..a heavy aura of reluctance....

Logan Field, circa 2001

 

It is with a heavy aura of reluctance that Patrick descends the yellow barred role-playing vessel. He heavily pulls himself down, from atop the chimney, rusty rung by rusty rung, exiting the invisible elevator of the lads shriveled imaginations; entering the disheveled cheap hotel lobby of life. He leaps off the third bar from the bottom, strutting up to Browman.  Browman, talking shit and gradually accumulating what Patrick calls Salivation through Christ on his chin. Mario, baggy pants and button down, spacious black-and-white t, is dancing the jumping jacks he couldn’t perform in p.e., making fist cuffs and shadow boxing in Hale’s direction. Escorted by Von B and Hale jogging up to catch up with the foray As if ushered on ball bearings the boys scatter into a brisk, relocating behind the twin graffiti gangsta garages, into the middle of Logan field, close to the second Facilities garage and backdrop, also spray-painted with signatures of the Latin Kings, FOLK, G.D.

 

“Aron, shit, even a lad of your feeble intelligence, I’m sure could see that I was partaking in a serious imaginative discourse with friends. What is it you want?”

 

“Man what the fuck is it you think I want you little turd.”  Aron retorts forcefully, pushing Pat hard in the chest. Keeping composure, cool and poised, Patrick slightly brushes the inside of his arms off as he rises, smiling a devious grin. If Aron knew anything about the female homonymic spelling of his own name and the emerald historically oppressed country it signifies, Aron would understand exactly where Patrick is coming from. Patrick’s people have been being shit on for centuries by dumbfucks with serious oral hygiene impediments like Bowman. Patrick is almost sure that Bowman has a British birthright beneath the condescending, uppity purl of his harelip.

 

“Bowman, I’m going to tell this to you once. Quit fucking with me. It is obvious that I want absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with you and your kin, so, if you’ll excuse me, I have a rather serious game to get back to involving my imagination and a CIA tryst, who just so happens to be the love of my life and who also, I was just so informed, (Patrick seems to bite his lip and look into VonBehren’s face with discontent) happens to be a SHIT, so, if you’ll excuse me from your life forever, it would be greatly appreciated.”

 

Patrick thanks Bowman for waiting a generous portion of his valuable dwindling youth before turning a one-eighty, clicking his heels together the way Tom Moore taught him how they do it military school. As he swiftly completes his turn an inadvertent hulk and tan-blur twist into Mario’s armpit.

 

“Who you calling Shit?” Mario grapples Patrick from behind, clutches his left wrist, twists it behind Patrick’s back, like he, Patrick, is being held hostage.

 

“Mario let ’me go.”  Hale says.

 

While holding Patrick Mario swats Hale’s clenched palms. A pair of ten sided dice tumbles into grass, Mario stoops over rattling his ample ass in Hale’s face, picks up both dice and deeply pocket them as Patrick is hurtled into the grass with a comic book thud. Aron lefts, steps into Patrick’s shadow and comments, telling him that he has never seen a person who both smells and looks like a leftover turtletwad.

 

“Shut the fuckup, asswipe.” VonBehren stoops in front of Patrick to help him up.

 

“Mario, please give me the dice back. You are not being very nice.”

 

“You want the dice fatso? How about you military nerd? How about you four-eyes? You want the dice?”

 

“Yo Dave and Pat, tell your mom to get some new lip stick. It left a ring around my dick last night.” Bowman snipes. Dave tells him that Aron must be talking about either his own mom or Patty Bushman because both VonB’s and Patrick’s maternal progenitor would never blow anyone with only one long eyebrow and who looks like an apish offspring Burt off of Sesame Street and the missing link.

 

“Go suck an egg!” Bowman barks acerbically. Mentally Bowman is no fuckwad when it comes to intelligence-a half-assed smartass as well as a smart classroom fuck, he precociously knows the path to a person’s dander is to disparagingly offer what he refers to as a Freudian finger (or, an all out up the ass Freudian fuck)-get on the person’s mother and don’t get off until you are done riding her into her son’s tombstone. Bowman veers his vision and smells Patrick’s breath. The two boys, shirted nipple to shirted nipple, Aron is the first to shove-twice in a row, threatening aloud that the Freudian finger is about ready to hatch so Patrick done better watch his ass like the purported second coming. Patrick calmly tries to eschew Bowman’s bleachy-sullied breath. He dislikes the grappled shoves and the vulgar bantering. From around him he sees no evidence of the monkey bars-sees no evidence of the yellow rungs. Mario is shaking the ten sided dice, telling VonB that this dice are about the size of his testicles. Patrick looks the other direction, just in time to see Mario hurtle each dice into he dead grass backdrop of Logan field. Aron’s voice greets his eardrums, nipping in deep like an unwarranted mosquito.

 

“You want some, you want some of me bitch? Yeah, I’m over here. You want some of me bitch?”

 

Sure there is talk of forgiveness in class by Pastors with laryngitis. There is talk of renewal; there is talk of morals and blah-blah-blah….

           

“Hey bitch,” Bowman says, pushing Hale.

 

Patrick then pushes Aron like he is the Lorax and Bowman is peddling Thneeds. VonB removes his glasses and tries to get pissed. Aron shoves both VonB and Pat into the dirt of Logan field. Mario Rutherford then comes to the aid of Bowman, pummeling Patrick’s back and telling Patrick just how fat his momma is.

 

“Yo momma so fat, the Air force used her underwear as a parachute.” Mario states, humming the theme song to the Brady Bunch and telling Patrick that he must have received those warts on his elbow when he stuck his penis inside the classroom gerbil.

 

Bodies collide into a heft, exalted hulk. Double joints snicker, limbs crack like crablegs. Tucked in shirts and torso’s smeared with grassy stains. A free for all melee having morphed into madness, the teachers, greeted with the gurgle chorus refraining cracked pubescent baritones wisped through a slight wind-conveying a pimply adolescent scratchy throat ruckus, picked up as curly-cues in Autumn carried through the autumn wind as if it were rustling over milkweeds, the teachers seem not to be aware of the fray. None of the teachers do much if anything. David slams into Aron trying to sweep his legs from underneath him. Eric Blushmen quickly intercedes pushing Patrick into the dust and then running backwards trying not to get dirt on his eighty-five dollars sneakers he’ll outgrow in six months. Jebediah Noelle witnesses the debacle, turns, and runs the other direction, playing Chinese tag with a bunch of third graders. Hale, the pacifist who refuses to fight, politely asks Aron to please knock it off with Patrick until Mario snaps at Hale like a fly-trap, telling him to shut the fuck up-comparing Hale with an overweight Hippopotamus in a tutu. Bowman interrupts Mario, reproaching Patrick’s hair because he has dandruff.

 

“Patrick, I didn’t realize it was snowing. Remind me next time I fuck your momma to bring my sled. It’ll make going down on her just a little bit smoother.”

 

“Mario, Mario,” Aron repeats Patrick half-caught in a near stagger to his feet, “as long as you remember to grease the sled first.”

 

            Patrick’s whole face is the color of a nuclear sunrise; innocent peach ripe one second transitions into embroiled plum the next, harboring anger, cogitating revenge; retaliation only to be assuaged through the asseveration of his body pouncing over Aron’s skull and peeing in his coffin before the wake.  Patrick once told VonB and Hale that he wants all those guys- Bowman  and Bushman and Fuckin’ Mr. and Mrs. M and Mario-all of the basketball protégé’s to feel, even if it is just for one lousy day, the way he feels inside-bruised and dead.

 

“Don’t get mad-get even.” Patrick incurs this over and over like a mantra. VonBehren holding his shoulders back in near massage stance. VonB hinting just to say fuck you and leave. Bowman gesticulating lewd gestures in front of all three of the boys. Eric Bushman, watching from a fair distance, running in, pushing one of the boys, and then circling out, fearful that if he is caught he may not start Varsity this coming Tues. Mario Now, at this moment in time, in this arena of outdoor space-he is both.

 

  He jousts towards Aron, desiring nothing more than blood and fizzing bone marrow. One hundred pounds of Pat’s anatomy comets into Aron’s torso.  A Thud. A pastel cloud of comic book sound effects seen lingering above Patrick’s fists and Aron's jerked head.  The boys toddle to the ground. Aron screaming rape. Aron screaming like a girl in a high pitched falsetto that could be mistaken for a laugh rather than a cry. Patrick is on top and Aron cringes as Patrick employs his McReynold’s Damndest to create a skull-size orifice into Bowman’s ribcage. He is trying to climb through him. A flanked fortress of bodies and jostled elbows surround them from all sides. There is ranting and cursing. Hale stands alone outside the fort like a lunar force. VonB is Pat’s only affiliate inside. He implores Pat to chill, the teachers are watching. Patrick is calling Aron a fucking cunt and a mother fucking dickhead. He flails his limbs the direction of the earth, paddling Bowman, trying to nail him into the ground with only his chapped knuckles fueled by his irate Irish dander.

 

“Fuck you PAM. And fuck your Mrs. Brady-ass mom. ” Bowman says.

 

“MOTHERFUCKERFUCKYOUFUCKSONOFFABITCHWEFUCKUMOTHERSUCKMYFUCKINGCOCKSUCKINGASSWIPEDICKHEADFUCKI’MAGONNAKILLUNOGUDCOCKSUCKERSUNUVABITCJBITCHBITHSUCKMMYMUTHAFUCKINDICKYOUCUNTFAGGOTASSWIPESPROTFUCKDERELICTSNOTTYTOOTHEDINBREDOFAWANNABEBASKETBALLPLAYERTHINKYOURSOBADNSHITWNEHNREALLYYOUJUSTAINTALLTHATTRYINGTOSTARTLIESANDMAKEMYNAMEFRIENDSANDMUTHAFUCKIN’THOROUGHLYPISSEDOFFANDRIGHTFULLYSOMINDYOUIRSIHANCESTRYJUSTBECAUSEYOURDADGETSMOREPUSSYTHANYOUCUNTFUCKYOUTUBOFSTALESHITPISSANDEVERYTHINGINBETWEENOJAYO.J.GUILTYGUITYFUCKYOUMOTHERFUCKJUSTTRYOGETAPIECEOFME.TRY!!!!.”

 

Patrick is possessed. His eyes look like that of a demon. The dancing flame found in cartoons about forest fire awareness. Both Mario and Dave endeavor grasp Patrick’s shoulders to no avail. Patrick is ignited. Steam is seen rising from his forehead. A furnace of pent up anger is slowly being drained.

 

“God Dammit you fag, get off me Pam.” Bowman says, wrestling with Patrick’s assertive limbs situated on top of him. From Hale’s perspective it looks like Patrick is trying to rape Aron. Riverdacncing solid slaps with his sliced palms into bulk and flab constituting Bowman’s physiognomy.

 

 There is a whistle. It is time to go inside. The teachers have seen nothing but what they take to be a flag football game gone awl. The teachers have heard nothing.  Christ Lutheran is, after all, a Lutheran school. God is invisible and he is up North somewhere, past the clouds and airplanes and space stations. He is so far away no one can ever see him until they die and are magically transported to his gate, where he judges us apparently over our hygiene. He is someone to pray to and to pay offerings to. Any validation to the existence of a masculine, circumcised capital-g God comes with each and every trophy Christ Lutheran’s basketball team accumulates in a season.

 

In a last digit effort Aron Bowman starts to laugh.

 

“Get off me you faggot. Like I’d fuck you the way I’d fuck your momma. It’s time to go in you freak.”

 

Eric Blushmen heaves Patrick off of Aron. A straight A student and a fucking prick, he runs to the building imitating a retard boys run, sticking his tongue out the side of his lips and crossing his eyes. He then looks back, smiles a decrying grin, turns back around lowering his shorts, shaking his freckled ass in a pendulous motion towards the direction of David and Hale and Patrick. Tod Neilson licks his palm and places it beneath his underarm, pumping his elbow to produce sounds of flatulence. Mario and Bowman and Pete and Michael Robinson all fall down in laughter and then offer each other cheap high five’s. Browman shoves Patrick one last time. Big Nose Pete runs up behind VonB, slides his fingers beneath the back of his pants and raises his underwear, giving him a creeper.

 

“Damnit Pete-fucking Pinocchio.” VonB holds out his middle finger. Pete has run off. VonB turns to spit on Aron.

 

“Fag.” VonB vents adjusting his Chicago Cub hat with the affixed Starter tag.

“Fuck you mother fucker. I’ll kick your fucking ass after school then I’ll fuck your sisters as well.”

 

“Man, get off talking about my sister.” VonB bitterly retorts, “I’ve just gotten off of yours!”

 

They look at each other vindictively. Then Hale looks at Bowman and tells him to please stop, he is not being fair.

 

“You want fucking fairness fatso?” Bowman balks. “Fuck You. And oh, Hale, I almost forgot to mention, Hyacinth Lionowski said you left your bra in the girls’ bathroom again yesterday. She said it reeked so bad Karen Pinesol had to spray the whole girls’ bathroom with Mrs. Mooney vagina’s spray. They’re thinking about importing emergency gas masks from the Gulf War to help us deal with the rotten stench. ”

 

“Please stop.” Hale says very simply. “You are not being very nice.”

 

“Man shut the fuck up David.” Mario says. “You got bigger tits than Dave’s momma.”

 

VonB, adjusts the yellow stripes of his fruit-of-the-looms and assists Hale in hoisting up Patrick. The trio heads up to the school, lagging behind the Dickheads. All three Boys feel inert and somehow paralyzed-oppressed. Hale tells them not too take it too personal because Eric and Aron and Mario are so stupid they don’t know whether to scratch their wrists or wind their butt.

 

Inside Patrick sits at his desk, shaking his leg up and down even though the inevitable caffeinated klatches and anxiety nerve ridden wire buzzes are still four years away. He fakes taking notes to Pastor Morningwood’s discussion on the triune God and pre-martial sexuality-instead he is seen from an overhead flickering light bulb penciling an outline for a special, top-secret grenade which he plans on shoving so far up Aron and Mario’s ass that they will first suffer from a severe form of dysentery before they implode. He pictures their blown up bodies splattered against the gymnasium walls like spaghettios and smiles. Their bones and limbs and eyeballs and cocks all smeared up against the Basketball banners of the State Championship of Lutheran Schools. Upon blowing them up Hyacinth Lionowski walks into the blue-shaded gymnasium decor rewarding Patrick for his audacity, valor and overall virility by giving him a blowjob on stage. As Hyacinth goes to town on Patrick’s pecker, humming into him like she is blowing bubbles in milk with a curly straw, Coach M impatiently walks up to Patrick with his arm outstretch to confess that he is so very sorry he spent so much time monopolized over the peccadillo’s of the varsity basketball team and he now plans, under Patrick’s military acumen and expertise, to devise an extensive paintball arena out of the defunct basketball stadium and, oh yes, with Patrick’s permission of course, he’d like to create an underground science lab underneath the girls restroom with only the cutting edge of scientific technology available for his tutelage and disposal.

 

Patrick pictures entering the top secret underground laboratory by sneaking off into the girls bathroom during vespers, flushing the handle of the one toilet that is always broken and watching the toilet, then, back flipping up and inside the wall panels to reveal the twisting staircase leading downward to stealth air craft and recent atomic advancements. As Patrick begins to descend the stairs he hears a voice:

 

“Patrick, how do you think God feels about this sort of behavior?”

 

Looking up through the staircase into the dinged pink of the girls’ restroom, he sees Reverend Morningwoods’s craggily visage and thick rectangular glasses staring him directly into his face. The pink linoleum of the room fades into a blackboard chalked with bible verses followed by numbers and colons. The pastor seems to be blinking his eyelids over Patrick’s penciled blueprints. He then confiscates the lined paper, folds it into his bible and once again inquires rather sternly, “Patrick, again, how do you think God feels about this sort of immoral behavior?”

 

Patrick’s face goes blank. To his left Aron Bowman is mouthing out the word freak. Rev. Morningwood begins to tap his foot. Patrick thinks that Rev. Morningwood looks like an esophagus bearing specs. As Rev. Morningwood starts to tell the class the importance of listening versus that of day dreaming Patrick re-enters the world of his mind and enters the girls room, flushes the toilet and descends the stairs, locking the entrance so that no one, not a soul, will find him. By the time the Associate Pastor inquires for what he says is to be the fifth and final time, Patrick does not hear him, he is far away.

 

“Patrick, how do you think God feels about this?  How do you think this makes God feel? Patrick? Patrick? Hello?”