by Joe Meno
In Catholic high school, that was crucial, the way you looked. As Gretchen was stomping down the hall—her fucking black combat boots clomping along the tile, her boot chains rattling, the sounds of her plastic and leather bracelets making noise like ringing bells, sweeping up and down her arm like a lot of loose change—one superprim girl in a Catholic school uniform after the other stopped at their lockers to stare and shoot back dirty fucking looks. What they saw when they saw Gretchen was this: an overweight, baby-faced junior, seventeen years old, with long blond and pinkish-red bangs and the sides and back of her head nearly shaved, heavy black eye makeup and safety pins and patches for The Exploited and DRI, bands she didn’t even listen to, but the patches looked cool, so anyway, patches and combat boots and a black leather jacket with the Misfits skull logo which had been hand-painted on with a bottle of Wite-Out stolen from her dad’s desk, and hands, hands full of silver, spiked rings, clenched at both sides, anticipating a fight, like always.
After class, Gretchen always met Kim, our friend, at her locker. Kim was also punk rock: a short girl with long bony arms and a sharp narrow face, always with at least five or six hundred hickies on her neck and along the top of her chest, blood red hair, and a dozen piercings in her ear, and now in addition to all that, an adorable red sore at the corner of her lip which she proudly called her “herpe.” I liked Kim a lot, but she scared the hell out of me. She was very attractive but a little fucking crazy. OK, so Kim turned to Gretchen, putting on her jean jacket, and asked, “What’s your malfunction, douche-bag?” which was what she always said when you met her someplace.
“I fucking hate school,” Gretchen said, and they headed down the hallway. Gretchen always walked with her head down; Kim always kind of skipped and whistled and knocked books out of other girls’ hands when she had the chance. Gretchen curled her lip and glared at two beauty-queen freshmen, their perfect fucking blue kneesocks pulled up high, their green sweaters tied about their waists, and their young, soap-opera-star faces already glowing. The two freshmen were reapplying lipstick in their compact mirrors and laughing and pointing behind their reflections at Kim and Gretchen. Gretchen did the balk to make them jump, taking one step in their direction. The girls turned away quick, hiding behind their locker doors. The shorter one, with darker hair and these recently plucked eyebrows, made a mousy squeak. Kim flicked them off and Gretchen let out a laugh—Ha!—and turned, glad she had done it. It was in that moment—that second—that she took a left down D hall and accidentally bumped into Stacy Bensen.
Stacy Bensen.
Stacy Bensen, a senior; a student council snob, blond hair, dyed a shade blonder, always in a bouncy bob; thick red lipstick with black lip liner that accentuated supple lips that every dude couldn’t help but notice, which made you feel kind of sad for her, the way you feel sad for strippers and girls who do porno flicks because they’re so pretty that no one will ever see them as anything more and it begins to destroy them maybe; blue eye shadow with matching blue sparkle nail polish that was always flawless and hinted at the fact that Stacy Bensen had never worked a part-time job, or any job, a day in her life; a green cardigan sweater, tied neatly about her neck or waist; and the most fucking darling brown penny loafers, perfectly accessorized with two bright copper pennies, which sparkled just less than Stacy’s glowing, makeup-ad, all-around-American-girl, pictureperfect face. Also, leg warmers of various patterns and colors. Also, as I was often told, her remarks in ethics class about how girls who got abortions should be prosecuted as child-murders. Also, as overheard, her tendency to address other girls in school as “girls,” as in the sentence,“Girls, we need a couple of more volunteers for the blood drive.” Also, and altogether her worst feature: her buttons. We had gone to grammar school together and even then she wore a different homemade button almost every week: Proud to be a Princess. Go with God. Sensible and Celibate. Here was a girl who, in her fucking overemphatic, rehearsed tone of voice, seemed to say, Everyone around me is a fucking subhuman. Here was a girl who, in small, measured, perfect movements—a blink of her glittering fucking blue eyes, this smiling wistful sneer, her giggle sweet as someone ringing a tea bell —seemed to whisper, I am better than you in every way. And maybe she was right because her looks and smarts and charms always dared you to argue, but you never did because what did you have to argue with when you looked the way you did?
That day, Stacy Bensen was wearing a button that said, Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here. So in the hall there, at the end of the day, between the noise of last classes—Are you going to play practice? and Pick me up at seven, and He gave us so much homework again—the smell of hair spray and fucking perfume thickening with repeated afterschool maintenance, Gretchen turned and bumped into Stacy Bensen and Stacy Bensen stopped and looked at Gretchen and said, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you fat dyke?”
OK, cut.
OK, if you knew Gretchen and could like read her mind, here’s what you would know already:
Cut to:
Five years old, Gretchen, a ballerina in this tumbling class. OK, Gretchen, five years old, tumbling. She couldn’t do a somersault because of her weight, you know, and all the other little girls would laugh, and there was this mean-faced little brunette doll in her class in particular, who one time pointed at Gretchen and said, “She’s fat,” and when it was time for the ending recital, Gretchen was told to just run across the stage while the other girls did their handsprings and windmills and front flips and shit like that. Instead, backstage, Gretchen bit the other little girl and was sent home crying.
And:
Eight years old this time, Gretchen shopping for a Halloween costume in the aisle of Osco Drugs, the rows and rows of plastic masks attached to plastic one-piece suits—Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and a Fairy Princess and Frankenstein and Dracula and all the rest—and her mother suggesting that perhaps Gretchen would prefer a Frankenstein to a Princess costume because the Frankenstein had just a little more room.
Then:
In junior high, someone spray-painting FAT-ASS on the side of her garage and Gretchen watching her dad, Mr. D., trying to hide his embarrassment by quickly painting over it with a shade of brown a little too light, and Gretchen and me and everybody seeing the spot every day as she came home until the day she moved, everyone knowing the spot was there, still there, and why.
So:
So when Stacy Bensen said, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you fat dyke?” Gretchen turned around and grabbed for a part of Stacy’s head, getting ahold of her fucking golden-yellow ponytail, and pulled hard until some of it came out, some of the hair tearing loose from the soft white scalp like the magical golden thread used to stitch together some lucky princess’ enchanted fucking wish, and then Gretchen, holding the girl by the front of her blouse, began pummeling Stacy Bensen’s face, breaking the fancy aquiline nose in one pronounced crack, followed by a dollop of bright red blood, over which Gretchen yelled, as loud as she could, “Why don’t you suck my fucking dick, Barbie?”
In a moment, the lezbo gym teacher in her blue jogging suit, Mrs. Crone, tackled Gretchen around the waist and then the elderly school nurse hurried to Stacy Bensen’s side and all the girls stood around shocked, their tender and holy virginal hearts beating hard, all of them open-mouthed and struck dumb. Here, here was the part Gretchen almost always left out: For all the fights she had been in before with tough stoner chicks, heavy mascara streaked down angular faces, in random basement parties, or in the back of deserted parking lots while their boyfriends hooted or clapped or looked on frightened, maybe; or with the preppy girls, strangleholds around long, elegant necks and noses that would later have to be retouched by expensive plastic surgery; or with that one tall, gooney girl from the volleyball team who had tons and tons of brown hair all along her forearms and who was so overly fierce and manly; for all that scratching and swearing and hair-pulling, for all that punching and hissing and biting, this
was the first time—the very first time—Gretchen had ever felt bad about what she did, the first time she felt worse after it all had happened, and still, she didn’t know the reason. But to me, looking back on it now, it’s easy: Like Gretchen being born fat, it wasn’t Stacy Bensen’s fault she had been born pretty.
SIX
American History can suck it. The U.S.A. can suck it. The Thirteen Colonies can suck it. George Washington can suck it. The British can suck it. The Red-coats can suck it. Muskets can suck it. That’s good. Muskets can suck it. Cannons can suck it. Benjamin Franklin can suck it. Roanoke can suck it. Jamestown can suck it. The Quakers, the Pilgrims, and the Indians can suck it. Early American trading posts can suck it. The Boston Tea Party can suck it. The Intolerable Acts can suck it. Bro. Flanagan and his bald liver spots can suck it. His bald liver spots can suck it separately, also. Bro. Flanagan’s overhead projections can suck it. His timelines can suck it. Billy Lowery in the front of the room who has to ask fifteen million fucking questions can suck it. Jim Gallagher behind me, jabbing me in the back of my neck with his pen can SUCK IT! These walls can suck it. These desks can suck it. These books can suck it. The ceiling can also suck it. The other jags in this classroom can suck it. This whole school can suck it. From top to bottom, they can suck it. The teachers can suck it. The Holy fucking Brothers can suck it. The sportos and jocks can suck it. The football players, baseball players, soccer players, wrestlers, runners, the meatheads and their varsity letters can suck it. The student council wanna-be fag politicians can suck it for being on student council and being fag politician wanna-bes. The rich, suburban kids with their brand-new cars can suck it. The dirty, inner-city dope dealers looking me up and down like I’m a pussy can suck it. The other marching band kids can suck it. The stoners, the burnouts, the metalheads, the druggies, the gangster black kids, the gangster Hispanic kids, the whiggers, the nerds, the geeks, the fags, the dweebs, the dorks, the wusses, the pusses, the flamers, the jag-offs, the chronic masturbators, the freaks, all of them can all suck it. The whole fucking school can just fucking suck it.
I looked down at my digital calculator watch, then I looked up at the clock at the front of the classroom. Both of them said 1:13. American History, 6th Period, Bro. Flangan’s room, Brother Rice Catholic High School, Chicago, IL, USA, North America, Planet Earth. Two more hours of this fucking shit. I sighed, then dug into my back pocket and checked out the mix-tape Gretchen had made me:
(I am a) Rabbit/The Lemonheads
Devil’s Whorehouse/The Misfits
Gimme Some Head/GG Allin
Dear Lover/Social D.
Lover’s Rock/The Clash
Day After Day/The Violent Femmes
I got it suddenly. All of the songs were about fucking. I looked at the side of the tape, where the title was: I Got Pubic Lice. I kind of laughed out loud in class, then covered it quick with a cough. I looked at my watch and then at the clock once more. I started at my list again.
END OF EXCERPT
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. He is a winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and was a finalist for the Story Prize. He is the author of five novels and two short story collections including Hairstyles of the Damned, The Great Perhaps, The Boy Detective Fails, and Demons in the Spring. His short fiction has been published in One Story, McSweeney’s, Swink, LIT, TriQuarterly, Other Voices, Gulf Coast, and broadcast on NPR. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times and Chicago Magazine. He is an associate professor in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia
College Chicago.
Also by Joe Meno
Demons in the Spring
Order Demons in the Spring Today.
Also by Joe Meno
The Boy Detective Fails
Order The Boy Detective Fails Today.
