Top Three Mortifications, #1: The Slap

Act One: Chain of Events

The slap wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me.

It wasn’t even the low point of that horrible year. It would probably look like nothing from the outside. A private moment on a deserted beach, me and some girl, a stupid misunderstanding, an angry response, that’s it. Shrug it off, walk away, right? Happens all the time. It’s funny. Sexual slapstick – watch the goofy guy blow it, punching above his weight. The first act of some cheesy rom com. Then he gets the girl in the end, and they kiss while the catchy pop song plays and the credits roll.

Except it didn’t work out that way.

I watched my mother die from an overdose, and then the creep who sold her the drugs filmed everything while I was forced to sodomize my best friend at gun point. I tried to burn down my shitty school and spent the next twenty years being tortured in a snake pit hellhole loony bin.

But that slap is the thing that hurts me the most.

Crazy, right?

But I think I know why. That was the moment when I finally saw the truth. This was my life, and this would always be my life, and there was nothing I could do to change it.

It was fate. It was history.It was the way my uncle Stuart felt in May of 1971, reading the letter from the Draft Board. He knew only bad things would happen from then on, and he was right.

So how did we get there? I work back through the events of that year, pulling the chain of events through my fingers one link at a time, and it all comes clear. Everything started to go irrevocably wrong the day that Sippy plagiarized my short story.

First of all he couldn’t believe that I wasn’t taking Mr. Blau’s creative writing class.

We were walking home from school, on the bike path, along the chain link fence beside the baseball field. 

I said, “I don’t need Mr. Blau telling me all his stupid opinions about my work.”

“You’re scared.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re scared of blubber-face Blau.”

“I am not.”

“Then what?”

“Forget it.”

“It’s the girls! You’re afraid they’ll think you’re weird.”

Sippy knew how to hit the nerve. It was pointless to argue. “I don’t write normal stories.”

“Like the one about the guy who eats people’s brains so he gets their talents?”

“That’s real. They did an experiment with lab rats. The dumb rat could run the maze just like the smart one -- after he ate him.”

“Whoa. Sorry, but that is the coolest story ever.”

“I don’t know.”

“When the guy disappears and his girlfriend sees all his mannerisms in the cannibal guy, the dead biyfriend totally coming to life in front of her… every little gesture – that’s classic, man. That’s a horror movie classic. Even the title. Are you keeping the title?”

“The Devouring? Yeah.”

“So cool.”

“Yeah but it’s not a regular story, Sippy. Nobody grows up or learns anything or makes some big life decision.”

“Hmpfh. I think choosing to eat your best friend’s brain so you can score with his girlfriend is a pretty big life decision, Frakes.”

When I finally convinced him I was never going to sign up for Blau’s seminar, Sippy did it. 

And stole my stories.

It turned out everyone liked The Devouring. The other kids looked at him differently after they read that one. Some of them thought he was crazy, some of them thought he was brilliant, and a couple of them seemed to think he was both. He basked in his newly anointed “mad genius” status and he turned insufferable, even around me. I couldn’t imagine what he could have written to justify his new stature. Of course Sippy couldn’t tell me. The stories were “private” and “personal” and the class was like “a therapy session”. Everything that went on in Blau’s office was “privileged”.

Even the Girl showed a flash of interest. 

But the situation was too volatile. It had to explode. But I guess Sippy wasn’t really thinking long term. He lived by impulse in those days.

The explosion came because the Girl was editing The Push-Rake that year – that was the NHS literary magazine. She wanted to print The Devouring. This was more success than Sippy had counted on. He panicked. Of course, he refused. Supposedly, she tried to convince him, but he wouldn’t budge. I’m betting he even a stole my classic excuse: “I don’t want to be judged.”

But the Girl wanted the story, and she was stubborn.        

So she came to me, the boy she had caught puking in the women’s bathroom on the ferry, the boy who had left his bloody paw marks on her gym t-shirt, Sippy’s best pal -- and asked me to intervene. “He trusts you,” she said. “He’ll listen to you.”

I asked about the story.

She told me the title, amazed I hadn’t read it.

The words lurched out before I could stop them. “Read it? I don’t need to read it! I wrote it.”

Kaboom.

She absorbed the information instantly. Maybe she wasn't even surprised. “Can I print it?”

“Uh – sure.”

           

“I’m going to edit it. You need an editor. You should take Blau’s class. It would help you.”

           

But She wasn’t finished. She trapped me and Sippy in front of his locker a few minutes later. She didn’t say much to him, but every word hit home. “I just figured it out -- Todd wrote this story about you! This is what you want to do – eat your best friend’s brain so you can write one decent sentence and impress a girl. It almost worked. That’s the sad part.”

I confronted Sippy after school, walking along Bartlett Road. Sippy had slipped out, I had to sprint to catch up with him. “Why would you do that?”

           

“Someone had to.”

           

“What is that supposed to mean?”

           

“The stories are good. Now people can read them.”

           

“Because you stole them!”

           

“You could have gone along with it.”

“What?”

           

“You didn’t want anyone to know you wrote the story! You keep your secret, I get the spotlight. That’s a win-win.”

           

“Why didn’t you tell me, then? We could have made a plan.”

           

“No way. You’d never go along with that.”

           

“Yeah”

We walked along. Finally he admitted the truth. “I wanted her to like me.”

           

“So how’s that working out?”

           

“Petty well -- for you. She thinks you’re some kind of prodigy now. And I’m the worm.”

           

“Good.”

           

“I’m used to it.”     

“Boo Hoo.”

           

“Fuck you, Frakes.”

           

A car slashed through a puddle and we had to jump back to avid the fan of dirty water.

“She really thinks I’m a prodigy?”

           

“More like a curiosity. The dork who can write – like the dog that can walk on its hind legs.”

           

“She told me I need an editor.”

           

“What a bitch.”

           

“At least we were talking. Girls like writers.”

           

“Dream on. She’s dating Billy Delavane, OK? Get the picture? You don’t fit into it.”

So that was it. We patched things up. And life was okay again.

 Until I led Ed Delavane copy my answers on the Algebra midterm.  And Sippy ratted me out, and Ed blamed me … But that's Act Two. 

Watch this space ...