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In the end I had to ask Madame Jimenez-Macanally a few discreet questions at school the next day, but eventually I was able to punctuate and translate it.
The first line threw me a bit because of the verb ramoner, which I’d never seen before but which grabbed my attention as it would any Ramones fan. According to the dictionary, it literally means “to scrub out or vigorously clean a chimney.”
Here, though, it was clearly being used as a sexual metaphor.
To ramone someone dry, as Tit’s sentence had it, is to, well, you know—do I have to draw a diagram, folks? It couldn’t have had anything to do with the actual Ramones—unless that’s where they got their name or something?
Anyway, the whole thing translates, roughly, as:
“I saw MT last night and I ramoned her dry. Details to follow. Are you going to the funeral? I would rather be tied up and whipped.”
I learned more French translating those sentences with a dictionary and a grammar and a weird conversation with Madame Jimenez-Macanally than I had in three-plus years of Jean and Claude, I can tell you that.
175
November
TH E F E STIVAL OF LIG HTS
I can’t even begin to describe how hard it was to refrain from mentioning the Catcher code to Sam Hellerman on the way to school the next day.
He was in a buoyant mood when I met him at the usual corner. He wanted to discuss his new theory:
“Just think what a better world we would have,” he said,
“if David Bowie had never met Brian Eno. That was the worst tragedy of the twentieth century.”
“Really?” I said.
In fact, I disagreed rather strongly with this, but my mind was on other things, and, to be honest, Sam Hellerman was getting on my nerves. Who wanted to think about Eno and Bowie when there was a Deanna Schumacher and a Catcher code on the menu? I didn’t even bother trying to ask him where he had been on Halloween night: I knew he’d only lie, which would demean us both. Plus, I still had some questions to ask Madame Jimenez-Macanally about the French text before I could be totally sure what the message said, so I was preoccupied. I gave him the silent treatment for most of the way. But I doubt he noticed: it wasn’t too different from how things were when I was not giving him the silent treatment.
I found Madame Jimenez-Macanally in her classroom during Brunch and asked her my questions about accents, punctuation, funerals, ramoning, and being tied up and whipped. She had more questions about my questions than I thought necessary or polite, and she was giving me a peculiar look the whole time, but I ended up getting what I needed.
Then, when class started, I’d catch her staring at me from time to time with this mystified expression.
“Mack Anally has a crush on you,” said Yasmynne Schmick, noticing.
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That was kind of funny, but I had other concerns.
Because Madame J.-M. and I were basically in the same mystified boat. The “solved” puzzle was still a puzzle. What the hell did it mean?
Now, the school calendar for November is dominated by this thing called “Homecoming.” I’m not all that clear on it, but I know it involves a football game, a “Rally,” and a dance, plus a slew of other pointless and embarrassing activities intended to promote the whole thing. It’s nothing to do with me. They always decorate the Hillmont Knight with flowers and blue and white ribbons. And this year, they had signs up everywhere trying to stoke excitement over Spirit Week:
“Come See the Spirit Towel!” Even if I knew what the hell the Spirit Towel was, I don’t think I’d tell you: I’m pretty sure we’re all better off not knowing.
I have my doubts as to whether even the full-on normal people cared very much about Homecoming or Spirit Week, to be honest. But definitely no one in my world (which I have to concede now included not only Sam Hellerman but also, by extension, the drama hippies) had the slightest interest in any of this stuff, other than to mock it. Yasmynne Schmick, who had by now become my regular Advanced Conversation partner, had said: “I can’t help it, Moe—I’m obsessed with the Spirit Towel.” Which I thought was pretty funny, actually.
But with the announcement of the Spirit Week activities came some more interesting and surprising news. The Hillmont powers that be, for reasons that remain unclear, had decided to hold a “Battle of the Bands” instead of a Pep Rally for December. Well, first they called it a Battle of the Bands, but someone objected to the word “Battle” as being too com-petitive. Which is hilarious, because “Battle” is far too gentle 180
a word to use to describe the game of survival of the most psychotic that is the soul and essence of Hillmont High School and that would have made Charles Darwin himself weep and wish he’d never invented a theory to elucidate it.
Some things are better left unelucidated, he would have said, and it would have been hard to disagree with him.
So anyway, they changed the name to “Convergence of the Bands,” and then to “Convergence!” because they didn’t want to restrict it to bands. Then, and why I’ll never know, they changed the name to “Festival of Lights.” But essentially we were looking at your basic high school talent show. It was going to happen during fourth period–lunch–fifth period at the end of the second week of December, six weeks away.
“Green Sabbath should totally try to get on this,” said Sam Hellerman, during one of his increasingly rare appearances in my presence instead of in the shadow of the Hillmont Knight and Celeste Fletcher’s ass. He was talking about Green Sabbath, of course, Monsignor Eco-druid on guitar, The Grim Recycler on bass and industrial sabotage, Todd “Percussion”
Panchowski on drums, percussion, acoustic and semiacoustic drums, cymbals, tambourines, cowbells, chimes, gongs, toms, shaker eggs, bongos, stick clicks, wood blocks, percussion, percussion and more percussion. First album Our Drummer Is Kind of Full of Himself.
I looked at him dubiously. How could we ever get on it?
You had to submit an audition tape to this group of normal students supervised by Mr. Teone. A tape of us actually playing, I was pretty sure, would automatically disqualify us, maybe even permanently, from playing anywhere, even with a more sympathetic panel of judges. Anyway, it sounded like a Festival of Insufferable Tedium and Aggravation to me. Did we even want to get in on it?
“We do,” said Sam Hellerman, “and we can.” And he 181
gave me that “leave it to me” look. So I figured he had a plan.
At the time, I found it difficult to see how any good could come of such a thing. And as it turns out, I guess I was mostly right.
DR. H EXSTROM
My first “therapy” appointment was also during that first week of November. My mom insisted on driving me there, even though I wanted to ride my bike. That was to make sure I wouldn’t duck out, which was a valid concern. She checked me in with the receptionist but didn’t stick around to see the shrink with me—maybe that was against the rules or something.
The psychiatrist was Dr. Judith Hexstrom. My plan had been to give her the old freaky-youth-genius treatment and try to unnerve her with silence and unreadable facial expressions. I was thinking maybe if I could convince her I was legitimately crazy I could at least get some medication that I could give to Sam Hellerman for a Christmas present. It didn’t work out that way, though.
For one thing, to my surprise, I kind of liked Dr.
Hexstrom. She wasn’t young or pretty, but there was something about her face that I liked, even though it was my considered opinion that her whole profession wasn’t much more than a shameless racket. And she was by far the most intelligent adult I’d ever talked to.