Walt Darling and the Boobs of Doom
Son, if you assumed that my first kiss lifted Erica’s curse and that my only task ahead was discovering who I would be lucky enough to kiss forever and ever and ever again, and then, also, of course, that I would never ever cry or suffer the stomach ache pang of loneliness that is so common to all in its ability to convince everyone that they alone are the absolute only one who feels so awkward, so unwanted, so alone… or at minimum, maybe, I’d be free of the fear that the next time a girl grinned and leaned in with her lips puckered and her eyes shut that I would boldly hold her head in my hands and tickle her tongue with my tongue and wouldn’t ever, ever, ever worry, because not yet job interviewing, not yet dressing to impress, not yet aware of the maxim that past performance predicts future dumbness so why even bother because I’d only ever be doomed to fail over and over again, even if this time I didn’t attempt a kiss in front of everyone?
That would make sense. A reasonable assumption. Curse gone. Walt, be bold. Walt, be free. Kissy kissy kissy me!
What could be easier?
Oh, son.
Would that living was as easy as imagining.
AND!
Let’s not forget how in that darkened theater with Simba conquering the Pride Lands and my lips pressed against Daniella Rodriguez’ lips and my hands on her arms and my hands on her elbows, and how very much I wanted my hands on her breasts but I could never command them to venture past where they felt safe and secure, so when the credits rolled and the lights went up, that mysterious and even darker country of Daniella’s remained unexplored, untouched, and unknown. I assumed, like everyone who first-time visits a country which instantaneously becomes their minimum expectations for all future understandings of heaven, that there’d be a next time, don’t exhaust all the wonder on your first trip! But then! Tragedy! There wasn’t ever a next time! Not with Daniella Rodriguez! And her breasts!
Son, before we continue…
A quick word or two on boobs.
How do I confess this?
In my youth, I was, perhaps, a bit… okay, a lot, like a lot a lot, like a lotta lotta lot, a lot obsessed?
My favorite teacher in high school, Mrs. Hendrix, instructor extraordinaire of eleventh grade English literature, lover of Emerson and Transcendentalism, Tarot reader, banned book research paper assigner, and creative writing encourager? She used to say, “Tits? What’s the fuss? They’re just balls of fat with nipples attached.”
Despite Mrs. Hendix’ best attempt at redirecting our discussion to Huckleberry Finn or Beverly Clearly (most banned author in America!), our class insisted on asking her to read another passage from Henry Miller, preferably one of the dog-eared pages, with the highlighted sentence in the underlined paragraph, and louder please, we can’t hear you over all the giggling, and also, I was unconvinced that the secret to happiness wasn’t gently touching a pretty girl’s breasts.
Son, I know you know how tapping out “5318008” on a calculator spells, “BOOBIES” upside-down. But did you know the origin of the word, “Boob?” It’s one of the only Roman alphabet-pictograph hybrids. Consider every angle: from above (B), from the front (oo), and from the side (b).
Oh, Son! Listen! Observe! Learn from my mistakes! Look, how even now, years on from my youth, how much easier it is for me to elevate the intellectualizing over the acting. For narrative convenience, I have even begun to scramble the chronology of my misguidance.
Mrs. Hendrix and her unheeded wisdom was junior year. Let me go back to 10th grade and my first year of high school. Three junior highs fed into my Sam Houston High School, but two split evenly into two other High Schools. So if you had attended Ollman, whose entire student body continued on into Sam Houston High, then your existing social divisions remained the same. If you went to Jameson or Eleanor (like myself), then half your classmates split off, and you essentially got a fresh start. For me, that meant I found myself amidst a crowd of students waiting for the bell, none of whom knew Erica; therefore, none of whom had heard of how I licked her cheek in front of the entire sixth grade class during my failed attempt at a first kiss. (Erica, herself remember, had moved away at the end of 8th grade). For all intents and purposes, we were all the new kid with an auditorium full of unknown cute girls to crush on.
Arriving early to math, I bonded with Tim, who sat in the seat in front of me, and scribbled guitar tablature in the margins of his pre-algebra textbook. Tim wore black and pulled his hair back into a loose ponytail. He practiced Wicca, but insisted he only cast good spells, which yeah, normally I would have rolled my eyes at, except your grandfather taught me that you can never have too many friends, and while some of the fellow honor students from my Eleanor Junior High had joined my journey into Sam Houston, I needed all the new friends I could get. Plus, Tim told me while he could show me how to play Smashing Pumpkins’ Disarm, it wouldn’t sound right with only one guitar, so he showed me how to play the opening notes of Today instead.
I knew Tim’s older sister, Martha, because we had both been cast in the school’s after school production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. I forget her role. Mine was Reverend Parris. I remember shaking a large cross at the accused and screaming like a bear. I considered the bearishness a bold choice, because I modeled my anger off of your grandfather’s anger, but all three nights of our performance, my performance garnered more laughter than gasps, and afterwards I wished that the director had told me that most people don’t roar when they’re angry. Rehearsals had lasted almost two months.
Because I was still too young to have a drivers’ license and both your grandparents worked, Tim’s older sister had given me a ride home from rehearsals, along with her best friend, Amanda. Martha had bigger boobs, but Amanda had a cuter face and in my 10th grade bravado I had told Tim I bet I could kiss Amanda anytime I wanted. I said that I imagined she’d wrap her fingers under my hair (worn long because of Kurt Cobain - almost all of us boys wore our hair combed down to our chin), and I would have to push Amanda off and say, “don’t be so eager.” Tim, who also had a crush on Amanda, told his older sister what I had said, which I awkwardly learned the day I got into the back seat and while buckling up, Amanda looked back at me from the passenger side where she controlled the radio and asked in a voice covered with sugar, “Are you ready? Can we go, Walt? Darling? I’d hate to be too eager.”
Then Amanda puckered her cute face and made kissy noises and my face turned as crimson as our school colors and Martha turned up the radio and spun the car and squeeled out of the school parking lot. Martha always played either Tori Amos’ Boys for Pele or Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine.
About Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor belting out, “I just want something I can never haaa-aave,” Amanda said, “His voice turns me on.”
“I want to get in the bathtub, turn the volume all the way up, and lose myself in his voice.”
“Yeah, what venereous vocals,” Martha said, turning onto the cul-de-sac where I lived.
“Walt? Darling? Do you know what a Wind Job is,” Amanda asked, fluttering her lashes at me.
I didn’t.
“Louder, please,” Amanda said, reclining her seat and closing her eyes.
In the backseat, my gaze began at Amanda’s beautiful eyelids before wandering down her chin and past the curve of her neck and up the outline of her bra and wondering if there was maybe a little hint of invitation behind all of her jokey air kisses, and that maybe, who knows, maybe did she want me to lean over and kiss her on the mouth? And those little boobs, covered only by a couple layers of cotton, did they have heft, like a bag of flour? Or were they soft and airy, like kneaded dough? Who knew?
I didn’t.
In drama class, the 10th graders joined juniors and seniors in discussing Commedia D’ellarte and demonstrating emotion through action, and between scenes no one wanted to hear me dramatize my amazing first kiss at the movies the preceding summer. No, my moment of smooch was a mere first read-through compared to the award winning performances about Chip’s little penis and how the cad only calls after midnight, or the radio show ready retelling of how panicked Andrea kicked when Hector’s braces caught in her bush when her mom knocked at her locked bedroom door.
While applying my stage make-up, Lydia asked me if I had ever given a “Snoopy and Linus.” To Lydia, who always ended up in charge of costumes because her voice pitched high like a cartoon character and who wore her eyeliner curved up and away into a hook like Cleopatra’s, I desperately wanted to say, ‘Give a Snoopy and Linus? But of course! All the time, doll.’
Instead I lied, “Once or twice.”
While adjusting my Reverend Paris wig, Lydia eyed me with the skepticism of an Egyptian queen and asked, “What about a Mexican Street Car?”
“Sometimes,” I said, risking the faker’s sweat, chancing muddying up my make-up.
Leaning forward to powder my face, Lydia asked, “A Shrimp Salad?”
“That’s like a Wind Job, right?” I replied.
Bent forward in front of me, adjusting my cloak, I marveled at her cleavage. If Amanda’s bra could hold baseballs, Lydia’s could hold Texas grapefruits. Backstage in the dressing room, uncertain of the meaning of the phrases Lydia threw at me, I wondered if I caught her breasts, would they be squishy like water balloons? Who knew!
I didn’t.
Years later, when your mom and I were long distance dating as AmeriCorps NCCC Team Leaders, her on the West Coast and me in the Northeast, flying to see each other every couple of months because our friend Tim had told us that after two months apart every late night phone call becomes a fight and after three months, breaking up is guaranteed, and during dinner with my Team Leader colleagues, Chuck Palahniuk’s book Invisible Monsters was passed around, stars in the margin of the Thanksgiving dinner scene where the parents explained the color code symbolism of the AIDS quilt and did the daughter know what Felching meant, and everyone laughing and sharing similar experiences, that’s when I told your mom about being teased my sophomore year of high school for not knowing what a Shrimp Salad was, and mouth open and eyebrows arched she shock-remarked, “Shrimp Salads were the best. I got one every weekend.”
“Wait! What? I still don’t know what a Shrimp Salad is,” I said, both stunned and embarrassed.
Your mom took my hand and said, “I’m joking,“ and she squeezed my palm and she whispered, “What the fuck even is a Shrimp Salad?” and we looked at each other like we were the only ones in the restaurant and the world, and neither one of us cared because a Shrimp Salad was just one more thing that didn’t matter because we had each other. Because there’s so much to know and you can’t know everything but sometimes you get to know all that you need.
In art class, Andrew asked if I was going to the party at Nick’s house.
“I didn’t get an invitation,” I said.
Andrew guffawed. “No one gets an invitation.”
“I don’t know who Nick is,” I said.
Andrew smiled. “You don’t need to know Nick! All you need to know is that his parents are out of town!”
I asked Dawn if she was going to Nick’s party. Dawn, who gave me rides home when The Crucible wrapped and after school rehearsals ended, and who kindly listened to me gush about how if I got cast in the spring production and so did Amanda, I might get to kiss her after all. Dawn shrugged in support. Dawn’s breasts I imagined felt like jello, because when she plopped down beside me on a bench or a couch or a curb, they always bounced a little. We had known each other long enough that my pinky finger didn’t ache when I was around her. That is, I could see why other guys found Dawn attractive, though I wasn’t attracted to her. I assume Dawn considered me in much the same way. Dawn evened the shading of her charcoal and said, “Yeah, I’m going, Walt. Do you want a ride?”
She took a step back and judged her drawing from a distance, which is often the best way to tell if you should start over or continue. Dawn said, “You should come. Everyone is going.”
Dawn dated Handsome Henry, our school’s star pitcher, whose arm was so fast that he started on the pitcher’s mound as a sophomore. Back when my failed kiss with Erica was all my classmates’ inside joke, I had been the best base stealer on my Little League team, and a decent enough batter and right-fielder. But after not playing at all during junior high, I naively enrolled in baseball my first year of high school. After two weeks of practice, the coach pulled me aside and said, “Walt, usually we don’t cut anyone from the team until second semester when baseball season actually starts, but I’m going to level with you, you should transfer to P.E. or weight training or something else. You got spirit, but these other guys have been playing Select teams year round and it shows. You can’t throw. You can’t hit. Save yourself the embarrassment and quit now.”
So, I transferred into weight training and learned there’s something honorable about trying and failing. Like that time in sixth grade recess, when I dove for the soccer ball and missed, but had gained respect because no one else had ever dared to dive? All the players who had snickered when I threw the ball those first two weeks, now when they saw me carrying books to class, it was all appreciative-nods, respect-grins, and, ‘What’s up, Walt’s.
I mention this so you know that as the year progressed I started to bulk up in the arms and the chest and outwardly appeared like I would have as much luck with the ladies as my name suggested. Like Kierkegaard famously said, “life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards.” Now, I get that all these romances that never were, they only prepared me for the singular sensation that is your mother. But back then, every missed kiss felt like a confirmation that yes, I was, in fact, cursed.
After my first homecoming dance, when Charlotte Reynolds drove me and her friends to Denny’s where her older friend Chase paid for all of our late night pancakes and I did my best to act cool and casual and not like I had just won the lottery because all-star hottie Charlotte Reynolds had agreed to go to the dance with me and when Charlotte Reynolds drove me home and I sat staring at my parents’ garage door, wondering if I should lean over the gear shift to press my lips against her lips, doing my best to ignore the pressure in my right pinky, and Charlotte Reynolds cleared her throat and Charlotte Reynolds said, “Walt, I had fun. I hope you have a good night,” and the automatic locks popped up, and I got out and stood in the driveway as she drove off, and I stared at the stars. So many constellations look like breasts. Scorpio is the easiest to recognize, but I was looking for one that resembled Charlotte Reynolds’ chest. Maybe Leo? The pointed legs? Like torpedo heads? At the end of the street, Charlotte Reynolds’ left tail light blinked and she turned and her car vanished into the suburban night. I wondered did squeezing her breasts feel like gripping a pillow? Or a rolled up blanket? Who knew?
I didn’t.
Spoiler alert: this script of me wanting more than anything to hold a pretty girl’s pretty breasts in my undeserving hands and revel in a pleasure beyond my not insignificant imagination? It continues on all through my first year of high school and then the next and then the final and then past graduation and then into college and eventually I become convinced that the first breasts I touch will be the last and yes that’s how I knew your mom would be my wife but before that, I’m a senior attending a statewide Drama/Speech competition in Austin, Texas and on the drive down from Arlington on the bus’ televisions hanging from the bus’ ceiling, the drama teacher is screening the drama kid favorite Grease and during the scene where John Travolta puts his arm around Olivia Newton-John and lets slip his hand down the front of her blouse, my best friend Garrett blurted out, “AHA! THE DARLING SLIDE!” and everyone in the bus, the entirety of our traveling drama competition team, turned and looked at me, shocked and amazed, in disgust and in admiration, and none of my protests of how I had never, nor any of my cries of how I would never, could never be so bold and nonconsensual, and I failed to dissuade my team that I wasn’t some mixture of creep and hero, and not even a week after our drama group returned from the competition in the capitol, I heard Edward Hyuyen joking about how he got to Darling Slide our class vice-president and future valedictorian, Tanya Jenson, after Homecoming. Garrett, for his part, beloved best friend that he was, did his best to extend the gag, asking our friend Kevin, who usually drove us all to lunch, how many Darling Slides he had accomplished over the weekend and our good friend Kevin, functional sex addict that he was, would always smile and refuse to play Garret’s game out loud, saying, “I don’t kiss and tell,” grinning while raising one, sometimes two, sometimes three, fingers from his handhold on the steering wheel. And yes, sometimes, in the retelling of this epic, I have exaggerated or bent the truth to make a more entertaining narrative, but this is the Friendship’s Honor truth, before the year ended, I was in the van with my dad and my younger brother and some of his junior high friends and my brother sat in the farthest back row next to the girl he was dating and my dad smiled into the rearview mirror like when my younger brother hit the homerun that won his team the Little League Championship, and my dad said, “Hey now. Hands where I can see them. There’ll be no Darling Slides during this drive.”
Even today, decades on from when I attended Sam Houston, I worry there’s a questionable move that boys dare each other to do, that bears my name, that I never even did.
During the spring production of the school musical, which show we rehearsed second semester, after everyone else had left the dressing room, and Lydia asked me to stay to run lines while she fixed her makeup, Lydia who finally got a role of her own, so now in addition to managing all the other players’ costumes also had to look good herself, which for Lydia was easy-squeezy, which was what she did to my biceps every time she passed me backstage, commenting on how firm and strong my arms had grown, and now, in the dressing room, alone, when she turned around and the mirror bulbs backlit her figure with an iridescent glow and I did my best to pretend I wasn’t trying to memorize her lava lamp like movement so I could remember this moment forever, and she kept leaning lower in front of me and spoke one sultry line of dialogue after another and all I could respond was, “uh huh uh huh uh huh,” and my pinky finger throbbed like it was caught in the snapping part of a mousetrap, and Lydia paused but didn’t rise and said, “Walt, you don’t seem interested in running lines,” and I swear she licked her lips and let her eyes travel down to my chest and then to my arms and then to my belt and then back to looking me in my eyes and she said, “What do you want to do?” and Lydia pushed her hair behind her shoulders and she said, “Walt,” and she beckoned me to come closer and Lydia said, “Darling?” and I continued to say, “uh huh uh huh uh huh,” and Lydia waited and I said more of the same and Lydia waited and then there was a knock at the door, lights down in the auditorium, the show was about to start, and Lydia and her grapefruits rose and left, and I stood alone amongst all the costumes.
I quit waiting for personal invitations and joined my friend Kevin when he drove to parties hosted by kids whom we barely knew, and then, afterwards, to parties hosted by kids we didn’t know at all. One night, towards the end of the year, all we had for a destination was the street name, Pinewood, which ran almost the length of our city. There had been a cross street, but Kevin forgot it. We drove through neighborhoods we knew and neighborhoods we didn’t until we passed a street with too many cars parked along the curb. Kevin parked. We walked up the street and to the front door of the house where the music blared and we waved and high-fived and acted like we belonged and whatever we said it didn’t actually matter because no one could hear us over the music. Inside Kevin started chatting with some girl before disappearing. I ended up next to some guy much bigger than me who set down his drink to demonstrate and instruct me on the best way to glide up to some girl dancing and then proceeded to detail how I should rub my crotch against her butt. Believe it or not, that’s how kids danced when I went to high school. Do you still do that? Exercise caution. It’s uh… pleasant, but also, assault?
“Don’t be shy. Get close. Feel the rhythm with your hips and grind up on that ass.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I don’t even know her name.”
“You don’t have to know her name,” the big guy said. “No one knows her name.”
“It’s easy,” the big guy said. “Watch.”
And he danced close to the stranger, but not as close as he had been encouraging me. I nodded and gave him a thumbs up and then walked into the kitchen, hoping to find someone I might know. There was a small group playing a game of beer pong on the dining room table. Two boys were kissing by the sink. I didn’t see anyone I recognized.
Strangers kiss at parties. I didn’t. But who knew? Maybe tonight was the night the universe would smile on me and I would make out with a pretty girl and finally touch a boob.
I felt a firm tap on my shoulder.
“Walt Darling, what are you doing here? And when did your arms get so ripped?”
“Erica,” I said, startled, confused.
My chest felt like jello, felt like kneaded dough, felt like a soft pillow, felt like water balloons.
I held the back of a couch and swallowed. I felt the smile of the universe suddenly reveal itself to be a leer as without my permission it pushed the last person I ever wanted to see again hard against my plans, twisting and groping all my hopes, tugging and squeezing all my ideas, pulling what pleasure it could just because it could from my anguished, moorless thoughts. I was not ready for this.
Erica smiled, like she knew a secret, because she did know a secret. She knew my secret.
“We should catch up,” she said. “It’s been too long. When did your arms get so ripped? You’re basically a stranger to me now.”
I blinked, speechless, and flexed for her.
Erica put her hand on my chest and whistled.
A new thought assaulted my heart. Maybe the universe’ leer was a mischievous grin? Maybe curses can only be undone by reversing what went wrong? Maybe this was my second chance? Could I try to kiss her again? Could I be cool? Could I be less eager?
“Yeah,” I said, still unable to articulate.
Could this be the moment that determined the rest of my life? What would happen if I failed a second time?
“I can’t hear you,” Erica said. “The music is way too loud in here. Let’s step outside.”
She took my hand and pulled me toward the door.
My hope is each Walt Darling episode can be enjoyed on its own, but if you liked this story and want to read more, let me encourage you to go back to the beginning and read them all :)
< Introduction | The Almost First Kiss | The New Game | The Rollercoaster of Oops | The Talk | The Actual First Kiss | The New Normal >
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Whatever you want! You choose! But choose wisely! Because “we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself, he chooses for all men…”
But honestly, tell me, would Walt Darling and the Boobies of Doom been a better title?