A young boy in the third grade suffers from what appears to be OCD. He feels like he has to repeat phrases to himself a certain number of times to prevent bad things from happening. He's smart and good in school, but experiences compulsions to do "bad" things as well. The voice in his head tells him to throw out the mail and he decides, instead, that he must ride his bike off a short drop. He falls on rocks and injures himself. His parents are concerned. The voice worsens in the fourth and fifth grade. The narrator considers himself a freak and feels overwhelming shame and embarrassment. When he moves to a new school the summer before sixth grade, he stops needing his repetitions and things get better for a time. However, he rediscovers the "hand jive" — a flapping of the arms and constriction of the throat he did when he was younger. The narrator recalls how, in third grade, his eighth grade babysitter Gina showed him her vagina, asked to see his penis, and kissed him. She told him about sex and condoms, and told him to keep it all secret. They went on "dates" together and she gave him a ring. The narrator also remembers hand-jiving in bed and the embarrassment he felt when his dad walked in on him flapping his arms. One day, Gina tells him that she saw him hand-jiving in his driveway from her window and threatens to tell his parents. He runs away and steps on a nail. His mother finds him and pulls the nail out of his foot, and asks him what's wrong. He decides not to tell her about his and Gina's secret, because he feels that his secrets — his compulsions — are also wrong. His parents start to take him separately on outings on alternating weekends. On one of these, in the car, his dad tells him about sex and STDs. The narrator becomes afraid that his brain will melt and tells his father that he and his friend Joey have rubbed their penises together while pretending to be a man and a woman, even though he doesn't love Joey, and asks his father not to tell his mother and to inspect his penis. His father looks odd and tells him not to do it again. In sixth grade, the narrator has forgotten about the hand jive. He does poorly in his classes, and his teacher is disappointed and thinks that he has higher potential, but he feels carefree. His teacher warns him he might be held back in class with a boy whom he considers a loser. The narrator begins to study obsessively, and excels in school but regains the hand jive. In high school, it is still with him. He feels like nobody and everybody. Shy and bullied, but good-looking and oddly popular. He has a lot of sex. He uses the hand jive when he feels like a social outcast to make him feel better. The last hand jive he remembers is in college, when he hand jives on the floor to a new R.E.M. album, and imagines himself to be "ultra-cool" like the lead singer. His roommate walks in on him and he's embarrassed and resolves to never do it again. He reflects on all the time he "lost" hand-jiving, but also on how he felt like the hand jive made him feel special. He sometimes goes to the "freak show" at Coney Island. He likes the way they assert their freakishness to the world and pictures himself doing the same, presenting the hand jive onstage in a circus. Though he misses it, he refuses to do it again, for fear of being "seduced [by it] again."