The next day, upon my return to the old folks home, I was immediately accosted by the unassailable frumpiness of Debora Fanning. Her dark eyes flashed upon my graceful and sweeping entrance through the front doors of this palace of the damned, but they faded back behind the glow of her shiny skin soon enough, for nothing seems to keep Debora Fanning passionate for too long. “Pendel. Just the person I was looking for. A word?”  I knew it would be more than one, but I meandered over to the front desk anyway. “Pendel. I spoke with Bill Hardisty yesterday evening. He said you left him hanging with Arnold Tillerman the other day. You know anything about that?” Was she speaking of Big Bill the orderly, friend to all mankind? “His name is Bill Hardisty, and to my knowledge, he’s never left this state.” I said yes, I knew that Big Bill had been on his way to wipe Arnold’s ass, but after taking into account the size of Bill’s dinner plate-sized palms, I figured he had everything under control. Debora stuck her tongue into her cheek and looked deeply into a spot above my head. “He did not, and poor Arnold has been very itchy for the last 36 hours or more. It isn’t funny.”

Well, okay, and so I’m sorry, and so where the hell is Arnie, and let’s get those cheeks scrubbed till they shine, America. Debora Fanning clucked and frowned slightly, and scratching the back of her head she said more: “Some gentlemen were looking for you the other day. You left before I could talk to you about it.” Casually I say: Oh? Did they provide identification? Had she seen them before? “Why would they have identification? They said they represented your grandmother’s estate. It wasn’t your day to serve, and I have no clue where you go when you’re not here, so they said they would be back. Has something happened to your Grandmother?”

The funny thing about my Grandma is that she died about four years ago. And before you all fall over yourselves telling me sorry, save it. The woman never liked me anyway. Apparently I reminded her of her ex-husband, who was of course my Grandpa, who was a difficult bastard, if you believe the rumors. My Grandma, a grown—nay, elderly—woman with stuffed bears and porcelain dolls all over her country-morning-breakfast-themed house…I’m sure my Grandpa merely had to lift a cheek and fart for her to consider him an abomination. She LOVED my brother Matty, though. He was her sun. He provided her with warmth and light and made the crops grow and brought the promise of better times to come on winter mornings after the wind howled and the cold seeped into every bone during the long dark of night. Every Christmas, Matty’s gifts were larger, and always needed batteries. And after I opened my new bathrobe, when the hurt expression would betray my feelings as Matty—a child at the time and not to be blamed for his actions, I SUPPOSE—would gloat with his beeping, blinking, plastic fantastic, my Grandma would shake her head with an impatient frown and claim, “Your Grandfather was the same way. He never appreciated the things he was given.”

So, look, I plan on keeping this short, so suffice to say that I doubt very highly that anyone came around to talk to me about Grandma’s estate four years after her death. Even if there were something left to give, it wouldn’t come to unappreciative ME, unless it happened to be a box of old bathrobes.

The thing I found really disconcerting was the fact that they DIDN’T show a badge. So then what the FUCK?

I told Debora Fanning that if the men happened to show their face again, she should ask them what my Grandmother’s name is. If they don’t say Esmeralda (her actual name was Gladys), she should contact the authorities IMMEDIATELY. She furrowed her brow and opened her mouth to speak, but I touched a finger to her lips and looked about conspiratorially. Later, I said, and ducked my head low, b-lining my way to Charlie’s room.

Upon arriving, having not seen Big Bill, I closed the door and snapped my fingers several times in front of Wide-Eyed Wendell’s nose. I said aloud to him that if he could hear or say a fucking thing, now was the time to let everyone know. In response he merely breathed. I turned and faced Charlie, who was seated in his wheelchair and watching General Hospital on the television. “What’s the big goddamned deal, scaring Wendell like that?” he said. I told him time was short, and I only wanted to ask if the men who talked to him the other day told him who they were. “They didn’t tell me, but it was pretty obvious, so I didn’t ask.” So who were they then? “How should I know? Are you deaf, Pendel? I just said they didn’t tell me.” And with that he turned back to his program. Charlie is so damned cool most of the time that you forget he’s an old man, but there he is in his wheelchair, sucking on his lip, his left hand fidgeting restlessly at his armrest.

I told Wendell to keep it real as I exited, and promptly smacked my nose hard into the chest of Big Bill the orderly. “There he is, ladies and gentleman!” he roared, and he slapped a one meaty hand on my shoulder as the other palmed what seemed like a dozen white towels. “Can I have a word with you, little buddy?” Rushed with no real idea why and with my eyes watering, I tried to tell this heavily browed man with the dark, curly hair and kind face that I knew what he needed to say, but that he needn’t because I was very sorry about Arnie’s rash-covered ass, but he silenced me with a serious look.

“Buddy, I can’t have YOU leaving me hanging when I’VE got to get something hanging out of a man’s butt, okay?” I repeated all my regrets, and stressed that it wouldn’t happen again, but that I needed to be on my way. “Where’s the fire, buddy? This is my point. There’s work to be done HERE. That’s why YOU’RE here. You screwed it up out THERE, so they sent you in HERE to learn about how what you do affects others. You see?” I said yes. He laughed. “No, you don’t. Look, you’re not so new around here that you don’t know what happens to an adult’s sheets after they shit the bed. It’s easily a two-man job, sometimes more. Sometimes MORE, you see?” Bill often repeated his words, adding weight to the things he really wanted his audience to grasp. “Now, that old man has about 500 hours left in him, maximum, and you just stole the dignity out of the last 40 or so. Does that sound like a person who knows what I’m talking about? Does it SOUND that way to YOU?” I said no, because it’s the truth. Bill took his hand off my shoulder and walked away.

I sulked to the nearest cleaning supply closet and shut myself inside the acerbic dark, and wondered morosely why I was made to suffer. This eventually tuned to self-reproach—inevitably, maybe—and the sheer depth of my inability to grow or learn sat on my chest—a lead gargoyle with a sharp, sneering eyes and zero remorse for my shortcomings. My stomach was killing me. My mouth felt watery and tasted of copper.

Eventually the dark grew kinder, and soon my raw nerves, deprived of stimulus, grew calm.

****

Sugarbear was in a panic about the strangers questioning the workers of the old folks home regarding my whereabouts. He wanted to dump every cube he had right then and there, but Benji and I convinced him to reconsider. I told him that I had no idea who was looking for me yet, and as far as I knew, the eternal Camile’s mother was hunting me down for my indirect role in trashing her house-cleaning business. We kept him from disbanding our little enterprise for the time being, but Sugarbear has been far less jolly than is the norm. If his old man ever found out about how he makes his spending cash, well, kiss Wittenberg University goodbye. I honestly think he frets over this more than he does, say, oh, I don’t know…JAIL TIME. That tells you right there how much simple approval means to a human. We are weaved into a social fabric at birth, the threads tight around our throat. Struggle but a little, and the grip tightens, choking off breath and weakening your resolve.

In all honesty, I think Benji and I are most worried about having to find REAL JOBS. A large part of me is happier than I have ever been. I seem to flourish on the underside of the ship, and the thought of being pried from the hull and dragged out into the sunlight to squirm in the plain sight of others leaves me hopeless and thin.

Personally, I think the horrible bitch that lives next door has something to do with all of this. I can’t prove it yet, but she’s fat and always complains about our music and has one nose out the curtains every time I walk out to hear the birds.

She’s going to find out what trouble is if I discover she’s fucked things up for me. Make book on it.

Ugh. Something tells me I should have apologized to Arnold T. for what happened to his ass. Oh well. There’s a lot of things I should have done.

Debora Fanning runs the old folks home with the discriminating hand of a curator. Her face is often serenely blank with sparse robotic emotion pulling back the corners of her lips only sporadically, and while she is not at all an unpleasant woman—at times even attractive—it is this seeming lack of interest in the affairs of humans that leads me to fuck with her at every opportunity.

The old folks home is a place that could use the human touch. The air is thick with the shame of neediness, and even upon my first arrival to this stone castle—a gloomy fortress holding back the final army—I could feel the weight of their demands on my shoulders. With skin paper thin, they advance upon you at first entrance, some begging to be taken back to the outside world where sun and energy feed the soul against the onslaught of the self, others begging you to please ignore the pleas of the beggars; their spines creak as they lift their heads high, demanding acknowledgement for their rejection of your pity.

People who have never had the pleasure of visiting a dump like this have no idea what I’m talking about. They’ll say I’m waxing dramatic. But dig this: on my first day of court-ordered compassion, I walked into the lobby and was immediately assaulted by a dusty old fart with pleading eyes and a brain as soft as the dawn outside. She began calmly enough, but something bubbling inside her set my teeth on edge, and I waited miserably for the bait and switch. She did not disappoint. “Hello,” she began simply enough.  I said hey. “Why are you here?” Strange for someone to ask such a simple question, but by now I have grown used to the bluntness of seniors. For them who have nearly run out of time, there is little need for social finesse. It just gets in the way of finding out information; suddenly the economics of time takes on real weight. And hey, I get it. I appreciate the lack of ceremony. So, instead of becoming hostile, I say to this woman that I’m looking for the front desk, and with hardly a pause she says to me, “You know, they keep me here.” Ahhhh, yes, of course. I repeated that I was purely looking for someone in charge, and her face stretched into a parody of melancholy. “I need help. I don’t want to stay here. They are terrible to me here. They treat me like a child. They treat me like I’m already dead. Like a dead baby. I can’t stay. Please call my daughter and tell her I need to come home. I need her help but they won’t let me talk to her they keep her from me please help me…”

“Don’t listen to her bullshit! None of it’s true!”

Startled, I swung around to find another old woman with stubborn steps and a surly face advancing upon me. She was wagging her finger in a very old-person way, and scowled at me as if it was my fault that the first old bat was spouting paranoid nonsense. The corners of her mouth curled down so far that they almost disappeared under her chin, and I wondered what came first: her bad attitude or a long, shitty life? Probably the latter, but me being who I am I tend to believe in both.

The first senior turned to face her: “Don’t you come near me!”

“She’s a liar. Her daughter doesn’t come here because she’s sick of listening to crazy bullshit!”

“No! Not at all! She doesn’t come here because they all told her I’m dead!”

“You ARE dead.”

“Young man, PLEASE. If you see my daughter, tell her she has to come and get me, tell her I don’t want to be here anymore. They take my money.”

The second old woman, the gruff truth teller, turned to address me: “She doesn’t have any money.” After she spoke, she looked away from us both, and dismissed the first woman with a wave of her hand. Finished with us, she crept back down the hall from whence she came. From somewhere, a disembodied voice confirmed, “It’s true. She doesn’t have any money at all.”

The first old woman with the gloomy outlook took my hand. It was like being grasped by a ghost bird, and reminded me of a great aunt that used to live somewhere in my past. “They all hate me because I have a daughter who loves me,” she whispered. “That woman who was yelling at us? She hits me when no one looks.”

Eventually I found the front desk, and with it Debora Fanning. Her dark hair was bobbed around her head—sensible with minimal flair. With arresting blackberry eyes pressed flat into a plate of white dough, she looked as though she could do some damage if she could only manage to drop a few (but people in this neck of the woods NEVER drop a few). Of course, now I know better. Without a complete emotional overhaul, the only thing Deborah Fanning will be doing any damage to is a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. As I approached the desk, I immediately sensed her authority and handed her my paperwork from the judge. She glanced at me coolly and said, “What’s this and who are you?” I told her the paperwork had all the answers she might be looking for—I mean, you know, FUCK her. I’m not getting paid to be here, and I don’t plan on finding a new perspective on life during this time with my elders, so pull teeth, bitch.

Debora looked at me unenthusiastically, and browsed the forms she had been handed. Without looking up, she says to me, “Are we going to have a problem?” I explained to her how I plan on setting an example for all of the young people here at the nursing home, and if possible, her look became even drier. Ten minutes later I had a mop in my hand.

And now I am ensconced in setting up board games, slinging soup, wiping chins, and pushing oldsters from point A to point B with stolid efficiency as they curse my ever being born and spit insults from denture-filled mouths. They ask for my help constantly, all the while hating themselves for asking, and hating me for giving. The whole place smells like death if death could be picked up with thick rubber gloves and scrubbed with pink industrial cleanser. Isn’t life wonderful? Isn’t GOD great in the gifts he bestows upon all of his blessed children? Is it any WONDER I am asked at every goddamned turn to fall upon my knees and thank him for all of his glorious mysteries? Well, just you try and stop me, all you little darlings of the starlight! Maybe if I try my best and always tie my laces tight and smile at every face I see then one day I can piss through a catheter of my very own and beg every passerby to set me free and wonder why my children forgot.

****

Charlie Murphy sits in his wheelchair with sunken lips resting against exhausted gums.

Charlie Murphy wears flannel shirts everyday; bolo ties with pewter buffalo skulls adorn his neck.

Charlie Murphy calls to me from across the common room and asks me to push him into the sunlit garden nearly every afternoon. My bushy hair and denim vest don’t seem to alarm him in the slightest; he gives none of the glaring disapproval that his peers have reserved for me. Charlie and I sit in the sun and he tells me about his trips to the city when he was a young man and how his parents hated his fascination with jazz and the smoke-filled clubs and coming home at dawn. I tell him he ought to give the hella-fucking awesome rock of Mayhem a try, and he says to me, “I’d never listen to that crap. I’d die of an aneurysm.” I push the others into the sun and they tell me I’m wasting my life. I think of my afternoon and its promise of bloody toilets and a grimy sponge, and I must agree that they may have a point.

Charlie Murphy looks at Debora Fanning and shakes his head sadly. “You could have been a beautiful woman,” he tells her. She looks through him and if she feels slighted by his comments, it doesn’t show. She simply hands him a small paper cup filled with variety. “Please take your pills, Charlie.” Charlie tips the cup into his hollow mouth, and only then does Debora hand him his water, as if the old man before her could not process all the objects at one time.

Charlie Murphy never met a bottle of suds he didn’t like, and he’s taken to sharing his secret supply with me every Thursday at 4PM in the room he shares with a comatose named Wendell. We toast the decline of Western Civilization and hope for the collapse of American Express. Well, I couldn’t give two shits about American Express myself, but it seems important to Charlie, and since he’s got the beer…

Charlie Murphy is a man of memory but not ceremony. He lived life like an actual human being, and from what I can tell, never relied on the false pretense of societal mass self-deception or rationalizations to form a picture of himself. He knows what he is, and he knows what he’s been, and if Debra Fanning, or my mom, or Dr. Duchenheimer, or any other fucking asshole for that matter doesn’t like it, they can kiss Charlie Murphy’s skinny ass.

Charlie Murphy is an old box full of new toys found just days before the house burns down.

****

I was searching the halls of the old folks home seeking out Big Bill the orderly When Charlie waved me over. “Wheel me to my room, Pendel. We have business to discuss.” I replied that Bill needed me to distract Arnold T. while Bill wiped his ass out, and Charlie said, “Arnie can go to hell or wipe his own ass. We’ve got bigger issues.” I told him I was more worried about Big Bill than Arnie, and was told, “Bill can blow air on his balls. That’ll distract Arnie, I guess.” So against my better judgment I ducked my head low and pushed Charlie to his quarters.

The rooms at the home fall somewhere in between a hospital and a hotel, with muted colors, wall-to-wall carpeting, full-length curtains, TVs bolted to mounts high upon the walls, and plenty of oxygen tanks. Staff members scuttle to and fro with tempers barely contained. Dim conversations regarding various aches and pains flood the open hallways like a college dorm jacked-up on Geritol. Most of these rooms have little-to-no personality, as the residents have largely turned their backs on individuality in favor of keeping watch. The occasional moan makes the hairs on my neck stand up.

Wendell stared at the ceiling without blinking and Charlie handed me a beer even though it’s Tuesday. I said, what’s up? It’s not like you to hand out beers midweek. He said, “What would you know about what I’m like? If you don’t want it, give it back.” I kept it. He cracked his beer and blew on the top, which is something he always does. It’s a mystery to me, but I suppose I must not care that much because I never ask him why he does it. Then he says, “Let’s get right down to it. You know my great nephew.” I said I’d have to take his word on that. “His name is Martin. He went to your high school. He wrestled. He was good. Not ringing a bell?” I did remember the guy, and I said as much. Thin and short, he did very well in the light-weight classes (so they say), and was one of the only male anorexics I had ever heard of (so they say). I told Charlie that I saw the guy standing around spitting into a can in the lobby of the school all the time. “Well, yeah, it’s a way these guys drop weight.” I asked if the dehydration made them weak for matches, and Charlie became impatient. “What am I, a doctor? The point is he told me about you.”

Oh really.

He must have read my face because he scowled and shook his head. “No. Come on. It’s nothing bad. If you’re a killer or screw little kittens, I don’t know and I don’t care. Well, I guess I would. Look, Marty says you’re the guy.” The guy for what? “You have something people want. Or at least, you can lay your hands on it.” I sat mutely. “Look, I have GLAUCOMA, okay?” By now I of course knew what he was getting at, but chose to continue staring blankly. Charlie became very agitated and exclaimed, “Goddamnit! Haven’t I spelled it out?!”

I said okay, okay. Maybe I knew how to help him (which made me feel a tad nervous because Sugarbear often says he’d rather we not make deals out in the world) but what the fuck did he want with that kind of trouble?  He sighed deeply. “All you guys,” he said, nodding unhappily, “you think I’ve always been old.”

****

The next time I came to the home, I had Charlie’s cube. Amazingly, he produced a small one-hitter that looked exactly like a cigarette from the inside of his shirtsleeve. I told him he was full of more surprises than anyone I had ever met, and he says to me, “We’ve only just begun. Wheel me outside, Pendel.”

The sky was a cloudy mess and the sun nowhere to be found, but it was for the best. Most of the seniors were deathly afraid of the rain, and stayed inside at the slightest inclination towards precipitation. Charlie and I had the courtyard to ourselves.

“Over there. Behind the tree.”

I sat down beside him on the ground, and made some kind of nonsensical chatter about the seasons. Charlie told me to shut up and handed me the CIGARETTE. After a little while he laughed and wiped something from his nose. “This shit…it’s crazy, but since I had my first stroke back in 92, this shit always makes my face go numb. But it’s not bad. It’s just different.” I said I never knew he had a stroke, and he said, “I’ve had three. Small. Very small. Miniscule. This big.” And he held his fingers out in front of his face just an inch apart to indicate just how small the strokes were. Then he grinned his toothless grin and laughed. I said, so okay, I didn’t know he had three small strokes. And he patted me on the shoulder and smiled. “Everyone in here has had a stroke. Don’t worry. You’ll have one too someday.” He laughed again, even more than before, and clapped his hands. He seemed happier than I had ever seen him, which was also happier than any of the other old people trapped inside this final stop before the great end.

“You know, you’re a nice kid for a punk.” I said thanks. “I’m…uhhh…smoking this with you now because it’s a courtesy.” What was he talking about? “I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten my manners, is what I mean. But after that I think I’m gonna have to keep this to myself, son.” He had never called me that before, and it was curious. I told him no worries, I understand the old folks are on a budget, and he shook his head and interrupted. “No, it’s just that I’m too old for trouble of my own, or to deal with yours.”

?????

“There were some guys the other day who came around here asking questions about you. I said I had no real contact with you. I said you were a punk and look like trouble and I’m too old for trouble. All of which is true, by the way.” Needless to say, this information knocked me off my precarious center. GUYS coming around and asking QUESTIONS? Well, that couldn’t be GOOD, could it? When GUYS come poking around asking QUESTIONS, it usually leads to people running manically and breathing heavy and flushing shit down toilets and climbing down fire escapes and all sorts of other crazy bullshit that I simply had no desire to find myself doing. What did these men LOOK LIKE?? “Jesus, Pendel, they looked like the kind of people that come around and ask questions about other people. They didn’t smile when they talked. They were serious men.”

I stood up and said I had to GO, but standing made me dizzy and I had to pause. “Look, you need to be careful. It’s probably nothing. I just wanted to warn you about this, and I wanted you to know why I can’t be sharing more of this with you. I shouldn’t have gotten it anyway, but I’m glad I did. I feel great. Even if I can’t feel my face.”

I said I couldn’t feel mine anymore, either, and old Charlie laughed and said something else, but I was already on my way out of the garden and didn’t hear him clearly. I had to go and talk to Sugarbear. If this was about what I was AFRAID it was about, well, you know, I didn’t sign up for that kind of shit.

How fucking stupid am I though? Of course I did.

One of the more bizarre ironies of living in a culture built on fear is how surprised you find yourself when the worst of those fears is realized. Seems fucking nutty. Either we never truly expected our fears to scuttle out from the dark corners left dusty and cold when we turned our backs to them, or we never really believed in our fears in the first place; rather we thrived on the thrill of being completely amped and strung-out on distant possibilities, our runny noses sniffing madly in pursuit of blessed distraction. Craving simply to fill the minutes, hours, and days until they toss dirt upon our lips and eyes, we scrape at the wall, never expecting a hole to crumble forth, never realizing just how weak the wall is until it starts to fall.

Lousy contractor. We entrusted this dick with our LIVES, and he with his shoddy workmanship doomed us all to the crushing weight of reality. And to see the other side of that hole in the wall—well holy hell. Who knew?

But we can’t talk about all that yet. First, the Move Out: It was pretty simple. I packed a box and a suitcase and threw that shit in Sugarbear’s dirty Volkswagen trunk. Easy as freaking PIE, fellow motherfuckers. When in doubt, travel light. You’re really not going to need any of the shit you’ve collected while whiling away the hours pondering the greater good, so leave it; cut it loose and let it find its next big hero.

The hard part being over, Sugarbear accompanied me back into the house where I USED to live for one last dose of disparity as my family members congregated to wish me well.

I shouldn’t be so flip. The look in Clare’s eyes tore at my heart. I asked her what the hell her problem was in far more of an irritated tone then I meant, and she flinched—which of course made me feel like even more of an asshole. I was like, hey man, I am sorry, but you are making me feel like a complete and total fuck-face. She was all like, “How can you leave me here with these weirdoes?”—meaning my mom and dad, of course—and I could tell she was seriously stricken by the thought, but I found that to be incredibly unfair. I pleaded with Clare. I was like, hey man, come on, lest we all forget, THEY kicked MY ass out. This was not my idea. “Pendel, you didn’t even ask them to reconsider. They don’t know you the way I do. They don’t know that you could get hurt.”

Sugarbear snorted and smacked my shoulder, skyrocketing my level of irritation. “You hear that, you pussy? The real world’s gonna chew you up.” I scowled deeply at both of them—why must I be underestimated at every goddamned turn? I said to Clare, look here, sister: I am made of fucking steel, get it? I cannot be broken. She just shook her head. “I know you,” she said. What the hell is that supposed to mean? I wouldn’t get the chance to find out—down the hall came the clumsy love of my mother and father. Clare clammed up and simply continued to scowl in my general direction until I left home forever.

“So this is it, yes?” asked my dad. He patted my shoulder in a very ‘now-you’re-a-man’ kind of way, and I felt absolutely no remorse whatsoever seep from a single one of his pores. My mother, on the other hand, was beside herself. Her hands bothered themselves with incessant wringing, and her eyebrows were a study in sorrow. “Oh Pendel, I think this is all wrong,” she bemoaned. Please. After everything—after she more than any other member of our sad kin made me feel like a bother and a hindrance to her happiness—she has the balls to tell me it’s wrong that I should leave. In my mind I was smashing everything dear to her into tiny bits, but outwardly I chose to be as tall as the redwoods, and I simply gave her a hug. My dad tipped me a knowing wink (though he knows very little) and comforted my mother, “This is the way of things. There’s no other way for him to become a man.” Dear lord. Really? That’s what you’re going to say? Of course he’s wrong, I could maybe get fucking LAID for once. That would help a hell of a lot more than starving to death in the back of Sugar’s shithole.

My mother took my hands, “Come over for dinner as often as you want, OK? Please? Help me not to worry.” I said fine. Realistically, coming over for dinner might be the only time I eat. “Sugar, keep him out of trouble. Keep him INSIDE.”

Sugarbear gave me a nudge. “No worries, Mrs. Haight. I got bars on the windows.”

“Oh Lord. OK. Oh boy,” worried my mother, and she turned and hugged Clare, because Clare was far more receptive to such things than any of the men around her.

My dad walked Sugar and me outside, cause that’s just the kind of fucking stand-up guy he is. “OK, ladies,” he joked. “Look, Pendel. I know you’re gonna take a couple of days to get the feel of all of this new-found independence, but after that, come by, OK?” I said fine. Then he took me by the shoulders and looked me square in the face. “I will be right here, son.” I got the distinct impression that he was not only giving me reassurances, but also warning me of his continued vigilance—which is a complete joke. Although my parents did much in the way of keeping me alive in regards to caloric intake and clothing, when it came to guidance and structure…but this is horseshit. They tried, I resisted, and the world spun restlessly on and on.

So basically, my leaving home was a complete non-event.

That night I celebrated liberation with Bear, Benji, and Hugh—Hugh being the name we gave to the wizard-shaped ceramic bong belonging to Benji. As I have said before, Bear’s old man is letting us crash cheaply at a property he owns near the corner of Rubsam and Race. Kind of a shit-hole, but I’m not really complaining. The gray paint is slowly giving up, the lawn is the color of hopelessness, and the cracked driveway speaks of a world long after the death of the last man as nature once again claims the spots we had worn thin. Nevertheless, the bedroom I have on the ground floor near the kitchen is my own, the living room has a television and cable and the promise of a life free from lectures and suspicion, and my roommates seem to genuinely enjoy my company (for the most part). The jabbing tip of springs as they force their heads out from nearly every cushion of every ass-related surface is barely noticeable when you spend as much time rocking the skull of Hugh as we do.

How do I afford such luxury, you ask? It’s a great question. I do have work, but the work is tricky to talk about, if you get my meaning. Basically, I work for Sugarbear. Benji and I both do, really. We single-handedly run the sales and delivery department of Sug’s fantastically lucrative plastic cube business. Suffice to say there’s a certain amount of glamour involved. The client makes a call to my man Sugarbear, who places the order in the hands of the raggedly loyal Benji or myself, and off we go on our various modes of transport with a generous supply of cubes, each one full of it’s own special brand of magic.

With sincere purpose I pedal into the night (or day, I guess…whichever), nervous but free from it all, and I visit all parts of town, delivering Sugar’s flawless product. I climb sagging steps and cross gated paths unhindered; I am welcomed warmly into hovels of sand and gilded halls; I am given Mountain Dew and I am offered red wine and everywhere around me there are smiles which are unique purely in their genuineness. I leave strewn behind me a trail of happy people. Hell, if I could only get the crabby bitches in the old folk’s home to feel the same way, I would have been tempted to think I’m entering into an honest-to-god period of renewal.

And to think I dreaded the working world.

Yes, times seemed to be quite high, but of course awakening must soon break a dream realized. After just a couple of weeks of living with a smile, I began to see the dark sedan parked innocently in front of our house, and thought nothing of it. Hindsight is a useless appendage.

This was mostly written when life was normal. I wasn’t going to post it, but I wasted a huge fucking amount of time on this trash, so you might as well get to see. It’s sloppy as hell cause I’m not bothering to fix it, but I realize now that it doesn’t matter at all. I’m in the middle of trying to decide how much about the new and horrific reality of things I should be sharing with all of you perfect strangers, and I suppose I will share it all eventually, but my mind is a bath of hot liquid right now, the sores on my back are still fresh and symmetrical, and I am currently in the middle sorting out fact from mental protection. How is all of this possible in a world of processed cheese and unicycles? It is beyond me. I might give up. I might go on. I might go back out to the bluff and see if they return. I might cry out when they lift me from the ground and wonder why did I come here? But hey, while I sort all of this crap out, you can read this moot bullshit:

Date rapists and pedophiles populated the summer school program like flies on a rotting sow, turning the bad to worse for their own sick nourishment. With blatant disregard for the rights of their fellow humans, they wag their cocks to and fro; with zero remorse they pounce upon the weak or unwary and unleash their savagery. But for Pendel the Great and Terrible, that’s all over now. The border-line retarded sociopaths once known to me as peers are forever (?) part of my past, because for all intents and purposes, I am a fucking high school graduate, MOTHERFUCKERS, and I plan to finally put some distance between myself and the fools of conformity that comprise the sad and vacant hipster clique known as high school.

However…I suppose it is safe to say that I am somewhat fascinated by this Eric Grassman character, and may try to cross his path in my newfound life as a true proletariat. Although I’m sure, after receiving his beat-down from Dougy the Rhino in Conway’s class a couple of weeks ago, it’s probably going to take some doing to end up on Grassman’s trail. According to Sugarbear—my soon-to-be roommate—the poor fuck has locked himself in his mom’s basement and hasn’t shown his long face since. I can’t blame him. Once an animal like Doug has tagged a person, only fresh blood from easier prey or death will deter him.

The Rhino made his name in junior high when he walked through the doorway one arid day and shocked the entire school body by already being a man. Shoulders squared under a neck as thick as a fencepost and his chin bashing holes in the sky, he caught the eyes of all. How could this happen? Who LET this happen? Where was GOD when this freak of science transformed like a young and dissident horse into a fighting and fucking machine rivaled only by men almost twice his age? At 14, he could snap the forearm of most teachers with the stomp of one massive heel. And in his EYES lived a cold confidence; in his EYES swarmed the silence of callousness—the complete lack of empathy borne by the stallion as he bites the neck of the mare and fucks her into submission; as he rears high and smashes down to splinter the bone of his trainer—his BREAKER—as he jumps the fence at full speed to free himself from the bonds of those who would have him TRAINED. Would he be corralled? Would he be lassoed? Would they mount his back and ride him home to deference? Sure, of course. Eventually. But in the meantime, his brutality was palpable and green—his malice untested and uncontested. He was a mutant. A laboratory of potency. He was only 14 freaking years old and he had the fucking goods.

We were all, of course, terrified.

So now Dougy’s like 17 or 18, and he’s only gotten larger, only grown more removed and apathetic, and he stalked the hallways of high school like a volatile apparition with a keen eye for petty transgressions against the unwritten laws of his narrow world view. Eric Grassman fell into the cross hairs of Dougy the Rhino’s muddled HUD, and paid the price—will continue to pay the price, I’m sure, until Grassman decides to leave town. Or else, Dougy gets his ass tranquilized, tagged, and carted off to the wildlife preserve, where he can live out the rest of his cold years of violence uninhibited, tasting blood without fear of reprisal.

It’s hard for a retard like me to stay on track. So okay. It was just another lazy day in Summer Session. The air was heavy. The bugs droned. We all trudged lifelessly into Conway’s nap-trap and slumped into our desks, merely waiting for the end of the day so we could all limp home to more gross injustice. Conway had called roll, and was beginning to rehash the finer points of some random classic using her patented method of oversimplification, when a soft humming undercut her voice, filling the room with distraction. Unswayed, Conway tried an honorable tactic, which was to raise her voice slightly and plow ahead, but the humming was just too fucking THERE, too fucking PERFECT as it traced the melody of some incredibly sopping-wet tune from the stone age; some song that (to the best of my memory) speaks of birds flying gaily around the head of a nameless asshole too saintly for his own fucking good; a song about the congregation of angels and the insane amount of beauty they’ve pumped into this one human, and about how we all can’t get enough of this sappy piece of shit as he walks among us, making us feel HORRIBLE about ourselves, because we could never measure up to the bar this son-of-a-bitch has raised. It’s a happy song, I guess, and something in its delivery ran so completely antithetical to Conway’s speech that the entire room dissolved into snorts and giggles. Heads swiveled, eyes darted, and smiles were exchanged at this unexpected change in plan. At first, it seemed impossible to know from whom the disturbance emanated (though I suppose it should have been obvious), but as all eyes connected and ruled each other out, every student in class eventually settled their focus on Eric. He faced forward calmly with a look of such benign longing—his chin bobbing minutely with every note that he hummed—that even Conway cocked her head to the side for a moment in concern before finally saying, “Eric, please stop that.” Eric continued humming his sad song as if nothing had been said to him at all, causing a few people to let out surprised guffaws of concern regarding his lack of social awareness. “OK, Eric. Very good. Very nice. You’ve impressed us all.” No change in Eric. “Eric, honestly. This is ridiculous. I know you can hear me. Now stop this instant or there’s going to be trouble, Eric. Eric, do you understand what I’m saying? Eric?”

Eric simply kept humming. If anything, from his outward appearance, he slipped—ever so slightly—deeper into wistfulness. His thoughts appeared far away, as if he had trained his mind’s eye on his memory as it launched itself into the icy Atlantic with all his hopes and dreams aboard. Would that ship ever make it’s way back to Eric Grassman and the troubled mind that had made it so hard for those hopes and dreams to realize their full potential? Ahhh…it was impossible to say. Could it be that the song Eric hummed had nothing to do with theatrics, but maybe something more to do with sorrow? Or longing? Or was that all BULLSHIT? I knew very well that inwardly Eric was watching the proceedings eagerly—gluttonously—gauging the reactions of Mrs. Conway and the rest of the class like a mad scientist adding the final touch of a lightning bolt to the stewy mix in front of him, waiting nervously to see if the improbable concoction would find legs and stumble away into the night.

Mrs. Conway marched to Eric’s seat, weaving her way through the onlookers until she stood directly in front of him. She tapped rapidly on his desk with one bony finger. “Hello, mister. Hi. Hey. I can wait for you, you know.”

Eric looked right through her without even a flutter in his posture. He sang to his memories. He sang to us—whether we wanted him to or not. For MY part, I was VERY interested. This was exactly the kind of shit that gets me out of bed every morning. But it was VERRRY clear that one person in particular was NOT into Eric Grassman’s unique brand of soft rock. Dougy the Rhino was supremely uninterested in Eric’s shtick. He sat a few chairs behind Eric and off to the side, with a clear view of the back of Eric’s head. And as I grinned to myself over the passive resistance I was witnessing, I caught a glimpse of Doug shooting rapid-fire daggers. I knew then that Eric was going to be in a world of hurt, and soon. Cold crept down from the top of my head and soon covered all of me. Doug was going to kill someone someday. His countenance sang murder.

“Eric, this is simply pathetic. I can’t let it stand.” Conway could have been talking to her cat. “Eric, go to the office immediately. You’ve stolen as much learning as I can allow.”

Eric hummed on endlessly. Conway stiffened. Doug tensed in his seat. I felt my own breath quicken as conflict loomed like a cloud of locust on the near horizon.

“Eric. Eric. Eric. Eric. Stop it. Now. Eric.” No reactions from Grassman at all, except for maybe a tightening of his focus. Conway sighed and closed the book on Eric’s desk. Then she gathered the rest of his shit and grasped his elbow. “Come on now. You’ve had enough fun at everyone’s expense. Go to the office.” As she spoke, she tugged at his arm, trying to pull him from his seat without actually putting any force behind her moves. Suddenly Eric snatched his arm back with a disgusted sneer, and popping up from his desk, he smacked everything from Conway’s pale hands and kicked it all across the floor.

“You can’t touch me! You don’t have the right to do that!”

“Okay, Eric. Just fine. You’re not hurt. Stop playing up for everyone and get out. Just get out. Go to the office. I have no use for your music and neither does anyone else in here.”

Eric clenched his eyes tightly and clawed like some kind of fucking mental patient at his ears. Honestly, it freaked me a little.

Conway had as much as she was going to take, which is about three times as much as any other teacher. She turned on her heel and headed for the door. “No, no. Not this. We don’t have to take this. None of us.” She stopped at the door and addressed the class in her senile, grandma way once more before exiting. “He’s taking from you. All of you. I hope you know that. And I hope you remember Eric’s behavior when you’re back in summer session next year.”

Eric stooped for his book and jaunted to the front of the class, throwing the text into the trash, and whining all the way, “You’re always on my back. I’m out of here.”

“Oh no, Eric. You stay. I’M leaving. But I’ll be right back, everyone. If you care, you can read.”

And she was gone. Eric turned to the class—the wounded, deprived contrivance melting instantly—and cackled childishly. “She’s a fucking—“ But he stopped short and a look of concern crossed his face. “What?”

I turned in my seat and with alarm saw Dougy the Rhino advancing up the aisle like a cartoon dog. Hate burned in his dead face. Eric saw that hate, and with confusion and panic, he mewed and made a jump for the door. But it was simply too late; the dog was upon him. Doug grabbed for Eric’s shirt in one blink and had a fistful of it in the next. Eric’s feet shot out from under him as his momentum failed, and as he awkwardly tried to regain his feet, Dougy unceremoniously flung him towards the rear of the room. Eric’s foot caught a desk leg, and it sent him sprawling. He smashed into a bookcase in an area devoted to bookcases, but he was able to use the shelves to quickly pull himself back up to his feet with surprising grace.

He would have done well to stay on the fucking ground. Eric no sooner turned around than Doug’s hand was around his throat and Doug’s fist pistoned into Eric’s face, making a meaty sound. Up came the fist, and then down again. Up again, and down. Up, down, up, down. Each pop to the face punctuated with that meaty smack, and each meaty smack followed by boyish cries from Eric, his face already a bloody mess. Finally Eric got his hands up to shield his battered mess, but like a person who knows exactly what he’s doing, Doug simply grabbed Eric’s arms and used them as leverage to flip Eric around; and pinning the arms behind Eric’s back with one hand, the Rhino grabbed a big ole’ bunch of shirt with the other, and commenced pulling and pushing, smashing Eric’s whole body into the bookcase he had originally flung Eric into. Oh, the humanity.

The soprano yelps of Eric with every blow rained upon him was pathetic and hypnotic, and masked the sound of the door to the classroom opening and the return of Conway. “Okay, Eric. Mr. Jimston is on his way. You can deal with him when he gets here.” She took up her chair at her desk without even looking at the back of the room, where a bloodfest was currently playing out in her class.

Eric was howling repeatedly in pain. Conway looked up from her desk absently and said, “Ok, boys. That’s enough. Take your seats,” and then returned to gazing at her desk as Eric’s beating continued and his cries kept ringing out. Mouths dropped open all over the place as everyone stared, waiting for Conway to make a move. She looked up, and glanced about languidly. “Boys, did you hear me? Take your seats.” Truly mind-boggling.

The door swung open again just as Doug threw Eric to the ground and lifted his foot in the air. Eric saw the foot coming through what must have been a red-wash haze as his nose bubbled blood, and he barely crawled out of the way of a stomp that would have surely broken a rib. And then he was off, heaving between desks for his life as Dougy followed suit without even so much as a disappointed grunt for missing his target. He was a robot—a nimble machine of terror that had fixed his smooth targeting system on the quivering mass of Grassman. Through the opening door came the English teacher Jimston, a stocky man in his mid-forties (I suppose) with angry red hair and surprisingly quick moves that he put to use as soon as he saw what was going on. He moved in with shocked eyes, and as he deftly threw a half nelson on Dougy the Rhino and began to drag him off he said, “Move wrong and I’ll break your fucking neck!” Whoa. Nice. Ballsy.

The spell on Conway was broken as she rose suddenly to her feet and exclaimed, “Oh my. Oh no. Boys, no!” Jesus. I’m sure this woman couldn’t pass a driving test, and here she is, managing wolves.

Eric rolled on his back, spiting blood out of his wrecked mouth. Doug spoke the parting words as his feet crossed the threshold to the hallway: “When I see you around I’m gonna cut your fucking head open.” I believe he will. Something tells me that Doug’s hand makes effortless transformations into all sorts of tools of torture and murder, one of which might be circular saw.

It was a CRAZY FUCKING SCENE. And I guarantee you that Dougy is gonna kill someone someday. Eric Grassman has a decent chance of winning the honor. Who knows why. I think Doug is a fucking base animal, and he smells the fear Eric feels for the world, and the Rhino HATES it. The scent is acidic and it burns, and Dougy does what he needs to do to smother that rancid and burning odor.

So, as I understand it, Eric walked away from the whole thing with a broken nose, two split lips, a separated shoulder, a cracked tooth that will probably have to be pulled, and two fucking-A nut-zo black eyes, purple like the night.

So you see how it’s going to be hard to smoke him out.

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 curb 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 blue 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 that what little light there was bounced off of round, fleshy cheeks 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 in 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 both of them 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, and 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.