I Know Your Secrets

We haven’t talked about my man Hanson for some time, right? The mustached inevitability of this fool in my life has seemed of late to be bottomless, and at times I forget to even be annoyed with him. But there he is, gazing benignly at me on a lazy Saturday with unsteady eyes rimmed with red, asking me if I’ve given any more thought to this or that. Well, you know, I have, actually.

Check it:

Three nights ago, Happy Hanson stumbled down his lack-luster front steps just after 11 PM and lurched angrily into his car. He backed unprofessionally out of his driveway and squealed up the street. The little fucker was painfully drunk. He reached the corner and blew through the stop sign, hanging a hard left and swerving to avoid objects only visible to pathetic, drunk assholes with disgusting cock brooms under their lips and hypocrisy in their beaten souls.

I know this because I was following him, you see.

I’ve been making it a habit to ride my bike up to his house after dark a couple of times a week, just to see if I can witness a drop of madness before bed. Most of the time it’s nothing; he might come out to the small porch and drink several beers while reading magazines about people and places he’d rather be, or I might catch the occasional conversation between poor Andy and his quickly aging, alcoholic, fuck-nuts crazy, depressed bitch of a wife as it wafts out on the night breeze to caress my troubled ears with its bitter qualities. Then there are nights like tonight, rare gems with the raw power to blackmail, when Hanson’s decision-making skills—stretched to the limit by the tremendous gravitational forces of life—completely fail him and he breaks all the precious laws he claims to hold so dear.

I jumped up from my shadowed perch on the large rock across the street, pulled my bike from the bushes, and pedaled after my sad Andy. He didn’t drive quickly, which made it easy, but he blew through just about every fucking stop sign along North Fountain Blvd, which made it a tad treacherous. But you know me; I got no problems with adventure. As far as my main man Hanson, though, he’s a lucky motherfucker, cause only a couple of blocks over on Limestone the cops prowl like pumas, just waiting to sink their glistening fangs into the skull of their drunken prey, hold tightly until the twitches subside, and then drag the carcass off to their lair at the station house where the victim is tenderized and drained in stark florescent privacy. It is poetry. It is survival of the fittest. Hanson is NOT the fittest. Hanson is the least of us all, and if the predator cats of Limestone had the chance, they would devour his sad sack of useless flesh in a single gulp—pageboy cut, mustached lip, clammy skin—all of him.

If I seem fixated on the man’s mustache, it is only because I do not understand it.

I followed this joker for practically four miles—at one time pulling up nearly even with his car in order to peek inside the driver’s window. Hanson was talking very animatedly into his cell phone. He was wiping his puffy eyes, again spilling cheap tears of remorse. At the time I assumed because of some tawdry remark made by his shot-slamming jezebel, but I found out soon enough that while that may have played a part, the main reason for spilling his salt was part of a deeper transgression. Or maybe I should say a LARGER one.

At the end of the trip was Parrin Woods Park, a heavily wooded and private area. It’s not often used because of 1) the lack of any playground equipment for the kiddies and 2) so few places to sit for anybody else. On any given night, the spot is reserved for darkly hooded youths dealing meth and coke to the disastrous party set of the town—pathetic children with no handle on their self-images (and who am I to talk, yes, yes, I know…now please shut the fuck up, perfect people), and the middle-aged factory set: drying out and splitting slowly from being left out in the elements with no protection, they stay up for days at a time beating their spouses and girlfriends mercilessly, taking apart their cheap K-Mart boom boxes and watching the same VH1 countdown shows over and over with itchy scalps and bloody half-moon scars in their palms.

Hanson wrenched his worn, green Neon over to the side of the road—ostensibly to park the fucking thing, but he really just veered over to the side of the road and turned it off, the ass of the automobile sticking waaaaay out into traffic. Did I mention that the guy was fucking plastered? For myself, I bolted my bike very neatly to a fencepost about 20 yards down and followed Andy from a discreet distance across the street and through the foliage. Into the canopy we traveled, and my nerves immediately began to sing chilled arias as the night warned of danger from broke junkies looking for a way.

A breeze was on my face, but I didn’t pay it much mind as I kept eyes trained on the hunched back of Hanson, who glanced about himself nervously. Seems the freakiness of seclusion had quite a sobering effect on the man. Oddly enough, he never looked back to see the one person in the park who was actually following him.

Parrin is not a large park, and soon we were in the middle of it—alone as far as I could tell—and I dipped back behind a largish V of oaks just as Hanson stopped and spun 90 degrees, squatting. He pulled a can of cheap beer from his hip pocket and cracked it open. In the silence of midnight it sounded like one of the trees falling down upon us. He must have felt the same way, for he ducked his head quickly and looked around as if a bat had just landed in his hair. After taking a swig, he sat against a tree and seemed to doze. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? The guy comes all this way and risks a sound mugging—or worse, arrest—just so he can catch some freaking “ME” time? No fucking way. I was getting steadily more pissed off and was nearly at the point of going out and giving the shit-heeled loser a swift fucking kick when approaching footsteps yanked me back down to my spot.

To my ultimate surprise, a decidedly plump and juicy sausage emerged from the darkness, knelt over Hanson, and began to eat his face. The sausage ran its fingers through his bowl cut—possibly looking to pull the skin down his forehead and suck out the soft eyes—and I felt my body leave itself with shock, but I pinched my own nipple and brought myself back around pretty quickly. Of course by now I realized that this thing was not a giant killer sausage at all, but a dumpy woman packed tightly into a drab and clingy summer dress. She was not eating Hanson’s head, either, but kissing him deeply on his weak mouth. I was completely floored by the scene. I tried to get a good look at this fat woodland fairy, but in fact the mystery cherub never even came up for air. She just kept nomming all over Hanson’s sweaty mug in the dim moonlight, filtered and downright fucking spooky through the overhead leaves. I could, however, see this: she was fat. I could also see this: what little light there was bounced off of round, fleshy cheeks that were so plump and yummy that they squeezed her eyes almost shut, and in the night those eyes seemed like black demon slits. I was freaking scared of her, truth be told. I mean, who but a night fiend with an evil agenda of total control would kiss a slug like Andy Hanson? Even if she WAS as fat as a bursting German wiener?

They never spoke a word to each other—which only deepened the strange sense of surrealism to my surroundings—until Hanson actually started pushing the demon cow onto her back, roughly drawing her jersey dress up over her luminous and voluminous thighs—an action to which the ample imp breathed, “Oh, you ARE a little scamp, aren’t you?” Hanson merely giggled manically as she helped him unbuckled his chinos, and I was grossly embarrassed for them both as they enacted the clumsy ballet of pulling down Hanson’s drawers. I was then mortified to find he wore tighty-whiteys, like some kind of overgrown, paunchy ten year-old. I nearly fucking PUKED when I saw his hairy, white ass, and though I found myself unable to look completely away, I had to turn my head and squint so that I might at least blur the unbelievably hellacious porno playing out in front of me, allowing my stomach to slightly calm itself.

Now is when it gets bad, people. If you have kids, now is the time to tell them to leave the fucking room. Hanson, ever the consummate pro, wrestled his miserable hips between the chunk’s thighs and buried himself up to the hilt. No condom. Did you hear me? NO CONDOM, I SAID. First the man is a murderous DUI son of a bitch, swerving his half-ton missile blindly down the streets where INNOCENT CHILDREN PLAY, and now he was planting his root into the messy garden of some fat devil pig of the night with no glove on. How in the hell can I look this schmuck in the fucking face from now on out? He’ll pontificate his freaking ass off to me, telling me how to live MY life, and just LOOK at the sloppy mess which is him. Oh my Christ. The world. Witness the hideous trial of our lives and tell me I’M the crazy one. All of you out there telling me I’M the one who’s got to screw MY head on straight, how I’VE got to get MYSELF together: listen to this idiot, you say; do what that fool says, you say; on and on you all go, speaking in tongues of lunacy while Hanson fouls a chubby, faceless tart in the woods at the witching hour. BAH. I am a firm believer in the policy of stoning.

So the whole godless act took about 45 seconds. Hanson grunted like a senseless brute and then rolled off his panting lover, licking the sweat from his mustache. She sat up and stretched herself, the messy essence of Andy glistening sickly on her gummy tummy rolls, and she turns her head lazily and says (with what I’m sure would have been half-lidded eyes if her cheeks had not been so fucking FAT), “You sure scratched my itch, Andy Hanson.” Seesh.

Hanson looked at her with absolutely freaking CRAZY-ass eyes, and he says to her—now mind you, these are the FIRST motherfucking words I have heard him say to this woman since she appeared—he says to her, “Next time I want to get you in your butt.”

I barked shocked laughter. I simply couldn’t help it. I’m not a goddamned SUPER HUMAN, after all. And of course, Hanson and his woman erupted into a fit of “Who’s there” and “Show yourself,” but obviously they were shouting at the dark back of a guy already halfway back to his bike.

I went home and took a long shower.

The Way-Fucked Circle of Life

It’s fucking crazy to think that sending a guy like ME to an old folks’ home is going to do ANYBODY any good at ALL.

My court appearance went off without a hitch. Processed like meat, cleansed of disease, stamped with assurances—I am made anew, and shall never stray from the path of direct righteousness again. They said to me, “Pendel, you have done wrong by us…why did you wander into the dark? Tell us what you saw while you were there.” And I said please give me a chance to explain, oh devisors of the faith, oh commanders of the wallow, oh brandishers of the law and sickle—my time in shadow was wasted…wasted…and now I’ve returned to the light and my sight is restored. Take pity. Have mercy. Show me the same clemency you would reserve for yourself. Are we not brothers? Has your life been a simple traipse from one patch of verdant truth to the next? Or did you struggle? Was there a climb over rock and stone with bleeding palms and cracked fingers and the thinning air shortening your breath as the sand trickled into your eyes? Did you stumble over cracks in the twilight? Was there never a moment of fear and doubt when, roused for a moment from your daydreams, you looked around to find the streets were strange and the windows cracked and boarded? Are you a fucking prodigy? Have you never soiled a finger while wiping your ass? Do you ever even shit AT ALL? Or are you magically immaculate, with every tender bite of veal dissolving like a drop of dew in the morning sunlight; no need for the crude stomach, the vile intestine?

“Are you quite through?” asked the judge, an old, dry fuck by the name of Parrott.

“Would you just shut up already?” pleaded Uncle Ben—whom you all know by now.

But I could not stop throwing myself upon the mercy of the court: Let me tell you a dream I once had, your honor (I begged). I was only a boy at the time—which in reality for me was not so long ago—and the summer was upon us and it was fucking HOT. I mean, you live here, you know how it gets. It’s brutal, your honor. The humidity is a living thing that fills your lungs; a sloth with hot breath sitting upon your shoulder, holding you down while the algae in its coat slowly creep down your neck and chest. I fucking HATE IT and I always have, and I complain viciously until all around me pray for a coma to take me until milder days arrive.

Evening falls, and the asshole sun finally finds it in its boiling heart to sink behind the hills, but still the bloated air presses its sweaty hand over your nose and mouth, suffocating you. Such barometric oppression is twice as distracting to a child as he tries to sleep, and to ME, ever the super fucking SENSITVE one, it is three times so. But my mother and father—too cheap to turn on the freaking battered window unit that could have saved us all from perdition and YEARS of mild spite—resolved the issue as inexpensively as they possibly could by letting us all sleep in the living room that night in front of one crappy, tore up box fan (as opposed to procuring a fan for each one of us, which would have broke the goddamned BANK, no doubt). Kids love this kind of shit, however, and the break from routine was welcome. We giggled and farted our way down the hall that night, our pillows under our arms—Pendel, Clare, and Matty—happy then because we knew no better; happy because to us, shelter was all there was, a roof over your head and a shirt on your back and the smile on the face of your father or your mother—never to see the worried creases in their foreheads when they turned to the window as the world wore away at their will—simple reassurances that sufficed so well at the time, but later would leave a residue of vague regret on your ribs as you think of all the nasty shocks in store.

Tee hee hee.

As hot as it was in the house, the breeze and noise from the fan was an extraordinarily comforting thing, and the very act of waiting for sleep was like a hug; the movement of air over my head seemed exotic, hypnotic. All five of us lay in a row in the living room that night, and I couldn’t have felt safer. Gradually, the murmurs and mirth faded as the shadows grew. Soon, all was dark and quiet, but something tugged at my mind telling me the peacefulness was a façade, and though I knew the loved ones near me were all asleep, a squiggling worm of fear in my gut told me that I was not the only thing awake in the vicinity—so I wasn’t entirely surprised when the door to my parents’ room slowly and silently cracked open…

The malevolent specter of my dream didn’t emerge from the room immediately. It first let the fact of the door sink in for a few seconds. As my guts slowly turned to ice, I watched the crack of blackness upon blackness slowly widen. The ice inside me froze my lips, froze my lungs, froze my limbs, and I could not speak, breath, or move when finally the dark figure—hooded and thin and uniquely evil—lurched slowly and ohhhh so silently towards us—towards ME, really, I KNEW he was coming for me, this evil piece of shit—and I remember feeling as helpless as I ever had in my LIFE, your honor. Because you see, I knew this presence inching its way slowly nearer wanted to kill me, yes, but he also wanted to get me out of the room as quietly as possible, because when I died he wanted me to be alone. Do you understand? He wanted my death to be worse than painful, more calloused than premature, greater than the terror of violence.

He wanted me to be lonely when I died, your honor.

There are many shades of black I discovered as I watched this mysterious cutter. The room I was in was very dark, but the hallway before me leading to the bedrooms was even darker. The crevasse left by the yawning door to my parents’ room was plain black. But the cloaked figure advancing on me like the staggered frames of a movie with missing cells was even BLACKER, and the hole in the hood where the face should be…well, that was a fucking abyss, plain and simple. When you rise uncontrollably (after the unannounced exit of gravity) above the trees and into the sky, straight up through the clouds—and the air is stripped from your lungs, and the atmosphere loses its color as you flail your arms hopelessly—soaring up to outer space, and then there is the blackness of the universe before you coupled with the unimaginable distances between things; but you do not stop, you only keep flying in a direction that can only still be described as upwards (though there is no “up” now), until, to your horror, you find yourself passing into a realm unknown, the mythical NOTHING that we always feared existed but could not prove, could not even bring ourselves to theorize, and yet here it is and its SWALLOWING you, gulping you in, sucking you out of the inkiness of space and hauling you into a blackness that you could have never in a million years supposed existed…the BLACK of NOTHING which you never imagined because who could ever truly imagine nothing? This was the black of the encroaching figure’s face. And now its frigid hand was around my ankle and pulling me, and the night no longer seemed hot, it no longer seemed close, it no longer seemed ANYTHING for I was quickly leaving the world of day and night and morning and evening and ANYTHING; I was being pulled away from safety to die alone. And I finally found my voice and I cried out for my mother to help me because the harbinger had me—the blackness was closing around my eyes as I saw my people all start suddenly from the floor at the sound of my voice and immediately begin to shout after me with their hands reaching out—but in their eyes was hopelessness. They did not gain their feet to chase after me. They knew there was nothing they could do. I was fucking GONE, your honor. I clawed furiously at the carpeting and the walls as I was pulled down the hallway towards the great nothing to die alone, but there was no purchase to stay me. Everything faded.

I awoke in my father’s arms, sobbing, crying out, my little kid PJ’s soaked in sweat. Like a goddamned baby.

“Where are you going with all of this?” judge Parrott demanded.

“Your Honor, my client is simply very sorry about everything that’s happened and the people’s time he’s wasted today,” pleaded Uncle Ben.

I cried out BULLSHIT. The whole point of the fucking story is that I’m INNOCENT, your honor. This fucking rice making fool doesn’t represent me. Not ME. He might THINK he’s representing some little asshole he “knows” as his nephew—some miserable little prick with a penchant for nasty anger and acting out against the cloned pigs feigning superiority—but that person is not ME. I am separate from all of that fucking jazz, your honor. I am not even in this fucking ROOM, your honor. I am a million miles beyond space and dying ALONE your honor. Or weren’t you even listening?

“Oh shut up,” said the judge. “This is nonsense. It doesn’t matter whether you committed a crime or not, Mr. Haight. The fact of the matter is that you ARE a miserable little prick, whether you believe it or not, and I think it would do you some good to spend some time watching the very specter you fear taking others into the blackness.”

I told the judge that I must freaking disagree most fucking strongly, but he sentenced me to community service in the local old folks’ home anyway. Which is fine. No, really. It is. The Eternal Camile’s great grandfather is there, for one—which means there’s a chance to get laid inside an old folks’ home, which would be fucking cool beyond BELIEF. I think Benji has a great Aunt or something locked up inside, too, but I’m not sure.

Three months. I can do that standing on my fucking HEAD, bubba. Make book on it.  It’s kind of exciting, when you think about it. To stare into the eyes of a soul so near death and to ask them if they want to play some cards…if you can’t take something away from that, then you’re definitely beyond help.

I can’t wait to tell them how lucky they are to be so close to having it all over with.

I Am of the Dregs, Part 2

The things that I see during my time in summer session leave me feeling confused about my current relationship with my optical nerves. Do I love them for their warnings regarding the coming danger, or do I hate them for the vile social interactions that, through them, I am forced to bear witness? The other day I was left loving them for the hilarious dramady they treated me to.

Eric Grassman is not a bad person. Not really. Something tells me that he is straining to clamp down on an indefinable fear inside himself. The world is too much for Eric, and it makes him lash out in ways far too creative for a securely tightened person. He has pulled some of the most outlandish stunts I have ever seen, and that’s saying quite a lot when you take into account the town/state/country where I live. I myself have made some pretty questionable moves, but Eric…

Eric is tall, like 6 foot and an inch or two, and he sports longish blond hair that on many days cries for the attention of a human hand. His face is eternally affronted, with sad eyes that constantly plead with you to tell him why. A splash of boyish freckles upon his small nose gives him an overall look of innocence, allowing us around him to forgive him his grandstanding. But the question always remains: How the fuck did he THINK of that?

And now an example: Mrs. Conway is a twit who runs a joke of an English class. Old, dry, used, and frail, her simple disconnectedness is a detriment to her students. First of all, she’s a freak and she’s losing it. I don’t know how Alzheimer’s is supposed to smell, but this woman fucking REEKS of it. Only two weeks ago the woman wore one red pump and one purple pump (in a blue dress), and as if this wasn’t bad enough, they had different sized fucking HEELS for Christ’s sake. I swear it’s true. How do you DO that? The moment you put them on in the morning—I mean truly, the fucking INSTANT the second shoe slips onto your foot—you know you’ve fucked up, right? Even if you ARE color blind, just the feel of things…doesn’t she have that sense anymore? Fuck, what a dingy broad. Eric Grassman hates her, and can’t tolerate even the sight of her. He visibly shakes the entire forty-five minutes we sit in class, mute and stupid. His fists balled, he glares her in the eye, calculating his next disruptive move. Often times during attendance, she’ll call his name and sparks fly like a dragging muffler: “Eric Grassman?”

“…”

“Eric Grassman, are you here?” She is, for the record, staring right at him.

“…”

“Eric?”

“…”

“Eric?”

“WHAT??!!? JESUS!!”

“Are you here?”

The snort of his disgust is enough to break glass. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

Conway is unflappable in her senility. “No, Eric. I’m not.”

“YES. I AM HERE, IDIOT.”

“Thank you, Eric. Tonya Gelfy?”

Conway’s class is on the second floor of the high school. Eric sits by the window. The windows are not sealed, they can open. Can you hear the train coming? On this morning, Eric had something very special planned for roll-call. I was dreaming of a life with no sorrow when several audible gasps roused me and made me turn in my seat, just in time to see Eric’s feet as he climbed out the window. I wasn’t shocked—this is Eric we’re talking about, after all—but my curiosity was highly peaked and I was delighted to see where this insanity was careening. Eric sat down on the ledge with a decent amount of grace, and began to swing his feet, smiling into the sun, as if it were Sunday and he was on the docks or a remote vacation island. Immediately following, Conway entered the room wordlessly and closed the door behind her. And as always, without uttering one word of greeting to any of us, she walked slowly to her desk, opened her attendance book, and began to read the names, completely unaware of the tense and expectant air. Eventually, inevitably, she came to Eric. “Eric Grassman?” Soft and whiney, like an old, airless cow. “Eric?” We all looked around at each other, our smiles wary. None of us palled around with Eric—he was simply too bizarre for even the likes of us—but none of us wanted to give him up by glancing out the window at his swinging feet. “…Eric…? Does anybody know if Eric has been in school today, or where he might be?”

How do you answer that question? You don’t. You let it lie. You watch with a pale smile as life unravels around you.

Soon after role was over, Conway put her prissy little fucking book away and turned to the chalk board, making meaningless scratches upon it with yellow chalk as she blathered on about someone long dead. As she did, Eric climbed stealthily yet casually back in the window, took his seat, and folded his hands in front of him. He looked at no one, he smiled at none of us, he made no gestures of conquest or victory. Eric does what he does for himself. The other members of the strained class faced forward again, filled with good humor and confusion, pleasantly apprehensive to follow the coming fallout. I couldn’t help but let my gaze stray. I really admired what this young man was doing; I wanted to see if there was a clue in his eyes. Finally he glanced at me and gave a wink, nodding his head slightly, indicating that I should face forward now.

Conway turned back around to face the class. I hadn’t been listening to her prattling one iota, so even the mundane quality of her question, wrapped in the odd actions of the last ten minutes, made my head spin just a touch. “Does anybody have any idea what followed?” Huh. The answers seemed endless, and since no one had been paying Conway any attention, none were willing to try and respond.

No one, that is, except Eric. He raised his hand. “Yes, Eric. You have an answer?”

“He drank himself to death. He died in a gutter.”

“Well, no, Eric. Not at all. No, that’s not right at all. He lived for years after.”

“I thought he died.”

“No, he didn’t. Not then.”

“Okay, so he didn’t.”

“Don’t get angry, Eric. It’s not my fault he didn’t die.”

“I’M NOT ANGRY.”

Conway gave up the conversation and turned back to the board. I was dying from joy inside. The whole scenario was playing out perfectly. Conway wrote half a letter and then froze. She remained stiff for what seemed like a fantastic eternity, and then pivoted slowly back to the class. “Eric, what’s going on?”

Eric jerked his head back, slighted. “What do you mean by that?”

“What are you up to?”

“Nothing! I’m just sitting here! GOD!”

“Eric, don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes. You weren’t here a second ago, now where were you?”

Eric’s face grew red. He was honestly incensed even though he was in fact guilty. I know the feeling exactly. I think it was fun for him, to play this out. He was in a test of wills with Conway, and this acting was merely part of the struggle. “That’s fucking BULLSHIT. I’ve been sitting here the whole time!”

“No. No you haven’t been.”

“YES!”

“No.”

“YES I HAVE! GOD! Why are you always AT me?!”

Conway snapped, but only a tad. It was like hearing a twig break in a hurricane. She set her chalk down hard. “I am not always at you, Eric. You were most certainly not at your desk when I called roll, and I want to know where you were.”

“NO. I was HERE. I ANSWERED you!”

“No you didn’t!”

“Yes I DID!”

“Eric you were not at your desk!”

“BULLSHIT.”

“No, YOU’RE full of bullshit, young man!” Holy fucking crap. Wow. That was big for Conway.

“You can’t say that to me!” Such feigned indignity. I love it. Eric just might be a genius.

“Dammit Eric! The door was SHUT! I closed it myself! You were not at your desk and you did not answer me!”

“You’re crazy. I don’t have to sit here and take this.” And with that, he simply stood up and walked out of the room.

The class sat stunned. Conway didn’t know what hit her. She looked at all of us. There were answers inside our heads. She knew it. As thick as she is, she knew it. She picked up her chalk. She cleared her throat; she pulled at her dress, and left a huge, yellow smudge of chalk down the front. Classic Conway. She blinked. “Ok. So. Does anybody have any idea what followed?” Needless to say, we did not.

Later that day, as I rode my bike home, I thought it might be a fucking GAS to make friends with Eric Grassman, and watch the explosions go off all around him, and to study the craters he left in his wake. I wondered if he had a place to live following the summer session.

I was getting to like Eric Grassman, and I wanted to know what the world looked like to him. It made it all the worse, then, two days later when Dougy the Rhino beat the shit out of Eric right there in Conway’s class.

But more on that later…LATER.

I Am of the Dregs, Part 1

There are times when life offers little reason to do well. Summer sessions at any school are the perfect cross section from which to study such a phase.

During the normal school year, this swank institution provides the likes of Benny Henderson with every possible accommodation in order to smooth one’s ascension up life’s indiscriminate ladder to mediocrity; but during summer classes, it is simply a way to cage the random beasts in our neighborhoods and keep them from ruining our lives during an otherwise peaceful vacation season—unless, of course, your name happens to be Pendel Haight and you’re stuck in the fucking cage with the animals. They are the worst of the worst; the kids who are not only dumber than pigeon shit and uglier than a sack of assholes, but also just plain MEAN. Dirt eaters void of underwear wandering the streets of your town with an insatiable urge to drive the pistons of hopelessness. Filthy inside and out, they invade your right to amble unhindered with a palpable malevolence that is truly unnerving.

And, according to my state’s department of education, I am one of them—or, at the very least, I must walk among them—and it has caused me to become somewhat unhinged and paranoid. I am the darting eye and the restless hand. I twitch spastically as my peripheral vision is put to the ultimate test, keeping the beasts within my circles of attention at all times. I do not do this needlessly, I assure you. These people—these BOYS specifically, for at this level the girls are either TRULY stupid, or merely useless sluts and druggies—these BOYS are the MEN that will one day become the cause for your deadbolts at night; that are the stalkers of daughters; the side of mankind that leaves the elderly woman beaten and bruised, crushed and sullied in the corner and void of all her meager possessions, the end of her life reduced to the shame and pain of debasement. These boys will be the ones to take the only thing you can truly call your own—your self respect—and they will use it to wipe the blood from their snarling mouths.

It’s all fostered by the system, of course. As a species, we love to fucking coddle ourselves. It makes me sick. I mean, come ON, people. You fucking KNOW by the late teens which kids are fucking sociopaths. It’s so fucking OBVIOUS. Donnie Watts is a goddamn LUNATIC, and anyone who has to sit in the same room with him for more than 10 freaking minutes can feel it inside their BONES. The teachers know it—they’re scared shitless by this insane prick. You can see it in their eyes every time he bobs to the surface. But who do they talk to about it? Anyone? Actually, I bet they do. I can see in my mind’s eye the line forming outside the principal’s office, each tired faced lined with a litany of horror stories about this thoughtless, crazy, fucking asshole. But the principal doesn’t care. The principal doesn’t have to deal with him at all. No, the principal only has to listen to the prissy whines of the upper class parents and make sure that they all have clean bottoms and pressed panties; he need only ensure the safe passage of their precious children to, at the very least, the third college of their choice.

How many shaggy doggies must have their lives choked away inside the oppressive closeness of the abandoned refrigerator before someone in charge decides to throw the mad psycho Donnie Watts into the deepest and darkest hole we can find?

The Watts family hail from the caves found just west of the center of the earth, but they clawed their way to the surface some time ago and staked a claim near the outskirts of town in a vinyl-sided box with a car lot for a front yard and a cat ranch out back. I would like to say that rumors of incest abound in this family, and so one could expect a hell-spawn to arise out of the anguished dust—but alas, no. Genetics simply created a monster, as genetics are apt to do from time to time. Don’t get me wrong: Donnie’s family is one scary fucking bunch. Sometimes, even from a mile or more away, you can hear his father cursing the light and swinging the belt as the mother wails and the children scatter. They all drink constantly—you could build a sizeable pontoon from the beer cans left around the vicinity on any given day. The air around the house is filled with the smoke of unhappiness and cigarettes, and the youngest daughter—aged 13—is the most readily available lay in town for many of the factory workers nearby—a sad pack of men who gave up on their dreams and a decent spot in heaven long ago. By all accounts, young Sylvie Watts has absolutely no qualms with this. As far as anyone knows, she thoroughly enjoys her popularity with the night crew and wouldn’t have it any other way.

I am depressing myself simply writing about these people.

Donnie. He shares my summer math class and much to my chagrin sits just behind me, one row over and two seats back. His curly brown hair frames a set of eyes constantly brimming with heated excitement. You can see the gears constantly turning. Sometimes I’ll pretend to drop a pencil just so I can gauge his latest action and he’ll be staring right at me with those keyed up eyes, and I get worried sick wondering what he might be thinking about. “You sure as shit drop your fucking pencil a lot, PENDEL.” he yapped at me the other day. I barked out some panicked laughter, and watched my back the whole way home. Sounds strange coming from yours truly, Pendel the Great and Terrible, but you don’t know this guy. It is a well known fact that he carries a knife with him everywhere, and has been responsible for the hospital stays of several kids from his neighborhood. Donnie plays with homemade blow darts. He has a row of cans always set up in a vacant lot near his vinyl box and practices shooting at them regularly with a gun that it is rumored he stole from under the bed of police chief Moody himself. That last part is a little much, I admit, but you get the idea.

Donnie always wears one of several pairs of loose jogging shorts—not exactly dirty, not truly clean. One pair is black, the other is red, and the third pair is white with blue piping. He wears no underwear with them. It makes me want to fucking BARF, and I hate it whenever he comes within ten feet. He loves to walk near the desk of a girl and pull the leg of his shorts up, and dance his pecker up and down right in front of their faces. The girl is always horrified at the act, but she does not dare yell out loud, because Donnie does not shy away from punching a girl in the face. I saw him do it once, from a distance. I was in the school parking lot watching him advance on an unknown chick across the street from me, and for whatever reason, without saying anything as he passed, he just clocked her in the chin and kept going. I’ll never forget the way she screamed out and fell to her knees, grabbing her face. Donnie never even turned around. He just kept on walking, never even picking up his pace, his shoulders squared, head up, and his steps completely sure. The wind blew his hair back and I could see that he wasn’t even smiling. But his eyes burned with that fucking insane excitement that always scares the fucking shit out of me. I don’t even think he knew who she was. It was a random act of violence and I’m sure it didn’t even make a dent in his day; he just feeds off of it like other people feed off McDonalds, without even registering what they are eating.

So the girls squirm helplessly away from his dick but say nothing.

AND SO, soon after he made the pencil comment to me the other day, he casually got up from his desk and walked up the row to the desk of Mrs. Trainer, a completely harmless woman in her mid-40’s who has a tendency to get lost in her shit for like 15 minutes at a time, not even looking up as the students fail to achieve any of the goals she has set out for the day. She was staring intently at some papers when Donnie approached her. She did not look up as his shadow fell across her work. Donnie pulled up the leg of his shorts and casually laid his full business out on her desk. Trainer didn’t notice. Donnie said, “Mrs Trainer.” She asked Donnie what he needed, but STILL never looked around to see. Just so focused on those mysterious documents of hers. “I don’t have my book. I need to go to my locker.”

She sighed. “Donnie, for the love of God, if you’ve gone three quarters of the class without it, why do you need it now? Go sit down.”

“Can I go to my locker anyway?”

“No. Sit.” Donnie simply backed up from her desk and let his pecker fall, slapping against his thigh. It was a fucking disgusting sound that amazed me. I mean, how could I be hearing this from 15 feet away? I guess that’s how quiet the room had gotten. Everyone was amazed. I laughed very quietly. I couldn’t help myself. It was one of the craziest things I had ever seen. I mean, Donnie placed his fucking DICK within two fucking FEET of a teacher’s face, and she never even looked up from what she was doing to notice. That takes a carelessness that is breathtaking and evil.

Donnie turned, and then let down the leg of his shorts. I just fucking KNEW he would do that, so I shielded my eyes. Several girls squealed. They couldn’t help themselves. Finally, Trainer looked up and said, “Are you going to give the class a report, Mr. Watts?”

“No.”

“Then sit.”

Donnie walked back to his desk, looking at nothing but the back wall. Shoulders back. Head high. Eyes wild. He sat down and tapped his fingers to nothing at all until the bell rang.

Summer classes are the bottom of the social barrel. I am of the dregs. I want out. I hope it isn’t too late.

Dormant Past, Vegetable Future

I spoke with my Uncle Ben yesterday. He was so stiff with me that I had to hold a mirror under his nose to see if he was breathing. Whatever. Zero love lost. It all boils down to this: I have my windshield court date in two weeks. I’m cool with it, I have no fears. I will do my time on the community service chain gang and become a real man of the people. Next thing you know, I’m Harry Truman, baby, making the highway a reality. The deception of Uncle Ben shall activate the course of his own destruction as he is crushed under the weight of my political machine.

I’ve had so many conversations with responsible elders regarding the new chapter of my action-packed life that it makes my head spin. The problem with many of these dependable people is that their lives are so void of risk, it’s a wonder they get laid at all. I don’t want that. I don’t want a sexless existence void of passion. My dry mother wants me to take on a mailroom position at my uncle’s law firm. Yeah, like THAT’S gonna fucking happen. I’ll take my own life before I submit to Uncle Ben’s plan to “whip that punk into shape”. My dad has a harebrain scheme concocted where I become an air traffic controller. Brilliant. He mentioned it to me and I said wha…? I turned to Google and typed it in, and was immediately presented with numerous lists of the most stressful jobs in the country, all with air traffic controller in the top ten. One site put it right behind ‘miner’. Fucking perfect. My dad threw his hands in the air, exasperated. “Well, you’re not just gonna get your life handed to you, Pendel! You’re gonna have to work someday, damnit!” I said fine, I’ll jump right in and defuse BOMBS for a freaking living. Would that make you happy? “I’m sure whatever idea you come up with will be better,” he said, in dickishly sarcastic overtones. Of course Mr. Hanson and Dr. Duchenheimer are still laboring under the delusions that college is still within my reach, if only I would reach out my sullied hand and grasp the cleansing light of knowledge…wrap it desperately in a lover’s embrace…

It’s simply not going to happen. Two years of Clark State Community College rubbing elbows with even bigger assholes than the freaks in my summer school classes; working the night shift at some pestilential hole-in-the-ground; another couple of years (or more) studying my pretty fingers to the bone at some rock-bottom, no-name little college until I earn that coveted BA. And then what? The rest of my life offered up for sacrifice at the alter of shady capitalism, my blood spilling into the coffers of nameless giants; giants with torsos thick with muscle rent from solid granite and kept strong with dreams wringed cruelly from the hearts of lesser men; featureless faces towering above me in the clouds, blanketed in mist, anonymous forever as they casually roar and shake the ground with thoughtless steps as heavy as mountains. I won’t fucking have it. I’d never last anyway. I doubt very highly that many in middle management—heavily scarred from merciless battles in the daily pit—would tolerate being told to go fuck themselves on a daily basis. Besides, none of those little college bitches are ready for a dick like mine. Pendel ‘The Hammer’ Haight.

Dear old dad stopped by the room the other day to say that he spoke with Benny the Hun’s father “man-to-man.” My old man is painfully archaic at times, but he is growing on me. For whatever reason, he stays in my corner, slitting open my blind eyes whenever they swell too shut to see. So anywho’s, he tells Benny’s dad that he’s terribly sorry for the pain I’ve caused everyone in their household, and he knows how horribly embarrassing it must have been for them to have to have such violence target their family in their own church parking lot. It’s so bizarre to me how everyone links church and embarrassment. Seems to me there is very little shelter to be found in this house of cards we call God—but I’m not gonna digress. Dad also tells the guy exactly WHY I did what I did, what Benny said to Clare and the insults endured by both of his children at the hands of Henderson. My dad tells the guy that if charges are pressed, he’s gonna be forced to talk about that, and he also tells the guy that Clare just hasn’t been the same after such insidious slander (Clare is WAAAAAY past it), and he’d love to avoid pressing charges for verbal assault (is there even such a thing?), but that Mr. Henderson was gonna have to meet him halfway. Amazingly, this flimsy dam of reasoning is holding for the moment. If I pay for the hospital bills arising from the broken nose (YES!) and cover the loss of the crappy sandal ($85!), the Henderson’s will most likely not press charges. Also, they apologized to Clare, and Benny the Hun’s got to attend a few weekdays of pew cleaning to make up for his sins.

I would, of course, have rather gotten off scott-free, but I guess this will do.

In other news, Sugarbear seems dead-set on living with me and Benji as soon as I get out of my summer classes. His dad has a house we can rent on the cheap in the shadier section of town, and Sugarbear has promised infinite fun in the form of weed and acid until we all mature or the house burns down, whatever comes first. This news, at least, pleased my father. I didn’t tell him about the drugs—I’ll probably keep that to myself. Sugarbear’s gonna stick close and attend Wittenberg University. Not a bad place to go for such a fuckup, really. Bear’s dad is an alumnus, and so Bear didn’t have to break his back getting in. Whatever. Take what you can, burn the rest.

More to come soon. Any suggestions on what an anti-social and overly-aggressive young man can do for a living would be most welcome at this point. I don’t know why I never thought about such matters before. I think I’m so pessimistic about anything that the future has in store that I’d rather lower the blast shields and keep my head down, barreling through the world without much thought, claiming to be ignorant of any trampled in my wake. But I felt them under my feet, and I stomped harder as they passed under.

Maybe landscaping?

Dad’s Gone Over

You think you know a person…

After the Benny Beat Down, I slunk home under the cover of nothing to find my house in utter disarray. My mom was screaming from behind the safety of her tears at my sister Clare, who was crying on the living room sofa and hugging the pillow like a teen-aged mother. My father was pacing the rug off the floor, exclaiming how a man works hard for nothing (which in fact makes perfect sense and is right on the money) to absolutely no one at all. Many of my father’s exclamations, which in the long run turn out to be 95% true if not 100% wise, fall on deaf ears. The human mind’s ability to reject the truth is at its strongest when the source of truth is flowing from the mouth of a friend.

For myself, I was fucking hungry. I marched languidly into the kitchen as all conversation came to a halt, and I took advantage of the silence to pick out a slice of cold pizza and eat the fucking thing. I turned to return the stares I was being given, paused in the middle of chewing, held out my right hand and said that my knuckles really hurt. “Well…of COURSE they do,” said my dad, and then stopped short of saying more, a confused look on his face.

“Why did you DO that, Pendel?!” wailed my mother. “How could you hit that boy like that? How could you embarrass me this way? How could my son be such an ANIMAL? You’re just a rabid animal, Pendel!” Blah blah blah. Clare stared at me blankly. I looked my mom square in the eye and said to her that the miserable little prick got what was coming to him, and that maybe now he’ll think twice before saying shit about how Clare likes to fuck her flunky brother. HEY NOW. Those sure were the magic words, and my, how they shut my dear mummy’s mouth. My dad leveled a finger at me. “We know all about what that punk said, Pendel, but you don’t just go pummeling people in the middle of the church parking lot! For Christ’s SAKE, Pendel! What were you THINKING!?” I said I was thinking about kicking some ass and taking some goddamned names, and then I excused myself to my bedroom. I then promptly turned back and stuck my head out and yelled for Clare. “What?” I hollered for her to bring me some ice, and to come alone.

A few minutes later she was there with cubes wrapped up in an old dishtowel. It had a fish on it as well as many random stains. I took it from her hands and thanked her. “You shouldn’t have done it.” she said. I shrugged and said so fucking what. It’s done. Whether or not I should have is moot now. She sighed. “You’re just begging for more quality time with Uncle Ben, you know.” So be it. She turned to leave, but looked back at the last second and said, “He’s coming.”

And immediately, my father was in the doorway. He looked at me blankly. With barely a glance to Clare, he said, “Leave us.” Formal. Humorous. Dreadful. My dad makes me like him sometimes, and at the strangest moments.

Clare left and my dad sat down on the edge of my bed while I iced my knuckles at my desk. “Does it hurt a lot?” he asked. Well, sure. “Good. It should. I don’t want you to forget what it feels like to hit another man.” I said nothing, because I couldn’t read into his words. His face was enigmatic. “Pendel, what you did today…son, you just picked the wrong time and place to make your stand. It’s one of your main problems.” That kind of took the breath out of me. It had the indisputable ring of truth. It made me angry and so sad. Everyone’s always telling me what my problems are, they’re always right, and the list keeps growing; an impossible punch list and I have no skills. I stared at my hand. I had nowhere else to look. The skin was pulled tight and was shiny, it looked like the skin of an irreparably fat person, a person who had taken on too much weight and was helpless to turn the tide and throw it off. Because he is a weak person. A person with very little self control or respect. Maybe it is in fact me; maybe I am simply fat inside…my soul needs a diet.

My dad then turned the rare trick of reaching out and placing his hand on my shoulder. “You made the wrong choice today, but I don’t know. I’m just as confused as you, I guess…but I’m proud of you, though, I think. I’m not sure.”

WTF. I was floored. PROUD?!? That certainly WAS NOT a turn I expected this lecture to take. “Pendel, that fool said something very toxic, I know. Your mother is embarrassed to her core, but I’m not.” Why not? “Hell Pendel, I don’t know. I DO know, however, that there’s some hope for you. There’s a brother down in there somewhere. That’s more than I believed yesterday, I can tell you that.”

So hey, I can only take so much love, and truly, I DID NOT earn all the mush that was oozing forth. I told him I did it more for me than for Clare, and he says, “Maybe, maybe not. I’m holding on to what I think, though.” Neat.

He stood up and said he would go because he knows how little I care for love-ins. True, but the whole display had left my head to spin. But then on his way out, he says, “There’s going to be trouble from this. I know the Henderson’s. They’re combative pricks. I’ll help you, but there’s gonna be trouble, Pendel.” I said hey, whatever. He then drops another bomb: “I’m going to make sure you graduate this summer, Pendel.” I said yeah, yeah. “Then I think you should probably move out, son. If it’s not college, then you just need to be out. You’re killing your mom, and I just don’t think you’re interested in learning any more from me. So when the summer’s done…” I said nothing. I had nothing to say. Was this the best or worst news possible? “I’ll help you find a place. I’ll help you get settled. You need to look for a job, son.”

And so he left my room.

It was by far one of the strangest conversations I had had in years. Once again, a person in my life has done and said the very last thing I would have expected. And once again it has left me feeling completely bereft of worldly comprehension.

My Love for Clare vs My Desire to Destroy Benny the Hun, Part 2, Suckers

First off, I would like to apologize to Clare. I think she’s completely right. My desire to jump on Benny the Hun’s head was completely for my own fulfillment, and seeing as she feels worse about things now than she ever did before I KICKED BEN’S WRETCHED ASS from one side of the fucking WORLD to another…well, sorry Clare. Some things in life you simply cannot change. I feel to the very depths of my tepid soul that I was meant to pound Ben Henderson into the ground, and then, as soon as he regains his tiny feet, beat him right back down again.

Benny the Hun has yet to get back up. I will be there when he does. I have cold inside that threatens to drown me, and so I must let it swallow Ben so that I may live on another day. Even you, Clare, would agree that I deserve more time on this lonesome earth than he.

Most of you know how this saga started. If you don’t, click here. Anyway, it continues along these lines: I ended up going to church again for the first time since I fingered that sad pie-hole Camile in the back pews several months ago—check that pointless day out here. It was one of the best freaking moves I have ever made in my life; since that glorious Sunday morning, I have never been asked to accompany my ridiculatory parents back to that heinous pit of hell-spawned ninnies again. Fucking loser jerk-wad tit fucking assholes. Every last one of them. They could all receive better guidance from an Ikea instruction manual, yet they choose to follow the word of an imaginary, celestial tick. BAH! Best of luck to them all as they spiral uncontrollably towards the sun. I had one reason and one reason ONLY to go back, and it wasn’t because my spirit needed a colonic. It was the only place I knew I could find Ben.

You see, my parents not only make me and my sister go to a school where we are not wanted, they themselves go to a CHURCH where THEY are not recognized. Yes, the church they attend (that I USED to attend) is in the same northern neighborhood as the fucking high school. The Church of the Slightly Affluent. The ceilings are gabled, the pews are padded, the ministers are young (so handsome!), and the collection plate has a felt bottom. Fancy fancy. Opulence on a budget, electroplated in Christ. Anyone looking can find the Hun’s family there, knee deep in worship, on every day of rest.

You could have knocked my mom over with a feather when I walked out of my room on Sunday morning and announced my intentions to accompany the family to church. I said, hey man, don’t question shit, or I’m back in my room like a flash. My mom was beaming with elation (am I an asshole or what?), and was like, “I’m not saying a word, I’m just going to enjoy this.” My dad looked at me like I was a used car salesman, but said nothing. Clare GLARED at me. When I passed by her to go outside she grabbed my arm and asked, “What are you doing, Pendel?” I told her I was on my way to say hey to the Lord and to get off my fucking back about it, because I was self-conscious about my beliefs anyway, and she was just making it worse. She fretted; she’s smart.

So let me go on record right now by saying that I am in no way some great fighter. I’ve only been in a few in my whole life. I don’t know if I can say I won these conflicts, but trust me when I say I left my mark. And I planned on leaving one FUCK of a mark on Benny the Hun that morning. I had in my pocket a roll of quarters that I had exchanged from a ten spot the day before on the way back from Dr. Douchenheimer (who had interestingly useless things to say about the whole Clare/Benny run-in, but more on THAT later), and I planned on introducing Benny’s nose to it in just a few minutes.

As the Dorkmobile steadily edged down the street towards destiny, my whole body sang with voltage. I honestly had no clue if I would win or lose, but I wanted to get my shot in. I had to let him know I heard him; I wanted him to know I had an answer. My dad drives like old people fuck, and it was making my scalp itch. I was getting so hot that my eyes felt like liquid-filled balls of fancy soap, the electrolytes were building in my armpits like Mayans. We had only gotten half-way there and I was ready to jump out the window and run the rest of the way. I imagined a long line of insanely enraged drivers pulling up beside us, horns blaring and fists shaking, spittle and curses spewing from their lips like chewed tumors as they told my dad what a fucking pussy he is. I wanted these daydreams to soothe me, but they did not. I wanted Ben Henderson. I wanted to see his lip split. I wanted to see his eye swell. I wanted to watch as he lurched crookedly away from my fury, arms wrapped around his cracked ribs. Man, I wanted to see this fucker cry like a goddamned baby. How DARE he fuck with me? How DARE he fucking SPEAK my NAME when I am MILES AWAY and shrouded in darkness?

Hell hath no fury like a Pendel scorned.

We reached the parking lot. My mom hooted merrily: “Here we are!” I was already out of the car and scanning the parking lot. My dad was like, “Pendel, for God’s sake, let me get the damn car stopped!” Fuck that. Blood.

I saw him. Halfway between me and the church. I was off like a shot, running to meet him before he was able to get through the big oak doors. Clare screamed my name—she had seen Ben too—and heads craned to see what the fuck. Benny the Hun heard it too, and he turned to look just as I was 50 paces from him. He saw me coming, and I swear to fucking god, the surprise on his face alone was almost worth the price of admission. I mean, hear it was, the DAY AFTER he says shit about me, and already here I come. Clint-fucking-Eastwood, mother fucker. A falling hammer. A swinging chain. A thrown brick. Then the glass of his shock shattered, and he turned to get the hell out of my way, but baby I was already there. He was almost to the steps of the church when I connected with him. BAM. I used my shoulder to slam into his body (my collar bone still fucking kills), and just as my body stopped freaking cold, his shot forward, and he was off his feet and flying into the bushes planted under the windows of the church foyer. I was jarred to the bone, my head already aching from violent contact, but I knew there was no time at all to think about what I’d done or the consequences. He could still really mess me up deeply if I didn’t take advantage of the situation.

I grabbed him by his smug ankle, noticing—crazily—his shoe; an expensive and maturely square-looking sandal, so on a whim I took it off his foot and threw it into the nearby trees. I then drug him by the foot out into the parking lot and quickly sat on his chest. I slapped him once meatilty with my left hand as I searched out the roll of quarters with my right.

Shouts now, some calling my name, some Ben’s, others asking what in the name of hell did I think I was doing. I could hear Clare above it all, or at least I imagined I did, but then before I knew it, the roll of quarters was sitting squarely in my right fist and I brought down the whole fucking farm right there on his nose. It splatted. That’s the best way I can explain it. Finally I looked into his eyes, and they were fucking HUGE and PANICKED, and for a brief moment there was cool relief to flood my tired mind.

And then the hands clamped onto my shoulders and drug me off. Mystery hands. I still don’t know who did it, but as they did it, I lashed a foot out and connected with Ben’s knee, and he cried out. Sweet ear candy. I screamed out and wrenched free of the hands that held me, and without looking back, ran for the trees and the alleyways between the lawns of the surrounding neighborhoods. The cries were at my back, “Are you crazy?” “Come back here!” Probably some woman cried out little Benny boy’s name, but I was past hearing distinctly. The blood thundered in my head as I jumped this fence and that until I was able to climb a heavily shaded tree, and I sat there like a child who is scared senseless of the neighborhood German Sheppard, loose from the yard again, and sniffing me out.

Two hours or so later, I climbed down from the tree, stopped in at a Kwik Shop for a hunk of jerky and a Mountain Dew, and wandered home. I noticed my knuckles were swollen to about twice their normal size, and I smiled to myself.

My Love for Clare vs My Desire to Destroy Benny the Hun, Part 1

My sister Clare is a being of light. Her face is small, and her slight hands are taxed with the continuous chore of smoothing her dark mane of hair. You could thread the eye of a needle with her ego, and somehow this has usually held her above ridicule. If there’s one thing I regret whenever I think about my half-baked efforts to stamp out hope, it’s the impressions I’ve left upon her. I can’t change the way I am, and I’m powerless to view the world any differently than I do (i.e., tons of random, smug, bone-smoking assholes needlessly making everything harder for all the other useless bastards of the world), but I wish she didn’t have to be a party to it.

Clare came back from high school graduation ceremonies the other afternoon. She has more friends in my stupid class than I do by far. She’s a fairly popular sophomore (I guess a junior now, technically), which on one hand makes me proud, and on the other hand drives me up a fucking wall because a lot of her friends end up being complete ass puppets. She one way or another keeps herself elevated above the din of these soul-chomping maggots, and I have to say I am in awe of her abilities, but I don’t know why she would choose to let such tit bugs feed off her like that.

The only reason I’m thinking about all of this is because when she got home, she made me feel like shit. She walked into my room while I spaced out on a Mayhem fan site, sat down on my bed, and said nothing. On my worst days I simply think of Clare as inert, so I have no problems with her hanging around, and thought nothing of it. She says, “I went to the graduation today.” I said oh joy. She asked if I wanted to hear about it, and I said I didn’t really have an interest, but if it keeps your mind off suicide, then gab away. So whatever, she drones on endlessly about a bunch of malevolent fucks that could drop dead today and the world wouldn’t skip a beat, but then she says, “Ben Henderson asked about you.” This made me turn from my computer and look at her. I asked what the fuck that spineless hunk of nasty foam could possibly have to say that I would care to hear. What she said made me more pissed than I have been in about a hundred thousand years.

“He said he bet I was excited to see you get your diploma.” Ha fucking ha. I said wow, you know, he’s a fucking comic GENIUS. I hope I’m there when he finally wins his long deserved Emmy. Fucking putz.

Clare went on: “Yeah, I didn’t play along with his shit at all, though. I told him so what if it’s taking you longer? I told him you have things he could never have, no matter how good he thinks he is.” Yes, I have a plethora of dead ends to choose from.

“And then HE said that the only thing you’ve got going on that he doesn’t is a sister to bang.” WHAT?!? “I said for him to take that sad, sick bullshit back, but he said he would only take it back if YOU had the balls to make him. Then he said if we didn’t like what he’s saying, then we should have never come to his high school to begin with.” HIS high school—what the fuck does THAT mean? That smug son-of-a-bitch has always felt he’s got more of a RIGHT to that fucking piece of shit school than we do. I will fucking KILL him one day in the very near future. I can feel it. OH GOD. My fingers ACHE to wrap around his throat.

I suppose some background at this point would be helpful: Benny the Hun Henderson is a fucking spoiled turd born with a silver spoon full of rancid dogshit in his rotten fucking mouth. His family has lived for a couple of generations in the northern part of this COMPLETELY INCONSEQUENTIAL town, and for whatever reason, they feel that this makes them some kind of half-bred, podunk royalty. What a misbegotten frame on which to drape a legacy. I mean, forget the fact that you’re sadly mistaken about your place in the world, but to do so in a place like THIS? It adds insult to idiocy. If you include the high probability of NEVER being able to explain to these people the sad state of their existence without them completely shutting down in cold denial, bubba, you’ve got a reason to go postal that no jury could fault.

My nerd family hails from the central part of town. Not so nifty—just a bunch of middle-class fuck-faces. Since my parents are a couple of self-loathing jackwads with their hearts set on a social status that they should neither desire or envy, they applied for us all to attend North High School. It was a no-brainer for Matty. He’s a complete brainiac with his head so far up the academic ass that he could never see the pissy looks he got for attending a school for which he was socially ineligible, and he thrived. But for me and Clare it was never so easy. Clare fares better, because she is a chick blessed with grace, but for yours truly there have been constant battles. Pendel the Great and Terrible has fought on the battlefield of the mind with Benny the Hun countless times.

But now Henderson has crossed a major fucking line with me. I mean, what the fuck…who cares what he says about me. I know what I am. The winds of waste are already blowing across my unmarked grave. But Clare is new. Her soul is freshly pressed. And now Benny the Hun is talking shit about HER—nasty, weird shit that can scar a person if they aren’t well equipped to handle the rigors of class warfare—and he is fucking DARING me to step out and take up arms against him.

I got no problem with it.

I told Clare not to worry. Ben will never make another off-color remark to her. I will take care of it. She can make book on it. She then scared me by getting all teary-eyed. “Pendel, don’t do anything, please. I only even told you because Sugar was standing right there and I wanted to tell you before he did so I could make sure you didn’t go all ape-shit about it.” I told her fuck that. He’s a bug. I’m an angry windshield. She got really upset and talked about how sad she is that everything has gone wrong for me, how she knows what’s in me, and how it breaks her heart to see life turn against a person she loves. “I don’t want you getting in more trouble than you are. I’m afraid if you beat up Benny that things are just going to get so much worse.” Then, to my horror, she HUGGED me and said she MISSES me and that she KNOWS I am still inside somewhere and can she please have me back. “It made me so angry not seeing you graduate, and that is YOUR fucking fault, Pendel. If you make it worse by fighting Benny, just know that it’s got nothing to do with me. I’m out of it. It’s just for you to keep fucking up YOU. And I’ll know you LIKE it, too.”

Fucking sisters, right?

She broke my heart with some of that. Clare’s the only person I’ve never wanted to reach out and crush. She’s the only human worth a squirt of piss on this whole radiation-blasted fucking rock, and I’ve hurt her.

And Benny the Hun’s gonna pay for it.

Don’t Come Crawling

Why hello, Camile. I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.

But first: last Saturday morning Handsome Hanson made a return appearance. He shocked the shit out of me by saying it looks like I’m going to graduate. He then shocked the shit out of me again by saying it all depended on how well I do in my summer courses. I was shocked for a third time to find out my parents will be PAYING ANDY HANSON to TUTOR me over the summer.

Was I born to suffer?

Looking at Hanson from across the sparse utility of the kitchen table turned my stomach. He sat there like a malignant lump, a smile pasted weakly beneath his sticky cock broom—but more than ever before I dwelled on the circles beneath his eyes. Oh, I know you now, Andy. I know what you go home to at night. Are you thinking about her right now, Andy my man? Are wondering what surprises your scrawny wife has in store for you tonight? I bet she dreads the moment your headlights splash across the back wall of your pretty little home. She sits, tense, a drink already in her hand. The television is on, and the news anchors are trying their best to tell her all about today’s great progress, but she doesn’t hear them. The tears are already in the corners of her eyes as she thinks about the years she’s already wasted and cannot rip back from your greedy arms, and you bury your face in those years, and you breathe in the scent of those years, and the smell is unfamiliar but it’s not supposed to be and you try so hard to remember until unbeknownst to you, your mind makes up lies in the cracks where memory should reside, and it places you in the stories of her heart where you never really lived. She senses it happening, Andy. And she wants you to give those years back. You are a thief and that is why she hates you, that is why she is, more likely than not, already half in the bag while you stare benignly at me in mom’s clean kitchen while the morning sun ignores your face.

You’ll probably be smashed before the sun goes down, Andy Hanson—but don’t worry. We all understand. It’s the only thing that keeps you from knocking her fucking teeth in whenever she kicks you down the stairs.

After finding out my GREAT GOOD FORTUNE at gaining Hanson as my number one big fun summertime friend, I asked him if he would like to celebrate our bright future together with an ice-cold brew, but he just laughed and shook his head. “No thank you, Pendel.” His eyes actually twinkled for a second, which made me uneasy and mistrustful. He continued: “It won’t be as bad as you think. I’ll try to make it painless.” I asked him if he was sure, adding, hey, it’s good for what ails ya (!), and he gave me a funny little look, but only shook his head again. I let it drop. Believe it or not, my disgust at gaining Hanson as a tutor was overshadowed by the possibility of getting my stupid diploma.

And then: later that night, more rocks at my window. I immediately knew who lurked outside. Only one person I know is so retarded as to announce their arrival in this manner. The Eternal Camile. I threw up the window and was like, hey idiot, it’s like nine o’clock. Just knock on the fucking door. She was all, “I don’t want your stupid family knowing I’m here.” It’s what she always says, right? I climbed out of my window and we walked a short distance down the shadowed streets to a nearby playground. On the way I explained to her that most people throw rocks at the window because the person they want to contact lives on the second floor. Our house is one story. She could just knock on the window. She was like, “Ohhhh…”. IDIOT. Truly.

When we got to the playground, she turned to me, and started talking. I didn’t hear the first couple of sentences she said because a nearby stop light had tuned red and cast its light across her face, turning a giant whitehead right beside her nose to pink. I wondered idly what she would do if I reached out and gave it a little squeeze. I really REALLY wanted to try, but in my heart I am a coward.

Slowly I began to listen, and realized she was very angry that I had spilled the beans about her mom’s cleaning business woes a couple of weeks ago. I told her to go fuck herself. She tells the cops she thinks I demolished her old man’s windshield (the fact that I did is beside the point), and she thinks she’s got the right to be fucking pissed at ME? What the hell is this bloated world coming to? She started to cry tears of real anger, which affected me little, and she said that now, because of me, her parents are so pissed with her that they won’t talk to her. They blame her for bringing me—the Great and Terrible Pendel—into their miserable lives. I laughed and told her that they have a point. She did. She punched me in the arm—a little too playfully for someone who’s supposed to be pissed—and said she never asked me to ruin her dad’s car and wreck her mom’s reputation. She never wanted her folks to stop speaking to her. I just had to smile. I told her that she should be thanking me. Why would she want those fucking apes talking to her anyway? “Fuck off,” she said. I said no problem and turned to walk away.

And THAT was when she spins me around and starts nomming all over me with those fucking fish lips of hers! I was so taken aback that at first I did nothing, I was lost in a haze of grape Hubba Bubba (I fucking HATE grape Hubba Bubba), and I was simply trying not to fall over as she hung from my shoulders, her sharp little teeth digging at my neck, my cheeks, my ears, my lips. She was breathing loud, like she had just come up from the blackest depths, the ink of the ocean, and as she tried to climb up my body I realized she was nothing but a goddamned monkey. A monkey with a fish-face and zits. Hey, like I said before, her dad’s an ape, right? It all makes sense in the end.

Coming to my wits, I pushed her off me and asked her if she had lost her goddamned mind. She said she had, which shut my mouth for a second. “I’ve got nothing to do now,” she said. “I miss you.” I told her that, unfortunately for her, I didn’t feel the same way. I tried to explain to her that she was initially just an object for me, a conquest to take before the summer was up, but that was all over now. Amazingly, she said she was cool with that. She just wanted someone to talk to, and that I was the only person who ever really did.

Well, that’s a shame, I said. Because now you’ve lost that, too. Go home and look at the wall.

She cried and slapped me. I said, hey, it’s fine man, whatever you need to do. She slapped me again and I shrugged. She turned to run away, but got tangled in her own big feet and sprawled across the ground like a milkshake. Typical. Typical Camile, typical life. I didn’t help her up. She pulled herself off the ground, and without dusting off or looking back, she walked into the night crying to herself.

Fuck it. Yes, I’ll let her make out with me again, but it’s going to be when I’m done punishing her for being such a little bitch.

Poor Little Fellah

Perspective has to be one of the most flexible materials in the known universe. I thought I knew myself. I don’t. I thought I was aware of the world. I’m not. The stars are expanding with a silent malignancy that’s been diagnosed but goes untreated; there’s a monster in the center of the galaxy swallowing life on a scale so incredibly vast that the very thought of it makes my heart stop, and then it vomits this chewed, destroyed life back out into space in a stream of bile so poisonous that it kills all in its path. Meanwhile, here in Springfield, Coach Brody is disgusted with my putting form, and is worried it will never get any better. He’s right to be worried. It won’t.

Dropping acid on the golf course was insane. The whole image of Brody-as-a-rodent expanded into this crazy cartoon character, living and breathing in front of us, with his red eyes strangely benevolent and his dimpled balls lurking mischievously in his tight pants pocket. Whenever his back was turned, laughter would overtake me to the point where my knees would buckle, and I would sit down hard with tears streaming. Brody would stop his oratory on hand placement and glance back at me with a slight scowl on his face, and—I swear to fucking god it’s true—he would wiggle his nose, chin up, testing the wind, just like a mother fucking rat. Even his nose hairs seemed to be as long and stiff as whiskers. I kept expecting him to paw the air with his tiny hands, but it never happened. That would have been too good, I suppose.

After a while, my antics put Brody off enough that he turned to me, leaned on his putter, and, regarding me with the sad smile of a man who understands simplicity, said something like, “You need to understand that golf is like Buddhism. If you are sufficiently practiced, you can determine your own game. But you must quiet your mind, son.” To be honest, he made me stop and think for a minute. The whole idea as it applied to life was obvious and eluding all at once, and I intended to ponder the matter until I got to the very core, but then the whole sky shifted and the hills undulated imperceptibly; a fir tree standing next to me began to breath deeply and I lost the thread of my thoughts.

When dusk came to the rolling green, the world turned mystic: a quarter moon hanging in the middle of the sky, with bright stars dotting the ceiling and fading away as the colors turned neurotic near the horizon. A low mist rolled in and hugged the ground, causing me to grab my own head to make sure it was still on my shoulders, and not floating away in the cosmic jetsam. I turned to Sugarbear to see if any of this insanity was registering with him and was completely shocked to see that Coach Brody had vanished entirely. I panicked just a little, grabbing Sugar’s arm and I kinda squealed, what the fuck happened to the rat man? Sugarbear and Johnson cracked up at that, hitting knees etc, and I was like what the fuck, and Sugar dries his eyes and says, “Dude, he fucking left like ten minutes ago. You said ‘later days, better lays’ to him.” Wow. I know it happened, but maybe it was like something that was happening to a future Pendel on another plane. I was entirely yet pleasantly befuddled about the whole thing. I was speeding through the universe at fifty THOUSAND miles per hour on a rock that was spinning fast enough to cause me to go flying off into space where my head could quietly explode without bothering anyone, and I was wondering if Coach Brody liked me. I voiced this concern out loud, and Sugarbear just laughed even harder. “Oh Jesus, Pendel. Brody probably doesn’t even know your NAME, man. He doesn’t know ANY of us. Just take it easy. It’s only golf. It doesn’t matter at all.” How the fuck could Brody not know my NAME? Sugar shook his head. “Look, don’t think about it. Why would you even want him to know? You don’t want people knowing shit like your name if you can help it, dude. That’s like one of your main fucking problems, Pendel. You tell everyone your name, man.”

It struck me like a rubber brick that I had no clue what Sugarbear’s real name is. I asked him. He said, “Exactly, dude.” My head continued its comfortable spin. I wandered off on my own and never made it back to those guys.

Soon it was full on night. I wandered around the vicinity of North Fountain Blvd, in and out of the neighborhoods, disgusted and thrilled by what I saw; much was hilarious and my head vibrated with inner guffaws at nearly everything. The artificial light splashing across lawns and trees was fucking creepy cool, all yellow and white and secret, and none of these people snug inside their asshole a-frames and split levels knew that the lunatic was now among them, haunting their driveways, watching as they cleared their plates from the table and seethed at each other over apple cobbler and coffee.

I was sitting on a random boulder that some idiot had stuck in their own lawn—I assumed to make mowing as difficult as possible—staring at a quaint little abode across a street that I had never even heard of, when the front door opened and Mr. Hanson stepped out of the door and sat down on the porch steps. My mind began to bleed. I mean, what the FUCK, you know? Seriously, what are the FUCKING CHANCES OF THAT? Nothing so frighteningly random had ever happened to me before EVER, and I was shaken to my very foundation by the thought that I might in fact be wrong about NEARLY EVERYTHING. The street lamps were illuminating the land all wrong, they seemed to roam and refused to hold steady, and the breeze was blowing the leaves in the trees like a hand brushing against sheer curtains—or were they moving by themselves? They are in fact alive, no? Hanson had brought a small cooler out with him, and after setting it down pulled a cheap can of beer from the inside and cracked it open. He took a swig and then set the can down and began to rub his temples. It was hard to make out the look in his eyes. He was too far away and it was night. I know he hadn’t noticed anybody watching him yet, and since, luckily, the past few nights had been rather chilly, I had my black hoody with me and so pulled the hood over my head.

No sooner had I done that when the screen door to the house banged open, and a very petite woman looked down at Hanson, and with what can only be described as HATRED, threw a book at him. Paperback. As she did, she hollered at him so the whole freaking neighborhood could hear, “Here, maybe you want to break THIS, too!” As the screen smacked back shut, I could here her say, “Useless!” before disappearing again indoors. And then, AMAZINGLY, Hanson dropped his head into his hands and started fucking sobbing. Ugh. Holy fucking shit. Even from 30 yards away I was totally embarrassed for him. I was completely confused, stuck on the question of how a person could break a book per say, when the door bashed open again, and the scrawny chick was back, only this time she had her own drink in her hand and she just stood there holding the screen door open with her foot. “Jesus, look at you. This is crazy that I have to put up with this.” Funny, I was feeling the same way about Hanson just a day or two ago. I slid as quietly as I could off of the boulder, and moved to the shadow of some shrubs planted just a few feet away. Just in time too, cause the woman looked up and down the street, I assume to see if anyone was listening to her berate the man with the moustache in front of her. “Come inside, Andy.” Andy. Did I know that? Hanson made a fucking gross sound like he was sucking snot back up his nose—a sound that I HATE—and his voice was all cracked like a CHILD, and he says “No!” Wow. Such defiance.

“I don’t want the whole goddamned neighborhood seeing my husband crying like a sissy on my own goddamned porch, Andy, now get in here!” Oh my god, the fucking drama! The veins were standing out in her THROAT as she screamed. If she didn’t want the freaking neighbors to know, then why in the hell was she yelling so damned loud? Well, whatever. Obviously she DID want people to see. Obviously she wanted to make a FOOL out of the man. Much to my chagrin, I began to feel bad for Hanson, and oddly protective. If anyone was going to yell at this asshole in public to make him look foolish, it should be me. So anyway, again he refused her, saying “You’ve got no right talking to me the way you do. Go back inside. I want to be left alone.”

And so she kicked him down the stairs. THAT’S RIGHT, FUCKERS. She moved fast like a horse and just booted his ass right down the steps. He tumbled like a sack of shit and hit the sidewalk hard on his shoulder. He just laid there and whimpered, and it struck me for the first time that he was probably fucking wasted. Then the boney chick’s foot lashed out again, this time kicking the cooler and the open beer down on top of him. He did nothing. He just lay there in a growing puddle of suds. She hollered, “I HATE YOU!” and disappeared inside. Hanson just kind of rolled around on the ground, moaning “No, no, no…”

I was utterly appalled.

Porch lights started coming on in the houses around me, and I knew it was time to make myself scarce. My buzz had abated greatly, and I was feeling very suspicious of the world, but my skin was still alive and my spidey sense was still tingling, so I made my way home and sat up half the night rocking out to Mayhem by the light of my flashlight.

People are twice as mysterious as I had originally thought, but Mayhem still fucking rocks balls. Life is getting more interesting, if not better, and it’s hard to say if I will ever snap back completely from the incredible coincidence of finding Andy Hanson, too wasted to stand and crying on his front porch.