Why Aren't You Smiling? Page 8

  Skinny Burnout Boy: “I can see why someone would dig John Lennon. I mean, he was a Beatle, for chrissakes, but what the hell does he see in Yoko Ono?”

  Exasperated Burnout Girl: “My stepmother is a total freak. The other day she went to the supermarket in curlers!”

  Burnout Boy with Dirt-lip Mustache: “A hash high is nothing like a pot high. It’s like a whole ’nother drug.”

  Pissed off Burnout Girl: “I got an 80 and Mrs. Pennington gave me a C+, and I said, ‘No way, 80 is supposed to be a B-…’ ”

  This was my cue! I trotted out one of Danny’s oft-cited opinions. “Grades are a form of thought control, totally fascist. I think they should be abolished.”

  Dewey, standing nearby as he emptied a bag of potato chips into a bowl, nodded his head approvingly. “I heard that!”

  The girl I’d spoken too agreed. “Yeah. Mrs. P. is a dried-up old bitch anyways. I bet she hasn’t gotten laid in years and is just taking it out on us.”

  I smiled agreeably then excused myself to find the bathroom, more for a break from the pressure of social interaction than physical need. On returning, I found the party’s atmosphere changed. Someone had dimmed the light, a few kids were necking, and the air sparkled with Sex. Boys and girls were looking at each other, giggling, flirting, touching knees. An orgy could break out at any minute. I found it hard to breathe.

  Tracey sashayed over to the stereo and turned up the Eagles, who were singing “Take it eeeesaaay,” in a manner so relaxed it was impossible to imagine them ever taking anything hard. She held her arms aloft and wiggled her fingers in Dewey’s direction. “C’mon,” she commanded. He eagerly leapt up to join her in what wasn’t so much of a slow dance as a vertical make-out session. Kai pulled Vicki to her feet and did likewise. My heart began doing all sorts of acrobatic feats not normally associated with internal organs. As Kai and Vicki’s lips locked into a long, juicy smooch, my legs, acting purely on their own recognizance, propelled me out the front door. I felt weird not having said goodbye to anyone, but knew I would have felt weirder interrupting. I walked home feeling despondent for no reason I cared to analyze.

  A few days later I found myself in Kai’s garage. As he rummaged through his sports equipment (we were about to play some horrible ball game), I casually asked, “Are you and Vicki finally going steady?”

  He looked up wearing an adorable frown. “She says going steady is for kids. So I asked, ‘Are you my girlfriend?’ And she said she’d think about it.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  Kai smiled dreamily. “She kisses really good.” He turned to me. “You have your eye on someone?”

  I panicked. “Nah. Nobody in particular.”

  He grinned salaciously. “Not a one-woman kind of man, eh?”

  Could he seriously think I wanted to be some shallow, egotistical playboy? I could see in his eyes that his question was intended to be flattering, but still. All the times I’d brought up the importance of universal Love and shared my hopes of running away to Oregon had made no impression on him whatsoever. Some combination of politeness, laziness, and self-centeredness kept him from seeing me as I was.

  “I dunno.” I looked down.

  Kai smiled indulgently. “What’s the farthest you ever got with a girl?”

  All major religions counseled that lying was spiritually corrosive. “Shaking hands.”

  Kai let out a winningly good-natured laugh as he pulled out a basketball. “Don’t worry. Just a matter of time.”

  I shuddered, both at the prospect of more sports and the terrible truth that my only friend, with whom I shared a profound, brotherly Love, knew nothing about me. He’d kept himself willfully ignorant not only of my innate Dweebishness (which was good), but my highly spiritual nature (very, very bad).

  Kai changed the subject. “What’s up with you and Douglas?”

  In movies and TV shows, the bully always gets his comeuppance at The End. Douglas had gotten his comeuppance, yet nobody seemed to have told him about it being The End. Instead of leaving me alone after the pee incident, he’d redoubled his torments with daily poundings that left both my body and psyche covered in bruises. Even amidst the savage anarchy of junior high, the epic quantity and quality of his persecution became noticeable. Teachers flung out reprimands and detentions, but Douglas ignored them.“Nothing. He just hates me. No reason.”

  Kai shook his head. “If I were you, I’d kick his sorry ass.”

  “I’m not into fighting.”

  “I heard he kicked your head! I mean, that is cold. You don’t kick someone in the fucking head.”

  “I guess he has mental problems.”

  “Yeah, like he’s totally psycho.” Kai shook his head. “Man, I’d kick that motherfucker’s ass.”

  My conscious mind never abandoned Christian pacifism, but my subconscious was susceptible to peer pressure. A few days later I was sitting on the Benches eating lunch when Douglas saw me and sauntered up. “Gimme those.” He pointed to a pair of chocolate Hostess cupcakes that sat on my lunch bag, awaiting consumption. I started to hand them over, but something (possibly a deep love of cupcakes) compelled me to hesitate. Outraged by my defiance, Douglass leaned over and flicked my nose with his finger. I’d endured far, far worse, but for some reason this particular indignity flipped a switch deep in my brain. I exploded into white-hot rage. Without any conscious thought, I stood up and mashed one of the soft, gooey cupcakes into Douglas’s hard, belligerent face. As he stood before me, utterly stunned, I practiced one of his own favorite tricks, putting one of my legs behind his and pushing him backwards with my hands. Douglas toppled on the asphalt and I quickly sat on his chest with my legs on either side of him, pinning his arms.

  “Get the fuck off me, faggot!” yelled Douglas. He tried to free his arms but my legs kept them in place.

  I leaned my face over his and shrieked, “If you ever mess with me again I will kill you. Kill you, do you understand?” I slapped his face!”

  “Help! A faggot is raping me!” screamed Douglas.

  A crowd of Burnouts and Popular Kids ran over and surrounded us. “Fight! Fight!” shouted the less mature.

  Rational thought returned to my mind. “Promise you’ll leave me alone and I’ll let you get up.”

  “OK! OK!” Douglas said quickly. “I promise!”

  As I stood, Douglas leapt to his feet and socked me hard in the shoulder. It was his favorite spot to punch me and there was already a terrific bruise there. The pain reignited the rage and I threw my first punch ever, landing it straight on his arm.

  “Auugh!” screamed Douglas. “My bad arm!”

  The safety supervisor stalked through the circle of on-lookers. “What’s going on?”

  “He hit me in my bad arm!” shrieked Douglass.

  “He was picking on me!” I protested.

  Several observers began simultaneously offering their own accounts.

  The safety supervisor made lowering gestures with his hands. “Enough! Is anybody hurt?”

  Douglas produced a sort of horse-like whinny. “I am! My bad arm!” He looked like he was going to cry.

  “OK,” sighed the safety supervisor. “The both of yous, come with me.” He grabbed Douglas and me by our arms and hustled us off toward the administration building.

  On the way, Douglas kept up a continuous whine. “I had surgery there! There’s a big scar! I think Leonard broke something. It’s my bad arm!”

  Douglas was dropped off with the school nurse while I was dragged into the safety supervisor’s office. For several minutes I sat in a hard wooden chair while he lectured at me. I didn’t hear a word he said as my mind was whirling with fear, exhilaration, shame, exhaustion, and self-righteous anger. The final verdict, though, was clear enough: a note to my parents and a week’s detention. Had I even defended myself? I might have, but couldn’t recall saying a word. When I shuffled back onto the courtyard, I was shocked to find that lunch was still in progress. The whole squ
alid episode had seemed like it lasted for hours, but only taken minutes.

  News travels at the speed of light amongst pubescents, and everyone had an opinion on what had gone down. As I walked past my former Dweeb companions, they shot me contemptuous looks and quickly turned away. To them, I was a brawler. Douglas’s friends, on the other hand, were outraged. A girl with whom he was often seen necking spat out, “That is low, man, low! His bad arm!”

  “Yeah,” agreed one of Douglas’s henchmen, a fellow who’d thrown a book in my face at such close range it had left a bruise under my eye. “His bad arm. That is fucked up.”

  I refrained from screaming out, “But I didn’t know!” only because I didn’t want to sound apologetic. I wasn’t sure how I felt yet.

  The Burnouts, predictably, thought the whole thing was funny. “Owwwww, my bad arm!” they said in high, sissy voices. “You hurt me, you bad man, you!”

  I smiled at these imitations, but didn’t engage anyone in direct conversation. I needed to check out, and so began doing homework. When the bell announcing the end of lunch rang, I reluctantly put it away and started off for class.

  Then, in the locker-lined hallway where I’d been tripped, kicked, and punched a thousand times, I saw Douglas. I felt myself tighten up inside, but deliberately kept my outer appearance cool. As energy coursed through my body, I walked deliberately within inches of him. Part of me wanted to punch his bad arm again, another part wanted me to beg forgiveness, and part wanted to flinch in terror. Instead, I walked by him as if he weren’t even there. Douglas did the same.

  I almost couldn’t believe it, but over the next few days and weeks it proved true: I was no longer a target. Douglas and his friends never touched me again. My parents had been right all along, punch a bully back and he’ll leave you in peace. This, of course, raised a huge moral dilemma. How could I call myself a Christian if I believed in fighting? Worse, the thought of Douglas whining about his bad arm filled me with wrath, which was one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The thought of my self-defense filled me with pride, another Deadly Sin. The way so many kids sympathized with Douglas and his bad arm made me envious of him, a third Sin. My mortal soul was in danger!

  Clearly, I’d let being a Burnout and my friendship with Kai distract me from my Journey. I needed to rededicate myself to Love, but could I really do what needed to be done? One sleepless night I went to my Love tree (as I thought of it) to think things through. I sat in its branches staring at the view as a cool breeze whipped through my hair. I imagined Love beams shooting from my heart, or rather tried to imagine them but couldn’t. I felt alone and bereft, un-Loved and un-Loving. I was overcome by a generalized feeling of horribleness so intense that tears welled up in my eyes. I scrambled down from the tree and went home in defeat.

  The next morning I awoke feeling no better. I called information for Rick’s address and wrote him a two-page letter. I was too ashamed of my fight with Douglas to go into detail, but gave a few dark hints that things were not going well. “I’ve been having a hard time Loving lately. People around here are not on the same spiritual trip as me and it’s kind of a bummer.”

  A long, miserable, lonely month after sending the letter, I received a postcard. Though usually my father was the first to see the mail, he was out of town attending a conference the day it arrived and I was able to whisk it away to my room before my mother saw it. The front showed a woodland animal of some sort (beaver? woodchuck? marmot?) and the back read: “Lenny, Glad to hear you’re doing OK, despite the spiritual problems. Remember, it wouldn’t be a quest if there weren’t challenges. Big changes afoot at the commune. Hope we see you up here sometime. Love, Rick.”

  Love, Rick. These golden, beautiful words sustained me as I suffered through the last remaining weeks till summer vacation. A few days after school let out, I would turn fifteen. What better time to make a clean break and start life over in a tiny Christian utopia nestled in the Oregon wilderness? Then again, how would I get there? I’d always imagined myself hitchhiking to the commune, but recently I’d seen a made-for-TV movie in which a hitchhiking girl was picked up by a witches’ coven and only narrowly escaped becoming a human sacrifice. The more realistic fear of being dosed with drugs by a Pusher and having to spend the rest of my life begging The Man for a Needle Fix was hardly more appealing. No, running away would never do. Far more sensible to visit the commune and just sort of not come back. I’d write my parents explaining I was fine, but “needed some space” so I could “grow as a person.” They would, of course, pine for me terribly, and I’d agree to visit them on the condition that they not try to keep me.

  In some ways, my parents were permissive. I could watch adult movies, never cut my hair, read what I liked, and stay up till all hours with no questions asked. Yet whenever I left the house after dark, they wanted to know exactly where I was going and when I’d be back. I’d been caught coming home from unauthorized midnight hikes a few times and been lectured at and sighed over until I repented. Their constant, well-intentioned supervision felt incarcerating. Getting my parent/jailers to agree to my visiting Oregon wouldn’t be easy.

  Of course, I’d been away from home before, having gone to camp the past two summers. On those occasions, though, I’d been personally delivered into the hands of adult administrators who promised to watch me every second, and lived up to that promise – or at least had their shiftless, sexy, teenage counselors do so. Then it hit me. Camp, as I’d been reminded more than once, was expensive! My parents, as I knew from bitter experience, were seldom averse to financial corner-cutting. I could simply present a visit to Oregon as a free alternative to summer camp. I immediately called Kai, whom I hadn’t seen in weeks, and persuaded him to come over. He arrived at my doorstep, bouncing his infernal handball. “We gonna play?”

  “Later,” I said. “First, I need your help.” We went to my room where he sat on my bed while I paced. Trying to sound nonchalant, I imparted the news. “I’m gonna blow town. I’m totally done with the whole school trip. I’m not learning anything and I can’t take the hassle any more.”

  “Where’ll you go?” asked Kai, looking dubious.

  “I told you about my friend, Rick, in Oregon, right?”

  “The Christian guy?”

  “Right. Well, he said it was OK to visit. I figure I’ll just go up there and stay.”

  “How long?” Kai carefully examined his handball as if he’d never seen it before. “Forever?”

  “Haven’t decided.” This was true. Who could say where my Path would take me? “Thing is, my parents are pretty uptight. Just to set their minds at ease, I’ll start by telling them I’m just visiting a school friend at his family’s ranch. You know, like a summer vacation thing.”

  Kai nodded. “Good thinking.”

  “But I need someone to pretend to be the school friend with the ranch and call them up. That’s where you come in.”

  Kai frowned. “Yeah, then I get in trouble when they figure out you’ve flown the coop.”

  “They don’t have to meet you. Just phone up and lie about your name.”

  Kai smiled a sneaky smile. “Yeah, I could.” He lay down flat on my bed, causing his tee-shirt to ride up a little, which exposed his stomach and the thin line of hair beneath his bellybutton. I got a sudden and severe case of vertigo and had to lie down next to him.

  “But if I’m some kid with a family ranch, won’t they want to speak with my dad or something?”

  “Just say your parents are out and I’ll have Rick call later. He can be the dad.” I was pretty sure Rick would actually be too holy and virtuous to lie to my parents, but I’d deal with that disaster when and if necessary.

  “Well, OK,” agreed Kai. “But you owe me a favor.”

  “Name it, it’s yours.”

  Kai glanced around my room and shrugged. “Can’t come up with anything right now. We’ll keep it on account.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means I get to ask for something la
ter.”

  I rolled over on my stomach to hide my sudden, inexplicable, and humiliatingly visible state of arousal. “OK,” I agreed. “I’ll have my mom call you tonight. I’ll write everything down so there’s no screw-ups.” My heart was beating fast and shallow like a guinea pig’s. For the first time, my plan seemed like more than a fantasy, like it might actually work.

  That night after dinner, I came into the living room where my mother sat on our ancient oatmeal-colored sofa, sipping scotch and reading The New Yorker. I tried to act normal, but feared that I looked like the devious little sneak I was. “Uh, Mom?”

  “Hmmm?” She didn’t look up.

  “You know how I’m supposed to go to camp this summer?”

  “Yes?” she sounded like she didn’t want to be interrupted. This, I thought, could work to my advantage. She wasn’t giving me her full attention.

  “Well, I’ve kind of been thinking I don’t want to go after all. I know I said I did because it was the last year before I was too old, but now I think I’ve had a sort of spiritual growth spurt. So I may already be too old.”

  She wrenched her eyes from her magazine and gave me a stern glare. “You are not sitting around this house all summer. You’ve got to get out and mix with kids your own age.” She furrowed her brow with concern and gave me the tight, nervous smile she wore when worried I wasn’t “well-adjusted” (which was a lot, because I wasn’t). “Camp is a privilege. You think we had summer camps when I was a kid? Ho, ho, ho! We had a little thing called work.”

  “Well, you see, I have this friend at school who’s going up to his family’s ranch in Oregon, and he invited me along.” As I spoke, I almost felt devil horns grow out of my skull. “They’re really nice people, and I thought I could go up there instead.”

  My mother put on a meditative look and sipped her scotch. “Who’s this friend?”

  “His name is Riley. You never met him.” My mother furrowed her brow. It wasn’t that she doubted Riley’s existence, she just needed assurance he wasn’t a nincompoop or a hooligan (her favorite terms of disparagement for inadequate teens). “He’s this really smart, cool guy. He’s on the debate team, and his side always wins. He’s like their star quarterback, or whatever the debating equivalent is.” My mother’s eyes glistened greedily for the trophies she wished I was bringing home. “His dad is some kind of author guy, and his mom, too. They’re very literary.”