In case you were wondering why this isn't in italics and why there are no links here, please understand the complexities involved in dealing with a nine year old document. I mean, I think started typing this thing on the actual first version Microst Word. Anyway, I can't link right now but you should probably gloss over this piece, scroll down to my most recent blog post and buy a much better book than this one, which I think is adequately priced at: Free.
Back to 1999.
Chapter 6
Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Joe Corolla kicked off his red flannel blanket and flopped onto his orange, shag carpet. His digital alarm clock informed him of the hour: 7: 00. The morning sun fought to shine through Joe’s muck covered window and failed. His ten by twelve-foot room, enclosed in darkness, looked like Joe felt as he sat hunched over on all fours on a dirty floor.
He flicked on the lamp (without lampshade) by his bed. His only lamp gave off a hideous yellow glow and revealed his room in all its humility: One twin bed covered in a red flannel sheet; brown, shag carpet circa 1970; an unused metal desk with a Singer typewriter circa 1960. His small closet lacked doors and revealed the extent of his expensive wardrobe (purchased, like everything else in his life with either drug money or his earnings from his father’s car wash).
Corolla left the room quickly, trotted down the hallway, and entered his grimy bathroom. The flower pattern wallpaper, older than Joe, was covered with a thick coating of tar from cigarette smoke. Joe couldn’t conceive what life forms could possibly live in the impenetrable coating of grime around the base of his toilet, in his shower and at the base of his sink. He showered quickly.
After pressing pomade through his thick black hair, shaving the black stubble on his face and staring into his brown eyes with the hopes of finding some kind of spark—any kind—Joe Corolla walked down the miniature hallway and into the living room. The living room, like the rest of the house, had not changed in years. With the exception of a relatively new television and a chordless phone, it was the exact same living room in which Joe Corolla had taken his first steps.
The living room, with brown, shag carpet, ancient, ugly green couches and a second-hand Lazy-boy with more rips than cloth, was comfortable much in the same way that an old pair of jeans was comfortable. Unfortunately for Joe, it was also ugly much in the same way an old pair of jeans is ugly.
Joe opened the refrigerator in his little kitchen and let the cool air warm his naked body. Joe never bothered with clothes in his father’s house. There was no need. His old man was either at work, at the bar or asleep. His mother had moved out years ago, before his oldest sister even turned sixteen. Joe had been seven. He didn’t really know his mother.
But he did hate her.
He drank milk straight out of the carton as he admired his muscular physique in the stainless steel of his old refrigerator.
What to wear?
Joe opened the rickety, white front door and discovered another beautiful day, a little bit humid, but hey, that’s St. Louis. The little row of simple white houses across the street sat in a depressingly orderly and impoverished fashion. Joe noticed the rusty yard decorations, the ripped screen doors and dilapidated yard swings. He thought of Ethan Lee’s house.
He closed the door, walked inside, put on a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans, a white Hanes T-shirt and a black pair of Skechers shoes. A thick, black Gap belt completed the look.
The old Owl clock on his kitchen wall hooted, as it did every half-hour. Joe walked from the house into his front yard, pulled a cigarette from his jeans, lit it, then walked to his car.
His car.
Man did he love his car. Of all the worthless things in this universe, all the materials Joe wanted and longed for, all the crap cards he felt were dealt to him by some unfair dealer, the Mustang was a blessing—no, it was the blessing, and Joe took great care of it.
Every time Joe worked at his old man’s car wash he washed, waxed, or cleaned the interior of his red Mustang. He worked on the chrome. He power washed all 5 liters of his engine. He treated that car like he owned it, and in fifty three more payments, he would.
He turned the key and listened to the engine rev.
“That’s right, Sally,” he said to his car. “Another day of school.”
As Corolla pulled out of his driveway, he turned on his cellular phone and hit number seven on speed dial.
Ethan Lee answered.
“You need a ride?” Joe asked.
“Yeah,” said Ethan. Joe could hear the coffee brewing in the background.
“You don’t ride in with Deborah?”
“Nah, it’s too late in the semester for her to get a parking pass. She catches a ride with Lisa Durch. Besides man, we got tradition to uphold.”
“True,” said Joe, then clicked his phone off.
Joe opened Ethan’s sliding glass door. The room had been cleaned. Ethan was not there.
Corolla sat down and turned on the television to some news story about the Columbine incident. Joe quickly switched channels.
Ethan came out of the bathroom, fully dressed, with a rolled joint behind his ear.
“What’s up?” asked Ethan.
“Hey,” said Joe.
“Got some bad news,” Ethan said as he poured himself some coffee. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“I’m done dealing, man. This is the last.”
“How much you got left?”
“After yesterday, about a half ounce of meth and fifteen rolls.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing. I’ll just smoke a lot of pot, screw my girlfriend, graduate high school and go to college like all the other good boys and girls.”
“Damn, Ethan. What a woman can do.”
“Fuck off.”
The duo walked outside, entered the red Mustang, and drove off.
Ethan lit a joint, hit it, passed it to Joe and said, “You know, man. You were right. It is the little things.”
“No, man,” said Joe as he coughed. “I wasn’t man. The big things add up. Like a car, a nice house, a good woman, crazy sex. The little things are just like, little.”
“No, man. They’re not. The smile on a small child’s face, the beauty of a sunset, a nice breeze, little freedoms from school or work—that’s what its all about.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I just thought about what you said. It’s like, why am I so popular? Because I have a nice place to party, because women like me, because I’ve got a lot of drugs, because I played baseball. All that is a bunch of shit, really. And to most of this school, it’s a big thing. But then I got to thinking: what’s important to me? What do I really love? And you know what I came up with?”
“What?”
“Nothing. I like to fuck, do drugs, get A’s, drink and own nice things. That’s not right. It’s vain, materialistic, unnecessary and stupid.”
“When did you figure all this out?”
“Last night, with Deborah. I told her what you said about the little things being the most important and she proved you right.”
“Well, I should thank her.”
Joe flicked the remains of the joint out the window as the Mustang found its parking space.
Joe watched with awe as Ethan dripped eye drops in his eyes, popped gum in his mouth and grabbed his book bag. Joe had no book bag, no need for eye drops or gum.
“Man, it’s amazing how different we are,” said Joe.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I’m gonna’ go into class, build a wooden cabinet, then go work for six hours. You’re gonna’ go to class, listen to a whole bunch of knowledge, learn and be smarter for it.”
“Maybe. So what?”
“So, you have to cover up and look sober. I’ll bet money my teacher’s stoned.”
“Cool.”
“Uncool.”
“What’s wrong, Man?”
“Nothing, Ethan. Go be a fucking nerd. I’ll see you after work.”
“Cool,” said Ethan as they shook hands goodbye, pulling each other’s fingertips in an effort to create a snapping sound.
“Later,” said Joe as he watched his best friend disappear into a section of the school that would never, ever give a chance to Joe Corolla.
Joe thought of his father, pulling down thirty five thousand a year at his car wash and wanted to cry. Instead, he lit a cigarette and meandered into the shop entrance.
“Another day, another dollar,” someone said to Joe Corolla as he stamped out his butt and opened the shop door.
Too true, thought Joe Corolla.
“Students,” said the obese Mr. Browning as he leaned against his desk. “The administration has asked all first period teachers to forego the pursuit of academic endeavors as a result of the recent events in Colorado.”
Mr. Browning sighed.
“So, we will take turns around the room in order of rows from left to right—my left not yours—and have each of you say how you feel. After that, I’ll give my opinion and then, if there is any time left, we’ll have an open discussion.”
“You believe this guy?” a pimple covered boy named Jim asked Ethan.
Ethan knew Jim because they had been lab partners in Honors Chemistry the year before. Ethan also saw Jim Phelps in Gold’s gym, where the nerd worked as a janitor.
“Yeah, I do.”
Browning pointed at a young girl in the first row.
“Well, I think it’s like, a tragedy. I mean, who could be so mean? I don’t care how you’re treated in high school or how much you hate people. That doesn’t give you the right to just kill them.”
“Next,” said Browning.
Some shy kid said, “I don’t know. I don’t really care. I mean, it’s not like it’s my high school or my friends.”
The girl behind him snapped, “That’s so weak, Jeffery. This is totally indicative of how our society is nowadays. The entire world has been desensitized to violence by television and video games. We all look for easy solutions.”
Ethan laughed out loud. The entire class turned their heads towards the back of the class to stare at him.
“You’ll get your chance, Mr. Lee,” said Mr. Browning. “Continue, Miss Constance.”
“Well, there are no easy solutions in life. We all must suffer and work through the hard times. That’s what I think.”
“Next,” said Mr. Browning.
“Well,” said a very skinny, very pale, brunette female. “I just think it’s sad. That’s all. Real sad.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Browning. “Mr. Phelps.”
“To tell you the truth,” said the pimple covered science expert. “I expected this. We’ve seen it before. People want to blame it on television, video games, family values or a whole lot of other nonsense about being desensitized to violence, but that’s not true. I come from a good family with good values, and you know what, I can understand why these kids reacted the way they did.”
Mr. Browning raised an eyebrow.
Ethan Lee eyed Jim Phelps as the young man spoke. Ethan remembered Junior High and early High School when Joe Corolla, Steve Shermer and a few other jocks would pick on Jim Phelps extensively. Ethan had learned when working on a biology project at Jim’s house that Jim had started Judo lessons to defend himself from the assault of bullies. Ethan never understood why anyone bothered to pick on Jim. After all, Phelps never really started any trouble.
“High school can be a horrible place. Every aspect of your life, history, personality and achievements are judged. People are divided by what sports they play, how good their grades are, whom they’ve slept with, how much they party. Bullies harass those who it won’t hurt their social status to harass. And well, it hurts. We’re all divided, and I can’t blame that on mass media or the fall of family values.”
“Who do you blame it on?” asked Mr. Browning.
Jim Phelps shrugged.
Ethan Lee said, “The school system.”
“Excuse me?” asked Mr. Browning.
“At the risk of stealing a turn, Mr. Browning, Jim hit it right on the money. We are all divided not by each other, but by this school system. Since we were little kids you were cool if you could kiss a girl or get in trouble, or play a sport the best, and as we get older, all those things become more important, especially to the school.”
“How so?” asked Mr. Browning.
“Good athletes never get punished. They bring money into the school. I was a jock once. Half the baseball team didn’t earn the grades on their report cards. If two future dropouts get in a fight, they get suspended. If Steve Shermer, captain quarterback gets in a fight with some average student, who do you think is to blame? I’ll tell you. No one. They shuffle it under the rug, all because he’s better than most at one position of one team sport. Then, we’re divided further within our own school because some of us are smart, which is crap. To top all that off, the school system imposes restrictions and restrictions, making it damn near impossible to have a little taste of freedom. So, instead of getting a little escape, we’re forced to constantly share space with people we hate.”
“Wait a minute,” said Jim. ‘What the hell are you talking about? Everyone loves you.”
“Maybe, but that’s only because I conformed. I became what they wanted me to become because I love women and parties.”
The class laughed.
“Okay, okay,” said Mr. Browning, “If we can stop the Phelps/Lee hour, I would very much like to get back to the problem at hand.”
Rows of reiterations took up a half-hour.
After the murmuring of open discussion subsided, Mr. Browning said, “Well, starting Monday, as a result of these events, Luther S. Dunby High School will be enacting a zero tolerance policy, whereby immediate expulsion will occur for any student caught with a weapon or in the act of creating violence. Also, you will not be allowed to bring book bags to class. You must leave them in your lockers. Also, even though it doesn’t matter because the weather is nice, no jackets will be allowed outside of lockers, either. I’ll dismiss you all early now. I know how you must feel.”
As they filed out like cattle, Ethan turned to Jim and said, “You’re on the money, Man. It’s nice to know another person with a little vision.”
“You too,” said Phelps, awkwardly.
The news of impeding Nazi-esque supervision in LSD High did not exactly please Ethan Lee. He decided to skip, but not alone.
He walked through hordes of people.
“Hey, Ethan?” someone asked.
“What’s up, Sexy?” some girl asked
“Ethan.”
“Yo, Man.”
“You staying out of trouble?”
“What’s this I hear about a girlfriend?” some insensitive kid asked.
He pushed passed them all—all the women, the hallway faces, the party people, the honors students, the jocks, the freshmen. He made his way to the shop class lobby, where a few longhaired stragglers sat around circular tables waiting for use of some occupied machine.
“Corolla in there?” he asked some kid who looked like his knowledge of fashion ended before 1990.
“Go in and find out,” said the kid. “This ain’t honors class, Ethan.”
“Fuck you,” said Ethan as he opened the heavy metal doors.
Joe was in the back, goggles on his eyes and headphones in his ears. He operated a huge belt sander. The cabinet was almost finished.
Ethan tapped Joe on the shoulder.
“What’s up?” Joe yelled.
“Let’s go outside,” Ethan yelled.
Joe put his goggles, ear protectors and CD case in his storage space, grabbed his cigarettes from his cubby hole and stepped outside with Ethan.
“Let’s get out of here, Man. You ain’t gonna’ believe this shit.”
As Deborah Van Klein departed French class, she felt an unusual, mild bliss. She understood that her boyfriend would be in the next class. In a slightly mundane way, this pleased her. It was weird, in a way, she thought, that Ethan and her would share two classes for the rest of the final semester of their high school lives—they would see each other everyday for at least a month, no matter where their relationship went. What was weirder, however, were all of the people who knew of their relationship.
People kept calling her name as they whizzed by on their way to class. People she’d never met—some she’d never even seen—spoke to her as if they were friends. She couldn’t believe it. In her honors classes no one spoke of her new relationship or attempted to befriend her—no one even cared about her personal life. But, every second she spent outside of class was another second amid local fame.
She opened her locker and removed her calculus text. A blonde girl about Deborah’s height opened the locker next to her.
“Hi, Deborah,” she said.
“Um, hello.”
“I’m Kathy,” said the girl who wore a red, white and blue cheerleader’s outfit.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, shaking Kathy’s hand.
“No offense, I mean, you seem like a nice person and all, but why would you want to be Ethan Lee’s girl?”
Deborah wanted to pop the little slut right in her candy red mouth. She felt an anger the likes of which she had never known. Her manicured fingers curled into two fists as she spoke, “I love him.”
“Really? Well, not that it’s any of my business, but you know he has slept with just about every eligible woman in this school?”
“Yes, I know. But, has he ever had a girlfriend before?”
The little blond stuttered as she spoke, “well, he’s dated…”
“Look, just because some woman screws him at a party does not mean that they belong together. Ethan is an intelligent, strong individual with more of an understanding of you stupid little future barfly sluts than you’d care to know. If you think that one night of sex with him makes a date, you know you’re wrong.”
“Fuck you, bitch. I hope he gives you AIDS,” the little slut said before pushing her way through a crowd of juveniles.
Deborah Van Klein wanted to curl up into a little ball, shove herself into a locker and cry for the rest of the day. Instead, she grabbed her calculus book, locked her locker and hoped to meet her boyfriend in class.
Joe Corolla and Ethan Lee were always welcome in Kip’s home. Kip was an old man and the first to admit it. The Korean War had sentenced him to life in a wheelchair but if he felt bad about it, he never revealed it to either of the two boys.
“Zero tolerance,” Kip choked on the words as he lit a large cigar. “So, how much were they tolerating before?”
“About thirty percent,” said Ethan.
“It was a joke,” said Kip.
The three men sat in the living room of an old home on Woodmill Rd. The entire home had been slated for reconstruction, along with every other home on the street as the ever-expanding county progressed. Due to the impending move, the home had been stripped of furniture. The furniture rested in Kip’s new condominium, purchased with government money. Kip had vowed to stay in his old home until the day of destruction despite the home’s lack of electricity, running water, or furniture. Ethan sat on an orange crate. Joe propped himself up on an overturned plastic bucket. Kip, as usual, sat in his wheelchair.
“The thing is,” said Joe. “The entire world is gonna’ be affected by this in a negative way, and well, it’s unfair.”
“What’s unfair?” asked Kip.
“It’s unfair that the people who created this fucking mess are the people who have to clean it up,” said Ethan.
“Sounds fair to me.”
“Well, it’s not. The people who created this school system are going to blame it on the same people they’re trying to mold into decent young citizens,” Ethan spoke loudly.
“Calm down,” said Kip.
“Sorry, Kip. It’s just unfair. We should have a say in this.”
“You do,” said Kip.
“How do you figure?” asked Joe.
“You’re eighteen. You can vote. Go change the world.”
The sun shone through the open window as the breeze and the honking horns from the street intruded on their conversation. Kip’s cigar smoke wafted slowly across the living room and out the windows.
“It’s like your house, though,” said Joe, aware he was bringing up a touchy subject. “You didn’t have a say in its destruction. People want nice places to live away from the city so they move out here in droves. They make more traffic. Eventually they want wider roads so they don’t have to move any further away from their jobs in the city, so they destroy your house, then they say everything will be better, but it won’t, because there will be more people and they’ll need wider roads.”
“I don’t see the connection, Corolla,” Kip coughed.
Ethan understood the metaphor perfectly.
“The school system wants our lives to be more structured so they make more rules. These rules mean we must spend more time with people in schools, even if we hate them. So, we try less to get along and more to avoid the heavy hand of the rule makers. Eventually, someone gets pissed and reacts violently, not against the rule makers, but against the people who get special treatment from the rule makers: the jocks, the popular people, et cetera. Then, as if they think it will help the overall people in the school, the system reacts by creating more rules, giving those who already have violent tendencies more to hate, more to fight against and more of a reason to hate those who get special treatment. It doesn’t stop the violence, but it makes it look as if something’s being done about it. Instead of progress in the mind, we get progress in the rules, much like the roads. If we all found ways to drive less with more people in our cars or get decent public transportation, we wouldn’t need to widen the roads. But because nothing will change, everyone just goes and gets better cars, just like people go out of their way to get special treatment from the schools. So we sacrifice thought for action and end up worse off.”
“Yeah,” said Joe. “That’s what I meant.”
“And I guess they don’t let the inmates vote on how to run the asylum?” asked Kip.
“Hell, they don’t even let us vote on school lunches,” said Joe.
Kip wheeled himself towards the window. Ethan and Joe watched Kip stare silently at the traffic.
“You know,” he said. “Forty years ago, before I left for Korea, I could sit at this window and wave at everyone who went by. They knew me and I knew them. I could hear birds singing. Reverend Jameson could always be seen cleaning off the steps of that church. Now, the church is three times larger with an asphalt parking lot bigger than anyone’s home I know, and janitors with power washers clean the steps. The people drive by as quickly as possible, pretending to care about where they go, and I don’t know them. The schools get built one every year around here but the kids who fill them would’ve been happy to stay where they were before progress moved them away. Everything’s go go go.” Kip sighed.
Ethan lit a joint.
“Still smoking that funny stuff, Ethan?”
“Better than that shit,” said Ethan pointing to Kip’s cigar.
Kip studied his cigar for a moment, coughed, then said, “Yes, I suppose so.”
“What were you saying over there?” asked Joe. “About the road.”
Kip, dressed in a pair of Wrangler jeans rolled up to hide the fourth of his legs claimed by The Korean War, a sweatshirt presenting the logo: USA, and a pair of horn rimmed glasses, rolled himself over to Ethan and said, “Why don’t you tell him?”
“He means, I think,” said Ethan. “That people don’t care about people anymore. They only care about money and progress. And I guess he means that the same can be said for the school systems. They only care about winning the games, getting the funding and being better than the next school, instead of actually stopping to care about the people in the school.”
“Well said,” said Kip.
“Hey Kip,” said Joe. “How long until doomsday?”
Doomsday was code for the day that indifferent construction workers making thirty-seven dollars an hour would level Kip’s house.
“Twelve and counting.” Kip paused. “You kids are coming over for the grand finale?”
“Of course.”
Kip planned to throw eggs at his own home while drinking a bottle of red wine that his parents had bought in 1927, when they finished building the house. If a few eggs landed on construction workers or their machinery, Kip had once told Ethan and Joe, well, accidents happen.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Joe.
“Hey, Ethan,” said Kip. “Whose turn is it to tell the story?”
“Yours,” said Ethan.
“No it’s not, I did it last time,” spoke Kip.
“And I did it the time before that,” said Joe.
Ethan shrugged. “I’ll do it,” he said.
Kip was no moron. At seventy years old, he knew he was about to die. Doctors said he would need a lung removed to stay alive; Kip, in his infinite tenacity, told the doctors that he was finished having parts removed and he’d be glad to die all the same. He had no family, anyway, save one sister who lived in Phoenix and never married.
Over the last years, Kip had taken to telling his friends at the legion hall the story of how he’d met the two young boys who occasionally made a point to visit him and borrow some wisdom. Then, after the news of the cancer in his lung, Kip had taken to making the boys tell the story from their perspective. Ethan and Joe loved hearing the story and hated telling it, but they told it anyway. They owed Kip that much.
“I was a fourteen year old punk,” began Ethan. “And my fourteen year old punk friend Joe decided it would be cool to steal his father’s truck and go for a joy ride. The roads were slick and icy that November, but that didn’t stop us two punks from getting drunk and wreaking havoc. On the way home, Joe lost control of the car—some say he never really had control of it—and slid into the side of an old garage, destroying the walls and knocking shovels, yard supplies, and pieces of the wooden garage wall onto a classic, 1968, cherry red, GTO convertible, damaging the body and breaking one of it’s windows. In the process, both of us punks were knocked out cold.”
Ethan stopped, flicked the remains of his joint out the window, took a deep breath and continued.
“When we came to, we were lying on twin beds in the same room. We had ice packs tied to our heads. The memory of events previous dashed trough my cerebellum until it became very clear that we should be in jail. I woke Joe up. The two of us walked down the hallway and into the kitchen where an old man in a wheelchair was doing some math on an antiquated adding machine.
“’Fourteen thousand big ones,’ he said to us.
“’What?’ we asked.
“’That’s what you owe me, or I call the police and your parents.’
“For the next two years we worked off our debt doing yard work, house work, rebuilding the garage, fixing the GTO—anything he needed. Then Kip, who’d always been polite about the situation, told us to get the fuck out and never come back. At which point, I gave him a hug and thanked him for the years of advice, the opportunity to work off my debts and, most importantly his honorable code of silence about the incident. We decided that we liked Kip enough to visit him often, glean his years of wisdom and gain the benefit of his understanding. Kip warmed up to us eventually, and taught us even more about life. Before long, one drunken act of stupidity had formed two punks into men, created an unfaltering friendship and bridged a generation gap.”
Joe and Kip applauded. When Ethan looked over at Kip, he saw tears in the old man’s eyes.
“Thanks, Ethan,” Kip said. “Now get the hell out of here. What kind of eighteen year old kids would hang out with an old cripple?”
“Who’s hanging out with a cripple?” asked Joe. “We’re hanging out with a veteran of the United States military who gave his legs so some punk kids could have the freedom to smash up his garage.”
Kip’s laughter roared, echoed off the walls of the empty house and brought life to two depressed hearts.
“Good luck with school,” said Kip as he showed the duo out. “And stay out of trouble.”
“Always,” said Joe. “Always.”
“Feel better?” Joe asked Ethan as they drove up Woodmill Rd.
“Much.”
“I can’t believe he cried.”
Ethan did not respond.
Deborah Van Klein, due to an early dismissal by her rather pleasant Psychology teacher, was one of the first students in the cafeteria. She sat alone at a small table in the back. The young transfer student contemplated the events of the last few hours over her lunch, which essentially consisted of two granola bars, a diet coke and an orange.
People were treating her very differently. She had many new friends, or at least, people who wanted to touch her, say hello to her and talk to her. Men said hello to her shyly, as if the very possibility of speaking to her would get them beaten up by a horde of thugs. Women, either through jealousy, hatred or disrespect, treated her very catty. They said ‘hello’ as if they meant, ‘slut.’
Deborah’s self esteem prevailed. She took a small amount of pride in having landed, quite possibly even domesticated, Luther S. Dunby’s most eligible bachelor. She knew these women were trying to make her feel bad because they felt bad. They hated themselves because they were ugly, materialistic, stupid sluts. After her meeting with Kathy, the cheerleader super bitch, she had decided not to let any of the popularity hounds bring her down.
Lisa Durch sat next to her.
“Hey, baby,” she said.
“Hey, Lisa.”
After a bite of granola, Deborah asked, “have you seen Ethan today?”
“No, but he probably left after news of the zero tolerance act.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Oh, honey,” Lisa spoke with an air of contrived wisdom. “He hates rules like my parents hate punk music.”
“Oh,” she said. “I knew that. I just figured he would, I don’t know, want to see me today.”
“He’ll see you today.”
Some girl with sandy pigtails and a pink shirt advertising her as a porn star sat next to Lisa.
“Lisa, you dumb slut, why don’t you sit a little further from our table?”
“Jessica, I want you to meet Deborah; Deborah, Jessica.”
“So, you’re the one,” said Jessica, who Deborah could have sworn she saw in an underwear ad in last Sunday’s paper. “Think you can change him?”
“I don’t want to change him,” she said, feeling a little awkward that a complete stranger felt she had the right to infringe on Deborah’s relationship. “He’s perfect.”
“Yeah, sometimes, if he really feels like fucking you right.”
“Jessica, you rude slut,” said Lisa.
“Well, excuse me; like you didn’t fuck him once before.”
Lisa turned to Deborah. “One time, and we were drunk,” she said.
Deborah shrugged it off. Don’t let them get to you, she told herself. It’s just jealousy.
“Let’s talk about something else,” suggested Deborah.
The conversation had moved from Columbine to Monica Lewinsky to Y2K to Jim so-and-so’s new car and into the depths of materialism. When the bell indicating the end of lunch finally rang, there were eleven people crowded around the small table, all gleaning pieces of Deborah’s newfound popularity in an effort to aid their collective need for mass attention. In an attempt to avoid seeming rude, she stayed late saying goodbye to all of them. As a result, she arrived late for her Honors American History course and was forced to do three pushups or receive a tardy.
She did the pushups.
Joe Corolla and Ethan Lee sat in Ethan’s basement watching Jerry Springer. As they debated the cultural influence of daytime television on America’s populace, Ethan’s door opened and Atwood Nash entered.
“Hey, guys. Want to smoke some weed. I have zero tolerance for people who don’t want to smoke some weed.”
For the next three hours, three men, bonded by a life of hating their collective place in the life, their school and their coaches, got heartily stoned, drank rum and together debated the future of high school’s everywhere.
They concluded that every school with any funding would eventually have metal detectors, security cameras and on-site police; that martial arts training would be requisite for an education degree. They all agreed that in their lifetimes, detentions would be held in minimum-security prisons.
“This shit starts Monday, right?” asked Joe.
“Yeah,” said Atwood.
Joe held up his glass.
“To the destruction of Luther S. Dunby High School before Monday.”
“Here, here,” cheered the students.
By the time Deborah Van Klein opened Ethan’s sliding glass door, she half expected to see him sleeping with another woman. She felt eaten alive by ravenous rumors.
She was surprised to find him passed out alone on a recliner.
The events of the day had made her hate him a little. It wasn’t his fault, she had told herself, that everyone in school follows the events in his life like the paparazzi followed Princess Diana. Nor was it his fault, she had concluded, that women spread their legs for him without so much as playing hard to get. Hell, she had given in to him on the first date without hardly a thought. But, she hadn’t known what she was getting into by becoming his girlfriend, and he hadn’t warned her.
As she watched him sleep soundly in his recliner, the television playing a Batman cartoon, she found herself wishing she’d never left Orange City, Iowa. Call it backwoods, naïve, or even a hick town, she missed the innocence that came with such a wholesome upbringing.
She found that innocence on Ethan’s sleeping face.
She kissed him on the cheek.
“Hey, baby,” she said.
He awoke, stretched his beautiful body and looked directly into her eyes.
“My love,” he said drunkenly.
He pulled her onto the recliner and began kissing her with his nasty breath.
“Brush your teeth,” she said. “We need to talk.”
After he had cleaned himself up, Ethan walked into his kitchen where Deborah had a hot pot of coffee waiting for him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Let’s sit down,” she said, handing him a cup of coffee.
“So, you heard about the zero tolerance,” she said as they sat on the sofa.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well, you know what I found out today?”
“What’s that?”
“Being your girlfriend sucks. Everyone wants to talk to me, to grab me, to make fun of me, to sit around me at lunch and bother me with stories of you. I’m so sick of it and it’s only been one day.”
“Sorry,” he said sincerely.
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend before. I didn’t know what it would be like. If it’s any consolation, school life is the same for me.”
“I know,” she said.
“What can I do to help?”
“You could show up at school, eat lunch with me, help me through this.”
“I will,” he said. “Tomorrow.”
He kissed her on the cheek and stroked her beautiful chestnut hair.
After they had made love, eaten, showered and kissed each other goodbye, it was only Ten P.M. Because Ethan hadn’t worked out in two days, he decided to go to Gold’s gym and move some weights.
Jim Phelps didn’t hate his job. At least, that’s what he told himself everyday at work. He had cleaned the men’s and women’s locker rooms, vacuumed, dusted and mopped the entire gym (as per the Wednesday requirements) and had even completed his workout by midnight. For Jim Phelps, a man in great shape, with adept mind and an overactive imagination, the job of night janitor never interested him. It did, however, pay a good wage.
He decided, after a long shower, to sit in the sauna and relax.
The sauna’s timer had been set for thirty minutes. He peered inside, saw Ethan Lee relaxing and entered.
“Hey, Jim.”
“Hey, Ethan.”
Casual politeness was an unspoken rule in gymnasium’s everywhere. Even people who would normally kill each other if crossing paths in a bar or shopping mall would simply nod at each other in a gym. Bullies who had shoved Jim into lockers treated him politely in the gym. People who would deliberately knock his books from his hands would go out of their way to say ‘hello’ in the gym. Jim Phelps knew that Ethan Lee would be no different.
“How was your workout?” asked Ethan.
“Good. Quads and Tri’s. You?”
“Chest and Bi’s. Pretty good.”
“Love this sauna.”
“Me too.”
“So, zero tolerance kind of pissed you off.”
“Really pissed me off,” said Ethan.
“Me too, but maybe it’ll level the playing field a little for us geeks.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, now if I get pushed into a wall by some jock, he’ll be expelled, won’t get to graduate. Maybe it’ll set a standard.”
“Maybe.”
“Can I ask you a question, Ethan, about something that’s been bothering me since before junior high?”
“Sure.”
“What does it take to be cool?”
Ethan thought about the question for a few minutes as the two dripped sweat in silence.
“Drug use, crime, fucking women, bad grades, sports, shit like that.”
“How did you become cool?”
“Drug use, crime, fucking women, sports, shit like that.”
“But, you’re an honors student. You get better grades than I do. You probably never have classes with friends.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t see how you impressed them all. You never see the other cool people at school. And why the hell are they cool anyway? I mean, I’m trained in three martial arts. I’m an expert outdoorsman. Even though I’m covered in pimples, I’m no uglier than most offensive lineman at school and they always have girlfriends. What’s the deal?”
“Confidence, probably. To be cool, you must command respect without seeming mean, impolite or disrespectful, but being cool is not that important.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“No, trust me it sucks. I mean, the women are great, the parties are nice but other than
that, it sucks. People come up with some definition of your personality and your way of thought. They think they own you. People you don’t even know constantly pester you in the hallways, at lunch, everywhere. You can be rude to them. You can treat them like shit. It doesn’t matter. They think because you show up at the same parties as them that you’re friends. Hell, Jim, with the exception of seven or eight people, I’m better friends with you.”
“Really.”
“Sure man. Remember when we were lab partners? We were always joking, doing projects at your house and talking about real stuff, philosophical stuff. Hell, I ate dinner with your parents.”
“So, why don’t we hang out?”
“You don’t come by my house.”
“What about all these bullies who give me shit?”
“What about them?”
“I try to be a pacifist, to keep from unloading all my martial arts knowledge on them, but I’m sick of it. I want to stand up for myself.”
“Why? So you can have even more people trying to beat you up.”
“Oh yeah,” said Jim, putting his head down. “They roam in packs.”
“More like herds.”
“So, there’s this party off Highway T on Saturday night. I was thinking, maybe, if I went, it would help my status.”
“Tell you what,” said Ethan. “If you go, I’ll introduce you to a whole lot of women, and then, eventually, you’ll see how stupid, materialistic and hateful cool people really are. They don’t value people, emotions or life for the most part. They value status. For them, the accepted appearance of cool is cool. Just follow three simple rules: don’t talk about Star Trek or any science fiction. All personable people hate science fiction for the most part, myself excluded. Don’t wear your glasses or any clothing which hasn’t already been worn by half of LSD High in the last three weeks. And last, but not least: no puns or bad jokes. Just be polite, adult, and most of all, confident. It’s confidence that wins you all those Judo matches right?”
“It helps.”
“Well, it’s lack of confidence that makes a person a geek. Women respond to confidence. A confident man has fewer problems and more happiness than does an unconfident man, and women are happiness thieves. If they wanted to be depressed, they’d hang out with their ugly, depressed, female friends. Men respect the men who get beautiful women.”
There was a silence.
“Cool?” asked Ethan.
“Yes,” said Jim.
“Hey, Ethan,” said Jim as Ethan got up to leave the sauna.
“Are we friends?”
“Well, we’re not enemies. I certainly respect a lot of things about you. So yeah, we’re friends. Maybe not the best of friends, but, I’d never fuck you over, at least, not on purpose. I’d say, at the very least, we’re cool.”
“Cool,” said Jim, as if he was finally getting used to the word.