The poem is much more subtle in imagery, but it gives the general feel of what happened. My 'tryst'- such as it was- with my friend's mother had lasted less than an hour, yet, it seemed, nothing was ever the same afterwards. For a while I blamed myself for it, thinking it eventually led to Tommy's misery. I quickly got over that & saw his mother's harlotry as his eventual salvation. Then, again, who knows? His father may have been a psycho-killer on the side. I recall having gotten these thoughts a year or so later when, in Grandma Chin's house, I was being regaled with 1 of her wonderful tales from her youth & noticed a plaque on the wall which read, 'The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. -Japanese proverb'. This struck me as odd because Grandma Chin had always expressed a hatred for the Japanese that made the Ku Klux Klan's hatred for blacks seem timid. I asked her why she would have a proverb from people she hated & she retorted, 'It was ours 1st, they stole it from us.' So things went for Grandma Chin, who saw all evil emanate from Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan, & his subjects who raped her land & her body.
Grandma Chin loved everyone else, though- whether they were black, white, Hispanic, Oriental, or any religion. America was where all people could get a fair shake, except the Japanese. & so it was I was shaking a test tube during 3rd grade. We were in the chemistry room & Kevin Webster, the 2nd black kid in my class at St. John's was watching me mix chemicals. I started a real brew & threw in a plastic package of sparkly, shiny little metallic doodads. I dumped this into a big beaker. Some of the other kids watched- but none as intently as Kevin. He had come to St. John's only that year- with another public school kid- white Jesse Gordon, a delinquent whose older brother Luke was even worse. More on them later. Right now it's Kevin, a happy-go-lucky kid of darker brown skin than Marc Taylor, who 1st senses something is wrong. Nonsense, I say. Excelsior. I keep adding chemical after chemical.
Kevin & I hit it off. He filled the void left by Marc Taylor's prolonged absences from class due to his parents' divorce. Kevin & I called ourselves the Schneider-Web Connection because my last name rhymed with spider, & his last name's 1st syllable was web. But, I'm sure you figured that out. Meanwhile, the brew in the beaker started foaming profusely & overflowed the top. Then it started spewing brownish foamy gunk into the air. The class was awed with the concoction, then grossed out as it stunk to high heaven. I tried to control it by adding more chemicals but the stench grew worse & the beaker spewed in all directions. Then some hit the Bunsen burner & kablooey! There was an explosion of smelly gunk that filled the classroom. Most of the kids had evacuated the room & the aide in charge had called the principal, Dr. Poll. By the time he arrived I was covered in brown fizzing foam, & a fire had broken out, which was swiftly contained.
Kevin Webster was laughing his ass off. So was the rest of the class. I also stunk badly, even worse than Mrs. Stasiak's pussy! By the time I had gotten cleaned up & given a spare set of clothes & uniform the only evidence of what had happened was that my hair was filled with the metallic sparkles. I strode back into class looking every bit the Glam rocker. For almost 3 weeks the sparkles remained & the kids teased me by calling me Sparky. Even Donna Baumgarten, whose tolerance of my antics toward her was always low, seemed to find me less weird- now that she could laugh at me. It seemed I was quite popular as the gutsy kid who was not afraid of anything. But, there was 1 child who was not a fan of mine. She was a monstrously fat girl with bad hearing, a speech impediment & bad cataracts. She weighed literally twice as much as me & resented that her efforts at destroying me for the past couple of years had been in vain. Her name was Margo Schwimmer & she had had it out for me ever since I had laughed at 1 of Tony Burrell's rankouts of her in 1st grade. As I was laughing, smaller, & unawares of the demon-fever that rode in her breast, as well as her proximity to me, she reached out & grabbed me about the neck & started throttling me.
Tony & the other boys were paralyzed with fear as the monstrous Margo's huge hands bore down upon my larynx. Homer Simpson never choked his son Bart with the degree of ferocity that Margo Schwimmer throttled me until our teacher pulled the beast off. What Margo did not realize was that she had sealed her doom. There is an old saying that 1 should never reveal 1's weaknesses to an enemy. Margo Schwimmer, erstwhile fat girl who had no bearing in my life, had Pearl Harbored me. She would go the way of Japan. Grandma Chin would be my guide.
1st I assailed her verbally at every opportunity. Now that I knew her power I also knew her weaknesses- she was slow as shit, & was vulnerable to harsh words. Within a week of her attack on me she was reviled as 'The Blob'- the fat 4-eyed monster who could not speak. I was relentless with the variations on that theme I assailed her with. On recess, 1 afternoon, I devised a plot with Tony to lure her down a stairwell. How we did it I do not recall the specifics of- perhaps by telling her 1 of the other girls wanted to be her friend, but in secret? When down the stairwell she was powerless when Tony, I, & some of the other boys tipped over a garbage dumpster & she was covered head to toe in filth. She wailed.
Another time I climbed on top of the jutting roof of the kindergarten roof, saw where she sat & pummeled her with the pebbles that covered the tar paper. She moaned. Another time I pissed in her thermos & gleefully watched her imbibe my waste until she puked. She gagged. Then there were times when the smaller, but far swifter, me would just kamikaze her, push her down, or hit her until she wept. I often got in trouble, but I was sure enough to also mentally torment her to retaliation & pre-emptive attempts, enough so that she was punished equally as much. But most of all I assailed her self-esteem by ranking on her blindness, ugliness, fatness, & inability to string coherent phrases together. Things went so far that by the 3rd grade, when her younger brother Todd-porcine but with decent vision & no speech impediment- had started at St. John's, I had turned him against her as well. He, in turn had made his sister the laughingstock of the school. Even Kindergarteners were taunting Margo as the hideous 'Blob'.
My triumph & vengeance had nearly been complete. But, after the 'Explosion Incident' Margo thought there was an opportunity to make me a bigger joke than she was. A series of small fires broke out in the weeks following the big explosion. Although having nothing to do with chemicals or me Margo thought she could frame me, merely by the knowledge that I had accidentally started a fire should lead others that I had become a pyromaniac. But, Margo did not succeed. Tall, faggy, & goofy German-born Kurt Brand stumbled across Margo, 1 lunch break, with a book of matches & some chemicals & came to tell me & Tony that she was gonna set another fire, this time in the Pastor's alcove. She figured that by burning up the office of the 1 guy who outranked the Principal she could see justice done to me. Unfortunately for herself Margo was not an evil genius. We caught up with her as she was about to set the fire. I shouted that we caught her, & the startled Margo dropped the match upon her chemically soaked plaid skirt. It lit up in flames & Margo ran out of the alcove & into the backyard where all the kids from all the grades, 1-8 were playing. Her skirt was on fire until a teacher grabbed a hold of her by the skirt. The flaming skirt tore loose & the teacher stomped the fire out. Margo Schwimmer, blind, hearing-impaired, ugly fat girl was running around the yard screaming, & in her pink underpants.
She had been exposed as the arsonist, reviled even more strongly, & was totally & utterly humiliated. She had been driven to her own undoing by the power of the words which flowed from my tongue, the same tongue which would decades later inspire fear, awe, & hatred in many others who crossed my path. Margo Schwimmer missed the rest of that school year- the last 2 or so months. It was rumored she had been expelled or suspended for the arsons, or that she had to go to counseling, or that the burns on her legs prohibited her from walking. It might have been all 3. But, she did return for 4th grade that September. But the absence & summer break had chastened her. She reacted like a zombie. We were told that she was given medication. She no longer responded to taunts, & barely responded to anything. By the fall of 1974 my victory over a far bigger & stronger enemy was total. I had won, & words had guided me to victory. The little white boy from Ridgewood, who was not kowed by junkies, nor bad cops, had stood up to 1 of the worst bullies of his youth & won an unconditional victory.
I owed it all to Grandma Chin. She had told me the way to beat a superior foe is to pick your battles wisely, only those you can win, & then relentlessly peck away for endurance cancels might. This is how she defeated the Japanese, & how I defeated Margo Schwimmer. Still, I was not as proud of the victory as I thought I would be when I 1st constructed it in my mind years earlier when Margo overwhelmed me with her mass. Victory was 1 thing, enjoying it was another, & how could I gloat over a near catatonic loser? Instead, I thought of pleasanter things, for a while, until my mind drifted back to the abundance of sad children I knew: Margo in her stupor, Marc Taylor in his own rages, & Tommy Stasiak, far away, lonely, but- at least- without welts & bruises. Ziggy had once told me that most people are shit & get what they deserve. I came to think, for a while, that people get the shit 1st, then get so caught up in the unfairness of it all that they tune out & live down to what they think that shit- life- expects of them.
Either way I was thinking philosophically, just as I had when Mrs. Stasiak shoved her cunt in my face. This, plus my ability with words would carry me far. Right here into your reading, where I turn backwards, & bow to the 2 vile females that pointed me here: Thank you, Mrs. Stasiak & Margo Schwimmer. I thus dedicate this tale to you.
