The King

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Winter 2004 [Premiere Issue]

NOVELLA

Escape Velocities ▪► Jim Snowden - Part 2 of 7

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August 31st, 1985

I had some relatives come up this weekend. My aunt brought her husband, nine-fingered Pete, to our house for the Labor Day weekend. Usually, I’m very interested to see people from outside Utah. You find if you spend more than a month here, you begin to think of them in the same terms as Basilisks, Hippogriffs and Centaurs. And even though I think most of my relatives are simple people, I can tolerate them without yawning too large or vomiting on the carpet. Pete’s another case, though. Now that I’ve met Derrick, I can point to Pete and say, "Derrick, your future."

I felt horrible for my parents all night. They had to try to talk down to Pete without sounding like they were doing it. It was as if they were doing some method actor stunt where they’d remember the last time they suffered a serious brain fever that prevented them from thinking clearly, and then act like that person. My dad had the help of a lot of good scotch whiskey from the State Liquor Store. You know, you’d think with as many relatives as Mormon families have, they’d be more tolerant of alcohol.

Or maybe all Mormons talk like Pete, "Let me tell you what. When I was a ground pounder in the Pusan perimeter, there was a lot of mud, and sometimes things blew up."

My aunt, Fiona, would rub his shoulder and beam at him as if his every word and gesture fulfilled a dream of hers. I can see how someone might settle for a guy like Pete. Low expectations, self-hatred, the comfort of knowing that, on your darkest day, you’ll have someone else to kill before turning the gun on yourself. But I couldn’t get my head around the idea that Pete was for Fiona what Fermat’s theorem was for me. The best thing my mom could say about him was that he never hit her. How was that enough to ignite a passion?

So we sat at dinner. I brought my math book. My mother shot a glare at me but I returned it, saying with my eyes, "Hey, you don’t let me have whiskey." I think she got the message because she looked somewhere else. I kept on with my math.

Pete said he had a lot of food allergies while my mother put lamb and potatoes and corn on his plate. His salt sensitivity didn’t keep him away from the shaker. His lactose intolerance and bad heart did nothing to deter him from the butter dish, and his dislike of lamb meat didn’t keep him from eating four slices of it.

When it was over, I had hoped that I would be excused so that I could leave my parents to face social doom. But my mother told me no. I was nearly an adult, and should begin to participate in adult conversation. I tried to say with my eyes, "What has that got to do with this?" but this time her gaze fixed on me. I shut up.

"So, Henry," Pete pointed his coffee spoon at me, "What are you up to there?"

"Quadratic equations."

"Let me ask you something," Pete said, "You got a girlfriend?"

"No."

"I didn’t think so."

"What do you mean you didn’t think so?" I said.

"I mean, you’re so involved with your books, Henry. That’s all. You’re a good student, I bet."

I didn’t say anything one way or another. I hoped silence would make him forget me and move on to another target. But his stupid, flabby face was still pointed at me.

"I wasn’t a good student," Pete said, "Except in shop. I was great in shop. That’s what got me where I am."

"And just where is that," I said.

"I’m furnace maintenance foreman. I know that wouldn’t do much for a brain like you," Pete said, "But it’s damn good, honest work. Lost my finger doing it. And let me tell you about smarts. There’s two kinds. Book smarts and people smarts, and I’ve got people smarts all over the place."

Again, I didn’t say anything.

"I know how to talk to people," Pete said, "That was great lamb, by the way. It almost makes me like lamb, although it’s going to give me the wind something awful, ain’t it honey?"

Fiona laughed and nodded. She reminded me of one of those women on the Jesus Channel who wear big purple wigs and makeup and nod reverently at whatever the guy with the white suit and cement hair says. Motherfuck, what does she see in the guy? I guess it’s a good thing she doesn’t see it in anyone else.

"Anyway," Pete said, "You oughta get your nose out of that book and start chasing skirts, or else people are going think you’re queer. I’m surprised your daddy hasn’t told you that."

It was hard to tell if my dad’s face was turning red, but I thought it was. His knuckles were white around his scotch glass.

"Well, I do take my studies seriously," I said, "But believe me, Pete, that when all that studying is behind me, I will aspire to gain your people smarts."

"Henry," Mom put her hand on mine and squeezed. She had to know what was coming.

"And though I’m sure I’ll never reach your level, I will reach, and stretch and strive, to become every bit the beer guzzling, fat, flatulent pustule that you are. And though I hope to leave a moist trail wherever I move, I’m sure that yours will always be more viscous than mine."

Pete just sat there, his mouth open. My Mom squeezed my hand until the bones ground against each other. Fiona called me a "shitty fuck." I didn’t acknowledge the pain in my hand, and I figured if Pete wanted to get up and hit me, that was fine too. He didn’t, though. He just kept staring at me in the silence, as if he no one had ever insulted him before. I felt better than I ever had. Though I knew that my parents would deprive me of money and work supplies until I apologized (and that, faced with this, I would apologize to him), I still got some satisfaction because we’d both know that the apology was forced, and not the result of guilt. I’d feel it short-term, but that fucker would remember it every time he inflicted his smug little lecture on another kid.

I spent the rest of the night in my room, which was where I wanted to be in the first place. I finished my homework. Soon Pete’s voice grew loud enough that I could hear him through the door. He went on and on about Pusan and furnaces and this time he saw an African Bushman pee. His brain is like the ocean surface after a ship sinks. Every so often, little bits of meaningless garbage from an unbelievable disaster bubble up to it.

As he blathered and boomed, my feeling of triumph drained. I’d belted him as hard as I could (more crippling insults occurred to me later, while I solved math problems, and I stored them away for future wars with trolls). He’d felt it, yet he kept drooling stupidity and arrogance all over the house. I remembered those big question marks that dumb students made on their test papers and felt sick when I realized that I’d just come up against the colossal force of stupidity, and lost.

My mom extorted an apology from me, as predicted, and grounded me for a week. If Pete knew the apology arose from threats instead of guilt, I doubt he cared. In fact, I got three more chances to hear Pete’s secrets of success and happiness before non-refundable tickets took him and Fiona away late Sunday . My parents drove them to the airport, so I got the house to myself. I listened to Tchaikovsky and Bill Cosby records and worked on Fermat.

Anyway, class on Monday wasn’t much. I turned in my work. Derrick turned in his. I was surprised to see him. I wondered if Mr. Call had spoken to him. Somebody should, if for no other reason than to explain to him how to turn on a washer/dryer.

September 3rd, 1985

Miss Gorgeous talked to me. Again! More on that in a minute.

The day started out with a lecture on the quadratic equation. I started thinking about the work I’d done last night. The equations weren’t coming out right. They weren’t matching and I couldn’t tell if it was because they couldn’t, or because I was fucking it up somewhere. I needed another pair of eyes.

Paying more attention to Mr. Call but understanding less, Derrick stared at the blackboard as if he were looking into some black, deep void. There’s another test in two weeks and the guy from Pennsylvania who should be my friend but isn’t is taking bets on what he calls the "Limbo Pool." He calls it that because the main question of the pool is, "How low can he go?"

I’ve been thinking a lot about Derrick. I wonder if he has a girlfriend. I realize it’s a strange thing to wonder and I shouldn’t care. But I look at him the way you look at those Amazon tribesmen in documentaries. He’s one of those guys who hangs around in the four-way intersection by the cafeteria chewing tobacco, who lives in Erda with two thousand cows. Is there some girl who says when she looks at Derrick, "Ooh, baby, break me off a piece of that. I’ve got the fever, and his balls have the cure"? Looking at that neck that seems to be just a narrowed part of his chest and smelling the decades of cowshit that permeate his skin and denim jacket, it’s hard to picture. He is here though, which means that somehow a similar calamity must have happened before. (Sure, maybe his dad’s a stockbroker and his mother is Queen of Belgium, but we’re talking probabilities here.) Still, maybe love is blind and noseless, and there is a woman desperately longing for him. Out there in the halls she sighs, "When will he notice me? Why won’t he notice me?"

I think stuff like that about women like Miss Gorgeous. I wonder why the law of averages won’t break my way just once. Other people get girlfriends so easily-- it seems like they don’t even have to ask. Women just jump on them. I figure it’s Utah, you know? They run into each other at church and shit, and their parents know each other and that’s the way it works. I can’t fight that. I have hope though. When I move in nine months, and get to a real town in Oregon or Washington (my parents haven’t decided yet), there will be lots of women who don’t care that I’m an atheist and a communist. Hell, there might be women who love me for that, and who won’t think I’m such a freak.

Maybe I’m rooting for Derrick. Maybe that’s it. If he can make it, then so can I. I mean, it stands to reason. The laws of averages eventually have to break your way. From the first amoeba to this afternoon, the laws of averages have been bringing living things together, mating them. So if it can happen for him, it should be able to happen for me. If anything, my odds are better than his. I shower every day.

I hope he has a girlfriend right now.

That just brings me closer.

Which brings me to Miss Gorgeous. I was in the library, sitting next to an old Commodore VIC-20 computer with its ancient tape drive. There aren’t many good books in the high school library (or in the main Tooele library, for that matter). You can read the old classics if you feel like it, but that wasn’t why I was there today. I was reading one of those self-esteem books they keep in the career planning section. You know the kind. They have titles like, Be Proud of Yourself, No One is Like You, and There’s Only What’s Right for You.

I hate these books. I do. I loathe them. I don’t believe a word in them. If I wrote one of these books, it would have a title like, Nursing your Hatred: Resentment as a Lifelong Pastime, or, Someday, You’ll Get Them All. I’ve found that having a good self-image is self-defeating. It takes so much energy to maintain it that you don’t have time for anything else. I prefer feeling shitty and getting things done. I look at it this way: the happy guy and I will feel equally good when we’re dead. The big question is, who accomplished more?

Still, I like to take the quizzes. I like finding out just how negative I am, and discovering if there’s any chance for negativity that I’m missing. A counselor once told me I had an extremely negative attitude, but was astonishingly conscious of it. I question his objectivity: I was strangling him with his pink pastel tie at the time. (Just kidding. I’d never strangle a counselor. There’d be an inquest, and I’d have to fill out forms.)

So, I’d just chosen C, three times a week, on a quiz that was meant to determine whether or not I was a sympathetic wife, when Miss Gorgeous appeared at my table. Too late to hide the book. It was best to make some sort of joke. The trouble was, I couldn’t think of one.

"Is it helping you?" she asked. I wasn’t sure of her level of sarcasm. I hoped it was high.

"Yes," I said. "My craving for pastel sweaters and berets increases with every line." I put the book down, and realized I’d said something awful. I told myself to shut up.

"Good one," she said.

Again, I scanned for sarcasm. Tough call. "Thanks."

"So, do you like self-esteem?"

It’s very frustrating when someone you like asks you questions. All of a sudden there’s a right and a wrong answer. Therapists used to tell me there were no such things. Of course there weren’t. Not with them. I didn’t give a shit what conclusions they reached about me. This was different. I wished I didn’t care, so that I could tell her off and get her away from me, but she was making it so difficult by just ... being her.

"Self-esteem? If it doesn’t bother me, I don’t bother it," I said.

She only let out a polite chuckle this time. Then the bell rang.

I thought about Miss Gorgeous while I sat in AP Computers. I wondered why she would talk to me if she didn’t like me. On the other hand, I couldn’t see how she could like me. No one else ever has. I wondered if she were setting me up for some joke. Toy with the school outcast for fun and profit. I sat through an entire class thinking about it, and didn’t get too much done on that day’s program. On my way out, I looked at several girls and compared the ways that they looked at me to the way that Miss Gorgeous looked at me. The way the other girls looked at me was cold, uninterested, and even slightly disgusted. I wasn’t sure I could see that, but then again, I was probably seeing what I wanted to see.

Oh, screw it. You know those word problems they give to kids with the multiple-choice answers? The Iowa tests? Answer D on those tests is always, "There is not enough information to solve the problem." Of course, the answer is never D. You can eliminate it immediately. In this case, the answer was D, it was driving me crazy, and I didn’t need this. Only one thing is allowed to drive me crazy at any one time, and that privilege belongs to Pierre De Fermat.

Whether Miss Gorgeous likes me or not doesn’t matter. I won’t be here much longer. It’s probably best not to start anything. It’s like I’m an Army kid. I don’t want to get into something that’s just going to leave me a while later. Best not to bother, and it’s better than thinking about all this crap. She was just being friendly. She’s a friendly girl. But she’ll be gone soon, while Fermat will remain. Best to go with Fermat.

End of story. I’m not sure if it was worth it. My hand hurts.

September 4th, 1985

I should stop calling her "Miss Gorgeous." I found out today that her name is Teresa Bythewaye. I wonder how anyone outside a James Bond movie managed to get a last name like that, but she has. So I’ll call her Teresa from now on.

So, what to say...

Derrick was late today, again. I think he has a negative grade right now. He came lumbering in swinging his arms like a giant ape. It made me wonder how Derrick was manufactured, and what’s more, what he was doing with us. There’s a guy I know, Mike, who takes my AP Computer class. As soon as I mentioned that Derrick stank up a chair in Algebra II, he said, "Did Mr. Call lose a bet? Get this. We were in shop together, back in Junior High. And Derrick came up to me because he’d lost his chaw, see? And he was pissed, figuring I’d stolen it to goof on him. I never would have done that. It would have meant touching his ass, and I don’t want to even imagine what that would feel like. So anyway, he gets up in my face, asking me where the motherfucking chaw was, and so I told him he probably left it behind the Diamoginized Chermaphlerm. And check it out, he said, ‘I already looked there.’"

It’s the sort of story you think someone is making up for a joke, but given Derrick’s exam score, it was hard to see how it could have happened any other way.

Of course, I’m not entirely sure why I care about the adventures of Derrick in school. He has no real effect on me one way or another. I mean, he’s stupid. Amazingly stupid. Wide World of Sports stupid. Still, while that is not without a certain entertainment value, like a fatal car crash, it can’t be all of it. People slow down to look at a fatal car crash, and then think, "There but for the grace of God go I," but they don’t stop, take pictures and interview the victim who’s still wedged in the passenger front seat. I find I think about Derrick a lot. If you don’t care about a person, then what they say and do can have no meaning to you, can it?

So, I wonder what the deal is with my interest in Derrick. If someone were writing one of those after school specials, they’d say that I was insecure about my intelligence and that’s why I have to bust on Derrick’s. Maybe I am. I bring up my accomplishments a lot, as if I were wearing them as a uniform. But then again, I’m not all that good-looking and I’m not good at sports or any other activity where talent is obvious and readily appreciated, and so I have to boast at least a little about the things I can do that no one would recognize. I think that indicates a social insecurity rather than an intellectual one.

Maybe that’s where it is. Derrick is a big joke. A really big joke. Even Mr. Call is in on it. He was explaining gravity as a mutually attractive force between two masses and Nick Jeppesen shouted out, "Yeah, when Derrick walks, the Earth comes up to him," and everyone laughed. Call fought it by biting his cheek. The muscles in his neck bulged out. Derrick’s expression alternated between insult and confusion over how exactly he was insulted. After being on the receiving end, it’s cool to be in on busting someone else for a change. They used to get me for being smart. They’ll get him for being stupid-- so stupid that even the ones I used to consider dense are able to see it. I don’t know. Maybe Derrick goes out and steps on as many ants as he can, or goes to the zoos to laugh at rhesus monkeys.

When I put it that way, it makes me sound like an asshole. I can just hear someone saying that I should be more sensitive. I see them shaking their fingers at me. Well, they can put their fingers down. I already feel bad about it and yet I’m going to do it whenever I can, because I know the people pointing their fingers would if they were me. These are the same sensitive people who wouldn’t help me when I was the one getting it in the neck. They just point their fingers at everyone and go tsk-tsk-tsk. They never do a goddam thing. So I figure there’s something other than ethics or kindness behind what they do.

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