11.4 – Lessons of Love

The party was already in full gear when they arrived.  Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult was playing loud and strong, the grills were all fired up, and so were the men on the deck.  Jerry and Pippin were arguing about the best way to stack the charcoal.  Jerry had become a frequent visitor, and Marty guessed that by now, he was officially his mom’s latest “boyfriend.”  He was a well-built man with sandy hair, a beer belly, and shrewd eyes that missed nothing.  Otter grabbed an armful of beers for the four thirsty high school boys, exhorting them, “Welcome to the Rusty Bucket Ranch, gentlemen!  Pull a log up to the fire and have a beer.”

 

Mike B. grinned broadly, no doubt thinking of his dad.  Dennis shrugged, “Twist my arm,” and accepted an icy can.

 

Mike S. appraised the husky Inuit and wasn’t intimidated in the least.  Both were brash and self-assured, and loved to party more than anything else in the world.  “Is this the initiation ceremony?”  He popped the top of his Coors can and chugged the whole thing, then burped at Otter, who whooped with gusto.  He had correctly read the old Eskimo’s personality, and immediately won his favor.

 

“There ya go!  Harpoon that sumbitch!”  Otter slapped him on the back and grinned broadly, showing his missing front tooth.  He shouted at Marge, who had come out with some snacks.  “Woo hoo!  We got us a live one, Raccoon!”

 

“Oh hi, you must be Mike.”  Marge projected her most charming air of domestic competence.  She was even wearing a clean apron.

 

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. White,” Mike S. answered in his best Eddie Haskell voice.

 

Marge giggled in mock embarrassment, and her posture and hand gestures suggested she was actually flirting with him.  Mike S. was popular at school because he was good-looking, and exuded that devil-may-care attitude that drove females to distraction.  For Marty, it was very weird to see him having the same effect on his mother.

 

“Oh geez, call me ‘Marge’ will ya?  I’m the cool mom.”  She was blushing.

 

The ever-observant and practical Rabbit got between them (deliberately, it seemed), and introduced herself to Marty’s friends, advising them in low, friendly tones not to get into a drinking contest with an Eskimo.  Otter, who had extraordinary hearing, pronounced, “Treat ‘em like men and they’ll act like men.  Burp!”  Every time he came up with one of his many proverbs, he took a self-congratulatory swig of beer, and belched for punctuation.

 

The Mike units and Dennis exchanged glances of excitement over the prospects of such a nurturing environment, and Marty gave them a tour of the house and yard.  With every new story or discovery, Mike S. fell more in love with the Rusty Bucket Ranch.  He kept saying, “You live here?” in a tone of sincere incredulity.  Marty was getting excited about having a brother around, and everything seemed to be coming together.  All that remained was to get his mom’s permission.  After all, she would be the one to shoulder the responsibility (and sign the forms).  He had an odd feeling she wouldn’t mind having handsome Mike S. around to look at.

 

They returned to the front deck, where Little Billy had shown up with Ent, and a nerdy guy Marty hadn’t seen before, who was introduced to everyone as “Earl the Spook.”  The pale, slender man didn’t react to the nickname, but half-waved in a reserved way.  He scanned the gathering through thick spectacles and missed nothing, scrunching his eyebrows beneath a huge forehead crested by a riptide of receding hairline.  Earl suddenly remembered he was holding an enormous bong that was almost as tall as him, and handed it to Dennis with both hands.  “Welcome to the Lagunitas Triangle,” he said in a tone of solemn initiation, and grinned with one side of his face.

 

“Actually, this is the guy who’s going to live here, so he gets first toke.”  Dennis graciously handed the bong to Mike S. instead, and poor Earl was mortally nonplussed at his misjudgment.  He fidgeted nervously, pushing up his spectacles and slipping his hands in and out of his stiff camouflage jacket.  Marty watched incredulously to see if Marge’s first act as a foster mother would be to condone smoking pot.  She smiled in benign acceptance, and he knew the papers were just a formality.  It was as if an unspoken tribal rite of passage had been satisfied, and now he had a brother!

 

“Here, lemme show ya an old Indian trick,” Otter offered before Mike S. lit up, and slipped something from his vest pocket into the bowl of the bong.  “Hashish, from Bombay.” He laughed loudly at his own pun, polished off the rest of his beer, and went off to piss in the woods.

 

“Your dad’s cool,” said Dennis, totally misinterpreting the situation, and then wondering why everyone was laughing at him.  “What, did I say something?”  More snickering.  Otter returned by way of the cooler and popped the top of his new beer, suspicious that he was the butt of some unknown joke.

 

It took a few weeks to cut through all the red tape for Mike S. to join the White family.  The bureaucratic circus wanted them to behave like performing dogs, and go through the whole routine.  They actually came out to the Ranch to make a cursory inspection, but it was more like showing a house to uninterested buyers who wanted to leave as quickly as possible.  Two caricatures of snobby “Marin Ladies” showed up (as Marty drew them in his mind), and they mostly focused on not touching anything.  They conveyed an opinion that Child Services was really scraping the bottom of the barrel, but foster parents were so hard to come by, and the system must put the lower classes to good use when necessary.  They approved them on the spot; probably so they wouldn’t have to see them again.  The tall one handed Marge some official papers that she’d been prepared in advance (so the ‘inspection’ really had been just a formality).  They gingerly hustled back to their Mercedes, clutching their handbags and trying not to get mud on their high heels.

 

All the stuff Mike S. owned fit into a couple of boxes he put into the back of Marge’s Toyota on Friday.  He hugged Babs, who was crying dutifully, and bent down to embrace Pops one last time.  The old man struggled to show emotion, but failed.  He passed on just a few days later, and Mike never saw him again.

 

While packing, he showed Marty a picture of his mother, who had died when he was in 3rd grade.  They lived in San Francisco and had no other relatives, so Pops had been the only real father figure in his life.  He never liked to talk about his history, preferring the possibilities of the present to the impossibilities of the past.

 

“It was Susie’s, but she only wet her bed on weekends.”  Marty teased back.

 

He showed him the closet where he had rigged some fluorescent lights and taped aluminum foil to the walls.  In the center, a marijuana plant about a foot tall was just getting started.  “The room comes with an indoor garden,” he offered in a tour guide voice, “And in the winter you have a nice view of the creek about a foot from your window.”

 

“I could fish right from my window!” Mike S. exclaimed, in genuine awe.  And so he did, as soon as he put his pole together.  Marty learned his new brother was quite impetuous, and once he got an idea in his head, he had to try it out as quickly as possible… and there was no stopping him!  His impulsive personality would lead to many awkward but entertaining situations.  The creek was naturally much lower now, but still only 15 feet from the window, so all he had to do was raise the sash.  He stuck his arm out and cast his line, just to say he did it.

 

“The salmon are right out there in the early spring.  You just missed them.”  Marty’s stomach shimmied as he remembered the sickly sweet stench from rotting fish washed up on the banks.  “There might be a piece or two out there if you want some jerky, but the rats probably got all of it by now.”

 

“I’m – Ouch!” Mike S. drew his head back in, and banged it on the window frame.  “I’m gonna catch one of those suckers next year, you wanna bet?”

 

“Pshht!” Marty waved him off dismissively.  “I could catch one without a pole.  And I don’t bet on shooting fish in a barrel.”

 

Back at school, word got around quickly that the hunky Mike S. had moved in with Marty’s family.  Girls to whom he had never spoken, and who formerly never acknowledged Marty’s existence, were now buttonholing him breathlessly in the halls to confirm details of the story.  They swooned visibly when he told them it was true, and they were now brothers.  Marty tried putting a good word or two in for his own prospects while keeping Mike’s fan club informed, but they showed no interest in the reporter – just the news.  During breaks between classes and recesses, the bleachers next to the baseball field were decorated with the scruffy fringe of the school fabric, with castoff students puffing on cigarettes hastily before going to their next class.  Shockingly, cheerleaders and other “good girls” were soon crossing the lines, venturing uncertainly into socially hazardous territory; like timid does drawn to a young buck’s irresistible charms.

 

Their conversations with Marty, his convenient but unwilling majordomo, became more frequent and direct.  The popular girls treated him like his secretary, as if he existed merely for the expedience of relaying their messages to Mike.  “Why don’t you tell him yourself?” he asked incredulously, when it became obvious they weren’t interested in him as a person, but just as a message boy.  This did little to increase his chances of gaining any traction on the slippery social slopes.  Marty was never any good at “playing the game” in high school, because he considered insincerity to be the lowest form of wasting time.  He yearned to discuss more meaningful topics than the type of cologne Mike wore, or whether he had a girlfriend at his former school, or what kind of music he liked listening to.  In fact, he quickly got tired of talking about his new foster brother altogether, and instinctively withdrew from the gossip trading floor to the creek that ran behind the bleachers, where he was accepted as part of the natural world.  He stayed down there a long time.

 

“What’s up, man?” Mike asked as he came down the bank to check on him.  Marty could see a cluster of concerned female faces at the top, probably wondering where their hero was going, and hoping he wouldn’t get hurt.

 

“I can’t stand all those girls asking about you,” he said truthfully, and Mike smiled in that exasperating way that made it impossible to be mad at him.

 

“You don’t have to answer them, you know.”  He put his arm around Marty’s shoulders like a big brother.  (He was less than 6 months older.)  “It’s better if you just act mysterious, like there’s something you know that they don’t.  That drives them wild, believe me.  Look at them up there.”  He waved his hand at the gathering throng of concerned admirers.  “They can’t stand not knowing what we’re talking about.”  He gestured emphatically, pointing here and there as if having an animated conversation.  “This will drive them crazy, just watch.”  He climbed back up the bank and said something, pointing down at Marty.  A few of the young ladies looked curiously down at him, wide-eyed, but they all followed Mike as he walked away when the bell rang.  The two didn’t share any classes, but Marty asked Mike at lunch what he’d said about him.  “I told them I needed to talk to you because you taught me everything I know about women,” he winked and elbowed him playfully.  Mike could tell Marty was very sensitive, and treated him with respect for his deep feelings.

 

A bolder group of overtly hormonal females approached, heedless of interrupting their conversation.  “Hey Mike, can we talk to you?” they writhed flirtatiously, and looked at Marty as if that meant he was supposed to leave, but he stood his ground.

 

“Not now, I’m talking to Marty,” he said protectively, “We’re sharing algebra notes,” he added, and that got a good laugh.  He non-verbally dismissed them, and they slowly filtered away, whispering among themselves to analyze the significance of what just happened.  They clustered at a respectful distance and dissected every nuance of their experience.  “You see?” the old pro said to the rookie, “Don’t give them what they want; it makes them more obsessed.”

 

“That’s easy for you to say, you can have any girl in the school,” Marty blurted jealously, and Mike didn’t disagree, but weighed his assertion seriously.

 

“I really only like one girl,” he intimated.  “I’m just playing the others to make her want me more.”  He was looking at the group that just left, and their blonde-haired leader, Annie, who was smiling back at him boldly.

 

“Her?” Marty exclaimed, “She’s the loudest one!”

 

“She’s fine, man.  Look at her.”  Annie knew Mike was talking about her, and was fairly squirming with anticipation inside her clothes.  The bell rang, and ironically, Marty had to go sit and hear a lecture about sex education, when he was already learning more from the mating rituals out at the bleachers.

 

Marty didn’t take his new brother’s advice, preferring his own tactics to the counterfeit interests and shallow innuendo of flirtation.  As the year passed, Annie and her brood of chicks hung out with Mike B., Mike S., and Marty more regularly.  There was one girl in her group to whom Marty dared to feel connected.  Of all the babes who bugged him about his foster brother, the short-haired Kelly was the only one who treated him like a person; with his own feelings.  Marty based this conclusion on the fact that she asked him how he was doing one day, before she handed him a note from Annie to deliver to Mike S.  Marty constructed a fantasy where Annie became Mike’s girlfriend, and her friend Kelly fell in love with him, and they were a happy set of two pairs.  Alas, two pairs doesn’t beat a full house.  He failed to realize that as the lesser of two choices, the female rating system had already filtered him out of the gene pool.  He thought he could be cool by association, but was sadly flat by comparison.

 

Marty envied Mike for the attention he was getting, but didn’t want any superficial adulation for himself.  He wanted one girl he could primarily call his friend, and only secondarily was he thinking of exploring sex with a partner.  He didn’t know it at the time, but he was developing a conviction that he wanted to experience sex only with a girl he really loved, and who loved him in return.  The guys he hung out with didn’t have girlfriends either, so being around Mike and his throng of devotees was a new experience.  It turned out that Kelly had no interest in him, and he pined from being surrounded by water and dying of thirst.

 

As the spring fully blossomed, the main topics of conversation at the bleachers were sex, drugs, and rock & roll (as usual), with emphasis on the first.  The older (and presumably wiser) dudes were masters of sexual innuendo, and constantly bragged about their delusional conquests.  They openly rated girls 1-10 by their attractiveness, or willingness to “give it up.”  Marty found this revolting for the way it objectified and disrespected the young women, but fascinating nonetheless for its worldly metrics.  When the conversation got too lewd, he would try to change the subject with a joke, or just walk away.

 

Marty didn’t know exactly what he wanted from a romantic relationship, but he craved most of all what he’d never experienced, except for his one summer camp fling with Lisa.  He wanted affection more than anything: someone who would love him for who he was, and embrace him as if they were inseparable.  Alas, he received almost no signs of affection from anyone, and developed a notable lack of self-confidence regarding his appearance.  He forlornly observed the couples at the bleachers: steady boyfriends and girlfriends who touched so naturally, and seemed to share the kind of intimacy he desired.  His mind-play and erstwhile poetry became melancholy.  He even tried calling Lisa to see if there was still anything there, but her mom said she now had a new phone, and wouldn’t give him the number.  She said she “gives it out to those who need to know,” and wasn’t swayed when he explained his past relationship with her daughter.  He left his number several times, but never got a call back, and had no way of knowing if his messages were relayed.