Beatnik Boys


“It’s almost your 18th birthday, and you know what that means?”
“Dirty beatniks, they’ll sleep with anyone, or anything for that matter!”
“Your cousin is a success, she’s got a job and she’s married!”
Wilma sat on the bus wedged in-between a large older-woman and a man with a
box of tools that dug into her arm whenever the bus would stop; there would
be a bruise for sure. A cowboy standing in front of her, who smelled like
hay and Old Spice, kept stepping on her toes and smiled every time he did.

Next week was Wilma Stenslin’s 18th birthday, a day she had been dreading for
years because she would have to leave the nest and find a real-job. It
wouldn’t be so bad if only there was someone, anyone who cared about her.
She sat daydreaming about that anyone; she’d find a “dirty beatnik” who would
love her. Wilma wondered what it was like to kiss someone; throughout school
she’d never gone-out, or even danced with anyone for that matter. If only she
could find that out-cast-of-society, she knew she could make him happy and they
would live their humble little lives alone-and-forsaken, but most of all, happy!

Perhaps she would find a dirty-boy who would get her pregnant, then he’d have
to take care of her. She vowed to devote herself to his every need, want and
desire. She would glow in the rapture; prove to her parents that she could be
a success like her cousin.

Then she thought about her cousin Erin, who at the age of 21 already had three
kids and one on the way. The thought of Bobby, her husband, who was the foreman
at the Flambeau yo-yo factory, even made her envious. As stupid as Bobby was, he
was still a man; albeit 42 and not much smarter than when he was playing football
in high school. Even having a complete loser like Bobby was better than sitting
in bed alone at nights longing to have someone hold and caress her. How many
nights had Wilma sat in the dark drifting off to sleep tortured by wild-desires
and half-dreams of making love to a special someone.

“Oh god, then there’s the whole masturbation thing; I’m surely going to hell!”
She thought to herself sinking deeper and deeper into her funk. “At least no one
knows I do it; what if someone ever found out that I did though? Perhaps god won’t
care if he knew how much I’m hurting inside; it’s not like I do anything else?
What about girls like Irene Stakowski, I heard she slept with the whole football
team; if anyone’s going to hell, she surely is. Maybe if I find a beatnik, I can
stop masturbating, and no one will ever know.”
Wilma reached up to pull the cord for her stop; the man’s metal box slammed into her
ribs. “Got’cha!” The cowboy said smiling, and wiped the tobacco-drool off his chin.
As she squeezed past him, she buried her elbow into his stomach, making him swallow his
‘chaw’ and gasp for breath. As she stepped into the stairwell, a cold blast of air
shot past her through the open doors; the bleary-eyed cowboy could barely make out
her lips as they mouthed, “Got’cha!”

The cold wind and snow bit into her face and made her even more sullen. She had to
take small steps so that she wouldn’t fall on her face, before she got home. Home,
the place where every waking hour reminded her that she was loveless and away from

her beatnik who was looking for her.
She didn’t know anything about poetry or even jazz music for that matter, but she was
willing to learn. She wondered if all beatniks were criminals and drug addicts: then
how come Maynard G. Krebs on Dobby Gillis wasn’t robbing banks and getting girls knocked
up? He was quite lovable; if she found someone like Maynard, she could change him, make
him like everyone else; she knew her love could change any man if only he would give her
a chance. She could have a family, a house and a Chrysler, or a Rambler if things didn’t
work as she hoped.

“What if he changes me?” She said out-loud, stopping in her tracks. Visions of wild
parties where naked people smoked marijuana all night playing bongos while reciting
poetry and having orgies shot through her racing brain.

Wilma Stenslin: DRUG ADDICT! She pictured herself stretched out on the floor of a messy
New York apartment with a lit marijuana-cigarette hanging from her mouth; her
undernourished children trying to wake their father out of his own “reefer” induced stupor.
Suddenly the police burst in with her parents behind them.

“That’s her! That’s our, well, that thing on the floor used to be our daughter – I’m so
ashamed!”

“I guess that’s my lot in life?” She thought. “I can’t do this by myself, I don’t even
have a place to live; they’ll be sorry they treated me like this. They’ve never even given
me a chance. How do they expect me to be grown-up when they don’t even let me date anyone?
I don’t want to be like Erin!”

“Oh, hi Billy!” Said a scruffy boy looking up from a book of poetry, almost running into
her. She’d seen him only a few times in school and always thought he was kind of strange,
but not now; now she saw him in a new light. His drawn face and scraggly beard made him
the perfect-beatnik. Was this her new found true-love, she could feel his love for her now,
the way he looked at her.

She stood on a pedestal; a Greek column guilt in gold that he alone built for her. She felt
every bit the most beautiful woman any man had ever laid eyes on; she would hold him to her
bosoms, this man-child that society had shunned, and bear the fruit of his loins.

“Love me, I am Venus!” She thought to herself. The clouds began to part, and in that instant,
they stood alone bathed in a shaft of sunlight.

The only problem was, she couldn’t remember his name!