Birdy

advice about locking, turning off the lights and not going over thirty-five. He kisses her on the cheek. Her mother kisses her on the cheek, too. The father turns around and shakes my hand.
    ‘Have a good time, son; but be sure to have her in by two o’clock.’
    Son! Holy mackerel, they’ve got me married to her already. The dance is over at twelve-thirty. What am I supposed to do with her till two o’clock? What will Perta think if I don’t come into the dream? This whole business is getting to be more of a catastrophe every minute.
    At the dance, I have to move the flower from her waist to her wrist. She wants it on her left wrist so I tie it to her wristwatch with a rubber band I have in my pocket. It sits on top of her wristso she looks as if she’s going falconing. The hand is perched on top of my shoulders while we’re dancing so the damned orchid keeps tickling the back of my neck and ears. It sends chills up and down my spine. This way I can smell it without seeing it. I keep being reminded of the rotten horse meat smell at the place Joe Sagessa took us.
    This smell combined with all the sweating bodies around us and the sound of the music brings me to the very edge of what I can bear. To take my mind off it, I keep trying to think forward to the dream when I get home to my bed. Doris is saying things to me about the music or asking where I live. She knows my father works here as a janitor but she doesn’t say anything about that.
    I see my father twice. He’s acting as a sort of bouncer-janitor combined. He keeps track of those who go into the boys’ toilets. His job is to slow down the drinking and help clean up the vomit if anybody gets sick. He gets five extra dollars for the night; just enough to pay for my stupid tux. I wouldn’t go through another night like this for fifty dollars.
    I see Al swinging and dancing around with his cheerleader. He isn’t much of a dancer, but she’s one of those girls who could dance with a buffalo and make it look graceful. Al dances one-two-three at the same beat to any music. He doesn’t even listen to it. With the tux on, he looks like a gangster in a movie. He’s wearing a white carnation but still he could be Brian Donlevy playing Heliotrope Harry.
    Doris asks me about the birds. That’s something I don’t want to talk about. If I really thought she was interested I’d tell her. I’d stop the stupid dancing, sit down and tell her about it. I look to check; but all she’s doing is making dance conversation. Sometimes it seems humans can only play games; all kinds of complicated games. Going to the Junior Prom is another game with a whole set of rules. Talking while you’re dancing is one of the rules.
    I don’t have a watch and I can’t see Doris’s with the big orchid draped all over it, but there are clocks at each end of the gym. They have wire mesh over the face to keep them from getting broken by stray basketballs, but you can still read the time if you get the rightangle. The time is crawling by. I’m pooped. It’s past eleven o’clock and I’m usually in bed by ten for the dream. My arm is tired from holding up Doris’s arm. I try letting my arm down sometimes, taking the weight off my shoulder muscle, but she doesn’t pick up the load at all, just lets both arms drop. Finally, when I can’t keep them up any longer, we leave the arms down and she snuggles in closer to me with her head tucked under my chin. Now I’ve got her hair tickling my nose, while the flower is tickling me on the back of the neck. Both my hands are occupied. Besides that, Doris’s big tits are pressed against me, they’re about the consistency of blown-up inner tubes. From all my flapping exercises, my sternum has a tendency to stick out more than most people’s, so her tits fit on both sides of it. We make a beautiful couple. We fit together like tongue-in-groove flooring.
    At last it’s over. I take Doris over to get her cape; we go outside. Everybody’s slamming car doors in the dark and laughing. I help her into her side of the car. She asks me if I want to drive. That’s wild. Nobody drives in our family; we’ve never had a car; never will. My father won’t even ride in an automobile.
    When I tell her ‘no’, she sticks the key into the ignition and turns it on. The car’s a Buick, the last model they made before the war. The motor is eight-cylinder, loaded with power, but it’s all pissed away in this car with something they call Dynaflow.