Restless Hormones and Horny Divorcees
What Comradery Can Look Like
Riffing on the theme from last time, I’m sharing an excerpt from a chapter in Rebooting Fate. Whether you call it hanging out, male bonding, or whatever, this is one of those down-time scenes which probably disqualifies Paradox from being men’s adventure fiction, per se.
Ike’s Uncle Si has set him up in a sort of cross-time witness protection program. The latter half of his childhood was spent in the prosperous postwar era. He is now starting college at the beginning of the 1960s. He is just getting to know a group of upperclassmen from the football team he refers to as the Tumultuous Trio. Enjoy.
After I showered one Sunday (our one day free from practice), Gartenberg, Bartok, and Kiley traipsed in to my dorm room, sounding like a cross between a prison riot and a buffalo stampede. I was just pulling my pants on.
"Damn, Jaeger," Kiley said, "you really do have a small dick!"
I thought about coming back with, "That's not what your mama thinks." But the wise course of action would be to establish friendly relationships with my teammates, while not letting them walk all over me. A tricky tightrope to walk; but humiliating one of them who was not intelligent enough to hold his own in a battle of wits, in front of his buddies, was probably not the route to go.
"That's Dr. Jekyll," I quipped, casually, while pulling my shirt on.
Gartenberg, and even Bartok, chuckled.
"You're pretty quick on your feet, Fresh Meat," Bartok said, with a slight nodding gesture.
"I'm still surprised he insulted your car and lived to tell about it," Gartenberg told his huge pal, grabbing the guitar and sitting on his bunk.
"He is awful generous with the wisecracks, ain't he?" Bartok asked, sitting on my bunk.
Kiley, who had seemed off-balance since my reply, suddenly brightened. "Yeah, Mr. Hyde is even smaller!" he exclaimed, with a victorious smirk.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the room for a moment, while Bartok shot Kiley an irritated look, and Gartenberg shook his head, sadly. He ended the silence by strumming his guitar.
"Scoot over, you big tub a' shit," Kiley said, shoving Bartok in the shoulder as he flopped back on my bunk so hard that I heard something crack. It was a testament to Kiley's physical strength that Bartok's massive torso rocked sideways from the power of the push. He scooted over, to get some space between himself and Kiley, while backhanding him in the chest. "You just broke the rookie's bed frame, dumbass. And quit tryin' to sit in my lap."
"Why? You gettin' a hard on?" Kiley used a gesture that simulated looking through a magnifying glass at Bartok's crotch. "Wow—almost two inches. Not bad for an offensive lineman." He slapped Bartok's arm. "And don't hit me, punk."
Bartok slapped him back. "Shut up, Inbred!"
They smacked each other back and forth for a minute, with blows that would have sent normal men reeling. Gartenberg continued strumming his guitar.
"Hey, Fresh Meat!" Kiley called in my direction. "What're you readin'? A headlight magazine?"
I held up the issue of Popular Science so everyone could see it.
Kiley's face wrinkled up like he'd smelled something pungent. "What kinda' pussy shit is that?"
"You a science major?" Bartok asked.
"Engineering," I said.
"Mechanical or electrical?"
"Minor in the former; major in the latter," I said.
"Holy, shit!" Kiley remarked. "I'm drownin' in the nerd fumes, here. How the hell did they let you on the team? You stuff a salami in your shorts so they'd think you're a man?"
"I get it," Bartok said. "Your dad was an engineer, and that's what you wanna be, too. That's why all the secret modifications in your car. How fast will it go, anyway?"
I shrugged. "Pretty fast."
"Yeah, no shit," Gartenberg said.
"Speedometers don't go high enough," I added.
"What are you doin' Labor Day weekend, Fresh Meat?" Bartok asked.
I shrugged again. "Playing football, hopefully."
"Balls!" Kiley chortled. "Ain't no 'popular scientists' gonna play on my football field!"
"I mean after the game—Sunday and Monday," Bartok said, frowning at Kiley.
"I'll probably visit my folks in Bakersfield," I said. I planned to visit the Orange Grove, BH Station, and Bloomington, too.
"I think we should take our cars down to the dry lakes," Bartok said.
"'We?' You mean me and you guys?" I asked.
"No," Gartenberg said, rolling his eyes. "He meant 'we' as in us and the poetry major on the first floor who rides the Vespa."
"Wouldn't that go against the whole hazing-the-freshman treatment?" I asked.
Bartok and Gartenberg exchanged a look.
"What the hell are you playin', Fartin'berg?" Kiley demanded. "At least play some Hank Williams or Roy Acuff or sumpthin'."
Gartenberg sneered at him. "How about I broaden your horizons a little?"
Now Bartok and Kiley exchanged a look.
"Not with the rookie watching!" Bartok deadpanned.
Kiley slapped five with the giant, and said, "I've been known to broaden a few horizons over at the girl's dorm after the floor manager goes to sleep."
Gartenberg shook his head and played a blues riff, then sang:
Gypsy woman told my motha'
Befo' Ah was born
Ya got a boy chile comin'
Gon' be a sonuva gun.
He gon' make pretty women
Jump 'n' shout
Then the world gonna know
What it's all about…
The music was building up and I was looking forward to hearing how it played out, when Kiley jumped up and made as if to kick the guitar.
"Man, what the hell is that? Why you gotta play all that weird stuff? At least learn some Buddy Holly on that thing!"
"What was that?" Bartok asked Gartenberg.
"Muddy Waters," Gartenberg said. "'Hootchie-Cootchie Man.' It wouldn't hurt you to listen to—"
"Oh, hell," Kiley declared. "Y'all are like a bunch of ol' ladies. We gonna sit around here all damn day? Let's give Fresh Meat here a pink belly and a swirly party, or go find some chicks, or sumpthin'!"
Gartenberg picked out an up-tempo tune, then sang:
We-a-heh-a-hell the little things you say and do
They make me want to be with you-a-hoo…
"Aw, hell!" Kiley grunted. "Ol' Fartin'berg here wants to bleed my poor ears all day!"
"You asked for some Buddy Holly, Inbred," Bartok told him.
"That ain't no Buddy Holly!"
Bartok made eye contact with me and gestured toward Kiley. "He's a music expert, in case you couldn't tell."
"Come on, fellas," Kiley pleaded. "You're turnin' me into an old man, here. Let's go do sumpthin', even if it's wrong. We can start by kickin' the rookie's ass and takin' his car. Maybe tie him to the bumper and drag him around some. But I gotta get outa this place for a while—it's drivin' me nuts."
"Too late," Bartok said, then studied Kiley soberly for a moment. "Why do you have ants in your pants every Sunday? Just be cool, man. We'll figure out somethin' to do."
Kiley threw his heavily muscled arms in the air. "Fine. Fine. I know: Why don't we go to church? Huh? Is that excitement, or what? That's about y'all's speed. Hell, it might be too much for ol' Fresh Meat over there, but maybe he'll survive. C'mon, fellas. We're off to church!"
Gartenberg stopped playing and fixed Kiley with an exasperated frown. "I'm Jewish, genius."
"Joosh?" Kiley repeated. "What the hell is that? You squeeze orange joosh, or grape joosh, er sumpthin'?"
"Maybe we should kick the rookie's ass before the day is over," Bartok reasoned, diplomatically, "but you need to calm down. I don't want to go anywhere with you if you can't be cool."
Kiley looked wounded. "Hey, I can be cool, Bartok. I just need to, you know…c'mon, man."
Gartenberg sighed and set the guitar down. "Okay, how's this: there's a beer joint in town that has live music acts on weekend nights…"
"See? Now you're talkin', Fartburger. They got big-titted broads who dance around with tassels on their nipples? You know, I heard some of them can get those tassels spinnin' like airplane propellers…but in opposite directions!"
"No, Kiley," Gartenberg said, with another sigh. "There are credible music acts, sometimes poetry reading…"
Kiley groaned at this. "Aw, hell no. You're talkin' about some kinda' beatnik hangout."
Gartenberg tried to ignore him, and turned to Bartok. "It's a place where older women like to go. Widows, divorcees…some not bad to look at. Some are horny."
"Maybe that's not such a bad idea," Kiley said, brightening. "Horny divorcees?" He moved his hips in a lewd thrusting pantomime. "I got just what those poor ladies left their pencil-dick husbands to find!"
"There's a certain female professor from this very institution who has been known to frequent the establishment," Gartenberg added, assuming an upper-crust continental accent for effect.
"No way," Bartok said. "Seriously?"
Gartenberg nodded. "And I don't know about her, but I can tell you that some of the aforementioned older women there happen to like football players."
"Jeez, Gartenberg," Bartok said, "why are you only tellin' us about this place now?" He pointed to Kiley. "All the weekends I've been babysittin' Inbred, here, and you kept the place to yourself?"
"It is kind of a beatnik bar, to be honest," Gartenberg said. "Didn't think it would be your scene."
"Our scene?" Kiley echoed. "Our scene? If it's got horny broads, how could it not be our scene?"
All three of them were on their feet, now, crowding toward the door. Bartok glanced back toward me. "Well c'mon, Fresh Meat. Let's go!"
Was this their circumspect way of accepting me into their circle? Whatever it was, I took advantage of it.