I returned from the Bahamas a week after the rest of the suckers had gone back to school. I was darker than bourbon. Of course at 15 I didn’t know that, but it sounded cool when I wrote it just then! The first thing I did was skulk into the gym where Mr. C and a few others were working on props. I remember it was dark except on stage as they were doing something with the lights. When Mr. C saw me, he told me to meet him in his classroom a little later. I waited in Mr. C’s classroom for a few minutes. When he finally appeared he shut the door and brushed past me to the big chemistry lab counter he used as his desk. I thought I must have done something again. Maybe I was in real danger of flunking, again. He was futzing with papers in his briefcase.
“I’m going to tell you something,” he finally said. “You cannot repeat it to anyone. Do you understand?” That’s when he finally looked up at me. And it was the Mr. C stare that I knew so well. While he would never swear, his eyes said “don’t bullshit me!” I of course nodded that I wouldn’t repeat anything.
“Dave S is failing Chemistry,” he said matter-of-factly, as if I was another teacher sharing a cup of coffee in the lounge. “He doesn’t know it yet, but as of next week he is ineligible to participate in any extracurricular activities. That means he can’t be in the play.”
I could easily devote at least one whole chapter to the Dave he was referring to. I knew the kid well. We would actually come to spend a lot of time together the following year. He was a funny guy. But he was trouble. He loved being an asshole. Loved to be the rebel, especially in our conservative Christian school. Don’t get me wrong, I fully admit so did I. But it was how we went about our mischief that differentiated us. I’d like to say I was like a white collar criminal while Dave was a smash-and-grab liquor store hold-up man. Dave liked heavy metal, Marlboro Reds, and trying to corrupt as many good girls as he could catch in his hypnotic gaze. But more than trouble, Dave was troubled.
He was the first person I ever knew that lived in a trailer park. Dave, his grossly-obese, abusive mother, his skinny meek father, and multiple siblings all shared a double-wide. The term double never seemed so irrelevant. It was a sad scene. It was the symbol of all of his angst, anger, and rebellion.
The funny thing was to just look at the kid you wouldn’t guess any of it. He was a skinny blonde with glasses and cardigans that made him look smart, which not surprisingly he was. Sadly like some comic book villain he was using his intellect for evil instead of good. Hell, he’d only tried out for the play because of one of our core cast members, Ania. They were dating, or going out, or whatever you want to call it. It was a short relationship of course. She wasn’t going to let him into her pants. Not all the way, anyway. Dave was smart enough to judge when a table was cold and would walk away quickly before he’d wasted too many chips. Of course I’d already made out with Ania countless times, which in this school was practically third base. She’d told me numerous times she was in love with me. Even during our senior year, she slipped a cassette single of Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You into my locker. I didn’t like seeing them together, even if I didn’t want to date her myself.
Here was Mr. C telling me that Davey-boy was about to get booted from the show. But why was he telling me this?
“Dave’s playing three smaller parts,” Mr. Campbell said. “Only two of them have lines. The show opens in two weeks. Think you could pick them up and be ready in time for opening night?”
I whipped out my Oscar and polished it on my shirt before responding “Uh, hellooo!?!”
Ok no, obviously I didn’t answer him that way. Never would. But I showed ample amounts of confidence in my abilities and gratitude for this second-second chance. I appreciated the chance to work tech and all, but as would be a theme later in my life, I was either onstage, and onstage a lot, or I wasn’t going to bother at all. Ulitmately I took on four parts in that show. The farmer, Mr. Jones, who opens the show and then another random farmer in a tavern. I played a raven spy that delivers a monologue about news from other farms. Finally I spent the entire second act as a dog. I played one of the evil pig Napoleon’s canine enforcers who carry out his bloody orders against animals who question his authority. That was fun. I know how retarded this sounds even before I say it, but I really got into that part. I didn’t want to seem like some dumb teenager pretending to be a dog. I really told myself I was going to become a dog. In fact, I was a wolf. I was a werewolf. I was a snarling bloodthirsty beast at the command of an anthropomorphic pig. Yeah, I know. I read it too.
Even though being hunched over like an ape (more so than usual) was murder on my back, I loved every moment of that play. I was on stage prominently, and aside from two brief monologues from two (thankfully upright) roles, I didn’t have to remember a single line in the second act. The kid playing Napoleon cued us with orders to attack whenever we had to bark viciously. The rest of the time I just paced around stage and curiously sniffed whatever female was closest and unprotected. I mean, if you’re going to be a dog . . .!
That play was impactful on my life for another reason, aside from getting in touch with my inner Rottweiler. As I mentioned, when I had to bow out my original part of Boxer was given to a new comer. The aforementioned Stacy, who was a year older than me and while he’d attended the school all his life never bothered to audition for a play. For some reason he’d felt compelled to do so this production. We didn’t get to know each other much during the show. I wasn’t much interested. He did an acceptable job, I guessed, but that didn’t mean I liked him. A month or two after Animal Farm closed I was sitting at home on a Saturday night when the phone rang. This of course was back in the days before privacy lists, caller id, or cell phones (portable telephones existed but they were the size of a brick and the idea of any teenager having one was science fiction.) The schools published a directory with everyone’s home address and phone number.
“Bart?” a somewhat familiar voice asked when I answered.
“Yeah,” I said reluctantly.
“It’s Stacy, from school,” he said. “From Animal Farm.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, realization sinking in, but quickly giving way to confusion. Why was he calling me?
“Rusty and I are sitting around at my house,” he said. Rusty was another junior at the time and he’d been in almost every play with me, including Animal Farm. He was nice enough but we didn’t socialize. I knew he was another honor student and I also knew he was a Trekkie. The little affinity I had for Trek never compelled me to strike up a friendship beyond the stage.
Where was this going?
“We were thinking of heading out to see City Slickers,” he said. The first City Slickers movie had only been out a few weeks at this time. The revival of Jack Palance was just beginning. “We thought it would be fun if you came along.”
“Um, yeah, sure,” I said. I turned to see my dad and stepmom watching me fidget nervously with the phone chord. Yes kids, in those days, phones were attached to a base, often hung on a wall. “Hang on though. Let me ask. I have to see if I can get a ride.”
“We’ll come get you,” Kelly said.
I put my hand over the phone and quickly explained who it was and what he wanted. Now, up to this point I didn’t really socialize with many guys. My attention fell almost immediately to the ones in the skirts. When I got to Highland I immediately found myself a girlfriend. She was a senior. That’s how I rolled. And she had a car. A big car. A Monte Carlo with tinted windows and a T-top. Again, how I rolled. We were inseparable. When she went away to college at the end of the summer I was devastated. Of course we vowed we’d keep it together, even though she was headed to Oklahoma. We actually did my entire sophomore year. Much to the dismay of my folks.
For one thing, I think they suspected what went on in that Monte Carlo when the movies ended and the ice cream was gone. When she was around, I never hung out with dudes, unless they were dating her friends. Once I discovered what girls could do to boys, I saw no point in hanging with my own. They weren’t going to do that. Although, in retrospect, I suspect a couple might have! She and I didn’t actually have sex-sex for the first year we were together. But we definitely worked our way there, regardless what we were told in youth group.
After she and I inevitably split up, the long distance thing being impossible to sustain at that age, I never went out much socially. For starters I was too young to drive. But honestly I was in a funk and not interested. I became a real homebody. My average weekend went like this: Friday night dinner with the folks. Watch television or a video until they went to bed, and then furiously masturbate to USA Up All Night cheesecake movies. Saturday morning I’d be up by 7 and off to the grocery or some other errand with the folks. We’d usually go have lunch at a restaurant, if I was lucky we’d swing by Target, and then home for the rest of the evening where again I’d wait till they went to bed and more furious masturbation. Said wanking always took place in my favorite pea soup green vinyl beanbag chair (I told you to remember it.) That bean bag and I shared a lot of memories. (For the record, I lost my virginity to said older girlfriend atop that trusty bean bag. Just putting that on paper.) Sunday was of course church day. As Jimmy Buffett once said, there’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
They were thrilled at the idea of me going out with boys from school. Fine upstanding spiritual young men at that. Not like the reprobates I would occasionally hang out with when my girl was away at school. For a while I’d made friends with a couple guys named Rick and Jay. We’d smoke Winstons and sneak a couple beers when we could convince Jay to risk buying. Jay was 3 years older than us, and looked in his twenties. We immediately made him our friend because he drove his own car to school the first day our freshman year. Jay was a good guy, but reminded me of Baby Huey. Strong as an ox, but a little dense. Jay was a terrible student hence being so much older than us. Jay had revisited a few grade levels. That said he was loyal to a fault, a talented artist, and a gifted mechanic. I’ve recently learned that served him well as he’s become something of a phenomenal airplane mechanic.
Rick got his license when we were sophomores and his old man helped him buy a souped up 1970 Chevelle SS. It was a copper color with black racing stripes and it rumbled like a jet engine. I’ve never really been a car guy, but driving around Milwaukee, a major gear-head town in Ricky’s Chevelle was fucking sweet! We got a lot of looks from chicks (yeah that’s right, chicks) and thumbs up from every biker we met at a light. We would cruise around with all the other muscle cars, chain smoking and listening to Andrew “Dice” Clay albums. We could spout off every dirty nursery rhyme in-synch with the Dice-man. Hickory dickory dock . . .! If our parents only knew!
I played co-pilot on more than one drag race down Highway 100. One winter’s night we were messing around, showing a couple preppies what the SS could do, when Ricky dropped the hammer on an icy overpass and the car launched forward. Then sideways and we began to donut across the highway. When we finally stopped spinning, the car pointing sideways, on a snow packed median looking out into the night sky. Thank God because if it wasn’t there we’d have slid across the other lane, and very easily found ourselves plummeting towards terra firma. I know car guys love to wax poetic about how sturdy these old cars were built, but a three story drop to asphalt? You do the math. We had to pay a guy in an F350 twenty bucks to hook a chain to the bumper and pull us out. Some Good Samaritan, but I guess it served us right.
I not only got my parents’ blessing to go to a movie with Stacy and Rusty, the old man slipped me a twenty and I wasn’t even given a curfew. I was apprehensive but figured what the hell? I wanted to see the movie anyway. I just didn’t know what to expect with these guys. Was this a trap? Was it an intervention where they’d sit me down and tell me I’d backslidden and needed to prepare my soul for the rapture? They picked me up an hour later and we talked movies the whole way to the theater. We shared a number of favorites. Stacy and I were both big fans of Tim Burton’s recent Batman and all Steven Spielberg flicks.
When the flick was over, we stopped at Taco Bell. Stacy and I dominated the conversation. Mostly movies, music and television, of course. It turned out we were both David Letterman disciples. We had a shared obsession with icons of the 50’s & 60’s like Elvis and James Dean. We rambled on about trivial facts. The stuff nobody else our age thought about, let alone discussed. It was the most interesting conversation I’d ever had because we had similar opinions, but different viewpoints. Which made sense, given our backgrounds couldn’t be more opposite. It was like we were of the same tribe, but different ends of the camp. It became apparent this guy and I would be friends. The only time anything even remotely religious entered the conversation was when Stacy told us he’d been accepted to a private Baptist college in Illinois called Euphegenia.
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