, for that matter. Which always left me feeling more like a miniature version of the prissy Dr. Smith from
Lost in Space,
shrieking in horror at the sight of an attacking Cyclops or space biker, than someone who had anything in common with the kids in my neighborhood. The problem was, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t force myself
not
to obsess about my revulsion toward anything that came out of, or resided inside of, anyone else’s mouth. And this made it quite difficult to be a kid, because it seemed like whenever I had a bottle of pop (or “soda,” as you non-Midwesterners call it) at any point from age four to fourteen, it was guaranteed that within seconds of opening it, some kid I knew would appear behind me and utter these dreaded words:

“Hey, can I have a drink?”

Every
time. And then I was stuck. Because if I dared to say no, it was sure to provoke a thoughtful and understanding response of “C’mon, ya baby. I’m not gonna drink it all.”

“Yeah, but you’re gonna get your
mouth
all over it.” Or at least, that’s what I
wanted
to say. But instead, in my true nonconfrontational fashion, I’d always relent.

“Uh . . . okay. Here.”

I mean, what other option did I have? What else could I do without sounding like an oversensitive only child in serious need of an ass-kicking? Unless I was prepared to dig into the old coffee can I kept my extra allowance in and buy every kid who came up to me their own bottle, I had to give in or suffer the consequences.

But it really made me mad. And it made me want to cry. Because I was always so happy and the world was always a much nicer place when I would buy myself a bottle of pop. My mother had her rum balls, which she would eat whenever she felt as if the day had dealt her too much hardship. And me? Well, there was nothing I liked more than a good soul-soothing bottle of liquid candy.

The circumstances were always the same. It would be a warm afternoon. I’d be walking home from grade school, tired and worn out from a full day of crushes and failures and overreactions. I’d approach the old drugstore, where I usually bought a 3 Musketeers bar or some oversize Sweet Tarts or a few long strands of Bubs Daddy Grape Bubble Gum, the flavor that tasted so good when I chewed it and yet had the power to turn my stomach when smelled on the breath of others. Feeling like a snack, I’d check my pockets and discover a dollar bill that my mom would occasionally give me on the days when she was overcome with love for her only son, money she had specially earmarked as “buy yourself a little treat if those boys are mean to you again” cash. I’d smile warmly as I pulled out the dollar, thinking about my mom. What a nice thing to do, I’d muse. At least
she
likes me. I mean, she never calls me Fig Newton or Pig Newton or Paul Fag. At least not to my face. And so, dollar in hand, I’d head into the store. Since it was usually warm and humid outside, I’d make up my mind to get a bottle of 7-UP. Or maybe a Dr Pepper. But not a Coke. Because Coke would stunt my growth and rot my teeth and make me question authority in a caffeine- and cocaine-induced stupor. Or so my mom always said. And so, I’d settle on a Squirt. I’d grab an ice-cold bottle out of the refrigerator and go up to the counter. There would be nice old Mr. Ken. I never knew his full name, but I always liked him, even though many weeks later he’d falsely accuse me of shoplifting. What a jerk he turned out to be. But on this day, he was still good ol’ Mr. Ken. I’d pay for the bottle, say “thank you,” and head outside. As I walked, I’d twist off the top. The bottle would give me a friendly hiss that seemed to say, “Oh, friend, are you going to enjoy me.” I’d take a deep breath, releasing all the tensions of the day, raise the bottle to my lips, tilt my head back and take a drink, enjoying life to its fullest. The world seemed to melt away. I’d forgotten that Karl Scott tried to beat me up in math class and that I’d gotten yelled at by one of the playground ladies for jumping off the swing. What did they care if I broke my leg? They never came to my rescue when someone was trying to push me off the top of the monkey bars or strangling me with the tetherball cord. No, no, let it go, Paul, I’d think to myself. You’ve got your Squirt. Enjoy it, drink it slow, and maybe you can make it last all day. And life for that one moment was good.

That is, until the dream would be shattered when Norman would suddenly walk out of the bushes and want to backwash into my bottle.

So, I’d reluctantly give him my Squirt and he’d put his mouth on it and take a sloppy swig and I’d feel defiled as I’d watch him gulp down my once pleasure-producing soft drink. My thoughts would be torn between hoping he choked on the pop and figuring out how I could possibly salvage what was left in the bottle. Maybe I could pour out the top inch of spit-contaminated liquid, then thoroughly wipe down the mouth of the bottle with my shirttail to remove the memory of his mouth. I would actually start to feel there might be a possible second life for my pop when suddenly the nightmare would worsen.

Another kid would invariably walk up.

“Hey, Norman, can I have a drink?”

“It’s okay with me, but it’s Paul’s pop. Ask him.”

What was I gonna say? “No, I don’t mind Norman’s saliva but yours is a no-go.” Why did all these kids have to drink out of the same bottle anyway? Couldn’t they go and buy their own? Didn’t it bother them that they were drinking out of something that two people had already contaminated? There’s no way
I’d
do it, so why would
they?
Was I that much weirder than everyone else? Was I that much smarter? Or was I just an expert at making big deals out of nothing?

Whatever the answer and no matter what anyone said, I was
not
swapping spit with
anyone,
especially a bunch of guys I didn’t even really like.

So Norman’s friend would grab the bottle and take a drink and get his stupid mouth all over it and then a gang of Cub Scouts who were friends of the kid currently drinking would show up and take their turns and after an eternity I’d get the bottle back. The top would be coated with everything our grade school served for lunch that day and the few inches of liquid left at the bottom of the bottle would have about the same viscosity as old motor oil. I’d look at it and feel queasy and feel like crying but instead would try to sound casual and say, “You guys can have the rest. I’m not thirsty anymore.”

“No way. I’m not drinking that. It’s all backwash.”

Yeah, YOURS! What started out as a pleasant, tension-relieving interlude with a bottle of pop had once again turned into yet another in a long line of torturous moments that made up what were supposed to be my carefree days of youth.

Self-imposed torture, granted. But torture nonetheless.

Well, it was a couple of years later into this neurotic little world of mine, when I was in junior high school, that something happened during gym class that was to prove one of the most traumatic events of the spit-and-germ-avoiding segment of my childhood.

Simply put, I met a girl. And that girl’s name was . . . Resusci-Annie.

“Annie,” as I’ve affectionately come to know her, wasn’t a girl in the standard person-who’s-actually-alive sense. No, Annie was a mannequin, a life-size doll with a rubber head, a mouth, a working windpipe, a set of lungs, and a body that was in possession of neither arms nor legs. Resusci-Annie, Queen of the Latex Torso Women, was something invented by paramedics and CPR instructors to be used for the teaching of the uninitiated in the fine art of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Annie also had one other thing going for her. . . .

She was terrifying.

The first traumatic thing about Annie was that she looked like a dead person. Her face was white and rubbery, her eyes were closed, her mouth was loosely open, exposing a disturbing set of rubber teeth, and she had a full mane of greasy, matted hair on top of her head. She hardly looked like someone anybody had a chance of saving. I’d throw a blanket over her face and start contacting next of kin if I saw her lying in the street. But as far as the emergency health care community was concerned, Annie had one purpose in this world and that was to be revived over and over again by anyone and everyone trying to master the very practical skills of lifesaving. A group, I’m ashamed to admit, I had no desire to join. If anyone was thinking of having a medical emergency around me back then, they’d better have made sure their life insurance was paid up, because I’d be about as useful to them as earplugs at a whispering contest.

Mr. Wendell told us to gather in the center of the gym as we came out of the locker room. As we walked over, we saw Resusci-Annie lying on the floor.

“Whoa, cool, a dead person,” said Norman, as if the sight of an actual armless and legless corpse would be something one could consider “cool.” We gathered around and stared at Annie.

I had recently been taken to my first open-casket funeral by my parents and had gone up and viewed the body of the deceased. I didn’t really know the man who had died, but I was amazed at how alive he actually looked lying there. Although it’s a cliché, the guy truly looked like he was sleeping, as if his eyes might pop open at any moment and he’d yell at me to “Stop staring, you little big-nosed bastard.” Looking back on it, seeing a dead body like that should have been a traumatic experience, but with the sad organ music playing and flowers everywhere and people quietly crying, I was surprised at how well I had handled the whole thing. It seemed very natural. All part of life’s process. I had thought dead people would look different. I thought they’d be scary. I thought they’d give me nightmares.

In short, I thought they’d look a lot like . . . well . . . like Resusci-Annie did that day. And as I stood there, staring at her lying on the dirty floor of my school’s gymnasium, my fear of dead people immediately came rushing back like the Johnstown Flood.

Just then, a very large policeman with a big red drinker’s face and a handlebar mustache entered the gym and walked up to us.

“Hello, gentlemen. My name is Sergeant Korn.” He said it loud and proud, like a guy who knew that since he was a cop, nobody was going to laugh at his goofy name. “As part of an organized effort to teach people in our community about emergency medical procedures, I’m here today to demonstrate to you the proper way to administer the life saving technique of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” He droned on for several minutes about how this procedure could be used to revive a drowning victim or a choking victim or a victim of any number of other accidents and maladies that would send me running for the hills if someone around me actually fell victim to them. So I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to get out of all this. However, if learning mouth-to-mouth meant it would keep us from having to play flag football or floor hockey or having to embark on yet another pointless attempt to do enough sit-ups to try to qualify for the much-unwanted President’s Physical Fitness Award, then I was all for it.

“And now, with the help of my good friend Resusci-Annie here,” Sergeant Korn said, gesturing grandly and then chuckling at his allegedly cute comment, “I’m going to show you the correct way to administer the ‘Kiss of Life.’” And then, accompanied by an aria of grunts and groans, he awkwardly got down on his knees next to Annie. He stuck his fingers into her mouth, telling us that before we did anything, we were supposed to make sure that there were no “objects” blocking the victim’s throat. So, I wondered, before you saved someone, you were supposed to stick your fingers into his or her mouth and fish around for gum or a toothpick? Forget that. If a person was dumb enough to drown while chewing on a wad of Bubble Yum, then it’s not really my fault if he or she dies.

Sergeant Korn pinched Annie’s deathly white nose, put his hand under her neck to “open the throat,” took a deep breath, put his mouth on top of Annie’s, and blew. Annie’s chest rose and fell. Sergeant Korn watched it, his face a bit redder than it had been a few seconds ago, then took another deep breath, put his mouth back on Annie’s, and blew again. Again her chest rose and fell. I immediately started to feel a bit nauseous. Even though we were watching a very clinical procedure, it had the feeling of something that we really shouldn’t be seeing. Maybe it was the image of an overweight cop on his hands and knees blowing into the mouth of an oversize doll and making his already uncomfortably red face even redder that made it feel more like I was watching a very low-quality porn film than a lifesaving demonstration. Unsettling images of Sergeant Korn’s private life with Mrs. Korn started to flood into my head. Fortunately, before I was able to ruminate on these mental pictures for too long, Sergeant Korn looked up and breathlessly said, “Resusci-Annie . . . now has enough air . . . to start breathing on her own again.” He took a few more deep breaths to compose himself. “And I can now feel good that I just saved a life.” And then he struggled to stand up again, improperly equipped as his body was for kneeling and bending, let alone chasing bad guys. How this man with the physique of a sumo wrestler got to be a cop was beyond my comprehension. But then again, this was small-town Michigan. Guys of this body type were as common a sight in one’s life as cars whose lower halves were completely eaten away by rust. However, hearing him pant and try to catch his breath, I had a momentary flash that Sergeant Korn might keel over and that one of us would then be expected to put our newfound Kiss of Life knowledge to the test.