Chapter Four-Numb
Don't grab, Don't clutch
Don't hope for too much
Don't breathe, Don't achieve
Or grieve without leave
U2
Life is a lie.
A lie told by fools pretending to be sages but a lie nonetheless. You can’t blame them for passing the lie down, after all they were told the same lie when they were wee lads as well. It’s a generational thing, lie to lie, father to son, mother to daughter. A lie for all seasons, for all time in fact. A lie that we all believe and then pass down ourselves.
We are told that life is this grand tapestry of events that spread out, majestically like a patchwork quilt of memories and experiences, makes this tale with a beginning, middle and end. We are told that each life is a story filled with great heart and sacrifice. That each one of us is filled with joy and sadness, drama and comedy, schlemiel and schlimazel. We are taught that every moment is connected to the next, a series of pictures when flipped very fast past the naked eye gives the illusion of movement, but really goes nowhere. It’s an illusion of movement instead of actual movement. It’s a sham, a farce.
Life is a lie.
Life is no more connected from one moment to the next than a train of thought has a caboose and a conductor. We spend so much time trying to tie events together, hoping that some form of narrative comes out of it we will do anything to gain sense out of the chaos. We crave action and reaction, cause and effect we will go to any lengths to make it true. Drink too much ? Your dad was a drinker. Eat too much ? Your mom was a porker. You a shrill, overbearing bitch who can’t let anyone get a word in edgewise ?
You’re on your own, but I bet in the end you’re going to blame someone else.
We try to connect these things, buying into the lie that life makes sense and that it is sequential and that in the end, we all learn the same things at the same time in the same way. And I am here to tell you friend, that’s just plain bullshit. For I am here to tell you…
Life is a lie.
Life is not connected and it is not sequential. It rarely makes sense and if it does, you’re probably just overcompensating for something else. The truth is much simpler to explain but more terrifying by a factor of ten to accept. So if you like your life as it is, lie laden with a heaping dose of just not real as a side dish, stop reading. Because I am going to tell you the truth and I am going to bet you will either A, hate the truth, or B disbelieve the truth. Either way, it’s not going to end up pretty. So here’s your chance to get your money back and leave the theater before the monster is revealed. Last chance.
Also, those you are overly whiney and chronic about seeking outside validation, might want to stop as well. Not because this might offend you, I just don’t like that type of person reading my stuff.
The truth is this. Life is a series of unconnected events that are so unique and startling that there is nothing in your repertoire of responses that even come close to covering your reaction. The time after that is spent in a mad orbit around this event as you try desperately to understand and accept whatever it was that occurred. You scramble to do this so your life can fall back into the same boring rut it was before and you can be ready before the next big thing hits you. You think the more of these events you experience the better off you will be when the next one comes along, but that's just part of the same lie. In actuality we are as bowled over as the first time it happens we just have a better poker face the older we get.
And that’s it. Life, a series of things you just can’t get.
Your first crush, out of left field, like some nasty, little hormone ninja that sneaks up behind you in gym class and throws a bag full of emotions over your head, leaving you unprepared for the feelings and sensations flowing through your body. The next few months to years, depending on how sharp of a tool you are, is spent getting a hold of this feeling and realizing that whatever it was that you were crushing on, might be the thing in the end you are going to like. Which is incredible in itself since right before the crush, you didn’t think too much of whatever it was in the first place. So just about the time you get a hold of this mad rush of feelings and desires, life comes at you again. And WHAM…it’s something else.
Now your mind may want to put the two events together. We are a rational people and like to think we are ruled by logic and reason.
We are also the people who invented cheese in a tube and still say other people are going to hell because of a 2,000 year old book that no one can quite agree on says so. The thought we might be a bit illogical and unreasonable as a species, needs to be addressed.
So you have this ‘crush’ thing handled. I mean sure, you like guys, and that’s a bit weird but you also brought a can sardines to school in a duffel bag on the off chance there was an earthquake that collapsed the school and you were trapped for days until the rescue dogs found you, so maybe crushing on a boy is a little weird, but as weird things goes it doesn’t come close to toping the list. Of course you also thought that rescue dogs were going to find you after an earthquake so weird AND stupid might be a curse you are going to have to live with.
Where was I ?
Right, so you have this crush thing going on, and then you meet a friend. A real friend, something you also have never had before. And in the span of under a year you have two things you never thought you might have at the same time. A desire for love and friendship.
And you're thrown. I mean completely off your rocker. Because your rational mind wants to ask, I was crushing on Shayne so am I crushing on this guy too ? You want to go ahead and take a two and then another two and trade them in for a four later on down the path. But see, that’s the lie, and hence the problem.
The two events, are unrelated in the scope of things. They have absolutely nothing in common with each other. One was a fluke where this one guy ended up pushing a button that hadn’t been pushed before and this other guy, well he is just trying to be friendly. Nothing at all between the two have anything in common at all. Events. Separate. Apart. The fact that I had a crush on this one random guy and want to be friends with this other person is just a coincidence. It means nothing more than that. Nothing.
And now you know exactly what I mean when I said, Life is a lie.
Life is the lie we tell ourselves everyday to make sure, we are never the thing we didn’t think we could be.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
My next life was going to be the best one yet.
I had spent the last part of the year secluded to myself. I had once again drawn my cloak of indifference around me and passed through the world without being a part of it. I could barely look at Shayne, the words weird kid were like sunlight to a vampire. I cringed around him knowing what he really felt. In time that feeling spread to the rest of the school and I assumed everyone thought that. I became a side show medium, reading others minds and then crucifying them for their imagined sins.
I became an asshole, which wasn’t that far of a walk all things considered.
I became openly hostile to others around me, no matter how congenial or pleasing they seemed to be. I had heard the truth and once heard, the truth cannot be forgotten. I knew that these things were not my friends and had convinced myself they would never be my friends. Furthermore the looks that people gave me began to gain textures, layers and layers of meaning that without Shayne’s little speech I would have missed. The eye contact, the raised eyebrows, they were all signs, sign that they knew I was a freak and had no desire to see me as anything else. Without a word said I had been ridiculed, persecuted and tortured, all in the time it took to pass someone in the halls. Part of me hated these people and everything they stood for.
The larger part of me wanted to be them so bad my teeth hurt.
I studied them as they studied me. I recorded everything I could take in their culture, their styles, their language. I was an anthropologist, living undercover in a foreign land. I studied their clothes, their hair, their likes and dislikes. I wrote down names of music they listened to, names of bands were scrawled all over the inside of my notebooks. School ceased to be about school and became about them . Everything became about them. I had a plan you see, a plan to make next time different.
My weekends were spent in malls and arcades. Normally a place that had no function for me the mall became my wildlife preserve. Watching the strange creatures interact in their natural environment I was able to see how they reacted to each other and after awhile mimic the ability. I practiced the strange raising of the corners of the mouth that seemed to reflect some form of joy called a smile. It was a foreign feeling on my face but I endured to gain what I craved so badly yet never once touched.
Acceptance.
It was the drug that kept me going, the burn in my gut that made me take the silent screams of the people I walked by everyday at school. It was everything to me to one day be one of them, so much so it turned from a desire and straight into an obsession almost overnight. The water held just above my lips I was tired of this desert and this isolation, after a point I would do anything to become one of them. So many night spent in front of a mirror, practicing my smile or repeating the same surprised look you get when you see a friend at the mall and they wave to you from across the food court. Hours and hours in the mirror, mimicking all that I saw, yet not understanding a word of it.
I didn’t want to smile, and I didn’t have any friends across the food court. I wasn’t a normally bubbly person and in fact to this day if you rounded up fifty of my closest friends and told them to pick out a list of words to describe me, bubbly wouldn’t make it on a single list. I am a socially subdued person, not finding any gain in drawing attention to myself in a crowd. Yet I practiced that smile and wave, for the day I might want to.
Sometime in my next life.
That summer I began to formulate because I realized what my mistake had been and was ready to move on. I had figured out the problem, which of course didn’t lie within me, was fixable. Just like that I had reduced a year of uncomfortable stares and awkward silences down to ONE little thing. One number was off in my head and only one thing needed to be fixed so my next life would work. And even that little thing wasn’t my fault in the first place. I had just assumed that other people were as advanced and understanding as I clearly was. So after a year of this and a summer of contemplation I had the error and was ready to fix it.
All I needed was money.
See the fault wasn’t in me or my moody, put off way that I couldn’t deal with kids my age. It wasn’t with my anti social ways and the disdain I had for all things normal. It wasn’t in the subtle yet permeating way my intelligence made me feel superior to those around me and treat them as such. It wasn’t any of those things because those things just weren’t true. The true failure of the middle school experiment came down came down to two things.
The assumption that kids could see how great I was even if I dressed like a complete dork and two the fact I didn’t have enough money for new clothes. And I knew how to fix it.
Chess King.
Now for those of you not alive in the 80’s….GET OFF MY LAWN !!
Ahem…sorry….for those of you not alive in the 80’s Chess King was a clothing store, but so much more. Where in the 80’s clothes were much. Much more than just clothes. In the 80’s clothes became your identity, your persona, your image and your acceptance. It was vital that you were unique and expressive, but in a fashionable way. The thrift hand styling of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna may have looked cool on MTV, but were impossible to recreate at home. So of course someone invented Chess King.
An image factory they sold clothing assemblies more than actual items of clothing. Whole outfits with interchangeable parts could be created for the lamest at heart. Jackets, vests, shirts, skinny piano ties, suspenders, pre pegged pants and Ray Bans in every color in the rainbow. As long as the rainbow was done all in black. Chess King was the coolest and lamest store at the same time. In one sense it allowed lame people to dress somewhat cool it also allowed lame people to dress somewhat cool. Making those who were in fact cool look lamer just by showing up. It was the great equalizer, the savior of all uncool and just the thing I needed to make this life perfect.
That a lot of money.
Since there was no geek outreach program at Chess King it was going to fall to my grandparents to once again foot the bill for my Phoenixian like return from the dead. But in a manner much closer to my mother than I choose to comment on right now, I pressed them to throw money at a solution for a problem that clearly only existed in my head. There wasn’t a great deal of struggle or conflict to get them to agree, after all I had gone to school and lived with them for a full year now and not once had I lit a car on fire or vomited all over the living room at 4 in the morning. So compared to my mom I was a treat to give money to.
My grandmother didn’t think much of the clothes I was picking out. I believe her words were, humph, if you like it and doesn’t it come in any other colors ? Which in grandma translated to Dear God what is that ?, If you insist on wearing such a hideous thing in public and doesn’t it come with it’s own can of gasoline so when you’re done with it you just apply a match ?
Of course looking back I would have to say, I agree.
Three Miami Vice style jackets, each of a more terrifying pastel color than the last. Five vests, four button cut to mid chest, two paisley’s, a black and white checkerboard and two neon colors that to this day could induce vomiting in infants if exposed too soon. Five different, acid washed, pre pegged, pre wrinkled, pre faded pair of jeans that had actual tears at the knees and thighs. I assume there was small tribe of Phillipino children somewhere that got paid 15 cents a week to wear brand new jeans and then trash the shit out of them so lame Americans could then pay 35 dollars a pair and wear them as if brand new yet lived in.
I also got three Swatches and a pair of Ray Bans to be safe.
In the 80’s Qusimodo could have gotten some action if he had a cool Swatch and a pair of Ray Bans. By the way, if you are reading this and don’t know what a Swatch is, please go to a museum of ancient history and look under, Oh my god they wore what ? It should give you a smile. So I was ready. Neon clothing, black sunglasses and a watch that was less art and more of an allergic reaction that kept making my wrist break out in a rash.
I was ready.
I envisioned the next day down to the tiniest detail. I saw the kids watch me, wondering who the new kid was. I saw them, awash in their own nervousness wonder if I was going to be one of the cool kids or one of the very cool ones, since I was dressed so well. I saw myself, the new Ferris Bueller, the new Alex P Keaton, the new me. I saw myself being welcomed by the gang, knowing my smarts and sweet ass clothes make me the snappiest person at Livermore High. I saw all this and more as I drifted off into sleep. I saw it all and was sure my life was going to start tomorrow.
I saw everything but Kelly Ayers.
He was barely four and a half hours old when he was killed.
And though his death was tragic and brutal, it is important to note at this time, he died looking damn good.
I never had a chance. It was a matter of moments for me to walk in, my clothes an eyesore to even the completely blind. I knew I was drawing attention and like every social retarded nerd in existence, any attention is considered good attention. Kelly was about to school me in the difference.
I walked into the Student Union a changed man, a new man, I was taking my life my the horns and making it what I wanted. I had seen Dumbo enough times to know there was no magic in my clothes, the magic was within me. I was going to fly, I was going to soar, and I didn’t need a group of racially motivated birds to fool me into anything different. I was alive, I was here, I was what’s next. And possibly my clothes might be magic, after all they did glow under a black light.
And then of course he was killed.
Livermore was a small town but it was large enough to warrant two high schools. Livermore, the one we were at, was the larger of the two, being the oldest of the two and there was Granada, the newer one of the other side of town. And even though the middle school districting took ione into account, Granada divided up the students equally with the Livermore. The point ? Livermore got Kelly and I. Granada got Shayne. Which meant I got the cranberry juice.
Kelly had been waiting, plotting, anticipating the day that my imaginary boyfriend would leave me unguarded. I had become so used to Shayne’s presence I had forgotten Kelly existed. And there, less than 20 minutes into the new school year, I was reminded in a manner that could only be described as Carrie like in its malice. I can still the blur of white plastic as the tub of juice is hefted over my head and its contents are thrown over by now unarguably non magical clothes. I froze, and not from the freezing liquid and ice running down my face.
There is silence in the lunchroom as the assembled crowd takes in the carnage. There is dark red liquid everywhere and the scene is so tragic it is almost comical. It is the silence of judgement, the silence of shared shame. The silence that a crowd shares in sympathetic understanding of just how horrible it is for you. It is the silence that exists just before the laughing. Just before the pointing and the belittling clapping that can bring a grown man to tears. In many ways, I think the silence is worse than the laughing. Only because you know, the laughing is coming.
I didn’t need to turn around to see him, I didn’t need to look at his face to know who he was. His hysterical fits of donkey brays that passed for laughing let me know in a second who was responsible. And though it is only the combined mixture of sugar, water, ice and red dye number 6 soaking into my pants, it might as well be blood flowing freely from fresh gunshots. By the time I can make it to turn around, I am already dying. Another life lost in the pursuit of happiness.
The laughter circles around him as the here and now starts to merge into the there and then. Time becomes weak and paper thin as the past rushes up to the present. I look back and I am there in that lunch room, surrounded by the other kids on their first day. I am there as I look down at the new kid in the fancy clothes covered in cranberry juice scrambles to his feet. I watch as the boy gathers up his books and what little dignity he had brought with them and flees their presence like all truly evil creatures must do before the light. I watch as he slips on the juice and the tile, almost falling again sending the room into even more hysterics.
I shake my head, knowing that it isn’t me who runs out the door in shame and agony. It isn’t anyone who slams open the door, praying there is a bottomless cliff on the other side. There is no one home at Casa James, the drivers seat is empty, there is no one at the wheel. It may look like a drowned cranberry rat that rushes past the kids coming into the lunchroom, it is in actually a corpse, a corpse that doesn’t know well enough to stop moving once dead. I watch through the tinted windows as he runs into the quad, slamming into the assembled crowds in their pre school ritual. A pinball thrown to and fro from social bumper to social bumper until he finally collapses in a side bench, well out of the way from prying eyes and haunting laughter. It is there the walking dead stops and sits. And slumps. And cries. Cries for a life not yet lived, yet still wasted.
It is in that moment I first thought about killing myself. There, in that moment of pure abolishment that I sit there and stare into the abyss that is my soul. And in the darkness and flames, the abyss stares back. And I realize. I realize that this is who I am. There are no more masks, no more lives, no more lies. This is who I was, and there was nothing let to do to change that. And there, staring into that darkened mirror of my soul, I made the decision, made the choice.
I was going to have to kill myself to get away from me.
Don’t do that, a voice says.
I whip my head up, half in shock as I assumed I was alone and half in terror that I might have been talking out loud and didn’t know it. I wince as the juice from my hair flies off from my head nap and soaks the dark haired boy’s face standing in front of me. I am frozen in humiliation as he stands there, dozens of tiny drops of cranberry trickling down his face. We are both motionless for moments.
It's him who laughs first as he wipes his face off with the back of his jean jacket. I am still aghast at the moment, but I notice that his laughter is infectious. It is a laughter of real humor and enjoyment. It is a laugh that comes from deep inside his heart. A laugh that until now, I thought was real for other people only. And we stand there, both of us covered in cranberry juice, laughing like the kids we are supposed to be.
He sticks his reddened hand out and says, Dean.
I thrust my equally red hand out and grab his, James.
And he smiles a smile that years from now, can still bring warmth to my face. He smiles and the world stops for a moment as our hands, sticky with mutual meet and hold.
Welcome to Livermore High, he says through his smile.
And just like that, I am reborn again.
I am 15 and my life is over. I am 15 and my life has just begun. I am 15 and I have just met the love of my life.
Don't hope for too much
Don't breathe, Don't achieve
Or grieve without leave
U2
Life is a lie.
A lie told by fools pretending to be sages but a lie nonetheless. You can’t blame them for passing the lie down, after all they were told the same lie when they were wee lads as well. It’s a generational thing, lie to lie, father to son, mother to daughter. A lie for all seasons, for all time in fact. A lie that we all believe and then pass down ourselves.
We are told that life is this grand tapestry of events that spread out, majestically like a patchwork quilt of memories and experiences, makes this tale with a beginning, middle and end. We are told that each life is a story filled with great heart and sacrifice. That each one of us is filled with joy and sadness, drama and comedy, schlemiel and schlimazel. We are taught that every moment is connected to the next, a series of pictures when flipped very fast past the naked eye gives the illusion of movement, but really goes nowhere. It’s an illusion of movement instead of actual movement. It’s a sham, a farce.
Life is a lie.
Life is no more connected from one moment to the next than a train of thought has a caboose and a conductor. We spend so much time trying to tie events together, hoping that some form of narrative comes out of it we will do anything to gain sense out of the chaos. We crave action and reaction, cause and effect we will go to any lengths to make it true. Drink too much ? Your dad was a drinker. Eat too much ? Your mom was a porker. You a shrill, overbearing bitch who can’t let anyone get a word in edgewise ?
You’re on your own, but I bet in the end you’re going to blame someone else.
We try to connect these things, buying into the lie that life makes sense and that it is sequential and that in the end, we all learn the same things at the same time in the same way. And I am here to tell you friend, that’s just plain bullshit. For I am here to tell you…
Life is a lie.
Life is not connected and it is not sequential. It rarely makes sense and if it does, you’re probably just overcompensating for something else. The truth is much simpler to explain but more terrifying by a factor of ten to accept. So if you like your life as it is, lie laden with a heaping dose of just not real as a side dish, stop reading. Because I am going to tell you the truth and I am going to bet you will either A, hate the truth, or B disbelieve the truth. Either way, it’s not going to end up pretty. So here’s your chance to get your money back and leave the theater before the monster is revealed. Last chance.
Also, those you are overly whiney and chronic about seeking outside validation, might want to stop as well. Not because this might offend you, I just don’t like that type of person reading my stuff.
The truth is this. Life is a series of unconnected events that are so unique and startling that there is nothing in your repertoire of responses that even come close to covering your reaction. The time after that is spent in a mad orbit around this event as you try desperately to understand and accept whatever it was that occurred. You scramble to do this so your life can fall back into the same boring rut it was before and you can be ready before the next big thing hits you. You think the more of these events you experience the better off you will be when the next one comes along, but that's just part of the same lie. In actuality we are as bowled over as the first time it happens we just have a better poker face the older we get.
And that’s it. Life, a series of things you just can’t get.
Your first crush, out of left field, like some nasty, little hormone ninja that sneaks up behind you in gym class and throws a bag full of emotions over your head, leaving you unprepared for the feelings and sensations flowing through your body. The next few months to years, depending on how sharp of a tool you are, is spent getting a hold of this feeling and realizing that whatever it was that you were crushing on, might be the thing in the end you are going to like. Which is incredible in itself since right before the crush, you didn’t think too much of whatever it was in the first place. So just about the time you get a hold of this mad rush of feelings and desires, life comes at you again. And WHAM…it’s something else.
Now your mind may want to put the two events together. We are a rational people and like to think we are ruled by logic and reason.
We are also the people who invented cheese in a tube and still say other people are going to hell because of a 2,000 year old book that no one can quite agree on says so. The thought we might be a bit illogical and unreasonable as a species, needs to be addressed.
So you have this ‘crush’ thing handled. I mean sure, you like guys, and that’s a bit weird but you also brought a can sardines to school in a duffel bag on the off chance there was an earthquake that collapsed the school and you were trapped for days until the rescue dogs found you, so maybe crushing on a boy is a little weird, but as weird things goes it doesn’t come close to toping the list. Of course you also thought that rescue dogs were going to find you after an earthquake so weird AND stupid might be a curse you are going to have to live with.
Where was I ?
Right, so you have this crush thing going on, and then you meet a friend. A real friend, something you also have never had before. And in the span of under a year you have two things you never thought you might have at the same time. A desire for love and friendship.
And you're thrown. I mean completely off your rocker. Because your rational mind wants to ask, I was crushing on Shayne so am I crushing on this guy too ? You want to go ahead and take a two and then another two and trade them in for a four later on down the path. But see, that’s the lie, and hence the problem.
The two events, are unrelated in the scope of things. They have absolutely nothing in common with each other. One was a fluke where this one guy ended up pushing a button that hadn’t been pushed before and this other guy, well he is just trying to be friendly. Nothing at all between the two have anything in common at all. Events. Separate. Apart. The fact that I had a crush on this one random guy and want to be friends with this other person is just a coincidence. It means nothing more than that. Nothing.
And now you know exactly what I mean when I said, Life is a lie.
Life is the lie we tell ourselves everyday to make sure, we are never the thing we didn’t think we could be.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
My next life was going to be the best one yet.
I had spent the last part of the year secluded to myself. I had once again drawn my cloak of indifference around me and passed through the world without being a part of it. I could barely look at Shayne, the words weird kid were like sunlight to a vampire. I cringed around him knowing what he really felt. In time that feeling spread to the rest of the school and I assumed everyone thought that. I became a side show medium, reading others minds and then crucifying them for their imagined sins.
I became an asshole, which wasn’t that far of a walk all things considered.
I became openly hostile to others around me, no matter how congenial or pleasing they seemed to be. I had heard the truth and once heard, the truth cannot be forgotten. I knew that these things were not my friends and had convinced myself they would never be my friends. Furthermore the looks that people gave me began to gain textures, layers and layers of meaning that without Shayne’s little speech I would have missed. The eye contact, the raised eyebrows, they were all signs, sign that they knew I was a freak and had no desire to see me as anything else. Without a word said I had been ridiculed, persecuted and tortured, all in the time it took to pass someone in the halls. Part of me hated these people and everything they stood for.
The larger part of me wanted to be them so bad my teeth hurt.
I studied them as they studied me. I recorded everything I could take in their culture, their styles, their language. I was an anthropologist, living undercover in a foreign land. I studied their clothes, their hair, their likes and dislikes. I wrote down names of music they listened to, names of bands were scrawled all over the inside of my notebooks. School ceased to be about school and became about them . Everything became about them. I had a plan you see, a plan to make next time different.
My weekends were spent in malls and arcades. Normally a place that had no function for me the mall became my wildlife preserve. Watching the strange creatures interact in their natural environment I was able to see how they reacted to each other and after awhile mimic the ability. I practiced the strange raising of the corners of the mouth that seemed to reflect some form of joy called a smile. It was a foreign feeling on my face but I endured to gain what I craved so badly yet never once touched.
Acceptance.
It was the drug that kept me going, the burn in my gut that made me take the silent screams of the people I walked by everyday at school. It was everything to me to one day be one of them, so much so it turned from a desire and straight into an obsession almost overnight. The water held just above my lips I was tired of this desert and this isolation, after a point I would do anything to become one of them. So many night spent in front of a mirror, practicing my smile or repeating the same surprised look you get when you see a friend at the mall and they wave to you from across the food court. Hours and hours in the mirror, mimicking all that I saw, yet not understanding a word of it.
I didn’t want to smile, and I didn’t have any friends across the food court. I wasn’t a normally bubbly person and in fact to this day if you rounded up fifty of my closest friends and told them to pick out a list of words to describe me, bubbly wouldn’t make it on a single list. I am a socially subdued person, not finding any gain in drawing attention to myself in a crowd. Yet I practiced that smile and wave, for the day I might want to.
Sometime in my next life.
That summer I began to formulate because I realized what my mistake had been and was ready to move on. I had figured out the problem, which of course didn’t lie within me, was fixable. Just like that I had reduced a year of uncomfortable stares and awkward silences down to ONE little thing. One number was off in my head and only one thing needed to be fixed so my next life would work. And even that little thing wasn’t my fault in the first place. I had just assumed that other people were as advanced and understanding as I clearly was. So after a year of this and a summer of contemplation I had the error and was ready to fix it.
All I needed was money.
See the fault wasn’t in me or my moody, put off way that I couldn’t deal with kids my age. It wasn’t with my anti social ways and the disdain I had for all things normal. It wasn’t in the subtle yet permeating way my intelligence made me feel superior to those around me and treat them as such. It wasn’t any of those things because those things just weren’t true. The true failure of the middle school experiment came down came down to two things.
The assumption that kids could see how great I was even if I dressed like a complete dork and two the fact I didn’t have enough money for new clothes. And I knew how to fix it.
Chess King.
Now for those of you not alive in the 80’s….GET OFF MY LAWN !!
Ahem…sorry….for those of you not alive in the 80’s Chess King was a clothing store, but so much more. Where in the 80’s clothes were much. Much more than just clothes. In the 80’s clothes became your identity, your persona, your image and your acceptance. It was vital that you were unique and expressive, but in a fashionable way. The thrift hand styling of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna may have looked cool on MTV, but were impossible to recreate at home. So of course someone invented Chess King.
An image factory they sold clothing assemblies more than actual items of clothing. Whole outfits with interchangeable parts could be created for the lamest at heart. Jackets, vests, shirts, skinny piano ties, suspenders, pre pegged pants and Ray Bans in every color in the rainbow. As long as the rainbow was done all in black. Chess King was the coolest and lamest store at the same time. In one sense it allowed lame people to dress somewhat cool it also allowed lame people to dress somewhat cool. Making those who were in fact cool look lamer just by showing up. It was the great equalizer, the savior of all uncool and just the thing I needed to make this life perfect.
That a lot of money.
Since there was no geek outreach program at Chess King it was going to fall to my grandparents to once again foot the bill for my Phoenixian like return from the dead. But in a manner much closer to my mother than I choose to comment on right now, I pressed them to throw money at a solution for a problem that clearly only existed in my head. There wasn’t a great deal of struggle or conflict to get them to agree, after all I had gone to school and lived with them for a full year now and not once had I lit a car on fire or vomited all over the living room at 4 in the morning. So compared to my mom I was a treat to give money to.
My grandmother didn’t think much of the clothes I was picking out. I believe her words were, humph, if you like it and doesn’t it come in any other colors ? Which in grandma translated to Dear God what is that ?, If you insist on wearing such a hideous thing in public and doesn’t it come with it’s own can of gasoline so when you’re done with it you just apply a match ?
Of course looking back I would have to say, I agree.
Three Miami Vice style jackets, each of a more terrifying pastel color than the last. Five vests, four button cut to mid chest, two paisley’s, a black and white checkerboard and two neon colors that to this day could induce vomiting in infants if exposed too soon. Five different, acid washed, pre pegged, pre wrinkled, pre faded pair of jeans that had actual tears at the knees and thighs. I assume there was small tribe of Phillipino children somewhere that got paid 15 cents a week to wear brand new jeans and then trash the shit out of them so lame Americans could then pay 35 dollars a pair and wear them as if brand new yet lived in.
I also got three Swatches and a pair of Ray Bans to be safe.
In the 80’s Qusimodo could have gotten some action if he had a cool Swatch and a pair of Ray Bans. By the way, if you are reading this and don’t know what a Swatch is, please go to a museum of ancient history and look under, Oh my god they wore what ? It should give you a smile. So I was ready. Neon clothing, black sunglasses and a watch that was less art and more of an allergic reaction that kept making my wrist break out in a rash.
I was ready.
I envisioned the next day down to the tiniest detail. I saw the kids watch me, wondering who the new kid was. I saw them, awash in their own nervousness wonder if I was going to be one of the cool kids or one of the very cool ones, since I was dressed so well. I saw myself, the new Ferris Bueller, the new Alex P Keaton, the new me. I saw myself being welcomed by the gang, knowing my smarts and sweet ass clothes make me the snappiest person at Livermore High. I saw all this and more as I drifted off into sleep. I saw it all and was sure my life was going to start tomorrow.
I saw everything but Kelly Ayers.
He was barely four and a half hours old when he was killed.
And though his death was tragic and brutal, it is important to note at this time, he died looking damn good.
I never had a chance. It was a matter of moments for me to walk in, my clothes an eyesore to even the completely blind. I knew I was drawing attention and like every social retarded nerd in existence, any attention is considered good attention. Kelly was about to school me in the difference.
I walked into the Student Union a changed man, a new man, I was taking my life my the horns and making it what I wanted. I had seen Dumbo enough times to know there was no magic in my clothes, the magic was within me. I was going to fly, I was going to soar, and I didn’t need a group of racially motivated birds to fool me into anything different. I was alive, I was here, I was what’s next. And possibly my clothes might be magic, after all they did glow under a black light.
And then of course he was killed.
Livermore was a small town but it was large enough to warrant two high schools. Livermore, the one we were at, was the larger of the two, being the oldest of the two and there was Granada, the newer one of the other side of town. And even though the middle school districting took ione into account, Granada divided up the students equally with the Livermore. The point ? Livermore got Kelly and I. Granada got Shayne. Which meant I got the cranberry juice.
Kelly had been waiting, plotting, anticipating the day that my imaginary boyfriend would leave me unguarded. I had become so used to Shayne’s presence I had forgotten Kelly existed. And there, less than 20 minutes into the new school year, I was reminded in a manner that could only be described as Carrie like in its malice. I can still the blur of white plastic as the tub of juice is hefted over my head and its contents are thrown over by now unarguably non magical clothes. I froze, and not from the freezing liquid and ice running down my face.
There is silence in the lunchroom as the assembled crowd takes in the carnage. There is dark red liquid everywhere and the scene is so tragic it is almost comical. It is the silence of judgement, the silence of shared shame. The silence that a crowd shares in sympathetic understanding of just how horrible it is for you. It is the silence that exists just before the laughing. Just before the pointing and the belittling clapping that can bring a grown man to tears. In many ways, I think the silence is worse than the laughing. Only because you know, the laughing is coming.
I didn’t need to turn around to see him, I didn’t need to look at his face to know who he was. His hysterical fits of donkey brays that passed for laughing let me know in a second who was responsible. And though it is only the combined mixture of sugar, water, ice and red dye number 6 soaking into my pants, it might as well be blood flowing freely from fresh gunshots. By the time I can make it to turn around, I am already dying. Another life lost in the pursuit of happiness.
The laughter circles around him as the here and now starts to merge into the there and then. Time becomes weak and paper thin as the past rushes up to the present. I look back and I am there in that lunch room, surrounded by the other kids on their first day. I am there as I look down at the new kid in the fancy clothes covered in cranberry juice scrambles to his feet. I watch as the boy gathers up his books and what little dignity he had brought with them and flees their presence like all truly evil creatures must do before the light. I watch as he slips on the juice and the tile, almost falling again sending the room into even more hysterics.
I shake my head, knowing that it isn’t me who runs out the door in shame and agony. It isn’t anyone who slams open the door, praying there is a bottomless cliff on the other side. There is no one home at Casa James, the drivers seat is empty, there is no one at the wheel. It may look like a drowned cranberry rat that rushes past the kids coming into the lunchroom, it is in actually a corpse, a corpse that doesn’t know well enough to stop moving once dead. I watch through the tinted windows as he runs into the quad, slamming into the assembled crowds in their pre school ritual. A pinball thrown to and fro from social bumper to social bumper until he finally collapses in a side bench, well out of the way from prying eyes and haunting laughter. It is there the walking dead stops and sits. And slumps. And cries. Cries for a life not yet lived, yet still wasted.
It is in that moment I first thought about killing myself. There, in that moment of pure abolishment that I sit there and stare into the abyss that is my soul. And in the darkness and flames, the abyss stares back. And I realize. I realize that this is who I am. There are no more masks, no more lives, no more lies. This is who I was, and there was nothing let to do to change that. And there, staring into that darkened mirror of my soul, I made the decision, made the choice.
I was going to have to kill myself to get away from me.
Don’t do that, a voice says.
I whip my head up, half in shock as I assumed I was alone and half in terror that I might have been talking out loud and didn’t know it. I wince as the juice from my hair flies off from my head nap and soaks the dark haired boy’s face standing in front of me. I am frozen in humiliation as he stands there, dozens of tiny drops of cranberry trickling down his face. We are both motionless for moments.
It's him who laughs first as he wipes his face off with the back of his jean jacket. I am still aghast at the moment, but I notice that his laughter is infectious. It is a laughter of real humor and enjoyment. It is a laugh that comes from deep inside his heart. A laugh that until now, I thought was real for other people only. And we stand there, both of us covered in cranberry juice, laughing like the kids we are supposed to be.
He sticks his reddened hand out and says, Dean.
I thrust my equally red hand out and grab his, James.
And he smiles a smile that years from now, can still bring warmth to my face. He smiles and the world stops for a moment as our hands, sticky with mutual meet and hold.
Welcome to Livermore High, he says through his smile.
And just like that, I am reborn again.
I am 15 and my life is over. I am 15 and my life has just begun. I am 15 and I have just met the love of my life.
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