Beautiful Girl

When I was fifteen, I cut off the last joint of my left ring finger during a woodshop class. I was laughing at a joke while cutting a board on a table saw. The bite of the blade sent a great shock through me, and I didn’t dare look down, but the bleached faces of the other boys told me just how bad it was.They didn’t reassemble bodies in those days. Later, I heard that one of the guys in the class had picked up the joint, complete with dirty fingernail, and scared some girls with it. No surprise, no hard feelings; it was the kind of thing I would’ve done, and not only because I was a jackass. The girls around me were coming into glorious bloom, and my way of pretending not to be in awe of them was to act as if we were still kids—to tease and provoke them.I’d never had a girlfriend, not really. In sixth grade, in Seattle, my friend Terry and I used to meet his cousin Patty and another girl at the Admiral Theatre on Saturday nights. Patty and I sat in the back and made out for two hours without exchanging a word, while Terry did the same with Patty’s friend. After the movie, Terry and I left by the side exit so his aunt wouldn’t . . .