ATURE had assigned Patti a sexy part, and she played it.  She dressed the part.  She looked the part.  She cultivated a knowing wink and a provocative pout.  Soon she had a reputation.  People assumed that she was the sexual adventurer she seemed to be, and many claimed to have explored the territory with her.  Since I was both a cynic and a dreamer, I told myself that the claims I heard were certainly exaggerated and probably untrue, and I managed to convince myself that, in all likelihood, Patti was a virgin—a very sexy virgin, to be sure, but still a virgin—and I tried to hold on to that conviction, but it wasn’t easy, given the sheer number of claims to the contrary.  Some I could easily dismiss, because the claimants were no likelier sexual partners for Patti than I was myself, but others were more convincing, none more so than the claim I heard Nicky Furman make one afternoon when I was sitting in the school auditorium during a study hall.
    Patti had just come into the room, late.  I watched her walk down the aisle, watched her hand a note, an excuse for her tardiness, to Mr. Cantrell, an English teacher who affected bright silk squares in the handkerchief pockets of his threadbare jackets, watched her stand, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, canting her hips while her note was read, watched her idly look around the room to see who among the assembled scholars might interest her, and blushed when she spotted me and winked. 
    Two louts were sitting in front of me.  One was known as Greasy; I don’t remember his last name.  The other was Nicky Furman.  A low groan came from Greasy.  “Oh, man,” he muttered, “I would really like to get into Patti’s little snatch.”
    “Mm,” said Nicky. 
    “I mean,” said Greasy, superfluously and boorishly, “I would love to fuck her.”
    I was shocked to hear this, because fuck was rarely used in those days.  It had not yet become what it is now, a limp bit of oral punctuation that lies in a sentence like a slug, flaccid from overuse, as impotent as a comma.  It had power then.  It was outrageous.  I was outraged that Greasy should employ it to name what he wanted to do to Patti.  I would have liked to give him a piece of my mind, but I didn’t because I had seen the damage he could do to boys my size.
    In the privacy of my own mind, I told myself that what Greasy wanted was not at all what I wanted.  I wanted romance, love, a love taller than the tallest mountain, oo-oo-oo, deeper than the deepest sea, oo-oo-ee, a love that would never die, a passion for the ages.  I wanted to know the magic of all her charms, under the moonlight, one summer night, which meant, I can tell you, because I was there, pretty much the same thing as wanting to fuck her, but in a loving and beautiful way, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-ee, ohhhh yeah.
    “Yeah,” said Nicky.  “She’s a great lay.”
    What?  How did he know?
    “You fucked her?” asked Greasy.
    “Yeah,” said Nicky, as if it were not a particularly interesting thing to have done.  “She’s a great lay, a terrific piece of ass.”
    He was slandering the piece of ass I loved!  I didn’t want to believe him.  He hadn’t—Patti would never have—he couldn’t—this was just—
    “Bullshit,” said Greasy.  I was beginning to feel a kinship with him.
    “If you say so,” said Nicky.  He let a moment pass.  He snorted.  “I’ll tell you something funny, but you got to promise not to tell anybody.”
    “What?”
    “Promise.”
    “Okay.”
    “I had a rubber that I swiped from my father’s bedside table, because I didn’t want to get her in trouble, you know?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, I never used a rubber before—”
    Uh-oh.  This was not good.  It put him a bad light.  It was not the sort of detail he would include unless he was being really honest.
    “—so I open the package and I take the thing out and it’s a little flat round thing.  I don’t know what the hell to do with it.  So I start fiddling around with it, trying to figure out which end is up, and she says, ‘What’s taking you so long?’  And I say, ‘I don’t usually use this brand.  I’m not familiar with it.’  And then I see that it’s all rolled up, so I figure I gotta unroll it, which I do.  So I’ve got this long rubber bag that I’m trying to get onto my pecker, and it ain’t easy, let me tell you that.  When I finally get it on, there’s a big bubble in the front, like a balloon, and when I stick it into her, it goes ‘pop.’”
    “No shit.”
    “I told my uncle what happened, and he cracked up.  I thought he was gonna bust a gut.  And then he tells me you’re supposed to put the thing onto your prick and roll it down.  You don’t unroll it first.”
    “Oh, sure,” said Greasy.  “You didn’t know that?”
    “No,” said Nicky.  “I didn’t know that.  I already told you.”
    Silence.  Then Greasy, convinced now, asked, “How did you get her to let you do it?. ”
    “Just asked,” said Nicky.
    Just asked?  That couldn’t be.  It couldn’t be that easy, couldn’t have been that easy.
    “What did you say, exactly?” asked Greasy.  I bent over my notebook.
    “I said, ‘You want to get into the back seat?’”
    Damn.  You had to have a car.  Wouldn’t you know.
    “Yeah?”  asked Greasy.  He waited a moment and then prompted Nicky with, “And?”
    “And what?  We got into the back seat.”
    “You didn’t say anything else?”
    “No.  I said, ‘You want to get into the back seat?’  That’s all.  She knew what I meant.  Everybody knows what the back seat is for.”
    “Yeah,” said Greasy, and he laughed a laugh that sounded very much like the sound that would be made by the outrushing air if one inflated a dog till it was as round as a ball, then gave it a couple of slaps on the belly, and let it go.
 

“I should like to see the custom introduced of readers who are pleased with a book sending the author some small cash token: anything between half-a-crown and a hundred pounds.  Authors would then receive what their publishers give them as a flat rate and their “tips” from grateful readers in addition, in the same way that waiters receive a wage from their employers and also get what the customer leaves on the plate.  Not more than a few hundred pounds—that would be bad for my character—not less than half-a-crown—that would do no good to yours.”

You can toss a little something onto Kraft’s plate through the Amazon.com Honor System.

Copyright © 2001 by Eric Kraft

Inflating a Dog is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. 

Picador USA will publish Inflating a Dog in the summer of 2002.

For information about publication rights outside the U. S. A., audio rights, serial rights, screen rights, and so on, e-mail the author.

LITTLE FOLLIES
HERB ’N’ LORNA
RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED
WHERE DO YOU STOP?
WHAT A PIECE OF WORK I AM
AT HOME WITH THE GLYNNS
LEAVING SMALL’S HOTEL
INFLATING A DOG
PASSIONATE SPECTATOR
MAKING MY SELF
A TOPICAL GUIDE

CLASSIFIEDS