but clear by her tone, that Shann was jealous of Robby, possibly to the point of being a little curious about my sexuality. I know, maybe that was also my confusion, as well. Because, third, what was most troubling to me, was that despite all the fantasies, all the intricately structured if/then scenarios I concocted involving Shann Collins and me, whenever an opportunity to take action presented itself—like being alone with her in a nearly sealed dungeon—I became timid and restrained.
I couldn’t understand it at all.
History chews up sexually uncertain boys, and spits us out as recycled, generic greeting cards for lonely old men.
Dr. Grady McKeon was a lonely old man. I can only conclude he must have also at one time been a sexually confused, unexplainably horny teenage boy who erupted all over everything at the least opportune times. He was twenty-five years old, and well on his way to building an empire of profits when his younger brother, Johnny, was born. I once heard a tobacco-chewing hog farmer say that, in Iowa, folks liked to spread out their children like dog shit on a dance floor.
Dr. Grady McKeon would be Shann’s stepuncle, if there is such a thing, and if he weren’t dead. He was the last person to live in the historic McKeon house. He died when his private jet went down in the Gulf of Mexico. Its engines choked to death on ash from Mount Huacamochtli, the same erupting volcano in Guatemala that Robert Brees Sr. was filming a documentary on. And it also happened the same year Robby Brees and I smoked our first cigarette, danced together, and I fell in love with Shannon Collins.
Johnny McKeon never wanted to live in his dead brother’s old house. It took Shann’s mother about four years of badgering to get him to finally break down and take the place out of mothballs.
I held Shann’s hand, and we sat there in the dungeon with our legs pressed together, and I was so frustrated I felt like I could explode. But I concentrated, and methodically went through the entire account of what happened to me and Robby at Grasshopper Jungle. I told her about our plan to climb up onto the roof of the Ealing Mall to get our stuff back.
“I’m coming with you,” she decided.
“Not up on the roof,” I said, so authoritatively my voice lowered an octave.
Sounding father-like to Shann in the echoing darkness of the staircase that led nowhere made me feel horny, demons or not. I scooted closer and put my arm around her so that my fingers relaxed and splayed across the little swath of exposed skin above the waist of her shorts.
“I’ll wait in Robby’s car. I’ll be your lookout.”
“Shann?” I said.
I almost had myself convinced to ask her if didn’t she think it was time we had sex, and the thought made me feel dizzy. I would force myself to no longer have any doubt or confusion, to not wind up recycled by history.
“What?”
“This staircase really is creepy.”
And just as I pushed her firmly against the distressed brick wall and put my open mouth over hers, Robby swung the door wide above us and said, “The moving van’s here.”
CURFEW
WHILE SHANN’S MOM, the movers, and Johnny McKeon worked at unloading and organizing the houseful of furniture they’d shipped over from their old-but-much-newer house, the three of us stole away in Robby’s Ford Explorer on our mission to reclaim our shoes and skateboards.
Friday nights in Ealing, Iowa, rarely got more thrilling than climbing up on the roof of a three-quarters abandoned mall, and we were up for the excitement.
On Fridays, my curfew came at midnight, which meant that if I was quiet enough I could stay out until just before my mother served breakfast on Saturday morning.
I had to check in with my dad and mom, so they’d know I was still alive.
I told them I was going out for pizza with Robby and Shann.
It wasn’t a lie; it was an abbreviation.
I was not concerned about going to hell.
Nobody who was born and raised in Ealing, Iowa, was afraid of hell, or Afghanistan, or living at the Del Vista Arms.
Checking in for Robby meant swinging by his two-bedroom deluxe apartment at the Del Vista Arms and asking his mom for five dollars and a fresh pack of cigarettes, while Shann and I waited in the parking lot.
Shann did not smoke.
She was smarter than Robby and me, but she didn’t complain about our habit.
STUPID PEOPLE SHOULD NEVER READ BOOKS
IT TOOK ME a very long time to work up the nerve to kiss Shann Collins, who was the first and only girl I had ever kissed.
There was a possibility that I’d never have kissed her, too, because she was the one who actually initiated the kiss.
It happened nearly one full year after the Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy End-of-Year Mixed-Gender Mixer.
Like Robby explained to her: I was shy.
I was on the conveyor belt toward the paper shredder of history with countless scores of other sexually confused boys.
After the Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy End-of-Year Mixed-Gender Mixer, I tried to get Shann to pay more serious attention to me.
I tried any reasonable method I could think of. I joined the archery club when I found out she was a member, and I offered multiple times to do homework with her. Sadly, nothing seemed to result in serious progress.
At last, all I could do was let Shann Collins know that I would be there for her if she ever needed a friend or a favor. I do not believe I had any ulterior motives in telling her such a thing. Well, to be honest, I probably did.
I’d leave notes for Shann tucked inside her schoolbooks; I would compliment her on her outfit. She laughed at such things. Shann knew it was a ridiculous thing to write, since all the girls at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy dressed exactly the same way. Still, history will show that patient boys with a sense of humor, who can also dance, tend to have more opportunities to participate in the evolution of the species than boys who give up and mope quietly on the sidelines.
But I began to worry. Rumors were spreading around Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy about me and Robby, even though I never heard anything directly.
Then, in the second semester of eighth grade, I was called in to the headmaster’s office for something I wrote in a book report. Even though the book I read was in Curtis Crane’s library, as well as the Ealing Public Library, apparently nobody other than kids had bothered to read the book until I wrote my report on it.
The book was called The Chocolate War, and the copy I read belonged to my brother, Eric. Mrs. Edith Mitchell, who was the eighth-grade English teacher, assumed the book was about a candy kingdom or something. She probably thought there were magical talking peacocks in the book that shot gumballs and Sugar Babies out of their asses.
But there were teenage boys in the book—Catholic boys—who masturbated.
Boys who attend Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy are not allowed to masturbate.
My father nearly lost his job because I wrote a report on a book that had Catholic boys and masturbation in it.
Pastor Roland Duff, the headmaster at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, was very distraught.
He had the school’s only copy of The Chocolate War resting on his desk when I came to his office.
There, he counseled me about masturbation and Catholicism.
“My fear is that when boys read books such as this,” he said, “they will assume there is nothing at all wrong with masturbation, and may, out of curiosity, attempt to masturbate. In fact, Austin, it is true that masturbation