Friday, January 28, 2011

Criterion

My best friend Kenny was coming home for the weekend. Kenny had been away in the military and then college so he didn’t get home often. So when he did, it was a big deal for his friends.

Having so much time on your hands and so little to occupy your mind, people in Deadsville tend towards two extremes. Either numb yourself with alcohol, drugs, sports and other non-cognitive pursuits or start looking for increasingly convoluted and creative ways to look at and live in your life. My friends and me leaned towards the latter. So it had come to our attention that during the last few times that Kenny had visited, an odd confluence of events always happened. These events were:

- all of our pencils got sharpened

- the same crappy band played at the local bar

- our friend Stan got laid

None of these events ever happened without the others. If one happened – say, Stan got laid one night – you could accurately predict that Kenny was going to show up and that when we went to the bar, we would find that same crappy band back.

Now some of these were clearly related. Our pencils got sharpened because Kenny would almost always insist on playing Dungeons and Dragons and bring his pencil sharpener. So our pencils would get sharpened. And we almost always ended up playing D&D because the band sucked so we couldn’t go to the bar.

However, we never could figure out how the band’s tour schedule tied into Kenny’s travels. Nor could we figure out why Stan would always get laid that weekend and thus, miss seeing Kenny. Stan didn’t get laid very often. But you could always count on two things. First, it would always be the weekend that Kenny visited. Second, that Stan’s partner would always be fat and ugly. It became such a certainty that we used to joke about it.

Then one day Stan set us straight. A bunch of us were walking down the street when we passed a very attractive woman. While the rest of us spun around to ogle her as she disappeared in the distance, Stan just kept on walking. When one of us commented on how Stan only likes fat and ugly women, he corrected us with, “She doesn’t have to be fat”. At least some things could be explained.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

You Gotta Fight For Your Right

My dad was raised with 3 brothers and they all liked to fight. Around Deadsville there were a few other families of boys who also liked to fight. In a city, such families today might turn into street gangs. Or maybe they would have a long history of being boxers or martial artists. But my father’s generation didn’t have such options. It was just knuckles in a parking lot after dark.

Apparently they would have these epic brawls, various families teaming up with each other – one time the McCloud’s might be your ally against the Parini family, and the next time they both might team up against you. They would beat each other bloody, go have beers and do it again a few weeks later. As a kid, I grew up hearing spirited stories of these glorious fights and so did the sons of my father’s rivals. I guess the urge to fight runs in the blood because when they reached a certain age, these boys all felt it was their destiny to carry on their father’s legacy. Through high school and even after, every few months one or more of these guys would try to start a fight with me.

I was tall and fairly broad-shouldered. But I was also skinny, uncoordinated and seemed to lack the gene that makes young men want to pound each other. I had no desire or skill to fight anyone. I was one of those really smart, nerdy, geeky kids whose parents dressed funny. In other words, I was a perfect target.

For the most part, I could out-talk, outmaneuver and otherwise avoid those conflicts. But every once in a while they’d get me in a corner. Fortunately, although I personally did not have the fighting gene, one of my best friends did. Boy, did he.

Brad was like a swarthy, sneering, sarcastic cobra. He looked laid-back, but he was a tightly wound spring ready to fly into action with the slightest provocation. He wasn’t extraordinarily big or muscular. My father called him “wiry”. What he had was quickness and a fearless love of fighting. He never started one…. but he never passed one up either.

When we were 12 years old, Brad and some of his friends would steal away to the bathroom during study halls and lunch not to smoke but to fight. They would stand around and just take turns popping each other in the head. At the end of lunch, they’d all emerge, cheeks red, fists scraped and bleeding, and smiling like hell.

When it came to fighting, in some kind of strange symbiotic way – Brad and I needed each other. He kept me safe and I was the bait that lured in chances to enjoy his favorite hobby.

One night a few weeks after I had graduated from high school, a friend and I were engaging in that ever-popular Deadsville pastime of sitting in a parking lot and watching the cars go by. There were probably beers involved too.

As we sat there, two of these “family rivals” and an out-of-town guy I’d never seen before wandered over and started harassing us – getting up in our faces, giving small pushes and such. I was trying to talk my way out of it but things weren’t looking particularly hopeful. Two of the guys – a rival and the unfamiliar guy – were on me while the other rival had my friend. Just as things were looking quite dire, a familiar voice called out from behind the bullies; “is everything okay here?” The three guys whirled around and found Brad leaning casually on the roof of a car. In the dark, he didn’t look like much. Nonetheless, the two local guys started backing away…

You see, Brad had recently cemented his reputation as Bad-Ass #1. At a gravel pit party a few weeks before, someone started to give Brad crap. He, of course, gave it right back. He kinda had a gift for pissing people off when he wanted to. Before long all 20 of the guys there decided to shut him up. What they didn’t know was that 20 to 1 odds were just the kind he liked. When the first couple guys rushed him, he leapt into their midst like a madman, fists swinging and feet kicking. Ten minutes later they had had enough and called a truce. Brad was sore for a couple days (someone had slammed him into a car bumper) but he was never trifled with again.

The unfamiliar guy who had been harassing me looked like he wanted to take Brad on until one of the other guys said to him “no, you really don’t want to do that”. The two local bullies apologized for any misunderstandings and hurried away.

It’s a hard world out there – especially for a geeky, too tall, uncoordinated teenage boy. In a small town like Deadsville, people have to come together – as friends, communities, and neighbors – in order to survive, thrive and get their needs met. Brad and I had very little in common but he was one of my best friends all through high school. We were there for all of each other’s firsts: dates, being dumped, driver’s licenses, drinking, jobs, deaths, even marriages. We grew up together and always knew that we had each other’s backs. Even in a parking lot. In the dark. In Deadsville.