Flight of the Dodo - 19. Chapter 19

It was nearly five o’clock before Frankie and I left Charles’ apartment. Frankie asked if I wanted to stop at Clark’s at North Park Mall for dinner as we were walking to Frankie’s Ford Falcon. I told him I didn’t have enough money and he said that was okay. I said if he didn’t mind then it was okay with me if we went to Clark’s for dinner. Maybe I answered the wrong way because Frankie stopped walking and I didn’t notice right away. I finally noticed he wasn’t with me, I stopped walking and turned to look back at Frankie. He was just standing back at the door to the apartment building. I walked back.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“What happened with you and Perry?” Frankie asked.

“Nothing, but Perry did get me a Coke. He said that Charles is a top and that he was probably fucking you.”

“Is that what’s bothering you?”

“No, because honestly I don’t know what fucking is.”

“What do you know about sex?”

“Other than what they taught in Health class at Louis Bergman, nothing. There was a film that was supposed to be about sex, but it showed a cow being mounted by a bull and then giving birth to a calf. It was gross.”

“What about your friends? Surely, one of them must have brought up the subject of sex sometime when you were younger.”

“I never had any friends because I was so crazy. I think I must have been crazy at an early age. Of course, there was Syl, too. She was very mean to me when I was younger. She hit me a lot and was always calling me a stupid, ignorant dodo. She broke my arm when I was little. You can still see the scar where the bone stuck out. See?”

“Ew, that’s gross. How old were you?”

“Four, I think.”

“Did you have to go into foster care?”

“No, she told the doctors I jumped off the kitchen counter. I think they believed her.”

“That’s not right.”

“What could I do? I was a little kid. Nobody believes little kids.”

We walked to the Ford Falcon in silence. He opened my door and I got in. I watched Frankie walk around the car and get in on his side.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Frankie said. “Come on, Sweetie, talk to me.”

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“You know, what you and Charles did.”

“Do you, um, jerk off?”

“Jerk off?”

“Beat your meat?”

“What?”

“Masturbate!”

“Oh, no, Syl told me that good little boys don’t do that to themselves, so I don’t do that.”

“Oh, God, and you believed her?”

“For all of her faults, Syl was still my mother. Of course, I believed her.”

“Sweetie, I’m telling you right now big boys do that because it feels good.”

“I can tell you are mad at me.”

“God damn it, I’m not mad at you. Why do you always assume I’m mad at you?”

“Because everyone is mad at me one time or another and you swore. People who swear at me are mad at me. That’s just the way it is.”

I felt my mind starting to slow down. With all that talk about Syl and Frankie saying I needed to touch myself, I was talking myself into a meltdown. The only way I could stop it was to turn my mind off. I needed to empty my mind of all thought, except I felt something. I knew if I opened my eyes and saw what was happening to me my mind would go into overdrive. That always led to a meltdown because once my mind started to run wild there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I thought about taking an anti-panic pill, but I didn’t have any water to swallow the pill and I’ve never been able to swallow a pill without drinking something to wash it down my throat. I didn’t know what to do other than shut out everything around me.

I noticed something physical seemed to be happening to me. In some ways it was real, yet I couldn’t trust my mind because reality was usually only a delusion. As often happened as I was cycling down into a panic attack, I was losing touch with reality. My mind was in a heightened state of unawareness. Yet something was occurring in my immediate vicinity. It could be happening to my body, but my mind couldn’t process what that might be because I was so close to falling into a meltdown.

Sensations were coming and going in waves such that my mind couldn’t handle the input. I wanted to scream from these unrecognizable feelings, while at the same time I wanted to cry from the agony my mind was being forced to process. Whoever or whatever was causing the feelings flooding into my mind I had no idea. For the first time in my life I was as far beyond going into a total meltdown as I had ever expected to experience. The conflicting sensations were overwhelming my awareness. It no longer mattered that my eyes were shut, my sole point of attention was inside my mind. And then the most wonderful feelings I could ever have imagined experiencing exploded through my body and across my mind startling my attention to the very core of my being.

My eyes flew opened, but all I could see was bright flashes of light. Then it was all over and it was as if nothing had occurred at all. I was bereft of any feeling. Finally, I had enough awareness to notice what was happening, but nothing was happening. I had a sudden feeling of confusion and loss.

“Did you do something to me?” I asked.

“Didn’t you, uh, enjoy that?” Frankie asked as he pulled me toward him.

He pressed his mouth against mine. This was much different than what happened in the morning. His mouth was all over mine and then he pushed his tongue into my mouth. I felt it on mine, but I didn’t know what to do. Strangely, I felt somewhat sick to my stomach. Then he stopped.

“Okay, shows over,” Frankie said. “It’s time we get on our way. It’s going to be like hell getting off this hill. You okay, Sweetie?”

“I don’t know what happened,” I said. “Was that sex?”

“Yes, I gave you a blow job, like I did last night, but you already said you’ve never felt like that before?”

“No.”

“Charles was saying if you’re a total virgin and you being mentally ill, it may take some work to get you up to speed on sex.”

“I don’t know anything about sex and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, this is all so new. What’s a blow job?”

“It involves my mouth and your cock.”

But Frankie didn’t go further, and I didn’t want to pursue that line of thinking. I was at a loss as to where our relationship was going. I saw that he was back at Belmont and it looked like he was going to turn left. That would take him back to Olive where he could get on the freeway, but that wasn’t the best way to go at this time of day.

“Turn right and we can get down to Lakeview Boulevard,” I said. “From there, I’ll give you directions to where you can get on the freeway off of Harvard.”

“How do you know that? You don’t drive.”

“No, but I’ve memorized all of the avenues, boulevards, drives, places, streets, and ways in Seattle and North Park and how they all interconnect. Also, I have most of the stairs and alleys memorized.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to. I like maps. Not too many years ago, I was so crazy that I thought I had been switched at birth and I was really an African from the Ivory Coast. Every time I looked in a mirror I saw myself as being an African with very dark skin. The real crazy part was I thought I spoke French and no one else could understand me. But if they spoke to me, in my mind I thought they were speaking French. The really bad part was that I don’t know how to speak French and I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone speak French. That was a very bad time for me because I didn’t understand that I was seriously mentally ill. I thought I was just crazy. I thought that was my normal.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding, I was very crazy back then. I’m medicated now. As long as I remember to take my medications I’m okay. Plus, I have to be certain to go to my appointments. My only serious problem now is having panic attacks if something is happening that I can’t handle. I carry medicine for that, but I have to have water or some other liquid to take that medicine because I can’t swallow pills without some liquid.”

“You know, Charles was saying he thought you might be a little off,” Frankie said.

“How did he know?” I asked. How could someone know something like that about a person? It didn’t sound logical, as Commander Spock, the Vulcan science officer on Star Trek would say.

“He’s a professor of psychology at the U.”

“Oh, yes, a professional might notice the subtle intricacies of a crazy person.”

“From when you walked in the door, he thought you were probably mentally ill.”

“Yes, that is how professionals refer to us crazy people. They think they are being nice, but they obviously don’t really know what it is to be crazy. They study mental illness in textbooks and write scholarly papers, but us crazy people don’t study being crazy. We just are and that is what is hard about being crazy.”

“So you crazy people have a little club, huh?”

“What? Oh, you’re kidding me. Uh, you need to turn right up here onto Harvard Avenue East. Just follow it up to Tenth Avenue East and turn left.”

“Hey, the freeway is right there. Too bad we can’t do a quick left and get on here.”

“You do that and you’ll wreck your car. That’s quite a drop.”

“Can you imagine living here with all that freeway noise?”

“But look at the view. Hey! Watch where you are driving.”

“You told me to look at the view.”

“Yes, but you nearly hit that little girl on her bicycle.”

“Yeah, bet she pissed her panties, too.”

“Frankie, you are mean.”

“Yeah, aren’t I?”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t say anything. I sat there looking straight ahead out the windshield. We went around the curve and we were on East Miller Street, which we followed up to Tenth Avenue East. We had to wait a long time for the light to change. The light finally turned green, but we had to wait in the middle of the intersection until a long line of cars coming up Miller Street turned right onto Tenth Avenue East. As we went over 520, I saw flashing lights down on the Delmar Drive East bridge over 520. Obviously, Delmar Drive was blocked at the bridge and cars were being diverted up Eleventh Avenue East to Miller Street.

“Turn left at the light and go down to the next traffic light and turn right,” I said. “There will be an onramp on your left.”

“You really do have all these streets figured out,” Frankie said.

“Yeah, and then they put in the freeway. I was really messed up because streets disappeared. It was very confusing for a while, but eventually I got a new map and was able to figure out the new connections.”

“Sweetie, you’re absolutely amazing.”

“No, I’m totally crazy. It is hard being crazy because my thought processes are so screwed up, sometimes I don’t know what is right and what is wrong. And there was all that time I thought I only spoke French. Plus, there were all those years I thought my IQ was 73, but it really is 129. I was convinced I was a dope and a dummy. I was what is called borderline something. That was why I didn’t try hard in school. I thought I was too stupid to learn anything. I became lost in my maps and didn’t pay attention to anything else.”

“But now you’re smart, right?”

“Yes, I suppose, but I don’t know what I can do with it. I’d have to go back to school and retake all those classes I thought I was too stupid to be in.”

“Actually, Sweetie, you can take classes to get your GED.”

“What’s a GED?”

“It is a certificate that substitutes for a high school diploma. Our agency facilitates classes throughout the Puget Sound region.”

“You’re a teacher?”

“No, I’m an assistant administrator. I maintain certification files for our current and prospective instructors. Do you think you’d like to get more information on this?”

“I’ll have to ask E3 if he thinks this is something I should do.”

“How about I get you some information about the program and then you’ll have a knowledge base at the time you speak with your father?”

“Do you think this is a good idea for me to pursue?”

“Sweetie, one of these days you’re going to have to stand on your own two feet to move forward in life. You can’t rely on your parents forever.”

“Yes, that is true. Okay, get me the information and I’ll see if I can do this GED thing.”

“Cool, this is something to improve yourself.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I stopped talking. I realized my mind was still in fast forward, so near a meltdown that I had to be careful with inputs. Yet, I wanted to be with Frankie and learn how to carry on a conversation. I thought about how difficult it was to be crazy and have a mind that would turn itself off if I tried to use it too much. Then I decided I needed to talk to Frankie if I wanted to get to know him more.

“Frankie, uh, there might be problem with our friendship,” I said.

“Like what?” Frankie asked.

“Um, you’ve kissed me twice that I know of and you did that blow job thing to me whatever it was, but I really don’t like that. I don’t want you to be mad at me, but can we be friends and not do that stuff?”

“Oh, shit, no kidding?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, but maybe I’m not like you. I’ll understand if you don’t want to see me again.”

“No, we’re going to be friends, just friends. Okay, no more kissing and, definitely, no more sex. Is that cool with you?”

“Yes, and thank you for respecting my wishes.”

“What do you know, Frankie boy. You’ve got a straight friend.”

I didn’t know what Frankie was talking about and really didn’t want to press the issue. I still had that meltdown pending. It had gone into the background, yet I could still feel that weird sensation in my mind, as if the panic I felt earlier when Frankie was doing that thing to me was still quite active in the forefront of my mind, except it was actually waiting for something new to trigger it back into full action.

“Hey, Sweetie, want a burger?” Frankie asked.

“Okay, I guess. Where are we?”

“At Dick’s in Wallingford.”

“Oh, okay, sure.”

“Well, come on, let’s get out of the car.”

“Oh, okay, sure.”