Fiona grabbed my wrist and moved my hand over to her belly so that my palm was on her stomach just to the right of her belly button and my fingers draped over her hip. I want to say I almost felt a physical electric-y shock from the feeling of her bare skin. It was so surprising. I knew I was supposed to kiss her, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it exactly.
She scrunched up to me like she was trying to smell my shoulder and I leaned down and we started to rub our faces on each other in the general mouth area. She made this quiet “mmm” sound and started pushing her tongue all the way in my mouth and sort of swirling it in a circle.
Counterclockwise. I started to do that, too, after a fashion, but I knew she could tell I didn’t know what I was doing. I was in a clumsy, mentally deficient daze. I started to slide the tips of my fingers downwards just underneath the waistband of her jeans, so it was jeans-fingertips-underwear-skin with one fingertip poking slightly underneath the underwear layer, but she squirmed and said, all mumbly because she had her mouth full: “Uh, no, mmm, baby . . .” Uh-oh, I thought, I blew it, I wasn’t supposed to do that yet or at all and the whole make-out scene was officially over, but then she said in a kind of whispery voice, “My tits, my tits.” I started to move my hand up the other way and reached her left breast underneath her shirt. I had never touched a breast before. She seemed to shiver a little when I touched it. Somehow, I don’t know how, I knew that she wanted me to start pinching her nipple, and then, when I had started squeezing it and rolling it between my thumb and forefinger and she started saying
“mmm” again and breathing a little laboriously I knew that she wanted me to squeeze it a whole lot harder. I was really digging into it with my nails, and twisting it back and forth 73
while still keeping up with the tongue rotation thing as best I could. Her breathing sounded more like wheezing than breathing. I don’t know about the Frenching, but somehow I knew that I was doing the nipple thing right, how she wanted me to be doing it. Though it must have kind of hurt. Then suddenly her head fell back and she leaned away from me.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper. She was still breathing a bit strangely and she didn’t look sorry. She looked —how?
Conspiratorial? “Look, I can’t do anything with you because my boyfriend’s friends are all here. In fact, we really shouldn’t be sitting here like this.”
I didn’t know what I should say.
She suddenly leaned in and bit me on the neck right above the shoulder, and hopped off the couch and zoomed out. I didn’t know what to do.
Eventually I got up and went upstairs and back into the hallway. I scanned the clumps of drama mods, but I didn’t expect her to be there. She had clearly intended to flee the scene of the crime and was already gone. As I walked through the house tunneling through the little clusters of drunk and stoned kids and to the front door and down the walk and into the street and on my way home, I was really glad I had my army coat, which is long enough to cover up the front of my pants.
Otherwise, I might never have made it out of there.
SON, YOU GOT A BAD APTITU DE
Now, I’ve been avoiding this part, because I find the whole thing a little embarrassing, but I figure I might as well get it over with. I mean the Chi-Mo story.
Back in seventh grade they gave everyone this multiple-74
choice test to determine what you were supposed to be when you grow up. The way it worked was, certain combinations of multiple-choice answers would point to, say, Medicine, meaning you should try to be a doctor. Or you would get Law, meaning you were going to be a lawyer. There was Business, and The Arts, and both kinds of Technology, Food and Computer. Some kids got Athletics, even though it seems like the wrong type of test to determine something like that, and quite a few got one called Counseling and Social Work. Which sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the counselors and social workers who designed the test, but never mind.
Everyone got two results, so you’d have something to fall back on if the other one didn’t work out. No one took it that seriously, but it was supposed to be kind of fun to see what you ended up with. Answer some touchy-feely questions, sit back, and watch the machine reveal your future.
Somehow, I ended up with Medicine (which was normal) and Clergy. Which was not. Clergy was bizarre. I was the only one to get Clergy. What the hell were they doing saying “Clergy” to a seventh grader? My future had never seemed to have much going for it, but this was a dark avenue no one had yet considered. It freaked me out.
There was a Peer Interaction and Response Segment where everyone was comparing answers, and someone saw mine.
“Clergy!”
Most of the kids in the room hadn’t even heard the word before. I played dumb, didn’t say anything. That can make some situations go away, but not all.
Eventually, though, they figured it out and someone said
“Father Tom!” That wouldn’t have been too bad, as nicknames go, though it still would have been pretty weird for a seventh grader. But then someone said: “child molester!”
Then everyone started saying “child molester.” That was 75
shortened to Chi-Mo. And that got shortened to Moe. Or I guess maybe it’s technically spelled Mo’.
The process only took around fifteen minutes, ending when Mr. Bianchi threw an eraser at someone and said “settle down” to signal the beginning of the Pause and Reflect Segment. But by the end of that fifteen minutes I was officially Moe, or Chi-Mo, or sometimes Mo-Ped, and that’s the way it was ever since.
So there you have it. My nickname is an abbreviation for
“child molester,” or just “molester,” whether the people who use it know it or not. As I was saying before, it’s just about the poorest excuse for an insult anyone could imagine. It doesn’t even make sense. Still, anyone who calls me Moe, even when they may mean no harm, is a potential enemy.
That’s just the way it is.
