these techniques is all that devastating alone; but repeated endlessly and in tandem, they can build up and start to drive you a bit insane. The basic idea is to wear you down with day-to-day social exclusionary exercises, and the repetition of mind-numbingly similar minor pranks and indignities. It’s all about ritual abuse, mental and emotional stress, psychological torture, and humiliation. They really are a great bunch of guys.
The best way to handle such situations is to stare straight ahead and act like you don’t notice or care. Unless you happen to have some serious equalizing firepower. Which I don’t.
My dad always used to say “Fight back,” but that’s not realistic. Even if you could successfully pretend to be some kind of bad dude there would still be something like eighteen hundred of them and only one of you. On TV, people in that situation claim that they know karate and that their hands are registered as lethal weapons and then they do this yelpy kung fu dance. Someone cues the laugh track and the tension is relieved. Then there’s a commercial, and they don’t show the part where Matt Lynch rides his skateboard on the guy’s face.
No thanks.
The only way to get Matt Lynch to leave you alone, if you can’t actually take him out, is to introduce an element of uncertainty into his slow-moving, gummed-up “mind.” It turns out Matt Lynch has a fear of uncertainty and the irra-tional. Raising such doubts is not as hard as you might think, though it took me quite a while to figure that one out.
At the beginning of the school year, all the psychotic normal people are mainly concerned with their own affairs, and even the minor irritants and pranks I’ve described can get off to a slow start. Which is why that first week went by without incident. Well, almost.
18
September
TH E WE E KE N D STARTS NOW
I say almost because on Friday, at the last possible moment, there was what I guess you’d call an incident. I was in my own world, thinking about Baby Batter, planning my stage banter (“Hey, we’re Baby Batter, and this one’s called ‘Up Your Face.’ Un, deux, trois, quatre . . . ”) on my way out at the end of the day when I bumped into Mr. Teone. Literally, I mean: there’s quite a lot of Mr. Teone, and it’s pretty easy to crash into him if you’re not watching where you’re going. It happens all the time. In this instance I must have been going along at a fair clip, because I bounced so hard off his expan-sive trampoline-y stomach that I almost lost my balance and fell backward. Mr. Teone stood there smirking. No salute this time. Just a weird smile, if that’s what it was.
“Henderson,” he said, in that mush-mouthed, nasal way he has, stopping me with his hand on my shoulder. He pulled his head back and squinted one eye as he looked at me. Not a pretty sight.
I said nothing, looked up at him warily. What now?
“Say hi to your dad for me.”
I gave him one of my “whatever, freak” looks, disengaged, and shuffled off to the northwest exit.
See, that almost sounds like an okay thing to say, if you don’t know that my dad is actually dead. But now that you know that, what do you think? I would certainly pardon your French if you were to reply that he’s totally fucked up.
There’s no other way to put it.
This was just a few days before the anniversary of my dad’s “accident,” which had me in a somber mood, despite all the Baby Batter excitement. At moments like these, it’s hard to tell whether you’re being too paranoid or just paranoid enough. It sure felt like they were all in it together, all the 21
psychotic normal students along with their buffoonish mascot, Mr. Teone. It’s like they sit around all day trying to come up with ways to get to me. Some of the experiments are ill-conceived from the beginning; some are so moronic they wouldn’t trouble a retarded monkey; some have promise but go astray. But every now and again there’s one that lands.
This one had a kind of subtle brilliance.
In fact, I do talk to my dad, in my head, sometimes. Not that I think he hears me, not really. But I kind of pretend that I do think he’s listening, and would be dispensing advice and comfort if only there were a way for the human ear to pick up the signal.
Telling him that Mr. Teone said hi just ain’t gonna happen, though.
I was feeling kind of weird. When the subject of my dad comes up, particularly when it’s unexpected or sudden, I feel funny, kind of disoriented and light-headed. And there’s a strange pressure in my chest, like I’m recovering from being punched in the stomach. Mr. Teone’s remark had rattled me. Can’t they leave you alone for even one week? In fact, I don’t think they can. It’s in the school district bylaws.
Sam Hellerman was waiting for me by the oak tree across from the baseball backstop, which was our usual afterschool meeting point (unless somebody was already there “smoking out”—then we would meet a little farther down, near the track). We couldn’t think of anything to do, so we went over my house.
Friday is my mom’s half-day, so she was already home from work, leaning against the kitchen counter with her afternoon highball in her hand, smoking and staring blankly at the wall. She was wearing a shortish, vibrantly colored floral-22
print dress over white flared slacks, with big clunky boots.
And a turban. Yes, a turban.
“Far out, Mom,” I said as we walked by, but she was lost in thought and didn’t react.
Sam Hellerman followed me into my room. I put on Highway to Hell.
“The weekend starts now?” he said. I did the devil hand sign and said “Party.”
“Mom says to turn down the teen rebellion,” yelled my sister, Amanda, pounding on the door. “She can’t hear herself think.”
Bon Scott was singing “Walk All Over You.” I reached over and turned the volume up.
“What’s her problem again?” asked Sam Hellerman.
“Oh, she’s at that awkward age.” Amanda was twelve and was going through changes. It was like she had a supply of different personalities, a brood of alternate Amandas that she was trying out. You never knew which one you were going to get.
“No,” said Sam Hellerman. “I meant your mom.”
“She’s at an awkward age, too,” I said.
I was only half kidding.
Sometimes I accuse my mom of being a hippie, though that’s an exaggeration. She just likes to think of herself as more sensitive and virtuous and free-spirited than thou. If that dream leads her down some puzzling or slightly embarrassing avenues in a variety of neighborhoods, it’s not the world’s biggest tragedy. “I’m a very spiritual person,” she likes to say, for instance. Like when she’s explaining how she hates religion and all those who practice it. Well, okay, if it makes you feel better, Carol. She’s really about as spiritual as my gym shorts, but I love her anyway.
23
I think she might have unintentionally bumped up her own groovy-ometer just a bit after my dad died. Her eye for fashion certainly went through a strange and magical transformation around that time. I think the technical term is cataracts.
Well, we all went a little bananas. That’s to be expected.
My dad was more down-to-earth. He was with her on a lot of the touchy-feely save-society-and-admire-African-art stuff, I’m pretty sure. But he didn’t overdo it. Plus, he worked for the police, so he couldn’t be frivolous about absolutely everything. He liked war and action movies, which hurt my mom’s feelings. And he loved motorcycles, which I think she thought was daring and hot. I think he found her beautiful and quirky and goofy and charming, kind of how I do when I step back. Somehow, you always end up forgiving her for being totally crazy.