She and her husband lumbered up the stairs, and when Walt felt certain that they were asleep, he pounced on Dale Gummerson, shouting, 'Titty twister!!!' Brad Clancy joined in, and when they had finished, Dale raised his shirt, revealing nipples as crimped and ruddy as the pepperoni slices littering the forsaken pizza box.
'Oh my God,' I said, realizing too late that this made me sound like a girl. The appropriate response was to laugh at Dale's misfortune, not to flutter your hands in front of your face, screeching, 'What have they done to your poor nipples! Shouldn't we put some ice on them?'
Walt picked up on this immediately. 'Did you just say you wanted to put ice on Dale's nipples?'
'Well, not me. . personally,' I said. 'I meant, you know, generally. As a group. Or Dale could do it himself if he felt like it.'
Walt's eyes wandered from my face to my chest, and then the entire slumber party was upon me. Dale had not yet regained the full use of his arms, and so he sat on my legs while Brad and Scott Marlboro pinned me to the carpet. My shirt was raised, a hand was clamped over my mouth, and Walt latched onto my nipples, twisting them back and forth as if they were a set of particularly stubborn toggle bolts. 'Nowwho needs ice!' he said. 'Nowwho thinks he's the goddam school nurse.' I'd once felt sorry for Walt, but now, my eyes watering in pain, I understood that little Lauren was smart to have cut out early.
When finally I was freed, I went upstairs and stood at the kitchen window, my arms folded lightly against my chest. My family's house was located in a ravine. You couldn't see it from the street, but still I could make out the glow of lights spilling from the top of our driveway. It was tempting, but were I to leave now, I'd never hear the end of it.The baby cried. The baby had to go home. Life at school would be unbearable, so I left the window and returned to the basement, where Walt was shuffling cards against the coffee table. 'Just in time,' he said. 'Have a seat.'
I lowered myself to the floor and reached for a magazine, trying my best to act casual. 'I'm not really much for games, so if it's okay with you, I think I'll just watch.'
'Watch, hell,' Walt said. 'This is strip poker. What kind of a homo wants to sit around and watch four guys get naked?'
The logic of this was lost on me. 'Well, won't weall sort of be watching?'
'Looking maybe, but notwatching,' Walt said. 'There's a big difference.'
I asked what the difference was, but nobody answered. Then Walt made a twisting motion with his fingers, and I took my place at the table, praying for a gas leak or an electrical fire — anything to save me from the catastrophe of strip poker. To the rest of the group, a naked boy was like a lamp or a bath mat, something so familiar and uninteresting that it faded into the background, but for me it was different. A naked boy was what I desired more than anything on earth, and when you were both watching and desiring, things came up, one thing in particular that was bound to stand out and ruin your life forever. 'I hate to tell you,' I said, 'but it's against my religion to play poker.'
'Yeah, right,' Walt said. 'What are you, Baptist?'
'Greek Orthodox.'
'Well, that's a load of crap because the Greeks invented cards,' Walt said.
'Actually, I think it was the Egyptians.' This from Scott, who was quickly identifying himself as the smart one.
'Greeks, Egyptians, they're all the same thing,' Walt said. 'Anyway, what your pooh-bah doesn't know won't hurt him, so shut the hell up and play.'
He dealt the cards, and I looked from face to face, exaggerating flaws and reminding myself that these boys did not like me. The hope was that I might crush any surviving atom of attraction, but as has been the case for my entire life, the more someone dislikes me the more attractive he becomes. The key was to stall, to argue every hand until the sun came up and Mrs. Winters saved me with whatever cheerful monstrosity she'd planned for breakfast.
On the off chance that stalling wouldnot work, I stepped into the bathroom and checked to make sure I was wearing clean underwear. A boner would be horrible beyond belief, but a boner combined with a skid mark meant that I should take the ketchup-smeared knife and just kill myself before it was too late.
'What are you, launching a sub in there?' Walt shouted. 'Come on, we're waiting.'
Usually when I was forced to compete, it was my tactic to simply give up. To try in any way was to announce your ambition, which only made you more vulnerable. The person who wanted to win but failed was a loser, while the person who didn't really care was just a weirdo — a title I had learned to live with. Here, though, surrender was not an option. I had to win at a game I knew nothing about, and that seemed hopeless until I realized we were all on an equal footing. Not even Scott had the slightest idea what he was doing, and by feigning an air of expertise, I found I could manipulate things in my favor.
'A joker and a queen is much better than the four and five of spades,' I said, defending my hand against Brad Clancy's.
'But you have a joker and a three of diamonds.'
'Yes, but the jokermakes it a queen.'
'I thought you said that poker was against your religion,' Walt said.
'Well, that doesn't mean I don't understand it. Greeksinvented cards, remember. They're in my blood.'
At the start of the game, the starburst clock had read three-thirty. An hour later I was missing one shoe, Scott and Brad had lost their shirts, and both Walt and Dale were down to their underwear. If this was what winning felt like, I wondered why I hadn't tried it before. Confidently in the lead, I invented little reasons for the undressed to get up and move about the room.
'Hey, Walt, did you hear that? It sounded like footsteps up in the kitchen.'
'I didn't hear anything.'
'Why don't you go to the stairway and check. We don't want any surprises.' His underwear was all bunchy in the back, saggy like a diaper, but his legs were meaty and satisfying to look at.
'Dale, would you make sure those curtains are closed?'
He crossed the room, and I ate him alive with my eyes, confident that no one would accuse me of staring. Things might have been different were I in last place, but as a winner, it was my right to make sure that things were done properly. 'There's an open space down by the baseboard. Bend over and close it, will you?'
It took a while, but after explaining that a pair of kings was no match for a two of hearts and a three of spades, Walt surrendered his underpants and tossed them onto a pile beside the TV set. 'Okay,' he said. 'Now the rest of you can finish the game.'
'But itis finished,' Scott said.
'Oh no,' Walt said. 'I'm not the only one getting naked. You guys have to keep playing.'
'While you do what — sit back andwatch? ' I said. 'What kind of a homo are you?'
'Yeah,' Dale said. 'Why don't we do something else? This game's boring and the rules are impossible.'
The others muttered in agreement, and when Walt refused to back down, I gathered the deck and tamped it commandingly upon the tabletop. 'The only solution is for usall to keep playing.'
'How the hell do you expect me to do that?' Walt said. 'In case you haven't noticed, there's nothing more for me to lose.'
'Oh,' I said, 'there's always more. Maybe if the weakest hand is already naked, we should make that person perform some kind of a task. Nothing big, just, you know, a token kind of a thing.'
'A thing like what?' Walt asked.
'I don't know. I guess we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.'
In retrospect, I probably went a little too far in ordering Scott to sit on my lap. 'But I'm naked!' he said.
'Hey,' I told him, 'I'm the one who's going to be suffering. I was just looking for something easy. Would you rather run outside and touch the mailbox? The sun will be coming up in about twenty seconds — you want the whole neighborhood to see you?'
'How long will I have to sit on you?' he asked.
'I don't know. A minute or two. Maybe five. Or seven.'
I moved onto the easy chair and wearily patted my knee, as if this were a great sacrifice. Scott slid into place, and I considered our reflection in the darkened TV screen. Here I was, one naked guy on my lap and three others ready to do my bidding. It was the stuff of dreams until I remembered that they were not doing these things
