events that followed, I probably would have paid more attention.
But I spent most of the class in my own zone, thinking about the lyrics of Roxy Music’s “She Sells” and writing out a track list for Baby Batter’s third album,
Note to self: one of these days, my next band is definitely going to be Beat Noir-ay. First album:
But getting back to Hillmont:
I used to get beat up and hassled a fair amount in elementary and junior high school, but not so much these days. In part, that’s because the normal people of the world, as they mature and become more sophisticated, naturally begin to discover that psychological torture is in the end more satisfying, and easier to get away with, than the application of brute force; and, in part, or so I like to think, it’s because of a special technique I developed last year.
What I mean is, actual balls-out physical attacks, where one guy wins and the other gets beaten to a quivering bloody sock monkey, are rare, though they do happen. It’s usually more subtle than that. They’ll try to trip you as you go by in the hallway; or they’ll throw little rolled-up balls of gum at the back of your head in homeroom; or they’ll write stuff on your locker, or squirt substances like mustard, milk, or worse through your locker’s slats; or they’ll superglue your gym locker shut so you can’t get to your street clothes. None of 17
these techniques is all that devastating alone; but repeated endlessly and in tandem, they can build up and start to drive you a bit insane. The basic idea is to wear you down with day-to-day social exclusionary exercises, and the repetition of mind-numbingly similar minor pranks and indignities. It’s all about ritual abuse, mental and emotional stress, psychological torture, and humiliation. They really are a great bunch of guys.
The best way to handle such situations is to stare straight ahead and act like you don’t notice or care. Unless you happen to have some serious equalizing firepower. Which I don’t.
My dad always used to say “Fight back,” but that’s not realistic. Even if you could successfully pretend to be some kind of bad dude there would still be something like eighteen hundred of them and only one of you. On TV, people in that situation claim that they know karate and that their hands are registered as lethal weapons and then they do this yelpy kung fu dance. Someone cues the laugh track and the tension is relieved. Then there’s a commercial, and they don’t show the part where Matt Lynch rides his skateboard on the guy’s face.
No thanks.
The only way to get Matt Lynch to leave you alone, if you can’t actually take him out, is to introduce an element of uncertainty into his slow-moving, gummed-up “mind.” It turns out Matt Lynch has a fear of uncertainty and the irra-tional. Raising such doubts is not as hard as you might think, though it took me quite a while to figure that one out.
At the beginning of the school year, all the psychotic normal people are mainly concerned with their own affairs, and even the minor irritants and pranks I’ve described can get off to a slow start. Which is why that first week went by without incident. Well, almost.
18
September
TH E WE E KE N D STARTS NOW
I say almost because on Friday, at the last possible moment, there was what I guess you’d call an incident. I was in my own world, thinking about Baby Batter, planning my stage banter (“Hey, we’re Baby Batter, and this one’s called ‘Up Your Face.’
“Henderson,” he said, in that mush-mouthed, nasal way he has, stopping me with his hand on my shoulder. He pulled his head back and squinted one eye as he looked at me. Not a pretty sight.
I said nothing, looked up at him warily. What now?
“Say hi to your dad for me.”
I gave him one of my “whatever, freak” looks, disengaged, and shuffled off to the northwest exit.
See, that almost sounds like an okay thing to say, if you don’t know that my dad is actually dead. But now that you know that, what do you think? I would certainly pardon your French if you were to reply that he’s totally fucked up.
There’s no other way to put it.
This was just a few days before the anniversary of my dad’s “accident,” which had me in a somber mood, despite all the Baby Batter excitement. At moments like these, it’s hard to tell whether you’re being too paranoid or just paranoid enough. It sure felt like they were all in it together, all the 21
psychotic normal students along with their buffoonish mascot, Mr. Teone. It’s like they sit around all day trying to come up with ways to get to me. Some of the experiments are ill-conceived from the beginning; some are so moronic they wouldn’t trouble a retarded monkey; some have promise but go astray. But every now and again there’s one that lands.
This one had a kind of subtle brilliance.
In fact, I do talk to my dad, in my head, sometimes. Not that I think he hears me, not really. But I kind of pretend that I do think he’s listening, and would be dispensing advice and comfort if only there were a way for the human ear to pick up the signal.
Telling him that Mr. Teone said hi just ain’t gonna happen, though.
I was feeling kind of weird. When the subject of my dad comes up, particularly when it’s unexpected or sudden, I feel funny, kind of disoriented and light-headed. And there’s a strange pressure in my chest, like I’m recovering
