The labyrinth of Wydown Junior High was a devil's forge where distraught, harried pubescents scurried from the lash like gray, misshapen convicts in cowardice, drawn grimace, and lumps of stubbornness like a boot to the ribs. No doubt an unintended irony, how we roamed the basement level like the very underhalls of hell. The line of lockers ran a bracket shape ("[") and on the north and south stairwells you stole tragic glances up to the sun-lit lobby floor where adult guests were accommodated-- led to believe that all was well in this complex of chills as we flitted around in our impish, hyper-active youth. It felt like galley slaves chained in the hold of a ship, rowing away at our home-room benches as they attempted to crush our spirit.
It was a trick of standardization, fixed by indifferent administrators, that left "the system" in ensnaring anticipation for all those delinquents and trouble-makers amongst the faceless hordes. All tricks, all turns, all methods for shirking personal culpability-- that is, with bogus excuses-- were sealed off by years of working with the predictable channels of the pituitary-coursing young adolescent mind through buzzing gray matter unhewn.
The guidance counselor tried to put an optimistic spin on things with her degree in sappy children's psychology, not unlike my mother who assured me "that life would keep getting better and better" with at least a 45 degree angle.
She-- they-- were meant to soothe like storks.
But piles of meaningless busy-work, arbitrary rules, and callous insympathy waited beyond those fuzzy wooden doors of bland social work assurance, and one could not help sensing that the best years of his life were being. . . . . misspent. But I wasn't so much of "a sour-puss" to deny "my heaven on earth to come" like a party-pooper foo-fooing what I supposed would be "the end of history" as everyone boogied in the streets in perfect world harmony with the ascendancy of the Democrats in office sending "The Republican Boogey-Man" scampering with hunched-over groans. The option otherwise was too horrible to contemplate. . . . . a howling jungle out there in our glistening, slick media world "of changing times" that left "the bog creature" feeling very pitiful and small, as if his natural habitat was disappearing.
If I didn't cooperate "and be a good boy" with the narrow ribbon of begrudging self-interest?
Juvenile hall, the court system of grandmotherly black judges gazing at me with a far more seasoned expression than my flaky Jewish mother ever could, a gobbling mental ward, and above all-- the onus of friends and neighbors who would look over with dropped jaws, shake their heads, and think, "unspeakable. . . . .". Between "eternal bliss" and "existential limbo", you would cautiously pull the lever for what you were told "was good and right".
Yet what lightsome guarantees were there of anything as your teeth chattered over your nails and you leaped over the trench in the morning to run into "No Man's Land" like so many "Disposable Heroes". . . . . a Metallica song as harsh with laughter as a face full of mustard gas as you were ordered "back to the front" by lobbies, criminals, and forces that had no name?
Amerkkka Über Alles.
********************
There was this mid-80's thrash outfit called "Stormtroopers
of Death"-- a big, sweaty guy on stage telling all teenage head-bangers and punk
rockers to drop their differences and "fight the system". Then you recruit black
kids nodding on the corner to rap music, and there we'd be-- one big youthful
army devoted to laziness, Marxism, obnoxiousness, and sloth. You had an image of
a prison riot-- white guys laying on their bunks and pumping their fists in the
air with smug expressions while blacks tore shit up in the hallway with
particularly elastic, angry faces as boots "clomped" across the floor and
"the joint" was put on "lock-down". Our
ultimate rebellion, however. . . . . were against "the ostrich people".
The dynamic worked like this: when you went into a
gym, you always noticed some things-- one side of the weight room with the big
dumb-bells was "pure coffee" while the other side with the little weights was
"pure milk". Over there you had the "ostrich people"-- the tame, confused, upper
middle-class professionals made neurotic by comfort and their own aimless lack
of "race", "authenticity", and "sense of purpose" as atoms left
adrift in rootless, cosmopolitan chaos.
The strong black men stared straight ahead like military, like Malcolm-X's
bodyguards, so focused on their weight-training and the intensity of
the exercise that they would take to grunting like either a rhinoceros in heat
or as if they had desperately dislocated something.
"The Milk Contingent" would
raise their heads and swivel in the direction of the noise like flighty
ostriches, those whose brains were located too far from the ground to be
"effective" in this life like the low-slung, four-square squat of a beast that
kept it close and real to the earth like a tank-- with the horn, thick skin,
confidence, and well-hung willy to match. . . . . illustrating the absurdity of
this primal arena of the unvarnished truth.
Bar, plate, lift/Shrug, falter, stutter. A
"bad-ass" character with shades "shrugs" with 120 pound dumb-bells while an
emotional-splotch of a woman in drooping Spandex with her frizzy hair in a red
"scrunchie"
does curls with a 5-pound weight as a turkey of a liberal-arts baldy with a tame
mustache offers emotional support like a whipped spaniel.
We could see the difference. . . . . and it
occurred to one that little stopped "The Coffee Contingent" from "taking over"
like some kind of pirate movie, kept only in check because either they sensed the
majesty of their strength and didn't have to abuse it or that
"the white man's system" i.e. The Clayton Police-- would charge in "and
shoot them down". It was all a matter
of "credibility". . . . . and in this postmodern marketplace, we traded around
different essences and signage "like baseball cards" where the ultimate "nothing"
was an ostrich. Or a geek. Or a math whiz who walked around with "a pocket
protector" and exceeded in his studies. In short, no one wanted to be "white". .
. . whether country, blue-grass, poor white trash, or any sorry, unhip
individual "not in on the joke". There goes the state of Texas and
the entire libertarian party, if not "The United States Armed Forces". Communism
doesn't "wither away the state". . . . irony does!
And one did their very damn best not to be
friendless, awkward, and unwanted.
******************
Jailed for his convictions, a
recalcitrant-yet-compromised young "Eugene Debs" shared his detention cell with the dregs of
"progressive education". . . . . most lacking even the pretense of "political cause". The snickering useless became unwitting brothers in the simmering "revolution"-- the worldwide children's struggle-- as wood shop teachers bellowed their disfavor and hurled chairs against the wall. Scattered, the birds of mischief would soon perch once more, peeping their song of insolence
as I felt rising brotherhood with a sense of righteous solidarity for youthful
anarchy, whether noble or base.
Five minutes before recess a mob of preteens shift impatiently by the cafeteria exits, waiting for the "go-ahead" to leave for recess as if we needed permission for such a thing. A daring twelve year-old who shall not be named sets himself apart from the herd and ventures into the hallway, his petty audacity awarded by the furtive snickers of his newfound friends. Subconscious undercurrents slosh and boil as the pubescent mass mind aligns itself in a single direction like the philosopher's stone of movement and change. . . . .
Where might as well be on the other end of the North American continental land-mass,
an
ostrich-like cafeteria monitor relishes over a tater-tot pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Opening his mouth he pricks up his ears to something that could only be likened to the sound of galloping hooves. The clack of shoes, the roar of anarchy.
"NO! STOP IT! GOD-DAMN IT, STOP!". Lunch ladies peer startled and bovinely beneath their hair-nets while uniformed janitors tried to watch and mop at the same time, perhaps in their own private white-man's hells.
The pitiful brigade of lunch duty teachers run to the forefront of the stampede, waving arms, shouting in futility, shaking young frames, slapping in some sense even. The shining eyes. The leering grins. The abdication of all personal accountability as we charged down the hallway in a full-scale riot. From the swinging doors, out we burst as newfound brothers; some of us practically falling to our knees crying
"LAWD I BE FREE AT LAST!"
like slaves.
In this hour of popular triumph, the significance of "so momentous a deed" outshines even the mediocrity of the crowd-- the pathetic nature of
ignorant, milling mob psychology-- and it's all "smoothed over" by a sweeping declaration of "kid's rights" for history's pages,
young socialism's illustrated chronicle as one marvels over the revolutionary implications of such a
deed-- like the mass general strikes paralyzing czarist Russia in 1917! Why, a
left-wing agitator standing on a box with a finger in the air, haranguing the
system as the mob ran by with glee, throwing bricks!
We disperse in all directions but get rounded up soon enough, of course. . . . . mutinous resolve dissipating with trotting furlongs from the building. Without the mob behind them, individuals
could not conceive of freedom and what it meant. Returning to their waiting,
foot-tapping masters so they don't get picked out as individuals against the green soccer fields of existential brutality. . . .
. as the tanks rolled into Hungary.
Instigators jailed, harsher examples made, no recess for a week. Stricter patrols, the denial this event had ever occurred. But for what it is worth, the kids have won today!
The system might have buckled on occasion, but
rebounded back with elastic snap just as surely as the yellow detention ledger could jam in one more scrawled name. While others shrugged and accepted their circumstances, I waged my guerrilla strikes by doing as little as possible to spite the system. . . . . short of
having to repeat the grade over. I was like a dour Soviet, Lenin perhaps, staring into the biting steppe wind out of unyielding, dialectical protest.
It goes without saying, that I was the reason why communism patently didn't work. . . . . obviously presuming myself to be undoubtedly
SUPERIOR than my proletarian
brethren. Solving problems through intuition but not diligence, caring to spend class time pondering over the nature of time warps or musing in ensconced wonderment over the anatomical miracle of my working hand-- the tendons and interacting musculature. Anything to pass the time.
There I stood, inconsolably resigned in my season of academic winter. The sun seemed to be setting in my life-- and I could tell, slowly and surely, that on the other side was cold and darkness. I was akin to the condition of the broken-down Soviet state, a product of its own disease-- laziness and corruption. Rife with incompetence, inefficiency, broken machinery, poor excuses, crumbling manifestos, strained theories of "questionable" social science, blustering gestures of chest-thumping titanic nationalism, and not forgetting self-exemption for the leaders of the very Kremlin.
Glasnost and Perestroika held no coin around me!
For I was a clenched fist of stubbornness. . . . . and stared on feral and cat-like, not so different from Trotsky who eventually laid out a dummy in his cell and fooled the guards as he was smuggled out of the province in a creaking potato wagon to freedom.
For the revolution would thrive another day. . . . .
*******************
"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(Rheeee of Crickets)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
("I heard that, Missy!")
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