by Chris Lynch
No. Full steam ahead. I wore the clothes for the rest of Wednesday afternoon. Put them on again to wear around the house for an hour before school on Thursday. Put them right back on when I got home that afternoon. I was primed. The clothes do make the man, and they made me into Mr. Slickmaster.
I was so confident I forgot all about my diet. Who needs a diet when you’re Mr. Slickmaster?
“Oh my god,” I yelled first thing Friday morning. The Friday morning. Dance Friday. Good Friday Great Friday.
Fat Friday.
“No, no, no!” I yelled at myself in that desperate, deathly wheezy voice a person makes when he tries to suck in his stomach and scream at himself at the same time.
“Suck!” I yelled.
“Elvin Bishop,” my mother yelled back, from outside my bedroom door.
“Not the swear suck, Ma, the command Suck!” I explained more calmly. “I’m talking to my stomach. It grew. Ma, it grew, just since last night. Out of no place. Like the virgin birth.”
I yanked. I fell back on the bed. I pulled. You know the method, right? Grab a fistful of material with your right hand and try to haul the button across the great plains over to the other side where your left fist is cattle-driving the buttonhole over to meet it. But what you really do is wind up torquing yourself all over the place like a washing machine.
I looked just like one of those sexy ads with the models pulling on shrink-to-fits by standing on their heads and writhing on satin sheets and... you know.
Just like that.
“Suck!”
“Elvin, that is enough.”
“Poof, Ma. Just like that. Out of nowhere. Just since last night.”
“Out of nowhere? Virgin birth? Just since last night? Just since the pot roast, you mean? And since the cherry pie with ice cream, and the yogurt-covered raisins?” She was fully in the room now, bold and uninvited. I was lying flat on my back on the floor staring up at her with my pants still undone. “Or since the second round of the pot roast? Followed by a repeat of all of the above?”
I sighed. “Wouldja get to the point, Ma? I kind of have a lot on my plate today.”
“Self-control, I suppose would be my point, Son.”
“Fine, point taken. Now would you just step on my abdomen with both feet while I... you know, like with luggage.”
“How could you do this to yourself? I told you to slow down—”
“Stress. I’ve been under a lot of—”
“Put on the blue pants, for godsake.”
“I will not put on the blue bus-driver pants. I am not a bus driver. I will not be a bus driver. Bus drivers wear their pants fastened above the waistline, or below the waistline, but Elvin Bishop wears his waistline at the waistline. No. I’m almost there now... just another...”
“I can’t watch this.”
“I hadn’t meant to perform it yet for a live audience anyway. Please close the door on your way out.”
She did.
“Suck!”
I heard the doorbell ring.
“Suck!”
I could not believe how fast those two rats got up the stairs and into my room.
“Since Wednesday, El?” Mikie asked, staring at my stomach like he was my doctor watching my heart monitor flatline.
“So kill me,” I snarled. “I baked a banana bread yesterday afternoon. I can’t leave the baking to my mother, because she cannot bake. Do I leave her to starve to death then, my own mother, just so I can get a girl?”
Yes, I could hear what I sounded like. And yes, what I was really trying to say was that I felt like I did the day I played football at camp and got my head slapped until my nose bled. I sort of cried that time, but I sort of would not now. Big difference, you know, when you’ve been the one slapping your own head. With a pot roast.
I was thrashing around the room pretty good now, trying to get these pants to close.
“Better watch it, man,” Frankie said. “Remember your condition. My grandmother had the ’rhoids, and every time she got worked up she had a flare-up. The time she found my private stack of magazines, she had to eat standing up at the sink for almost a month.”
“What about the blue pants?” Mikie suggested.
“Shut up with the blue pants, all right? Go downstairs and have breakfast with my mother.”
“Listen then,” Frank said, checking his watch. “Don’t button the pants. Hold them closed with the belt, and keep the granddad shirt untucked to cover it up.”
I had managed to get up to standing position by then. But those words brought me back down onto the bed. I unpuffed my chest, repuffed my stomach, and sat with my face in my hands. “Ah. So I’m back to the tent maneuver. What a disgrace.”
“So what. At least this way you still get to wear the new gear, and if you control yourself for a few hours, you can try again after lunch.”
When I showed no sign of life, Mikie hit me with his own version of defibrillator paddles.
“We can do this, Elvin.”
We. You heard it.
I sucked it in, I sucked it up, I held the tent maneuver, and I would control myself.
As we walked to the bus stop, Frankie was already into the next stage of my development. It didn’t seem to matter to him that with me gaining girth at the rate of two stomach inches per twelve hours, I’d never get a girl to look at me outside a circus. He was already working on what I was going to do with this girl once I got her.
“Dinners are good,” he said, “but don’t go Mexican. Flowers are good. Candy is good, but creams, not caramels. She’d be, like, picking stuff out of her teeth the whole time... and no bowling. Bowling’s cool, but kind of... wait, check that.” Frank got a glassy faraway look. He’s a visualizer. Visualizing a bowling date, apparently. “Do. Do take her bowling. ...”
Then it hit me.
“Wait!” I said, spun, and ran back toward home.
“What are you doing, El?” Mike called. “You’re going to be late.”
But it didn’t matter. I was already sweating, chugging, steaming my way home even though the bus was only five minutes away.
I burst through the kitchen door, found my mother finishing the last of her coffee.
“Did you wash my pants while I was sleeping?” I demanded.
It is very hard to unsettle my mother.
She took another sip. “Of course I did. You wore them for two days, and today was the dance—”
“Ahhhh,” I said. “Ahhh. You shrunk my pants. You shrunk my pants.” I made a move to the door. Turned back to her. “You shrunk my pants.”
“Your needle is skipping, son.”
“Huh?” I turned to the door again. “My needle?”
“It’s an old album joke. Never mind.”
“You shrunk my pants. Then you let me believe...”
“The fact remains, you ate atrociously.”
“The bus. I’m gonna be late.” I threw the door open and ran out. I’d sweat myself into those pants yet. I would not be denied, whether my own mother was subconsciously trying to sabotage me or not.
I ran back in, kissed Ma on the cheek, ran out again.
The bus, and my friends, were long gone by the time I got to the stop.
Oh well, as long as I was at it...
It was a three-mile run. Well, it was a three-quarter-mile run, followed by a one-mile walk, followed by a half-mile run, followed by a half-mile walk with a side cramp for company, followed by a very, very sweaty quarter-mile run. If you had asked me whether any of that was possible before now, I’d have bet against me.
But I made it. I made it on my own. I made it with my pants buttoned (sweat-to-fit stretch-to-fit denims). Didn’t even matter that I made it twenty-five minutes late.
Didn’t matter to me, anyway. The late lady slid open her glass partition and was already making out a slip for me when I laid myself out on her desktop.
“Latelady, you’re not really going to give me detention, are you?”
“Su
re I am,” she said with a smile. She’s not mean, really, just enjoys her job. Everybody who’s not late likes her.
“But I ran. Look at me. You can see that I ran.”
“Maybe not. Maybe you swam.”
“No, listen. You don’t understand. I’ve got a story.”
“Oh a story. You’ve got a story. Well, that’s a horse of a different color then, isn’t it? Most of the tardies don’t have stories. Come in, come in.”
Latelady likes sarcasm. And she winked at me. Like she knew everything.
It was all over with that wink.
“But it’s Friday,” I pleaded. “I’m a freshman. I’m going to the dance.” In my dripping sweaty delirium, I really expected her to understand. Latelady was, after all, a lady. Somewhere in my world I have always understood that ladies understood. That they were... I don’t know, more willing to appreciate the sap running through a guy like me. That’s why I wanted to get to know more of them, starting with this very afternoon. That’s why I was sweating, after all, because this was very important, this dance, and Latelady had to know that, had to know it.
“Here’s your dance card,” she said, handing me my detention slip.
Fight Or Flight? DUH.
THERE WERE TWO OF us in detention that day. Me, and Metzger. Metzger was an acquaintance from my brief career as a wrestler at camp. That fell right after my football/head slap/nosebleed period, and before my stint in the priesthood reserves. Have I mentioned how much the school’s introductory camp helped prepare me for the real world?
Anyway Metzger. He kind of held a grudge from one time when I gouged him and bit him and stuff before I knew the wrestling rules. I had retired, but ol’ Metz kept trying to coax me out of retirement every time I saw him.
Fortunately detention at our school was a fairly loose business, and as long as you showed up, the monitor left you alone. The monitor was a rotating deal of different teachers, and nobody knows how the assignments get made. Judging by how thrilled the teacher always is to be there, it’s safe to assume that detention monitor acts as a sort of teacher detention system, probably for offenses like eating the last donut in the faculty lounge or showing up in stylish clothes.
Mr. Ferlinghetti was monitor this day. He taught history. He read history. He was history. After he checked your name off the list, he didn’t want to know about you unless your name came up in the book he was reading on the Napoleonic Wars.
I went to the window and watched my classmates board the silly yellow bus. Destination Sister School. I sighed, take-me-with-you style. One of those mugs was going to be dancing with my girl. Whoever she was.
Metzger came up and leaned on the sill right up against me, also looking out the window.
Maybe he wanted to be friends.
I took the opportunity to try and smooth things over with him.
“This bites, doesn’t it? Detention. When we could be heading off right now to meet all those girls and partying all night.”
Do people say that? I can’t stand words like party as a verb, but I figured the Metzgers of the world did, and if I was going to get along...
“Suck my ass, fat boy.”
Apparently not.
“You talking to me?” I said. It was either me or Ferlinghetti, right, so he wasn’t necessarily referring to—
“How the hell’d ya fit yourself into those queer brown jeans that are ten sizes too small? Jam yourself in with a broom handle?”
I told myself he was just making small talk. That Metzger didn’t have any friends, so the art of conversation was still a little new to him. I, Elvin Bishop, would remove the thorn from his paw.
“No, I skipped lunch actually, and jogged some too.” I smiled. There were about ten guys left to get on the bus, and I told them too, in my head, “I skipped lunch. I sweated. I did that, you didn’t. I should be the one—”
“I’m gonna kick your fat ass,” he said.
Well I tried. You saw. I tried, didn’t I?
“Mr. Ferlinghetti,” I said. He looked up from his book. He wasn’t happy about it. “This guy says he’s going to beat me up. Right here.”
“You load,” Metzger hissed. “You fink. You chicken-shit wimpy sonofa—”
He was right, of course. I had to recover. Just because Frankie wasn’t here didn’t mean I had to revert to my Mr. Nobody mode. He was putting a lot of work into me, and I could at least show some style. It was safe enough to do anyhow. Controlled, officially supervised circumstances.
“And if he doesn’t shut his mouth,” I barked, “I’m gonna shove my fat fist right in there.” Not exactly how I wanted it to come out, but close enough.
Ferlinghetti looked sleepy, but he had things tightly under control. He looked back down at his book. “Can’t do that,” he said firmly. Good, good. Just what I was counting on.
I smiled at Metzger. Made him crazy.
“Take it outside,” Ferlinghetti said.
There was a loud gulping sound that came out of one of us and filled the room.
Now here’s a move I was sure Metzger had never seen before. My knees buckled, I bent at the waist, and with both hands...
I grabbed my flaming rump.
Remember what Frankie said about my affliction? About what stress does to compound it? Remember his poor grandmother eating standing over the sink?
“What in the hell is your problem?” Metzger asked, taking a few steps back.
“None of your business,” I growled. Then I pointed at the door with my thumb. “Let’s go outside.”
“Am I supposed to bend way down there to beat your ass?” he asked as he followed me down the stairs. Like he was all put out by the situation.
“’Cause I’ll do it. Long’s I get to kick your ass somehow.”
Every time he mentioned doing stuff to my ass, I winced, and walked a little more sideways.
Finally, as the last party guy climbed on the bus, Metzger and I stood squared off in the school lot. I couldn’t believe that Ferlinghetti wasn’t even curious enough to come to the window like most teachers would. He even counted on the honor system for Metzger and me to drag ourselves back to incarceration after we were done with each other’s asses.
Cripes, the honor system. If I had half a chance, I’d scratch and bite my way out of this, and at the end of it all, I’d be expected to return honorably to detention?
The bus started up. Metzger started punching air for practice. The dope.
The honor system.
The driver was taking an awfully long time to close that door.
“Come on, Elvin,” a call rang out. It was Mikie.
Now there was an idea. How torn should I be over this? How compelled to return to detention? How committed to battling my nemesis with dignity?
How much did I want to meet our sisters?
Metzger bent over to touch his toes. If he was going to make it a game of I-can-do-this, I didn’t stand a chance, since I stopped being able to touch my toes at about the age when I stopped wanting to put them in my mouth.
I looked up at the detention window. Ferlinghetti was still tromping across Russia in winter.
“Come on, come on”—this was Frankie. “You gonna waste a killer outfit like that on Ferlinghetti?”
I was weakening.
He started chanting. That is so unfair, the chanting part.
“Sis-ters, sis-ters, sis-ters...”
Then, of course, all the bus windows opened at me and everyone in the freshman class—ninety-five percent of whom wouldn’t know me if they found me inside their lockers—started egging me on. Like I had to go to this thing. Like it would just be no fun without me.
It’s the chanting thing, you know. Guys will chant anything, as long as somebody starts the ball rolling. And once chanted, a thing is important and vital and so true you wind up with tears in your eyes you want it so bad. We men are slaves to the chant.
“Sis-ters, sis-ters, sis-ters...”
I did have this new runnin
g skill I’d developed. Shame to waste it...
It was so obvious that I was going to cave in to this that the bus driver didn’t bother putting it into gear. He’d hauled the door shut with that big robotic arm lever, and now he was going to all the effort of shoving it open again to wait on me.
It was obvious to everyone, that is, except Metzger, who was advancing in a crouched stance, with wide demonic eyes, and the spread-finger lunge of a madman from, like, the silent movies of a thousand years ago.
I was disgusted. “You’ve never beat up anybody in your life, have you?”
That put him back on his heels. He stopped momentarily, then remembered what he was there to do.
He lurched.
He took a swing.
I took the low road.
“Go, Elvin!” There were chants and hollers from every seat on that yellow bus. The driver started rolling slowly while I motored mightily.
As I stood on the bottom step of the bus, looking back to blow kisses to Metzger, Ferlinghetti appeared in the window, pointing down at me silently with a mile-long finger.
It is a very good thing that clothes actually do make the man. Because if who we were really depended on what we did, I would have just nullified myself. I’d done the most stouthearted and ballsy thing I’d ever done, running away from detention in full view of the entire screaming freshman class. And simultaneously, I’d done the most snivelly and chickenshit thing I’d ever done, running away from Metzger in full view of the entire screaming freshman class.
And happily, both situations would wait all weekend for resolution on Monday.
So who was I? What was I?
I had great clothes.
“This had better be worth the trouble I’m going to get into, you guys,” I said as I sat next to Frank, in front of Mike. The rest of the bus had forgotten who I was already, and moved on to “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” “I better be king of the prom here.”
Frank squinched up his whole face. “Not smelling like that, you won’t be. Whatju do, Elvin, take a bath in ammonia?”
