The Gingerbread Boy

Deceit is a many splendored thing. Never began to master the subject until Smith and I, 16 years old and always hungry were hanging around his kitchen. It was one of those windy days when shamaals swept the streets of Dhahran, the AC was quietly humming and there wasn’t a soul outside except for some hapless house boy pedaling his bike in vain against the blowing sand on the way back to domestic camp after serving a bridge group luncheon.

After we opened the refrigerator a half dozen times looking for something to eat, we wandered into his dining room to behold a giant gingerbread boy cooling on the typical Danish modern dining room table. Smith picked it up and said, “My mom made it for my little brother’s birthday. Do you want a bite?”

I said, “Smith. No! Your mother would kill me.” He said, “Oh well, she won’t mind,” and then proceeded to bite the head off of Gingerbread Boy before gently laying him back on the baking pan. We went into his den to listen to Bo Diddly records and eventually drifted off to the Teen Canteen where we ate square hamburgers and burned holes in Dixie cups with cigarettes until someone or something turned up.

It didn’t take long before we were joined by a half dozen girls and guys, all of us waiting not for Godot but for something to do as the shamaal kept howling outside.  Whether it was the Date Pit, the Surf Room or the Canteen the drill was the same, hang out and every time the door opened you looked with expectations of some sort. The next person coming through just might open a world of possibilities and so it was that Dwayne walked in.

Dwayne was sort of special, his parents were divorced and he hadn’t grown up in Dhahran but this summer his dad had brought him out for the summer. Definitely a fish out of water, he was fresh out of the sticks of Idaho, combed his hair in an elaborate sort of Vitalis-coated pompadour, didn’t know from Saudi camp sandals with the tire treads, wore pearl buttoned cowboy shirts, had no clue that cut-off jeans were the ultimate in fashion and thought that Elvis was still the bomb.

When he first arrived in camp, a well meaning but woefully misinformed friend of his father had asked Smith and I to help him ease into the scene. It was fairly hopeless but his dad had a fabulous bachelor pad on Christmas Tree circle, an unlocked liquor cabinet, Playboy magazines strewn about, a killer Hi-Fi sound system and nobody was home in the afternoon. It didn’t take long for us to convince Dwayne and we were on our way down to his apartment, picking up a few more desperately bored teenagers en route. Before you knew it his dad’s living room was packed with a dozen or more kids partying like mad, a bunch of us dancing on the coffee table to the Rolling Stones second album, “Everybody needs somebody – to love...” with Smith rummaging through the cupboards looking for mixer. All of us having a blast, girls giggling, guys doing the monkey dance and then the front door came flying open.

Dwayne’s dad stepped in, hand in hand with some gal from the office, obviously intent on some kind of afternooner. Everyone froze. He looked at us, we looked at him, and then suddenly, as if in a cartoon, we vanished instantly out the back door leaving only a puff of dust and Dwayne in our wake. Fortunately the famous Scott Miller lived directly across the alley and the party resumed at full throttle as we laughed and danced out the day completely oblivious to the wreckage we left behind.

A couple of days later I was at Smith’s house and his mother was sort of cold, shooting darts of disdain at me. As insensitive and self absorbed as I was at the time – a typical teenager, I even noticed her cold shoulder but didn’t say anything at the time. Years later, I asked Smith why his mom hated me so much. He finally admitted that she had asked him what happened to the poor gingerbread boy’s head and he replied, “Tim ate it.” Guess that’s what friends are for.