Chapter 11: Misanthrope's Drums of War

My relationships with women have always been strained, unorthodox, complicated, which I guess isn’t that uncommon. But whose relations with the opposite gender or love life, dating life is easy? Likely very few...

The first girl I can remember asking out, back when I was ten or eleven, was this girl I had a massive crush on for months. She was this cute, quiet brunette in my class, who I’d finally gotten the nerve to ask out.

As we rode the bus back to school, after a field trip to an early Florida pioneer settlement, several other kids were asking their crushes out, so I figured, what the hell, why not, and I walked over, confidently, strutting like a movie star, and I asked my dream girl out. But my dream girl wouldn’t be mine, tragically, and, with a look of shock, she asked me if I was joking, her eyes squinting, her lip upturned in revulsion.

I told her it was a joke, to save face and to lessen the blunt force of the mental trauma, and I scurried off, dejectedly, so I could go lick my psychic wounds.

Oh yeah, that one hurt.

I’ll never forget the look she gave me, and the pain of that rejection, how it spiked through me. It was like the pit of my stomach weighed 1000 tons and dropped like an anchor into a sea of shit. There really is nothing worse, no feeling worse for a man, than getting rejected by a girl he asks out, especially if it’s one he’s had a crush on for a while and finally works up the nerve to talk with and then...

But that’s how it is. Feelings aren’t always mutual.

And that’s how it is, being the man, the one who has to make the move, usually. The man is often the one who has to put himself out there, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve dealt with rejection easier, since I’m more acutely aware of the brevity, importance of time, and know not to dwell much on failures, waste time being upset. Plus, I know how many lovely ladies there are, all over the world, and if my feelings are unrequited, I let it sting for a night or two and just move on...

That first rejection was a body blow, and I’ve had others, but I’ve always been happier to have taken a chance and failed than not taken a chance at all. Those times I should have tried and didn’t, those sting the worst...

However, it’s not been all bad. In fact, far from it. I’m lucky to have met and spent time with many delightful women, who I cherish having met and whose companionship provided me many of the best times of my life.

Seriously, thinking about it, most of the best times I ever had involved women. The power of intimacy, physical contact, love, sex, and the magic and softness and the mere touch of a woman, there’s nothing else like it. I can’t imagine the sex robots that’ll come in the future will ever be able to recreate the true power of a woman...

Despite the challenges of being a man, hell, am I glad to be a man. As much as I love women, I wouldn’t want to be one. Periods, pregnancy, how creepy and rapey dudes can be. I once heard an analogy that having a vagina and being somewhere dangerous is like carrying a briefcase filled with cash. You always have to worry about some piece of shit trying to take it from you ... It’s fucked up, but true...

One girl I dated in college told me how premature ejaculation, small dicks, any of that shit, she’d take in a second over being a woman. And I agree with her wholeheartedly- and don’t ask me to riff more on that!

I have the utmost respect and admiration for women. Seriously. And I detest misogynists. Misanthropes I appreciate way more.

15

Back to middle school. That’s where I really started to fuck up and spiral downwards.

The middle school I went to was a jungle.

They say kids can be cruel. And they’re right. At this school, the kids were beyond cruel, they were merciless fucks.

This was back in the early 90s, before Columbine, before school shootings in America became a normal occurrence.

First hearing about the school shootings, as they unfolded, like a row of falling dominos, my reaction wasn’t shock, it was one of understanding.

Not that I agreed or supported it, because I didn’t. It was just that I could comprehend why these things happened after the myriad of bullying incidents I’d witnessed.

And I wasn’t innocent. I’d participated, been on both sides.

But my middle school, that was bullying to an extreme.

The usual targets were the nerds and the usual perpetrators were the jocks, “cool” kids. One kid, named David, got it the worst of anyone.

An awkward, small, spastic and skinny kid, he was a perfect target, sticking out like a perfect victim with his bushy, messy hair and short shorts. He wouldn’t fight back most of the time either, he’d take it. Kicks in the rear, wedgies, pushed into the locker, every stereotypical middle school bully victim bullshit, tripe, he took it.

Once I participated in a circle of kids, encircling him, slapping, kicking him, one at a time. Poor bastard. He’d only really fight back if you hit him in the head, and then he’d be ready to go. His counterattacks were weak, though, and he’d be pummeled every time.

The poor bastard!

I remember later, after middle school, freshman year of high school, sitting next to him after we’d bumped into each other at a McDonald’s near the local high school.

Our high school wasn’t as brutal, and many cliques had gone their separate ways. There wasn’t nearly as much bullying there. But anyway, I sat next to David, and we chatted over burgers, cokes and fries. Talking with him, I suddenly realized what an asshole I’d been for fucking with him. He was a decent guy. A likable person. I felt like shit for teasing him, beating on him. I can’t remember if I apologized, but I should have. If somehow he ever reads this, I apologize now, seriously.

Maybe if kids sat down and talked more, got to know each other, as people, there’d be less incidents of harassment, bullying. People simply getting to know each other could solve a lot, I think...

He was one of many who got it bad but was probably the worst.

Another incident I recall starkly, one that sticks in my mind to this day, happened in my middle school cafeteria, at lunchtime. This cute mixed-race Asian girl, Tori, was circling lunch tables, cheerfully, smiling with her whole face, light glinting and bouncing off her braces as she was inviting people to a party. She was flanked by another super cute girl, and they were making lists of things to bring to the party.

From behind, from the throngs of teens in the cafeteria, from the patina of zits and braces and awkwardness, emerged a lioness, a Colombian girl, named Juliana.

Juliana was chunky, always in heavy makeup, and generally ghetto as fuck. She approached menacingly, surging forth, like a lion in the Serengeti.

The lioness’s forehead was furrowed. There was venom in her eyes. Tori didn’t even see her coming.

Juliana didn’t say anything, just stopped in her tracks, cocked back her arm and slapped Tori upside the head, viciously, so hard I could hear the clap.

Then she walked away without uttering a word.

I have no idea what precipitated it. Maybe a rumor. Maybe a thing that upset Juliana. Tori was generally a sugar sweet girl. I can’t imagine what she must have done. But whatever it was, it was serious enough to warrant the aforementioned corporal punishment.

Tori stood for a second in shock. She had no idea how to react. I think she’d come from an upper-middle class family. I don’t think she’d ever been slapped. And as Juliana stomped off, Tori just stood there, frozen, the joy of her party-planning erased, washed from her face. She then broke into tears and was accompanied away in her girlfriend’s caring arms.

What a shitty thing to do, that sort of sneak attack. Of course, I’d done it myself, to others, but seeing another person do it, especially it happening to someone I liked, especially during a moment of joy, seeing that made me realize how ugly it was and made me feel shitty about when I was younger, whapping those kids in the hallway ... I wonder if they cried as much as Tori...

Afterwards, too, she didn’t have the party...

Back to the lioness, it wouldn’t be the first time there was trouble arising from the fiery Colombian.

Another incident almost ended extremely badly for me and my friend, Tony.

The Colombian’s boyfriend was another chunky young soul, also ghetto as fuck, a fellow named John, who was a reputed crack dealer, and a fellow eighth grader at our school. (This was the guy I wrote of earlier, the one from Saturday morning detention, who claimed to have gang-raped his teacher... )

My friend Tony, like me, was a bit of a dumbass and was a fellow skateboarder/poser/guitarist/smoker. We had recently gotten hold of fake acid, paper tabs that some older girls had sold to us, ripping us off, the fucking assholes...

(I’d done real acid before, so I knew, right after taking this shit, that it was fake, and was very disappointed... )

But Tony somehow thought it was real. Placebo effect, I guess. He thought he was tripping, but, really, he was just stupid and imagining things.

(Another time later, a group of fiends, including me, gave him another hit of fake acid, and he did the same thing, acted like he was tripping, waving his hands in front of his face, saying he was seeing trails, and we just smoked weed and laughed at his stupidity, didn’t tell him it was fake, because it was too funny to stop. For weeks after that, he would claim he was having “flashbacks,” dude. Until, finally, we came clean, told him it was a prank. But still, he wouldn’t believe it... )

A lot less funny, however, was Tony taking the fake acid to school and offering to sell Juliana a tab. Not so smart to attempt to sell a violent crack dealer’s girlfriend acid.

The crack dealer’s friend, JD, who I’d been cool with, met me in the lunch line at the cafeteria, looped his arm around my neck, hugged me closely to his tall frame, his hard body, and walked me out of the cafeteria, forcibly.

At first, I’d greeted him warmly, since we’d been friendly, but I could see something was amiss. I’d asked him if everything was alright, and he didn’t respond. His face was cold, stone cold, and angry as a hornet. A chill went down my spine. I had no idea what was going on or why he was so pissed, and he wouldn’t answer me as I tried to talk to him.

He pulled me into a bathroom and from every corner, and from out of the stalls, big Black dudes emerged. They all looked furious. I was friendly with them before, never had a single issue with any of them, nor wanted any issues, but they circled me, and probably would have beaten the honky ass shit out of me, if it wasn’t for a friend of mine who saw the pissed off JD pull me into the bathroom, and alerted the vice principal, who, at first, didn’t think it was a big deal and didn’t do anything, until my friend prodded him, told him it looked serious.

(Thank GOD for that friend. A true friend is one who saves you from being violently beaten by gangbangers and crack dealers... )

The vice principal stepped into the bathroom, thankfully, before any hands were thrown, and saved me from possibly being permanently handicapped.

As the group was dispersing, the crack dealer, John, who, again, I’d been friendly with, walked by me and called me a “bitch.”

I was confused. I genuinely had no idea what I could have done to warrant such extreme uncivility and possible hospitalization.

I met up with Tony, and he told me he’d jokingly offered acid to Juliana, and that John, the crack dealer, before nearly thrashing me, had pinned him to a locker in the hallway, that morning, and pulled a gun, put it to Tony’s head, and threatened to kill him (and me!) after school.

It was guilt by association. It was no secret that we smoked cigarettes, weed, drank, did whatever drugs we could find. So those guys must have thought we were selling, too, moving in on their turf. Or, probably, it was merely to do with Tony being dumb enough to offer Juliana acid. Fake acid, at that.

Of course, inside, I was raging, knowing what trouble Tony got me into. These weren’t the people you wanted problems with. I might have been wanting to punch him in the nose but given that both our lives were in danger, literally, there was no use in that. We had to stick together.

We’d seen what the crack dealer and his posse could do.

(Yes, I said posse. I had a posse too. Here’s to you, Lebron James!)

There was a Latin kid named Aaron, who transferred to our school. He looked pretty tough. I think he was from a rival gang, and he’d ran afoul of John and crew, and I saw the Latin kid get jumped, swarmed on, the shit beaten out of him, the kid punched in the face, kicked while on the ground by John and two of his friends after school, at the bus stop.

The next day Aaron brought a handgun to school, pulled it on them in the hallway. Our Spanish teacher was nearby and talked him down, talked him into giving up the gun, ending the standoff. It turned out it was just a BB gun, though. The kid was still arrested, put in a cop car (I saw him led out in handcuffs as I stole a smoke in the woods behind school), and he was later suspended and expelled from our school.

Tony and I had seen Aaron’s beatdown and had heard other tales of John and his posse’s brutality. And we didn’t have any BB guns or real guns, at the time, unfortunately.

Being vulnerable to being “jumped,” getting a gang beating, Tony and I took off and ran away after lunch, literally running, like prisoners escaping jail, and tearing through the woods next to the school, knowing John and posse would be waiting for us after school to beat us or shoot us or whatever.

And a friend confirmed, later, that they were in fact waiting for us, after school, stalking the bus stop, five of them, asking around, trying to hunt us down so they could whoop our asses.

Somehow, in all this, Tony and I were suspended from school for skipping class. Which was ironic. Nothing happened to John or his friends. Tony and I were also given additional administrative punishments, ordered to undergo psychological testing, and often sequestered, separated from classmates, made to sit alone in empty rooms, away from the other kids.

I guess we could have told the school what had happened, that John and his posse wanted to beat us down, but we weren’t into snitching. Not like the school didn’t know, I imagine, after the vice principal saw what nearly happened in that bathroom and how rumors, drama in that school spread like forest fires...

Fortunately, I had a friend, a girl, who was friends with John and vouched for me, let him know I had nothing to do with it.

(Another GREAT friend to whom I must be eternally thankful!)

One of John’s friends, also a violent crack dealer, still hated me, though, and, a couple weeks later, punched me in the neck, hard, in the hallway. He was slightly skinny and not much bigger than me and while I’m sure he could have probably fucked me up, I was willing to fight him. However, I backed down, knowing that if I had fought back, he and his posse would have given me a gang-beating later. I’d seen it happen to others ... I bet something of the sort had happened with Aaron...

Then a week or so later, the same skinny prick cornered me in the locker room, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and raised his arm, as if to punch me.