We were the boys in the corduroy pants, but that made too much sense! We needed to confuse people, like God confused Babel, we confused our parents, our teachers. We started wearing trench coats, wallets with chains, combat boots! Rebellion was our breakfast food! We begged for discipline, but no one dared discipline us! Our hair begged for discipline, so we started using hairspray with twenty-four hour holds. We fought all authority. We became rude. We turned into giant assholes. We got sent to juvenile detention where we mentioned suicide and shared our feelings to get out of it. We got sent to therapy where we mentioned suicide and shared our feelings to get out of it.
Our parents couldn’t understand us. We didn’t finish our sentences. All you do is mumble, they said, I can’t understand a word you say, they said. I can’t believe it another F! they said. We’re flunkeys, so what? Once upon a time our parents tried putting cute inspiring notes in our lunches, then they stopped, they gave up! Drugs were bought and sold out of our lunchboxes. We wrote E-V-I-L and K-I-S-S on our knuckles and showed our fists to our parents. We pretended to be Knights in Satan’s Service. You better listen to somebody! they said. You told him, I told him, we told him, he won’t listen! they said.
We tended to do the opposite of what most people would do. Basically, we didn’t give a shit. We were coarse, arrogant—invincible! We were well-fed and lusty—we were vulgarity itself. We’re just trying to put anything that’s weird into our heads, into our bodies—anything that’s not you belongs to us.
We did things without using our heads, like unbaptized criminals, with the brains of a peasant.
No one understood our music, no one could decipher the lyrics. That’s the whole point! Devil-worship music! they said. These are loud and evil days! they said. The only lyrics they could understand were the ones that worship Satan and suicide. Head banging speed metal, by music groups named after obscure cow diseases. Our parents tried to get us to get a haircut. Why don’t you cut the stuff off? they said. What happened to our sweet little boys? they said. Music pounding our ears like sledgehammers. We headbanged like gray-bearded woodpeckers tapping the hollow tree.
We hung with the dee-jay at dances, begging for “real music” to be played. Can you play some Slayer? we said. We smuggled Daddy’s Kessler and Jim Beam into dances—we spiked the punch, you didn’t notice? We’re the ones who put the “Kick Me” sign on your back. We whistled in the library, we stole books! Stephen King books. We sat in the back of the bus, bus drivers knew us by name, by our middle names, and made us sit in the front. We were noisy, anarchy coming out of our skin.
Everyone feared us in gym class, we ruled that masculine hour with aggression. We mowed down soft-spoken and gentle boys with our ball-playing, for this is not their hour. We let them have Mr. Shively’s algebra class.
We started saying “Fuck this!” a lot. We said “Fuck all of this!” We sat in the back row burning our bridges, scorching the earth behind us. We pulled girls hair, we gave boys wedgies. We skipped school Monday through Friday and showed up on Saturday. Our teachers tried to tell our fortune. You’re going to lose, our teachers said. Then our teachers gave up on us! That bunch of lucifers! they said. They suspended us and they expelled us, for our troubled thinking.
We broke wind like cockroaches, every fifteen minutes. Then we blamed the nerds and geeks, mostly we blamed our farts and belches on Dan Snodgrass and Jason Poplaski. We carved profanities into every surface, swastikas and pentagrams. We started food fights. We stuck our feet out and tripped people. Have a nice trip! we said. We plugged up toilets and sinks and waited for the flood like the preppies. We teased the preppies, with their French rolled pant legs. Waiting for the earth-wiping flood? we said to Noah Biteworth.
We found ways to ruin and waste our health. We sniffed the glue in wood shop which put us in a frenzy, we worked so hard when high on glue, like we’re making legs for Captain Ahab. We sniffed at everything we were told not to sniff. We sniffed Wite-Out until we saw green snakes. We snorted grape Kool-Aid and said, “Oh Yeah!” We got caught snorting Tang, pleading innocence with orange tongues. Barney Carrier offered us a snort of something once. What is it? we said. Elephant tranquilizer he said. Is it safe? we said. No he said. Sign us up! we said. We snorted everything! We snorted like we were in the “seaven sleepers den,” like we’re the last of the danger-seekers.
We sniffed Jenny Schwalm’s perfume in Algebra class and hid our erections! God, did she smell so good or what?
We memorized Shakespeare, because Shakespeare confused us, because Shakespeare confused everyone, because no one understood it! Walking down Bard Road comparing girls to a summer’s day—what a load of balls!
We got in so much trouble at school, we offered fifty excuses. We set things on fire, we destroyed things, we vandalized, we defaced. We don’t always end up where we’d like to be, in the principal’s office. Nothing you do makes any sense to me! Mr. DeLong told us. We took that as a compliment. Mr. DeLong tried to keep us under constant surveillance, but there’s only one of him, and so many of us, and each of us is wild with conceit and subterfuge and even bigger words if we needed them. Our parents asked us why, why, why, we kept everyone asking why.
Our reputation went before us like the Lord’s holy ark, and people got out of our way. We had a stigma attached to us which we encouraged. “Normal” kids wandering halls like in a Cretan labyrinth, head down and looking for the end of the string. Boys fainting from fear when we play “buddy-buddy” with them. What’s wrong with you? we said.
We failed classes, we got held back. Our classmates sailed further on, increasing the distance between us. Grinning like apes, we asked the world to solve us.
We lit firecrackers and held them until the last second. We lit cigarettes in the boy’s bathroom and held them until the last second. We hot-boxed cigarettes. Other kids kept watching us—confused. What will they do next? they said. Even we didn’t know what we would do next!
We were tough—Oh God, we were tough! We were not the kind of boys who walked home with a nice girl—we’ve been having men’s ideas since we were eleven years old.
We smoked one-and-a-half cigarettes in the five minutes between classes. We sat in our desks and others covered their noses, because we smelled. We walked in and out of classes with cigarettes behind our ears.
And girls! We chased girls the way birds chase birds. There was no holier chase in our view. We took Ms. Fester’s Home Economics for the girls. We pulled stunts outside of homeroom just to make Laura Wildfong look at us. Quit, you’re embarrassing me! she said. We all carved Angie VanHermert’s name into our textbooks, into our desks, into our skin! Angie’s a “Fast-Fish” as my buddy Ishamel would say. If you look at her again, I’ll kill you! Angie’s boyfriend said.
We had a big crush on Susan Beggs. How does my makeup look? I put it on in the dark this morning, she said. You look so fine, we said. We practically stalked Roxanne Miesch and Jamie Bettendorf down the hallways. We followed them into the girl’s room once, making ourselves thin as knives!
Most girls wanted nothing to do with us. What are you smiling at? Shanda Lagard said. Others thought we were “misunderstood.” They dated us like we were rescue dogs, like something was wrong with us. Like we needed love. Some girls loved us in secret. Sandy Dunbar and I climbed the hill together, and no one ever found out.
We dated good girls who wanted to piss off their parents, causing more confusion. Bambi Valdez, Paula Schmitigal, Nicole Jeanplong. Jenna Babcock and Rosie Hacker. Girls who held us and told us we won’t be lonely anymore. They gave us compliments on our looks. Did anyone ever tell you you look like Tom Cruise? Jamie Rant said. These girls knew how to make us behave. Our parents noticed.
But we got girls pregnant! We didn’t take sex education seriously—we took Lamaze class seriously. We watched our pregnant girlfriends get fat. We watched Tiffany Quinn and Jenny Schwalm get boobs. We carried their books, they carried our children. People see us cutting a big swath in the hallways with girlfriends bearing our children, wondering is this a good thing or a bad thing?
When our sons and daughters were born, we held our babies like a football in the wrong end zone! A strange determination seized us! We put our babies in front of televisions while we did homework. We changed their diapers, we fed our babies mother’s milk. We put so much care into our children!
We can see it in our children, these sons and daughters of chaos. They’re going to win, and it will be our victory! Imagine going against all their rules, and winning! Who’s laughing now? It was all part of God’s plan, you sons of bitches!
