Five good minutes (c.)

Hale’s Annual Autumn streak and Good times Gala usually paves the way into the week of festivities known as the Nut Creek Plum Harvest festival which every four years will fall exactly on opening Day colliding with Halloween, which is always a buffet of bacchanalian delights in which the student body is exempt from classes even more so than seems academically acceptable, even the Losers, for the most part, are allowed to dress up and skip out on Sarge’s mandatory marathon of morning sweat and Miss Wiltz Euclid for Eunuchs’ and mingle in the cafeteria, devouring Hey good Looking-what-ya-got-cookin? Marilyn’s jack-o-lantern-faced cookie and award winning silver-lining suicide cider and fudge shaped like something extremely obvious which every year all the students seem to avoid making the all too apt analogy and which every year Patrick points out and gets sent to either Coaches M or Doctor Kennedy Marshal’s office where she keeps slapping her hands to the cap of her knees positing that the reason Patrick thinks those things is simply because of his propensity for everything hard-core anal-coming-out -the back closet-door proclivities.  

 

There is still three minutes to go between classes.

Last Halloween Hale wore a white housecoat and stethoscope and dressed up like a gynecologist which everyone thought was cute until Lynford kept accosting him with “personal” inquiries which later lead Hale into the bathroom, hurling next to an Ostriched Jebediah  Noelle who that year, actually came dressed to school with a cardboard white-spray-painted toilet already fastened over the architecture of his headgear, a remark which did not auger well with either Mario or Aron. It was Von Behren’s idea last year to cozen Patrick into dressing up like a working-class bonneted Lavern and Shirley, which Patrick thought was gay as fuck til he realized they could guzzle beer all day and count to eight, espousing the working class dignity of Sclemeel, Schlemazel, and Hasenfeffer incorporated humming out the We’re Gonna Make It theme song while stomping up and down  acting as if is this world possessed even a modicum of promise and hope and no one would say a word much less stand in their way.  DeJuan and Buster donned clerical collars and somehow gained instant access into the Faculty lounge and good times saloon Trinity Titty Bar. Buster telling Dejuan afterwards before ripping out the overture to Candide that, if this is what is meant by a vocational spiritual calling then sign him up, brother, claiming that, while the majority of the Varsity Elite refuse to dress up like anything but professional basketball players, wearing their warm-ups and pretending to vocalize into cardboard cell-phones to make-believe agents about exercising potential free-agenting options on their contracts and marketing four year deals. The Varsity Elite Cheerleaders, all with the exception of the youngest, Hyacinth Lionowski, dressed up, according to Buster and Lynford, like the entire annual corpus of the 1986 Playboy playmates Centerfolds—both replete with bushy hair and hairy bush and boasting names like Tabitha and Crystal and Tiffany. Dejuan, shaking his head back and forth and Buster, making the sign of the cross almost before saying that they should have seen 7th grader Connine Whitman shake it near the copier machine. Damn! For reason’s that make Coach M point to his forehead and go duh, both Lynneford and Shithead dress up like a woman and becoming convenient store clerk respectively. Same with Larry-Lloyd Baker, with his standard everyday hippie motif. Peruvian Victor will tell you he’s a flamingo and then bawk even though he is wearing the same outfit he wears every day. Coach M almost vehemently insists that Lilian Wiltz stay attired in her short mini-skirt devil costume for the week up to and even after Halloween, through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and, if possible, even make it a New Years resolution to be more naughty-girl devilish at all times possible. Sgt Kockout tried to get into the season last year coming dressed to school sans camouflage and lip cloaked entirely in pink tutu wielding a glitzy wand with a star on the top of it asking “What?” when people seemed to take seconds longer look at him. Marcellus Buck has over and over again informed Coach M that the only damn thing he’s interesting in dressing up as this Halloween is a motherfucking pimp, dawg.

Patrick could have sworn that, while he was outside the janitorial closet firing one up, trying to figure out just how the blinding retina piercing trophy lights of the Narthex can become completely dark and ghastly dim around this time of year for one day alone a very corduroy vested, bald headed Dr. Kennedy Marshal and a spectacled faded toupee-toting Bev Pine walked into the counselors office with rolls of film tucked under the pits of their arms, pretending to be Siskel and Ebert, jutting out their marginal thumbs up in front of them and smiling in a wicked-shared secret sort of way. Coach M dresses up like Adolf Hitler every Halloween, telling anyone who asks that that’s not a Swastika stitched into his armband, but an expansion of the cross, and, if they really wanted to get technical about it, it’s an overhead periphery view of the school, shaped like a cross once, now, branched out and perennially growing into eternity, until it will conquer not only Poland and Europe but the also the entire globe. Coach M then says, oops, he meant to say south side, not Europe.

 

            It was Meredith-Elise Willow’s idea to dress up this Halloween as the Woman at the well while Cabbages dressed up as what she referred to as Potifars Wife, looking more like if Cleopatra posed for playboy, telling Hale to come here Joseph, she says, during lunch. Iola Clitty, perhaps confused, dressed up like a puritan seamstress. Judith Goldstein, the new girl has said what the hell, coming to school in a mini-skirt and knee-high boots with fish net stocking, claiming that she is a Presbyterian for a day. Time to sin til she can sin no more, baby. 

 

                           



That was a year ago and with Halloween and with the incipience of a new season looming Patrick is not exactly sure what he will dress up as this year. Still waiting, his eyes avert to the area near the baptismal fount Hale claims he has seen reverend Mornigwood use to avail himself early one morning before Matins. This morning the Guillotine mascot-dotted hallway  permeates with the peach odor of Meredith-Elise Willow's hookah tobacco. Since installing the hookah pipe into the café Hemlock Shithead has more or less come around and momentarily forgiven Patrick for the Little misunderstanding he had about the Jihad a month or so ago. Patrick got into a  little bit of trouble with Meredith-Elise Willow when he suggested that it would behoove the attendance of the Café Hemlock if her and Iola Clitty would strip down to their bra and panties and perform a little hookah-inspired belly dance for the incoming patrons when they arrived early to place their orders. Meredith-Elise then shot Patrick a scowl he could only imagine was the look of death, wondering how Von Behren was able to survive the horrid ramifications of their break up. Down the hall Marcellus Buck is escorted with flanking members of the media covering his recent decision to enter eligibility into this years NBA draft, therefore becoming the first eighth grader to ever forgo both high school and college and play straight with the millionaire big boys. If Patrick thinks back hard enough he can vaguely remember seeing Marcellus Buck in the classroom once, during his first day at CLS in Misses Brackenbitches 5^th grade, the day he stumbled in late to class after sleeping in and being told by Coach M to inform his matriarch to please refrain from depositing her sweet-innocent tuition grubbing kids in front of the ever pending Finance for Eternity gymnasium, for insurance purposes and to avoid any possible chance of that eyesore of a vehicle being seen by prospective students whose progenitors have a little more greenbacks in the vault. Coach M then proceeded to give Helen McReynolds rather complicated directions that looked as if they were written in some form of Sanskrit about to where she could park which turned out to be  about a block into the Harrison Homes public subsidized housing where part of the houses look like they were constructed out of some form of wet cardboard. Helen naively asked her oldest sweet and innocent son what the snapping sound was in the background and when he smiled, pretended he was smoking a cigar and commented out loud that he just loves the smell of Napalm in the morning, Helen performed a screeching youey through Vice Lords terra ferma and ended up back into the sarcophagus tiled gates of CLS, Coach M storming out again, informing her that if she insists on dropping her offspring off at the Heavenly Gates of this almost Universally respected Academy of Edification and Enlightenment than you can accept an insurance safety premium stapled to your bi-weekly tuition statement. Patrick remembers entering the hallway with Coach M reminding him not to touch the blinding trophy case or any of the stuffed mascot heads adorning the walls. As Patrick entered into Frau Brakkenbitches classroom his earlobes were greeted with the nerve searing shrill of her blow horn blasted  so deeply into his auditory edifice that he felt like at first he was at first shot. Patrick was then informed by the German import how truancy would be exterminated in the ubermann Global culture and how Patrick would never have lasted two seconds in the Hitler Youth camps of her day. If Patrick squints the lids of his eyes deeply together into the sockets of his face he can vaguely remember seeing Marcellus Buck in the classroom that first day of fifth grade, Patrick’s first day inside CLS as a whole, Buck, in the back of the classroom, a 6’7 fifth grader whose career would boast more accomplishments by the age of thirty-three than that of the savior in whose name this academy was founded, according to Coach M. Marcellus Buck was stationed in the back of Frau Brakenhardt’s classroom dribbling a basketball whose rubber coating resembled the globe. Patrick takes his seat in the front of the classroom where the Bible placed on the make shifted tilted cross altar vaguely resembled a copy Patrick had once seen of Mien Kampf.

 There is still two and a half more minutes left until fourth hour.



Patrick wonders what weird concoctions and mathematical extrapolations Graham Sheldon will present the Losers with today. The bevy of Media wielding cameras and pocket tape recorders and microphones strut the hallways. Patrick swears he hears Buck comment which sounds to where he is seated in the café hemlock like, not only was Jesus a God fearing Black man, he was also an all star- biblical center. As is almost always the case, Coach M walks straight upright and adjusts his tie like he is about to say something of significance when Marcellus Buck is being interviewed. The gentleman clad in the Armani outfit with his hair slick back wearing shoes that are polished to such a black buff that they reflect nothing but gold when he steps into the gilded trophy narthex. Apparently this gentleman is Marcellus Bucks go to right hand man is referred solely as “the Yak.” Patrick though it would be cute to walk up to the Yak and ask him if he heard the one about the three Sherpa’s who walk into the bar but figures maybe it just wouldn’t be a good idea by the way he seems to pad the top left portion of his sports jacket like he is pressing the safety off on a nine mm. The smoke from the Café Hemlock pleasantly wafts over the entire café. Employed by some sort of a work study program Larry-Lloyd Baker has been spending the entire late-mornings and early afternoon bussing tables at the Café Hemlock. Apparently, even though he receives only a portion of the tips for this job, Coach M has agreed not to mention anything about the “pot o bag” found in Bake’s locker which Coach M claimed he needed to perform exclusive scientific analysis on even though Bake swore up and down that it was oregono he was saving for mama Marilyn’s pizza. Later on that afternoon David Hale skirted into the Faculty lounge to get a 29^th refill for the red-eyed nerve rattling Coaches Widow where he saw Coach M, Lillian Wiltz and even a reverse collared Reverend Morningwood passing what looked like a bong constructed in the fashion of a psychedelic glass pecker, passing the vessel “counterclockwise” as Coach M called it, informing Lilian Wiltz to use her dry tongue to lick the remainder of the resin-residue of that bad boy. The overhead strobe lights were fluttering inside the Faculty Lounge in psychedelic sync with the music of the Jethro Tull when Hale walked inside the lounge, all-too familiar Styrofoam coffee cup in his grip, and, as the foreign odor crept inside his nasal passages and Lillian Wiltz greeted him with a peace sign Coach M coughed heavily into his rolled fist and ordered Hale to make something called a doob-run in the buff down to liquor convenient store    -the doob run which was to include copious amounts of cupcakes, Doritos and for some reason, bottled water. When Hale returned to the faculty lounge cradling two brown paper bags in his arms like a newborn Reverend Morningwood kept on getting extremely jittery and panicky, claiming that he had just seen a leprechaun over by the copier machine while a tussled hair and smudged eyeliner Lillian Wiltz was crying in Coach M’s arms, tossing several customized COMET doilies in his general direction claiming that if Coach M truly did love and respect her as a person and not only as a hole, he would publicly divorce the Coaches Widow and marry miss Wiltz. When Hale retold Patrick the story on the monkey bars, over an episode of gaming which involved Juggernaut who, minutes before his wedding, was accosted by a odd-scowl looking REV Morningwood clerical toting Sidearms who informed Hale that his doppleganger Juggernaut would have to make a moral and conscious decision between Marrying a Maxima who could never grow old, only fuck like a volcano every night and sate Hale’s every sexual, physical and emotional vagary or a Maxima who would grow old, wrinkly, whose boobs would begin to sag in the context of her wispy superhuman outfit, her long alluring orange tresses would one day resemble nothing more than a permed boll of almost gray cotton and who one day would experience menstrual cramps while flying and would grow old and die. At the word Menstrual and Cramps both Hale and Juggernaut publicly flinched, Hale, informing Juggernaut that, uh, since he himself is immortal he would have to go trough with plan A, my dear friend, if you know what I mean. And after the uproarious wedding ceremony where Wolverine (being best man) passes out cigars while Iron Heart and Dakota North hold each other very close with Orgon performing the chicken on the dance floor and when Speedball and Digital Justice were apparently dropping something which came in a little smiley-face pill and just as Wolverine is standing up very straight and holding out his half-sipped chalice of chardonnay and looking both Juggernaut and Maxima so straight into both of their eyes that it appears he is scrutinizing the number of follicles in their eyebrow, suddenly at that moment, a fury of sparks starts dancing around the side of Maxima’s neck, like what happens in Casa McReynolds when Warren plugs an additional extension cord into the gaping mouth of an already over-crowded outlet and little sparks begin to instigate and fly everywhere—just at that exact moment Maxima’s head topples into the ground followed by SideArms and Von Behren announcing in a very clearing-his-throat manner of surprise that Juggernaut just married a Surrogate Human Initiative Traitor  other wise known as a S.H.I.T (Patrick says the acronym an octave lower than his normal speaking voice an slower, like he is heralding the arrival of an 80’s hair band). Juggernaut couldn’t help but contemplate if he would have chosen the Maxima that would have grown old and died that he would have a viable mortal creation in his hands right now, instead of something with wires and fake hair and little wisps of smoke reeking of oil billowing from the side of her severed neck.  Patrick thinks back to Hale performing the doob run for the stoned faculty and for some reason, when Patrick pictures knock-out double heavily rumored Cavalier magazine heefer of the year—for some reason when Patrick envisions Lilain Wiltz telling coach M that she if she really loves her and wants to be with her he would look at her as something other than a “hole,” Patrick doesn’t picture a “hole” like the one in the center of Bradley park or the warm moist center of a female at all—instead Patrick (through David Hale’s monologue) imagines that Lilian Wiltz means “whole,” means that when coach M is not only fucking her but around her that somehow his presence makes her feel that she is one entity. One unit. Like the way Patrick feels about Hyacinth and how he wishes he could express this to her somehow in a manner  that she could perhaps one day understand.    

 

 
 

 ...there is all of two minutes left til' classes convene for the day...