Five good minutes d. (finale)

                                                           

 

 

 

            There is still a healthy two minutes to go before the high-pitched almost nasal buzzer squeals and classes (at least for the Losers) are set to convene. The hookah smoke wafting from Café Hemlock today is simply called VonBehren Die-a-Slow-and-Painful-Death-Most Preferable castration by a form of dental floss constructed out of little Barbed wire fibers, according to Meredith-Elise Widow. Since their harrowing romantic demise, Von Behren tries to keep a low profile in between classes, which means Patrick only gets a chance to kick it with Von B over the creatively conducive imaginary rungs of the Yellow Monkey bars at recess and during lunch. Last week Von Behren got the fuck beat out of him by Aron and Mario when trying to stand up for a wedgied Shithead. Von Behren was found trussed and gagged in the janitorial closet, a bottle of windex wedged in some orifice that makes Patrick uncomfortable just to think about. Von Behren claiming later on in the week, on the top of the Yellow monkey bars, that every time he now farts he leaves the seat cushion of his classroom  spring fresh and streak free. Von Behren tired telling Coach M and Dr. Kennedy-Marshal and almost began writing an underground newspaper entitled THE CUMWAD CHRONICLE in which he began to document all of the hideous unjust tyrannical life-style advantages of the Varsity Elite, or who Von Behren refers to simply as GUSTAPO. When Meredith-Elise heard about the Windex incident she simply rolled her eyes and mouthed words, asking herself rhetorically why Von Behren can’t just be like the rest of the impotent, limped dick elderly community and give up the ghost. In the less than two minutes given for Patrick to guzzle his Irish car Bomb Fuckochino (The ingredients for the Irish car bomb kept in a little shooter bottle Patrick jacked from a YE OLDE IRISH HONEYMOON SET he found of his moms bed after his parents wedding anniversary last year) he spots Von Behren running down the hallway into the gold-foam of the trophy central. Brushing the opposite direction out of the blinding light and into the steady day-light comfort are three of the Varsity Elite centerfold cheerleaders, clad in their leather mini-miniskirts and killer Comet Corsets. Peruvian Victor is three steps behind the bevy of giggling girls performing one of his signature aberrant walks, mentioning something about being stalled on cloud nine for wife.  DeJuan sits down next to Patrick and comments in a very British patois about this being such a fine day, my dear man. About a month ago Meredith-Elise cajoled Dejuan into starting a book club. Dejuan has been addressing Patrick and Von Behren as Wilouby and Heathcliff respectively and Hale, as a cad, whatever that is. DeJuan was really never much into gaming and Patrick is getting just a little bit sick of DeJuan always going out of his way to pretend he has culture, commenting to Patrick how everything else in life would be uncivilized as he sits down next to Judith in the Café Hemlock and begins to spread nominal amounts of grey poupon across a bagel with a miniaturized knife. The Media ants have finished interviewing Marcellus Buck, Vincent the Yak raising up both if his bouncer arms as if he is trying to part the red sea, announcing that’s enough, no more questions, the lad has to get back to his studies. Part of the reason Patrick thinks that Vincent the Yak was hired as Marcellus Buck’s personal body guard was to keep him in check for saying anything uncouth to the media. Last year after Buck’s stellar 98 point first half performance over collegiate Clemson, Buck took the microphone in his mouth and began to perform fellatio on it, saying that this was what his bitch was gonna do to him after the game tonight—she’s a gonna suck it like this. Patrick’s first prank at Christian Logos Seminary transpired later on that year, the first day after he found Jebediah's Noelle’s entire head lodged inside one of Mario and Aron tapioca and Tamala and chilli bean specialty toilets. Fifth grade year all of the male students at CLS were required to try out for the junior Varsity Elite team. Jebediah Noelle had been lodged in the toilet before, but apparently this time Buck had come into the Mens in the third quarter of the Ostriching and continued to pummel Jebediah's head even deeper into the shit-stained porcelain concavity of the toilet, ramming his head and neck at such an angle that it apparently caused Jebediah irreparable spine and shoulder damage. When Patrick found Jeb his entire anatomy looked like a limp exclamatory mark sticking out of the top of a heap of shit. Patrick was only in fifth grade but he managed to wedge him free and swipe all the feces from his visage and clean his glasses and even perform CPR on the lad. When Patrick realized that Jebediah was potentially paralyzed he busted ass out in the hallway where a sunglasses and slick back Pat Riley haired Coach M was surfing around the vectors of the cross on a chariot model  mopad the words PHAROH PAHROH written in sleek cursive on the side of the vehicle.

The afternoon  Patrick found a paralyzed Jeremiah Noel, he hauled some serious McReynolds hairy-ass down to the finance for Eternity gymnasium where Coach M was skiing around the court on his Mopad assessing the height and athletic ability of the fifth grade scouting class, Patrick bursting into the gymnasium doors with a look of devout concern as well as for solicitous hatred for Coach M and Marcellus Buck and Aron Browman. The first thing Patrick does is shoot Von Behren a look, his facial muscles exuding a beckoning concern for a fellow comrade. Von Behren, attired in headband and knee pads and something that looks too much like a tube top for Patrick to mull over at the  moment. Hale is spinning the geographical earth—the one that Marcellus Buck usually has bouncing between the arched legs—on his pinkie, balancing the Coaches Widow jaundice coffee cup in his other hand when he sees Von Behren pumping his elbows in the direction of Patrick. Hale then decided to join them but not before nonchalantly hurtling the basketball from half-court behind his back at the opposite rim, paying the least bit of attention when the globe-topography balls lands straight between the hoop, net still, a chorus of damns echoing from the fellow fifth grader recruits behind him. When Patrick tries to convey to Coach M about the tyranny and down right ruthlessness of the Varsity Squad, Coach M mistook Patrick for a valet, dismounted his Chariot Moped, informing him to park it in the shade and that a scratch on the vehicle is a scratch on his ass if you know what I mean.

 

Hale hauls his signature ass  evaporating into the office, toppling over a Virginia Slim chain smoking Gayle Heumermann, knocking her down as he gets to the phone as dials nine-one-one. Von Behren and Patrick continue to hold Jeb’s head up and back so as the passage of vital air can be equally distributed and so that the blood can get flowing once again. Five minutes passes and the wheezing Technicolor drill of ambulance sirens begins to screech in the background followed by Coach M, asking why and how Patrick and Von Behren could have been so cruel to a fellow Loser basketball player-slash-student like themselves before Coach M picks Jebediah up and tosses him over the front Mopad stepping up and recruiting CLS Caucasian  poster child Eric the Red to operate the chariot and ferry a limp bodied Jeb Noelle into the arms of medical assurance. Coach M snapping at Patrick, saying he can’t believe what sort of uncouth mannerisms both he and Von Behren played instigating some sort of hazing ritual with a helpless and stuttering limb Jeb Noelle. Patrick, furious, trying to state to Coach M about the echelons of pure vile both Aron and Mario and this instance Marcellus Buck are capable of achieving in this institution, bring up the fact that Patrick himself did try to flag a very pharaoh-pharaoh moped wielding Coach M about the comatose state of Jeb Noelle when he found him but all Coach M could do was suck it up and tell Patrick how could he, how could he let one of his comrades wither like that after pummeling him near to death. At least that is what Patrick imagines Coach M to have said, as he looks down into the puddle of his black liquid Irish car bomb fuckochino and catches his own reflection looking back up at him, the reflection of Patrick’s own face seems elongated with an almost birch elasticity to the nose. Patrick’s reflection is looking up at him and seems to be pondering out loud only in silence why, why didn’t Patrick try to stand up for himself three years ago. Patrick can feel the warm ashy hint of Jameson dissolved in his Fuckochino as his ears meet Mrs Brakenhartds Blowhorn and he is reawakened from his momentary reflection and reeled back into moment of here and now. Larry Lloyd Baker is performing some sort of  trick with his skateboard in the corner of Café Hemlock where it looks like he is trying to walk up the bottom side wheels before flipping the board around three times and landing back on it, sideways in the askance position he was at before. Looking at Bakers skateboard reminds Patrick of the Thruster (in the morning) model Warren engendered and has since applied the Thruster Technology to his BMX. Warren was less than thrilled when Patrick “Borrowed” the top secret covert BMX thruster two years ago in an emergency operation to rescue his youngest sibling Allan from getting Guillotine by Coach M. Allan was disguised as Little Man in the Canoe, dressed up with facial paint and headdress and feathers; using taupe body paint to color his countenance a deeper shade of tan. The Bullhorn blasts again. Larry-Lloyd Baker performs his skateboard flip, looking like he wants someone to direly acknowledge his punk chicanery.

            Patrick remembers Coach M clattering off into the direction of what will one day be the Finance for Eternity Gymnasium to scope out future prospective student athletes, leaving a sewer-reeking Patrick all alone. At the time Patrick had only been in attendance at CLS for less than two months and already Noell,e Von Behren and Hale had served as his closest compadres—this was a year before Von Behren started hanging out with Tim Brandigan down the street; eight months before the sleep over in which Tim invited Von Behren fellow friends into the crazy imaginary world of gaming even though he admittedly never liked Hale very much from the outset. In fifth grade year, the autumn of ’88 Hale and Von B and Patrick spent the majority of recess tackling the splintery wooden architectural and steel planks of the playground, pretending to play various games of war, Patrick, turning his arm into a M16 and ushering plosive BLAM sounds from the interior of his lips. Misses Brakenhardt seemed to orchestrate the time signature of their developing youth with the shrilling almost nasal blare of her blowhorn. The incessant teasing by the Varsity Elite had been kept to a minimum. Looking back just two years into he empty-jackolantern of the past autumns, Patrick felt an emancipating rush of freedom in those afternoon recess, whirling around the totem stature of the playground feeling that all of eternity was at the disposal of his make believe nozzle made out of his arm.

 

Coming back in from recess that afternoon and being informed by Coach M that the reason Jebediah will be coerced into wearing Iron Maiden headgear for the next decade of his life is because he, Patrick, failed to monitor him properly while he as lying listless on the linoleum turf of the bathroom.

           

 

Another blow horn blaze streams into Patrick’s earlobes. He’d surmise he has about one minute left before Graham Sheldon continues to blather on about some sort of neon epliptical mathematical proof while the majority of the class just sit there and stare at the solar system. Baker has been trying to do some sort of a trick where he mounts the side of Saturn’s rings just when it is beginning to lift up off the ground in mid-afternoon when the Cherokee runners looking on in awe and land, in perfect symmetry on the Tip Comet which, thanks to Hales and Cabbages little around the clock whoo-hoo, has a pair of tye-dyed panties flapping on an antennae like a flag at a funeral for a Grateful dead concert. There are always the sounds of basketballs echoing inside both the hallway and gymnasium inside CLS. Close to when the buzzer goes off, students can be heard counting down from ten to one and standing back at full and half court getting ready to heave a Hail Mary down the court, along with a dizzying fusillade of other balls. Patrick looks down into the watery remnants of his fuckochino. Patrick heavily sighs to himself, reflects his eyes into the ceiling, inhales a hearty breath of DIE DAVID hookah vapors and, as if drifting off into a distant memory of a childhood fraught with cable television and Kool-aid, began to quote from memory the lines of Hudson Hawk about how come you always have time to order a cappuchino. At the word cap, Meredith-Elise hisses out a shhhhh! holding her middle finger over her middle finger like a warning up to her lips, pointing with her smooth pointer finger linked to the antipodal palm to the placard with Patrick’s name scribed to the bottom in Olde English a picture of what looks like a thief in the night silhouette wedged into a blaring red ghost busters life preserver with a safety belt slashed in the middle.

 

“What,” Patrick says trying to paraphrase Wayne and Garth, “No Hudson, Denied!!!”

 

            Patrick quickly drowns the remainder of the fuckochino through his lips, lifts up and stretches his limbs into a Y-shape, looking back into the golden haze lingering in the hall like a mist. The sound of balls wildly ricocheting inside the glazed luster of the court has momentarily subsided. Both Shithead and Deeba are carrying janitorial buckets into the searing light, knowing that Coach M expects them to polish each individual vector of the trophy case on the hour every hour. Jebediahh Noelle is seen screeching down the hallway, his limbs elongated as if in a cartoon, fleeing the pending grapple of Aron and Mario’s grasp. Patrick remembers how Eric Bushman was apparently awarded the Presidential bobby-pen of cumulative courage for his efforts to help rescue a withered Jebediah Noelle. Noelle being hospitalized for three weeks and coming back to CLS with headgear for life constructed from his shoulder as if plumbing from his spine were helping to hold up his forehead at all times, like a buttress. After the ambulances left and the fire chief looked at Eric The Red and said that he damn near saved this boys life while padding him on the head like a toddler Coach M recruited all of the fifth grade boys in the gym with the exception of a newly-manicured Lynford and broke them up into shirt skins, ignoring Patrick’s request that couldn’t Gia Walker be on his shirtless squad, a quick smile, reverting back to pain and loss. Patrick himself had never been one to invest too much time into sports but something about playing against a flagrant fouling Mario and aron and a purported 6’7 fifth grade all-star Marcellus Buck escalated his thoroughly pissed off Irish temperament into an all out emotional arsenal against the group of students that would one day be known as the Varsity Elite. It was the moment when everything came into focus—Patrick, somehow realizing the venal money-grubbing demagogue propensities of Coach M, the superficial bullying antics of the Varsity Elite, the all out trajectory into which his life was gradually falling and succumbing into—somehow dribbling the Marcellus Buck globe inspired basketball in his palm, Patrick was able to make out his future, as if the basketball was nothing more or less than some sort of an omen. He could see himself and the rest of the fellow Losers over the discourse of Junior high relentlessly being taunted and jested by those wearing vinyl jumpers and shooting layups all after noon—he saw himself and daves not being able to fit in or ever really feel like they belong in high school, feeling all alone and empty and more or less like a day to day failure. With the ball cupped into the contours of his palm the rage Patrick had felt almost since day one here at CLS began to escalate. While Mario and Aron continue to hack Patrick, virtually pummeling him on his every drive lunging at his waist and dragging him down into the luster shine of the court, Patrick still finding a way to climb to the hoop in the same fashion in which he and the daves will later claw their way up to the helm of the monkey bars, splitting open the undaunted font of their imaginations, letting it lead them into a place they have never before could have fathomed. Patrick, with his shirt off, drool salivating from his lips, his body caked in a glaze of hirsute sweat scored 31 points, drained five threes and blocked four shots of Eric the Red (who configured his arms in a funny manner and tried to call goal tending) and even Marcellus Buck. Coach M refereed the game in his Pharaoh-Pharaoh mopad and his sunglasses and Egyptian cap, a whistled lodged between his lips, silence at the performance that he witnessed.

 

            At the end of the game the Losers look at Patrick, a feral beast, untethered and out of control, in a single frenzy—as if trying to reclaim something indelibly lost, and with the memory of a listless Jebediah Noelle still blood fresh in his head, Patrick takes the globe shaped ball that had felt like an oracle in his palms, rushes up to center court, where a picture of Ghetto Jesus is planted in the middle of the Varsity elite sprouting out in ear shaped lotus petals, Patrick takes the earth shaped basketball and spikes it—pounds it as hard as he possibly can muster, into the forehead of Ghetto Jesus’ face, before walking out of the gymnasium, howling out the word FUCK, as loud as is humanly possible. The globe ball pounced so hard that into the forehead of Ghetto Jesus that it shot straight up into the ceiling an lodged itself in between chandelier light casket that would later one day be covered up by the welkin. Twice Patrick has taken a broom, stood up on his tippie-toes and tried to dislodge the Globe shaped ball and twice he batted at it with all the inertia of a blind folded adolescent and a porn-filled piñata and left empty handed to no avail. Still, Patrick reflects, there was something burrowed within his chest that until that day, on the basketball court, remained locked up somehow—something that was pent up and released in a time capsule inside his chest and could only have been properly channeled under duress circumstances.

 

            There is the sound of a Buzzer accompanied by the ricocheting clamped applaud of a thousand launched balls.

 

Patrick is late for class.