Blood Test

A short memory of childhood self-care/harm

I step outside the camp store on a bright summer morning and open up the pack. Most candies you casually pop in your mouth, but this is not most candies. I delicately place the hard green disk on my tongue and wait.

I’m a hurricane’s eye encircled by young male energy: shit-talking shouts on a basketball court; “No running!” moans from bleary-eyed 19-year-old counselors, speed-slapping card games I’ve just learned to play on the porch of a nearby bunk. I’m making it sound fun, and sometimes it was.

In 1985, I don’t know that one day they’ll stop selling GianTarts (because of lawsuits?), that younger people will think I’m talking about the far less menacing Giant Chewy Tarts that replaced them (in a conspiracy to make the public forget?). When I describe this candy, I’ll say it was the size of a half-dollar, and people won’t know what that is either. They won’t remember the super-square version of John F Kennedy’s face, his iron jaw so cartoonishly quadrilateral that it might have been a sly parody from an artist prophetically paranoid about the impact that further lionizing this weird family would have on later generations.

I also don’t know that I don’t belong here, with spoiled kids who maybe aren’t that much richer than me but certainly act like it. They haven’t figured it out either, and probably never will because I’m good at fitting in, being good enough at the games, and not letting myself judge their in-jokes and music until I’ve learned them so thoroughly that I can finally allow myself to admit that they kind of suck.

I’m letting it sit on my tongue, like you’re supposed to. Usually I’m incapable of preserving even the hardest candies for more than a few minutes. I’m always overcome by the canine drive to gnaw at it, play with it, test its tensile properties against my jaw. But a GianTart brings its own dog to the fight, intense acidity that bites into your tongue if you’re patient enough to let it dig in while you observe the chaos all around.

A GiantTart is a massage appointment for nine-year old boys. Just relax, sir, and let the chemicals do their job. As I feel the candy work its way into the fibers of my tongue, I give in to the deep calming sting amidst the cacophony of teasing and laughing and bouncing balls and maybe even someone calling my name. Not yet. I stand outside the store for another minute. Now.

I take it out of my mouth, and note the drops of red smeared into saliva sitting on the top of the still sizable green disk. Reassured, I pop the candy back in and join the fray.