Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim Read Online Free PDF

you weren’t supposed to flinch upon hearing the girl’s name. The baby had died too soon to pose for photographs, but still she was regarded as a full-fledged member of the family. She had a Christmas stocking the size of a mitten, and they even threw her an annual birthday party, a fact that my mother found especially creepy. “Let’s hope they don’t invite us,” she said. “I mean, Jesus, how do you shop for a dead baby?”
I guessed it was the fear of another premature birth that kept Mrs. Winters from trying again, which was sad, as you got the sense she really wanted a lively household. You got the sense that she had an idea of a lively household and that the slumber party and the ketchup-covered knife were all a part of that idea. While in her presence, we had played along, but once she said good night, I understood that all bets were off.
She and her husband lumbered up the stairs, and when Walt felt certain that they were asleep, he pounced on Dale Gummerson, shouting, “Titty twister!!!” Brad Clancy joined in, and when they had finished, Dale raised his shirt, revealing nipples as crimped and ruddy as the pepperoni slices littering the forsaken pizza box.
“Oh my God,” I said, realizing too late that this made me sound like a girl. The appropriate response was to laugh at Dale’s misfortune, not to flutter your hands in front of your face, screeching, “What have they done to your poor nipples! Shouldn’t we put some ice on them?”
Walt picked up on this immediately. “Did you just say you wanted to put ice on Dale’s nipples?”
“Well, not me . . . personally,” I said. “I meant, you know, generally. As a group. Or Dale could do it himself if he felt like it.”
Walt’s eyes wandered from my face to my chest, and then the entire slumber party was upon me. Dale had not yet regained the full use of his arms, and so he sat on my legs while Brad and Scott Marlboro pinned me to the carpet. My shirt was raised, a hand was clamped over my mouth, and Walt latched onto my nipples, twisting them back and forth as if they were a set of particularly stubborn toggle bolts. “Now who needs ice!” he said. “Now who thinks he’s the goddam school nurse.” I’d once felt sorry for Walt, but now, my eyes watering in pain, I understood that little Lauren was smart to have cut out early.
When finally I was freed, I went upstairs and stood at the kitchen window, my arms folded lightly against my chest. My family’s house was located in a ravine. You couldn’t see it from the street, but still I could make out the glow of lights spilling from the top of our driveway. It was tempting, but were I to leave now, I’d never hear the end of it. The baby cried. The baby had to go home. Life at school would be unbearable, so I left the window and returned to the basement, where Walt was shuffling cards against the coffee table. “Just in time,” he said. “Have a seat.”
I lowered myself to the floor and reached for a magazine, trying my best to act casual. “I’m not really much for games, so if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll just watch.”
“Watch, hell,” Walt said. “This is strip poker. What kind of a homo wants to sit around and watch four guys get naked?”
The logic of this was lost on me. “Well, won’t we all sort of be watching?”
“Looking maybe, but not watching,” Walt said. “There’s a big difference.”
I asked what the difference was, but nobody answered. Then Walt made a twisting motion with his fingers, and I took my place at the table, praying for a gas leak or an electrical fire — anything to save me from the catastrophe of strip poker. To the rest of the group, a naked boy was like a lamp or a bath mat, something so familiar and uninteresting that it faded into the background, but for me it was different. A naked boy was what I desired more than anything on earth, and when you were both watching and desiring, things came up, one thing in particular that was bound