Slow Flashes (Part 4: Bird Dick)

When school let out for the summer, I was left virtually friendless. All my private school friends trotted off to Europe or South America. I wanted nothing to do with Jeremy, which I assumed meant I wouldn't be spending any time with Kevin, either. I was wrong.

At the end of June, Mr. Harris was offered a job in Arizona. Kevin's sister, Erica, had just graduated from high school, and was spending her summer backpacking The Appalachian Trail. Kevin didn't want to spend three weeks in a strange state with only his parents for company, and his sister had no interest in having her twelve year old brother tagging along on her camping trip. Apparently, camping was a more private affair than an orgy. Since he didn't seem to have any alternatives that wouldn't flop him into depression, my parents invited Kevin to stay with us until his parents got back.

After he'd spread his sleeping bag on my bedroom floor, he said, "I heard Bird Dick's parents found out about your Waldo books and told your parents."

I laughed at his new nickname for Jeremy. So obvious. Why hadn't I thought of it? "Yea, but I tore the pictures out of the books before my parents got a chance to look for them."

"Sweet deeeeeeeeeeewd. Where did you put them?"

"I think Bird Dick stole them."

"What a lewwwwwwwwwser." Kevin said. "I can't believe we used to hang out with that baby."

So Jeremy Bird Dick became our punchline punching bag. The stealing, crying, faggy baby who listened to Milli Vanilli, and jerked off to professional wrestling. Kevin and I still watched the Pay-Per-View events, but only because my family had a black box, and we wanted to prove that we knew it was fake. We didn't watch the weekly shows, or really care about wrestling at all. We cared about biking, and girls, and baseball, and Nintendo.

On his fourth day as a member of our family, while my parents were at work, Kevin challenged me to a game of Nintendo Baseball. "I'm gonna kick your ass, faggot."

"You wish, homo." I said. "I rule at this game."

"Bet you ten bucks I win."

I smooshed up my face. "I don't have ten bucks." This was a lie. I was a paperboy who hid half my tips from my parents, in order to buy the soda and candy that they refused to buy for me.

Kevin smooshed his face in a mirror image of mine. "Ok, then. Every time one of us hits a home run, the other person has to do something stupid."

"What," I asked, "like hang out with Bird Dick?"

"No. Like. I don't know. Like stand on your head for a minute."

"Ok."

I hit the first home run in the second inning. "You've got to run outside and shout I love sucking Jeremy Burdick's tiny little cock."

"You're an asshole." Kevin said. But he did as he was dared, and was lucky that nobody appeared to be within auditory range when he shouted it.

In the third inning, Kevin hit his first home run. "Ok, you have to take off your pants, put your hand in one of your Wrinkles dogs, and make it give you a blowjob."

He wanted me to stick my dick in the mouth of a puppet and pretend it was giving me a blowjob? "For how long?"

"A minute."

We went back and forth for most of the game. It seemed we averaged two or three homeruns an inning. He had to pretend he was getting fucked by a lightswitch, I had to put a harmonica in my butt and run around the room, he had to play the rest of the game naked, I had to tie a ribbon around my balls. During the seventh inning, fearing that the next dare might involve touching, I told Kevin I was bored and didn't want to play anymore. Thus securing my role as the Ferdinand Magellan of boys' bodies. I discovered them, but always got hit by the poison arrow of fear before I had the chance to exploit what I found. Fully clothed, the two of us went upstairs and watched Ren and Stimpy until my mother came home.

"Have you two been watching TV all day?" She asked. "It's time to do something productive. Let's go upstairs and clean the gerbil cages. I don't think you've cleaned it in months."

Up the stairs, we trudged behind my mother. I grabbed Rhoda, Ralph, and their assorted babies, and put them in a series of plastic Habitrail tubes. I picked out the wheel, and all the plastic toys, and laid them out on my desk. Then, I put my arms around the terrarium and picked it up. And there, in the spot where the terrarium had been, was fifteen pages of a big nippled goddess squatting over, licking, and otherwise making good use of a huge cock attached to a bronzed man in a visored helmet.

Kevin let out a sharp laugh. "Busted!"

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/228919.html

Slow Flashes (Part 3: Find Waldo Now)

On the ride home, I became convinced that we were going to be in a terrible accident, both of us killed by a tractor-trailer speeding down the wrong side of the highway. When my mom came to identify the bodies, and collect our things, she'd tell the nurse how sweet I'd been, how I'd never cried as a baby, and how I was so smart that I'd been attending private school. And when she got home, and started leafing through my backpack, she'd cry a bit at my tattered Tolkien, she'd cluck her tongue at the blank sheet of graph paper in my algebra book (I was supposed to have finished my homework that afternoon) and then she'd see the Wall Street Journal, and marvel at what an intelligent boy she was raising. A few seconds later, when the porno fell out, she'd realize what a complete sexual deviant I was, and she'd cut me out of all the family photographs.

Luckily for my family, there was no terrible accident between my dad's work and our house. I ran upstairs the moment we got home, and stuffed the magazine under my mattress. During dinner, I realized that my father kept his porn beneath the mattress, so, clearly, my mother would know that that's the first place to check for those kinds of things. I asked to be excused. I ran back upstairs,and began frantically looking around the room. The desk was out, as I'd known for years that my mother liked to go through all of my drawers while I was at school. I couldn't hide it in my closet because my mom had once found a turtle I'd been keeping in a shoebox in there, and she had dug through it once a week, ever since. Under the gerbil cage! Perfect. I hid the magazine and returned to dinner. After dinner, I leisurely watched four minutes of TV before heading back to my room. Under the gerbil cage was a terrible place. What if my mother decided to clean the cage while I played with my friends? Or what if Rhoda or Ralph (the gerbils) decided to make a bigger nest, and moved enough wood chips out of the way to expose the magazine's glossy cover? Doom! I decided that under the mattress was the best I could do for the moment, and decided to go to bed early to protect it.

The next day, my parents let me stay home. I searched the basement for an appropriate hiding place for my new treasure. Under the carpet? Inside the jacket of my old Mousercise record? Every possible spot seemed too conspicuous. The magazine was just too thick. There was no safe place for it. I was a wreck. There were only four hours before my parents came back from work, and I had no idea what to do with it.

I had a small heart attack when the phone rang, and my mom asked me what I was doing. "Playing....Nintendo." I said. My hands were shaking.

"Ok, hon, see you soon."

Soon? Oh, God. Not soon. Anything but soon. I had to do something. Something must be done. Drastic measures needed to be taken. And that's when it hit me. I didn't need the entire magazine. Most of the articles didn't make any sense to me, and I had no use for the pictures of just women. I ran up to my room, took out a pair of scissors, and cut out my favorite fifteen pages of the magazine, which I tucked between the covers of my Where's Waldo books. Then, I brought the rest of the magazine downstairs, tore it into tiny pieces, and used it to start a fire in our charcoal grill. After about twenty minutes, there was nothing left of the magazine but ashes, and my fifteen favorite pages.

But what if my mom picked up the Waldo books while she was dusting, and the pictures fell out?

I went into the basement, swiped a roll of my father's electical tape, and attached the top of each page on the inside covers of all four of Waldo books, so that they were secure, but I could still flip them over to see the other side of the pages. I was clearly well on my way to becoming a criminal mastermind. I longed to tell someone about my evil genius. But who? Jennifer would be grossed out. Scott was treacherous scum. I couldn't risk showing the Waldo books to the other kids in school, lest a teacher discover my secret.

Kevin! Kevin would appreciate my burgeoning life of crime. I tossed my Waldo books into my backpack, and walked down the street to his house, and knocked on his door. He was in his room, playing Ninja Gaiden with Jeremy. When we were done marvelling at the graphics of the game, I opened up my backpack, and made them both swear not to tell anyone about what I was going to show them.

A week later, every kid in my neighborhood had borrowed my Where's Waldo books. When they were safely back on my bookshelf, I breathed for the first time since I found the stupid magazine. No one had been caught.

By then, school was back in session, and life had returned to passably normal. I kept my Where's Waldo books in my backpack at all times. Nobody at school knew I had them, and there was never a moment when my mom might stumble upon them while she was cleaning.

On a Saturday night that seemed as docile and soothing as any Saturday night, my parents invited Jeremy Burdick's parents over for dinner and drinks. I knew that Mr. Burdick and my father worked together, but I didn't know they were friends. And I'd never seen Mrs. Burdick out of their house before. After dinner, while the adults sat on the porch, drinking cocktails and telling stories, Jeremy and I went into the basement to play Kid Icarus. I had just been turned into an eggplant when my mother opened the door to the basement. "Hon?" She called.

"Yea, mom?"

"We're getting a little bored of playing cards up here. We were wondering if you'd mind going up to your room and bringing us a couple of your Waldo books. We want to see who can find him the fastest."

My little eggplant eyes bugged out. "Uhhhh...Sure."

I ran upstairs and tore all the pictures out of the book, leaving noticeable rips. I asked Jeremy to fold up the evidence and hide them somewhere. Crisis averted.

I went back to the basement and tried to de-eggplant myself. Jeremy came down a minute later.

"Where did you put them?" I asked.

He smiled. "I'll tell you later. Our parents might be listening."

We played the game a few minutes longer, and then he said "How come all the pictures in that book had guys in them? You gay?"

I paused the game. "They had girls in them, too."

"Fag." Jeremy said. Then he went upstairs and told his parents he wanted to go home.

After he left, I scoured my room for my pictures. When I didn't find them, I knew that Jeremy had taken them home with him. Oh, well. I hoped his parents found them and grounded him for a year.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/228545.html

Slow Flashes (Part 2: Welcome To The Club)

Pilgrim's Academy was my chance to start over. None of the kids in my new school knew that I had been third-grade famous for my Woody Woodpecker impersonation, or that Queen Popular Sarah The First had caught me picking my nose in fifth grade science class. Nobody had heard about the time Kevin Harris pushed me off my porch and broke my arm. Nobody even knew who Kevin Harris was. I was safe.

I've never asked my parents precisely why they decided I should go away to a private middle school. I think they believed that I was too smart for the public school system, and that's why my grades had been dropping. It couldn't have been because I was bored with the facts the teachers mumbled, and terrified of the small humans who were supposed to be my peers.

Whatever the reason, I'm mostly grateful. I've heard stories about what happened during my two year absence from the public education system: group showers, rat tails, stabbings, a pregnant girl, marijuana. The most exciting thing I can remember from my two years at Pilgrim's was when the Latin teacher had a nervous breakdown between third and fourth periods, and stormed out of her classroom yelling that my friend Scott and I were "trying to destroy" her and her "teaching curricula". That night, she called our parents, and the parents of a few of our classmates, and told them how "ill-behaved" and "dangerous" we were. After a brief investigation into our third and fourth period activities (the highlight of third period being that my teacher failed to collect the homework I didn't do, and the highlight of fourth period being that nobody blamed me for the fart someone dropped in the darkroom), the Headmaster issued a written and verbal apology to all the children and parents involved, and the Latin teacher was demoted to assistant librarian.

It was during the Pilgrim's years that I fell in love with the idea of Jennifer. Long brown hair, green eyes, nose that wrinkled pleasantly when she laughed at my stupid, stupid jokes. After voluntarily going to a couple of her cello recitals, and convincing her tutor me in Science, I finally got the courage to ask her out, and was stunned when she said "Yes." I was less stunned when she dumped me four days later, confessing that she'd only really gone out with me because she wanted to make out with my supposed best friend, Scott. And he hadn't noticed her at all, until she started tongue kissing me during lunch.

I'd like to say I spent the rest of the year shunning both my treacherous friend, and that filthy hobag, Jennifer. But I didn't. I continued to worship my ex-best friend's new girlfriend. And pretended to not hate Scott for his betrayal. After all, they were my best friends.

Unlike public school friendships, private school friendships are hindered by distance. No one in my school lived in the same neighborhood that I did. Only two of them lived in the same town, and neither of them were my friends. So, during most school vacations, I stayed home alone and began my affair with computers. Typing elaborate fantasy stories, and some of the worst rhyming couplets recorded by twentieth century man. I became really good at top of the line games like Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and King's Quest IV. During my Spring Break (which did not correspond with the public school's February and April vacations), I spent some time at the doctor's office where my mother worked, and riding in my father's work truck, eating sandwiches while he fixed electrical wires and telephone poles.

On the third day with my father, I ate a runny Grilled Cheese sandwich that had decided that, since it had defeated my throat with its power of burnination, it was more than up for the challenge of destroying my colon. Despite my life-long dislike of public restrooms, I had no choice but to run into the restroom that my father's many coworkers shared, and purge my body of this greasy affront to cheesdom.

I knew this was going to be a multiple part bowel movement. At least a three minute project. Unfortunately, I'd left my copy of The Two Towers in my dad's truck, and the only thing in the stall with me was a Wall Street Journal. I picked it up, and out fell a glossy magazine with a scantily clad woman on the cover. Club. I was ready to put the magazine back within the pages of the newspaper. I'd "read" through my father's Playboys, and hadn't found anything interesting aside from the joke section. Slim women with large breasts leaning over cars, or kneeling on beaches didn't do it for me. But the woman on the cover was not like the women in my dad's Playboys. She didn't look like the kind of girl who liked long walks on the beach, and dreamed of curing cancer, or becoming a veterinarian. This wide-hipped, huge nippled goddess had probably dropped out of highschool after her third abortion, and decided that stripping only provided temporary fame, while posing for porn meant that her nineteen year old pussy would live forever.

I flipped the magazine open. I marvelled at the way she squatted to the ground, a whip held tight in her teeth. In the background was a bright red motorcycle, and beneath her was...a huge cock. Sure enough, the next page showed her leaning over the motorcycle, while a guy in a visored helmet and nothing else pointed his cock in the direction of her mammoth ass. My butt clenched. I leaned over and checked the room for a pair of feet. I was alone. I folded the magazine back into the Wall Street Journal, ran it out to my father's truck, and zipped it into my backpack.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/228152.html