Book Review: Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack

Title: Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack

Author: M.E. Kerr

Date: 1972

Publisher: Harper & Row

ISBN: 0-440-92030-2

Length: 190 pages

Quote: "'Is shooting smack taking heroin?' Tucker said. 'It's not just taking heroin,' Dinky said. 'It's wallowing in it. That guy lives to shoot up.'"

It took me a few years to read this book. I remember looking at the shiny-new original cover--graffiti, to warn us that this was a grimy urban story--and wondering whether it was about sports, drugs, or murder, and not really wanting to know. So, for others who may have a similar reaction, there's the explanation. This is an instructive story about sober, ordinary people who live in a city where some of them are trying to help addicts. Dinky Hocker, whose real name is Susan, does not take drugs at any point in this story. She just observes that her very fashionable, p.c., leftist mother shows more empathy to the addicts the mother tries to help than she shows to Dinky, so in a moment of desperation she claims...

This is not only the story of Dinky Hocker. It's also the story of her three sober friends Natalia, Tucker, and P. John. Natalia is pretty. Tucker is appealingly shy and immature. P. John is big, fat, and a redhead, and he copes with these social handicaps by being a loud Republican, partly just to annoy his left-wing father. Tucker and Natalia like each other a lot, though more in an idealistic way--they read contemporary pop psychology together--than in a romantic or erotic way. Will they be a romantic couple next year? "You ask me if my love will grow? I don't know! I don't know!" Tucker echoes the Beatles song. P. John likes the idea of taking control of his weight and wants to share that with Dinky. Dinky sneers, "Isn't that romantic," at his friendly weight loss tips and political rants, but she's miserably aware that at least P. John is her date, whereas Tucker has eyes only for Natalia.

Their social circle also includes a few recovering addicts.These young people aren't friends on the same level that the four main characters are each other's friends, but then again they're not written off as "scags," a word that does not appear anywhere in this book. My school encouraged sneering at "scags." Dinky's parents, and church, don't encourage that.

Now do we need a little sermon for the boys out there in Readerland? Yes! We need a sermon, and it goes like this: Girls liked Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack because it portrays the cute guy learning something very important. We know, because you've told us, that a lot of you guys are not fully human. You're not interested in making friends. The only social activity you enjoy is staring at the kind of female body you drool over until you muster the nerve to suggest flopping into bed. There are some young women who can relate to that feeling for two or three days out of the month, but they soon learn that being around you even during those days is not worth the trouble. If you are male and want to have the kind of real-life experience you have been dreaming and drooling about, you're going to have to put your big boy pants on and actually talk to people you do not find attractive. The only way Natalia's ever going to notice Tucker's lovableness is by seeing him be the best possible friend to P. John and Dinky. A good way to practice, online, is to chat with what appear to be women without seeing, or asking for, a picture--or even a physical description.