“Besides,” he said on his way out, “I can’t stop thinking about her.”
Preposterous as this statement was, considering he was talking about someone he hadn’t even met, and despite the fact that the English language lacks a word of sufficient intensity to describe just how far out of his league this girl was, there was a desperate pleading in his voice that I recognized from hearing my own voice on those rare occasions when I used it. And though I may have hated to admit it, whether you’re crazy about an imaginary girl in the real world, like me, or obsessing over a real girl in la-la land, like Sam Hellerman, it comes down to pretty much the same thing.
Sam Hellerman may be a genius, but love makes you stupid. No exceptions.
“FINALS”
Now, if you were designing a schedule that divided the school year into two terms and you had to work around a lengthy winter break in the middle of it, how would you do it? Have the first term end just before the break, and the second term start right after it? Good, that’s how I’d do it too. But for some reason the geniuses of the Santa Carla Unified School District had decided that the way to do it was to pause the first term for Christmas vacation and then continue it for a week and a half after everyone gets back, which is why we all had to return to Hillmont High for eight more days of torture and tedium before heading to our new so-called academic homes.
At Hillmont, it’s even sillier because this fall term hangover is called “Finals.” Technically you’re supposed to use winter break to “study” for some alleged final exams that I imagine a real school might use to test you on what you’ve learned in the past term. But to my knowledge no Hillmont student has ever studied during this time, and if you’ve had no unexcused absences, they don’t make you take the “Finals” anyway. So the best students—that is, the ones who love school so much that they never miss a day and those with no social life to speak of who couldn’t manage to miss a day if their lives depended on it (like Sam Hellerman and me)—are thus exempted. I’ve never had to take a “Final” in my life for this reason. So “Finals” at Hillmont High School are essentially little more than a punishment for poor attendance. And though I don’t speak from experience, I am pretty confident in saying that in practice, they are little different from any detention: you sit at your desk in a room full of other delinquents, head down, for a couple of hours, and you write lines or copy a dictionary page if they catch you looking up or being disruptive in any way.
Sam Hellerman was waiting for me at the corner of Vista View Terrace Court Boulevard and Chop Down the Sea Road Road as usual on the big day. And by big day, I mean the first day of the end of Hillmont High School and the world as we had theretofore known it. It seemed momentous, something to be commemorated, and as Sam Hellerman had his headphones on and was devoting nearly all his energy to being strong, confident, and in command of the situation, it fell to me to deliver a few solemn words to mark the occasion.
“Well,” I said. “Well.”
There was little conversation on the walk to the oak tree across from the Hillmont High School baseball backstop, the spot where we traditionally paused to gather our resources and brace ourselves for the ordeals to come. With Sam Hellerman’s tape motivating him, I was left alone with my thoughts, and though they weren’t all that nice to be left alone with, I’d had worse thoughts for company. Contemplating the end of Hillmont High was a bit like the liberating, unfulfilled dream of Y2K: despite whatever terrors might be in store in the short term, you could cling to the comforting thought that, in a world that has effectively ended, none of it would wind up mattering all that much.
Sam Hellerman wasn’t smelling so great today, but he was too engrossed in his tape to notice as my raised eyebrow inquired wryly as to the last time he had showered. Well, you have to make allowances for these geniuses, I suppose: a lifetime spent with one’s head in the clouds often leaves little room for personal hygiene—that’s pretty well known.
Another thing I noticed, upon close examination, was that this unusually pungent Sam Hellerman featured a new accessory: a cell phone, an obvious Christmas present, clipped to his belt in a gay little holster. A few of the rich kids at Hillmont High had been turning up with these monstrosities lately. Amanda had been begging for one for months, to which she had so far gotten little response except a few pointed looks from the parental units, the looks that say: “What, do you think money grows on trees?” Now, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no point whatsoever in them: the last thing I need is to be disturbed by unwanted calls when I’m not even at home. And I can think of lots of better things to spend that kind of money on than a car phone you have to carry around with you everywhere in a gay little holster. Like a guitar, say, or a big box of pornography.
For Amanda, whose whole life revolved around being on the phone or being worried about the possibility that someone else’s being on the phone might temporarily deprive her of the opportunity to be on the phone herself, such a device made a great deal of sense. For Sam Hellerman, not so much. What imaginary people would he call? What i. p. would call him? It was a bit sad, like Jeans Skirt Girl and the tapes. Not only was Sam Hellerman engaged in a misguided, doomed-to-fail project of seduction, but he also now had a little symbolic representation of his social unsuccessfulness clipped, as a constant reminder, to his belt just next to and slightly above his embroidered gold jeans penis.
Okay, wait, hold on and back up. I’ve got to rethink this.
Sorry, but I just realized I blew it there by mentioning the golden embroidered jeans penis. You know what? Trying to spare you guys a ways back isn’t going to work after all. Basically, there’s just no way to tell this story properly without mentioning the gold embroidered jeans penis from time to time. If you’re one of the people who skipped from this page to this page earlier, you must be pretty confused, wondering, “What’s all this about a golden penis?” So you might as well go back and read that part now. I give up. I just can’t make it work. Sorry about that. We’ll wait.
Okay, are we all set here? Good, let’s continue.
Anyway, as I was saying about Sam Hellerman and what his cell phone holster and golden embroidered jeans penis symbolized, it isn’t that I was in much better shape, social successfulness–wise. But at least I had the saving dignity of not trying. And that counts for a lot.
“It’s for emergencies,” he said when I pointed to it sarcastically—God, the phone! It was the phone that I pointed to that was for emergencies, not the golden jeans penis, smart-asses. I pointed to Sam Hellerman’s phone. Jesus. Anyway, that all only seemed to underscore my point. Somehow.
“Merry Christmas,” I said. Then I added: “Any calls?” But watching Sam Hellerman extract the device from the holster, turn it on, wait for it to start up, check it, sigh, switch it back off, make sure it really was off, return it to its holster, buckle the holster closed, and say no with a serious shake of his head—well, it wasn’t quite as much fun as I’d expected it to be. The strange feeling I got from it was hard to identify, but there was something Little Big Tom–esque about it. All joking aside, Sam Hellerman was my friend, sort of, and I hated to see his train wreck of a life get even more wrecked. I had to assume he’d feel the same about me and my own train wreck. People without options stick together.
I wasn’t sure if they were going to make me do “Finals” or not. On the one hand, while I’d missed quite a few days when I was in the hospital, it didn’t seem fair to punish me for that, especially since they themselves were ultimately responsible for the injuries that put me there. On the other hand, life isn’t fair, and anything you can say about life generally goes double for Hillmont, so I figured it could go either way. As it happened, there had been no need to bother even wondering about it, because even though we were explicitly there for “Finals” and pretty much nothing else, according to their own letter, it didn’t look like they were making anyone actually take any “Finals.”
Because as lax, and poorly organized, and lame, an
d just generally fucked up as Hillmont High School was before, that was nothing compared to how l., p. o., l., and f. u. it was when it had only eight days to live. The administrators were all going to other schools; the teachers who were being transferred had no reason to care what happened at Hillmont during these last days (and probably hated Hillmont just as much as anyone); the ones who were being let go might not have been happy to lose their jobs, but why should they care either? As for the ones who were taking the school closure as an opportunity to retire early, at, like, twice their regular salary or whatever it was, well, they were practically giddy. The students, even the most virulently normal ones, were in no position to complain. Hillmont High was a hell pit even for the most privileged among them. They had all cared precious little about anything before, and they cared still less now.
The result was a sort of carnival atmosphere, papers flying, open lockers swinging in the breeze, desks overturned, subliterate attempts at obscene graffiti appearing as if by magic on doors and walls, and even small fires set in trash cans. Of course, just as birds gotta swim and fish gotta fly, normal people gotta be normal. So there was still a bit of the routine harassment of the small and weak that you get wherever normal people gather in large enough numbers to make congratulating themselves over it worth their while. I got slammed into the wall accidentally on purpose by the shoulders of passing goons a couple of times on my way in, and Sam Hellerman was tripped so that he fell in a muddy patch of grass at the edge of Center Court.
“WAGBOG,” I said, which means, if you recall from my previous explanations: what a great bunch of guys.
But Sam Hellerman, fortunately in a way, I suppose, was too worried about his precious cell phone to be overconcerned about what a great bunch of guys they were, or even about his own pain, discomfort, and humiliation.
“It’s all right,” he said, brushing mud off the holster after he had made sure the thing was still able to turn on. “It’s all right.”
“What a relief,” my eyes said. “You’re one lucky bastard.” Then, in words: “Any calls?”
“No,” said Sam Hellerman.
There isn’t all that much to report concerning Hillmont High School’s final “Finals.” There was, however, an assembly in the auditorium, mandatory for all students, according to an announcement during homeroom.
The best thing about this assembly? The three enormous banners that hung above the stage:
CARING
HEALING
UNDERSTANDING
Sam Hellerman’s eyes sought mine as we trudged in and took our seats, and both sets of eyes were saying: “Note to selves—must steal banners.” If we couldn’t construct a band or an album of note out of that excellent raw material, we weren’t the rock and rollers I thought we were.
The first speaker was some guy from the Santa Carla Unified School District who recapitulated the contents of the letter announcing the school closure. His remarks can be translated and summarized thus: academic excellence, blah blah blah, please don’t sue us, and if you do sue us, please don’t sue us that much.
“Never fear, my centipede,” I said silently, stroking the little fellow gently but with feeling. “You shall be avenged.” If I, that is to say, we, hadn’t been out in public like that, I might have risked a sinister laugh, but shrewdly, I kept it to myself. We were going to sue them, and sue them a whole lot, whatever it took; but it seemed like a good idea to keep our cards close to our chests, if that expression means what I think it does, even though centipedes don’t have chests and can’t hold cards. That’s okay. I’ll hold them for you, little guy.
Next up was a lady named Dr. Elizabeth Gary, who was some kind of counselor or social worker. Her first words, to my and Sam Hellerman’s considerable delight, were: “Caring. Healing. Understanding. Caring, healing, and understanding.” Man, there is definitely a song in there somewhere, I thought, and I could tell Sam Hellerman was thinking the same thing. Dr. Elizabeth Gary delivered essentially the same “don’t sue us” message that the SCUSD guy had, but with more touchy-feely embellishments—your basic therapy racket shtick, in other words. I was used to this kind of talk from Little Big Tom, so much so that most of it just flew by me without my noticing it to any great degree, as it does when it comes from him. But one of the things she said stuck in my mind because it was so preposterous, yet so representative of the deeply misguided views of normal people and their entire chain of command.
“All teenagers,” she said, “want nothing more than simply to fit in, to be accepted by their peers and their society.”
Well, I mean, I understand why normal people might want this to be the case, and there is no shortage of schemes, well-intentioned or downright sneaky, aimed at brainwashing you into thinking that taking your place in the ranks of the normal ought to be your dearest wish. But it ain’t necessarily so, and it certainly isn’t the case for me. Normalism is nothing any sane person would volunteer for. It is rotten, corrupt, terrifying, and thoroughly despicable, organized by psychotics, led by fiends, staffed by sadistic, subhuman monsters, and supported by dim-witted enablers like the soppy teenagers Dr. Gary described. When you say “I want to fit in,” you are essentially volunteering yourself as a victim, and when the thing you want to fit in with is “society”—well, as “society” is just another word for the government, you’re basically begging the government to control you and use you as it wishes for its nefarious purposes, which can be pretty damn nefarious, if “nefarious” means what I believe it means. The fact that they occasionally go around with these big “caring,” “healing,” and “understanding” banners just makes it that much more insulting.
I have no interest at all in “fitting in” with them or being “accepted” by them. On the contrary, I would very much enjoy their destruction. But failing that, all I want is for them to leave me alone. This, of course, will never happen, because not leaving people alone is the main thing they like to do and pretty much the only thing they’re good at.
I only mention this because Dr. Elizabeth Gary’s final message was that there was going to be counseling available, at the county’s expense, for all those who felt they needed it. And I realized that, in light of what she had said about the supposedly dearest wish of all teenagers to “fit in” at all costs, I now had something else to add to my General Theory of the Universe: in normal-speak, “healing” means submission to authority, and “counseling” is merely a euphemism for brainwashing.
I must warn the others, I thought. But there was really only Sam Hellerman other than me, and I had a feeling he already knew.
But in case you’re not already normal, here’s your warning: if they try to “heal” you with a little “counseling,” head for the hills. Never surrender. Because it’s a trick, you see.
NO ASS-GRABBIO
The one further thing I’ll mention about the Last Days of Hillmont High School is what happened in Mr. Schtuppe’s class. Mr. Schtuppe, if you’ll remember from my previous explanations, is this big, bald, pink, buffoonish English teacher of a man easily identified by his plentiful ear hair and his talent for mispronouncing practically any word in the English language with breathtaking ease. In view of the fact that he has had the audacity to grade decades’ worth of students on their ability to replicate these mispronunciations, you could say he’s pretty much a one-man indictment of our educational system. And yet somehow I wound up being fond of him in the end. I’ve learned more from him than I have in any of the other god-awful classes at Hillmont High School, that’s for sure. Fine mispronunciation, like a fine cigar, has first to be endured, then explored, and only then savored. (Actually, I’ve never had a fine cigar and wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do with one if I had one, but I imagine it’s something like that.) I have said before that I owe much of my success with women to mispronunciation skills, and I’m not even exaggerating all that much, so I feel rather indebted to Mr. Schtuppe, whether he intended it that way or not.
Plus, he wa
s the one who introduced me to 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary, the only truly useful book I’ve come across in ten years of being forced to attend school. If you like my powerful vocabulary and find my playful mispronunciation of words drawn from it to be inexplicably sexy (and I’m sure you do), you have Mr. Schtuppe to thank or blame for it.
On this particular day, Mr. Schtuppe was in a mood that he himself might have characterized as ebullient (“ay-byoo-LYE-ent”). He was one of the teachers taking early retirement, and he was clearly glorying in the prospect: you could practically see actual dollar signs spinning in his retirement-crazed eyes. At one point, I thought he might go so far as to do a little jig, which is a dance done by leprechauns, mainly. He didn’t, but he had a definite jig look about him, nonetheless. I could hardly blame the guy: “teaching” “English” to barely sentient (“sen-TEE-ant”) Hillmont “students” year after year must have seemed like a long, slow death sentence for which retirement with a lavish pension was an unexpectedly acceptable reprieve.
Even though there were no “Finals,” Mr. Schtuppe had to give us something to do, so he handed out sheets of paper and said “Write something” in the tone someone might use to say “Scram, will ya?”
As I may have mentioned before, Celeste Fletcher was in Mr. Schtuppe’s class as well. We sat together and wrote out phonetic mispronunciations of all the words we could think of. The likelihood was that these papers would simply be thrown in the trash as soon as we handed them in, like most assignments you do at Hillmont High School, but on the off chance that Mr. Schtuppe was actually going to read any of them, it seemed like a nice gesture, a way of showing him that, if nothing else, he had “reached” at least two of us.
King Dork Approximately Page 10
