King Dork Approximately by Frank Portman Read Free Book Online Page A

basement somewhere on the edge of town in a “play a steady beat or the kid gets it” kind of spirit. But the tragic human toll aside, the results speak for themselves. Go put on SD 36-142 and tell me that the Rudd Family Kidnapping of ’75 wasn’t worth doing.
    The more you work on it, the worse it gets: I think I may have stumbled onto something like a profound principle there. I should try to integrate it into my General Theory of the Universe, or at least write it on the bathroom wall.
    As for that Celeste Fletcher, man, what a girl, but she could sure drive you crazy. I am always impressed at how females seem to know what’s going on and act like nothing is confusing and what is happening is exactly the way they expected it to be. In a way, they’re like the Sam Hellerman of the sexes. They look at everything with this nodding smirk, as though saying to themselves, “Uh, yeah, go ahead and play out your pitiful little script, we’re ten steps ahead of you at all times and we all know that in the end you’ll wind up doing precisely what we want.”
    At least, that’s how Celeste Fletcher was, sitting against the basement wall at the practice doing homework, or something,and pausing now and then to look up and beam “knowing glance” rays at random targets throughout the room. I was sad that Celeste Fletcher didn’t seem to like me anywhere near as much as I liked her but comforted by the fact that she didn’t seem to like anyone all that much.
    When the practice was over and we were all doing the hug-goodbye thing, she subtly nestled herself into me, a bit more, it seemed, than was required. I was covered in rock and roll practice sweat and my centipede was pulsing, and my all-over body bruise was slightly painful, which only made it that much more awkward.
    “Sorry this is so weird,” she whispered directly in my ear.
    So, there was something—a “this,” that was enough of a thing that it warranted the designation “weird.” And not just weird, but “so weird.” Or not. She was just rubbing herself on people’s bruises and saying words. How could anyone know what they actually meant?
    At the risk of sounding a little corny, Celeste Fletcher was like a song. That is, the project of trying to figure out what she could possibly be up to was like rehearsing a song: “The more you work on it, the less you get it.” Man, that is, unfortunately, maybe the most generally applicable aphorism I have ever come up with. God, I hate being so insightful.
    The thing is, we had a lot in common, which I’m not very used to, and I guess it’s hard not to get a little carried away with sentimentality when presented with the one person you’ve ever met in your life who thinks, for instance, that deliberately mispronouncing vocabulary words is funny, especially when she has a pretty nice body.
    At the practice, when we had just finished a particularly disastrous run-through of “You Know You Want It,” she had looked up from her notebook and said: “Well, that certainlywas harminomious and mellifluicious.” And then she did this little half smile, directed solely at me. It was what you call a “nice moment.” The combination of conspiratorial mispronunciation, sarcasm, and ass was too much for me. I mean, how could you not be in love with that, at least a little?
    But I wasn’t in love with her, not literally, despite the fact that I once thought I was and even told her so in one of my most embarrassing of moments. If I was in love with anyone, it was this imaginary girl she had portrayed for about two hours one night earlier in the year, basically just Celeste Fletcher in a costume. Fiona: her lack of reality did nothing to diminish her appeal, and possibly enhanced it. Or maybe it was the glasses and the too-small Who T-shirt that did it. I just couldn’t get those out of my stupid head.

FIELDWORK
    I was thinking how nice it might be to share Sam Hellerman’s faith in the end of the world. At least