Monte Carlo
This is a book in which the subtitle promises it will be about the 1970’s. To be more precise: the 1970’s in America. Therefore it is pretty much a law that there will have to be at least on reference to a Mustang, a Pontiac Firebird and a Monte Carlo. While the book would break that law with reference to the horse-inspired muscle car, it comes through on the other two, although only one is worth of a memorable simile:
“The Monte Carlo's engine throbbed like a bad headache.”
Anxiety of the Season
The narrator tells a long, involved story about one particular Christmas with upshot being he is in a state of anxiety fueled by multiple external circumstances. He is caught and he knows it though he doesn’t yet know that his parents know it yet. To describe that particular circumstance and the difficult of trying to sound perfectly normal, he devises what may be the perfect metaphorical imagery:
“My voice sounded as though a ventriloquist were standing behind me, pulling a string.”
The First (Premature) Time
Teenage sex usually isn’t romantic or particularly erotic. Usually, it is just awkward and embarrassing, especially when it is the first time and an excitable boy with no experience acts like an excitable boy with no experience:
“My arms buckled and I collapsed on top of her, as startled as if I'd crashed through the ceiling…It took all the energy I had just to separate myself from her and flop onto my back. For a time, I felt like a stranger to myself. My body wasn't a body, but a humming void, peaceful and weightless.”
Not the Wienermobile
A scout outing wrangles the narrator and his buddies a chance to meek the Weiner Man and go inside his wiener-shaped vehicle. It is not called the Wienermobile, however, because that is a trademarked name of Oscar Mayer. Pretty much the same deal, however:
“The Frankmobile looked pretty big from the outside, but inside it was close and cluttered, like someone had taken an entire house and squashed it into one room.”
Ted and His Prom Date
The narrator admits that he mainly knows his buddy Dave’s friend Ted Wenkus by reputation. Either despite this or because of it, Ted and his prom date manage to earn the most intense metaphorical description of the entire section relating how things went at his prom:
“Ted Wenkus had also brought a girl I'd never seen before, a tomboy with a Prince Valiant haircut and a crooked smile, the kind of girl who was probably good at pinball and could blow interesting smoke rings. Ted reminded me of a giraffe: he had a freakishly long neck topped by a head the size of a cantaloupe.”
