The Phone Call

Here's my latest oeuvre for the S Project.

The Phone Call

"C'mon, dude, just pick one already."

"Yeah, dude, he right. You takin' too long."

Raucous laughter echoed throughout the room.

"Hey--maybe he lookin' for a fairy princess."

"Doncha mean a fairy prince?" The speaker exaggeratedly lifted a limp wrist and took tiny mincing steps, encouraged by the guffaws.

They were being ignored by a slight boy, perhaps 13 or 14 years old, who stood intently poring over the graffitoed wall. The reddened tips of his ears were the only indication that perhaps their coarse comments weren't going unheard after all, but his shaggy tawny hair hid his ears, his eyes, and much of his face and hence kept his secret.

Finally bored with the joking, the biggest of the boys took charge. "Look, kid, pick a name now and we outta here."

The boy at the wall shook his head and mumbled.

"What? I can't hear ya."

"I said I can't do it."

"I don't think I heard ya. You was gonna tell me which name you gonna call, right?" The inference was obvious. Pick a name, or you in big trouble.

The boy closed his eyes and pointed.

More strident laughter rang out.

"Good choice kid. C'mon. You don't need to write that one down. It's on the phone booth."

The other boys shoved him out of the bathroom and down the block to a nearby phone booth. They crowded around him as he dug some change out of his jeans pocket and fed it into the hungry mouth of the telephone, eavesdropping with indecent eagerness.

"Hi, Tammy? Yeah, uh, I'm, uh, well, my name's Ted," he lied, stammering. "I got your number from a friend of mine. I hope you don't mind my calling or nothin'."

The other guys stared at each other, bewildered. This definitely was not in the script.

"My friend say you really nice. He say you the prettiest girl he ever seen."

The leader of the group shoved him. "What the fuck you doin'?" he hissed.

The boy ignored him and continued. "Yeah, and my friend say you got the biggest tits on the block, too."

He saw grins growing on the faces of his friends. Taking his courage from their approval, he said, "My friend tol' me you'd screw anything on two legs, and I got a real bad hard-on. I was wonderin' if me and my friends come by would you--"

He grinned broadly and held the phone out so the other boys could hear the shrieks of profanity coming from the other end of the line.

With assumed innocence, he said, "Oh, did I interrupt you in the middle of somethin'? Well, never mind then. Maybe later." He hung up, and swept the hair back from his face.

The biggest boy gave him a beer. "You one of us now, boy. You done all right." The others surrounded him, laughing and jeering, and they strutted off down the street, masters of the universe. They men.