The Best Little Boy in the World by John Reid; Andrew Tobias Read Free Book Online

subconsciously....
    Subconscious, hey? Well, we were indeed nearing Secret City. But he could delay the start of class no longer, and our stage-whispered exchange was tabled. He was on to me. I avoided him for the rest of the year.
    Close as Sir came, neither he nor anyone else ever penetrated my defenses. The guns of Navarone were like water pistols in a shoe box compared to the fortress that guarded my secret.
    Short of doing myself in, which, like every adolescent, I enjoyed contemplating from time to time, my last line of defense was to turn and run. I only had to resort to it once. I was sixteen, researching one of my extra-credit reports at the Museum of Natural History. On satellites, I think it was. I was examining the Explorer capsule that was on display, watching the continuous film strip that simulated its flight through space, looking at the plastic astronauts cramped in the cockpit, when a man next to me asked some question about the capsule. I hadn't noticed him before. He was unassuming: average height, maybe twenty-five, slim, wearing a gray windbreaker zipped up halfway. Your nondescript man. I answered his questions; he asked a few more. We speculated for a while on what it would be like to be an astronaut—drinking Tang, floating weightless.... Then he said: "Now let me show you what interests me."
    What interested him was the tropical bird exhibit, dimly lit, birdcalls echoing around the halls—a nice enough exhibit, but evidently of little interest to others. It was deserted. We looked around for a little while, he told me that some of his friends had painted the backgrounds of the exhibits, and I began to wonder how I was going to get away. Mainly I was bored, but I was also beginning to feel uncomfortable with this man. Then I felt his hand DOWN THERE! JESUS CHRIST! No one but the doctor had ever touched me down there. As I pushed his hand away, he was saying, "Would you like a blow job?" I was terrified. Half because I was being molested by some perverted old man (twenty-five), and half because I didn't know what a blow job was. The world was caving in again, my inadequacy on display right there in the American Museum of Natural History. I choked out a tortured "No!" as I ran out of the exhibit, out of the museum, and most of the way home. He shouted after m e—shouted in the hush of the tropical bird exhibit—"How can you be so NAÏVE? —AÏVE? Ïve? ïve?—ve?"
    I wonder what made him think I was naïve? I hadn't stopped to tell him I didn't know what a blow job was. He must have read it from my behavior. Maybe he figured that anyone who would bolt from anything so pleasurable had to be naïve. And of course he had to say something; it must have been an uncomfortable minute for him also.
    I was in knots. The experience was so unpleasant, with so many implications and ramifications for me, I couldn't even analyze it clearly, as I had learned to analyze most things. And the worst part was, I didn't know what a blow job was. Sure, I had heard the expression, but I never thought I would have to know what it meant. Anointeth? Surely no teacher would ever put it on a quiz (though in my more paranoid moments I would imagine such quizzes—perhaps given by that guidance counselor). Nor would any classmate ever ask me what it meant. In the first place, they all knew already. And if there were, conceivably, anyone left in the world who did not know, he would be just as mortified at the thought of asking as I was.
    Needless to say, when I got home, I locked myself in the bathroom with the dictionary, careful not to leave telltale folds or smudges on that page, and read all forty-three definitions and connotations of "blow." And equally needless to say, you can't buy mental health for the price of a dictionary.
    Of course, I regained my senses quickly, thankful that no one would ever find out what had happened. In fact, I quickly turned the incident to my advantage—psychological judo: The next summer in