SCHOOL SPIRIT

I hated high school and it hated me. The boys spent half of the day thinking of ways to kick my ass, and the other half actually kicking it. The girls looked at me like I was walking around with two fistfuls of dog poop glued to the sides of my head like earmuffs and wearing a winter jacket made of carefully patched together cow plop.

You can call me crazy if you like, but it's kind of difficult to get excited about quadratic equations when you’re anticipating the oh so wonderful feeling of Johnny Jockstrap’s foot colliding with your kidneys at 3:45 next to the dumpster out back.

"Look, mom! I'm pissing blood! I need to get to work on paper about Operation Barbarossa and how it was the turning point of World War II, though. Guess I'll have to clean up those pesky blood splatters later!"

Don’t misunderstand me; despite the occasional group dumpster beating, my high school wasn't what anyone with half a brain in their head would consider "tough."

Of course, we did have to wear an ID card around our neck. There were also random locker checks throughout the year and metal detectors at the main entrance. Graffiti peppered the stairwells and there was a special office on the fourth floor where a local cop was posted - but still, to the best of my knowledge no one ever went on a shooting spree or anything – at least not while I was there.

Like most schools, every year there was a homecoming pep rally - you know, so everyone could support the team and show school spirit – Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Bah and all that nonsense.

On the day of the rally the entire student body was herded into the gymnasium. Once the cattle were packed in the principal would go into the standard speech about how the kids at his school were faster, stronger, angrier and had thicker penis’ than the kids from the next town over.

The football team instantly became the recipients of thunderous applause and come hither glances those in the audience with vaginas. The cheerleaders spun and jumped, and offered up ever so brief glimpses of the teenage camel toe crammed into their tiny blue underpants. A beach ball was passed around. There were signs, and streamers. A few of the more dedicated decided to lather themselves in body paint.

It was loads of fun for all involved, right?

Wrong.

As far as I was concerned, that nonsense could eat my nuts.

It could eat my nuts then, and it can eat them now.

Hell, I’ll lather them up in sauce if it’ll make them go down smoother. I’ll marinade them for a solid twenty-four hours before tossing them on the grill. Yeah, you heard me. I said marinade. I don't even care if that doesn’t make any sense.

Making sense can eat my nuts as well.

I’ll put them on a bun.

I wanted the girls to ram the beach balls right up their backsides and the boys to roll the streamers into a fine point and slide them it up their pee hole.

Sophomore year I came to a major decision: I was going to buck the trend.

I was going to play by my own rules and I was going to ditch the pep rally.

Under normal circumstances at a normal high school this might not have been such a difficult thing, but at my school the pep rally was mandatory. In fact, security people were posted at the exits in order to catch mad anarchist black sheep like myself, and return them safely to their pens.

I was going to have to play it smart and play it cool. For one day in my life I needed to be less, Steven Novak and more, Steve McQueen.

***

My eighth period ended and the teacher told us to line up and follow her to the gym for the pep rally. I made sure I was at the back of the line.

Down the stairwell and to the first floor we went. We made a left at the cafeteria and headed toward the gym. When we passed by a bathroom, I quickly slipped in the door. From there it was into a stall where I dropped the toilet seat, hopped on top and quietly chuckled to myself at the sheer genius of my plan.

What's that?

You're saying to yourself, "This isn't very cool. Hiding on toilet seat doesn’t sound a hell of a lot like Steve McQueen"

Well, here’s a bit of movie trivia for you smartass. Apparently you haven't seen the special hush-hush directors cut of Bullitt, because Steve does exactly that. It's there. Trust me on this one. You don't need to go confirming it or anything. I just schooled you and you know it! Take it like a man.

After ten minutes I figured it was safe to make my move. I hopped off the toilet, cracked open the bathroom door and peeked out.

The coast was clear.

Tiptoeing out of the bathroom, I began carefully making my way to the exit on the other side of the school. It was my thinking that the furthest exit from the actual rally was the one least likely to be guarded.

Makes perfect sense, right?

When I passed the principals office I crouched to make sure the receptionist didn't see me. I used an alternate route to avoid the cafeteria. My plan was working perfectly! Everything was going exactly according to plan and I’m not the least bit ashamed to say I was pretty proud of myself.

I was really doing it!

I was really ditching school and I was pulling it off in spectacular fashion!

It was awesome!

No, no, wait. It wasn’t awesome – I was awesome!

For the very first time in my life I really was, Steve McQueen!

After rounding a corner at the end of the hall, I spotted the exit twenty feet away. I’d done it. I’d pulled it off. Screw those douchebags and their douchey school spirit! 

Screw all the football players who had prom dates and would undoubtedly lose their virginity fifty times over before they reached their twenties! Screw all those cheerleaders with their silky skin, luscious hair, and mouth-watering chests! Screw their perky high school-loving smiles and their annoying high-pitched laughs! Screw the principal and screw the teachers! Screw the mustached janitor who would make more money putting wood chips on puke in a year then I would ever make with my art!

Screw them all!

Screw them all ten times over with the business end of a business stick! Screw them so hard they forget their names and their address and their families, and they’re doomed to forever walk the streets confused and lonely, and begging for change!

Screw everyone in the whole damn wo-"Hey, you! Where do you think you're going?"

Shit.

The voice came from behind me. It belonged to the girls gym teacher.

Double shit.

Not only did my entire plan come crashing down around me in an instant, but it came crashing down because of a beefy, butch lesbian in a pair of short shorts with a whistle around her neck.

Ten minutes later I was sitting on the bleachers in the gym while everyone cheered, and the kid behind me purposely kicked me in the spine.

To the best of my knowledge I can't recall that ever happening to Steve McQueen.

Even in a hush, hush directors cut.

ROSE TAKES IT OFF

I was a virgin throughout high school. I never poked unknowingly a pair of boobs. I never squeezed a buttock that wasn’t my own. I never kissed a girl on the lips, or the face, or the hand, or blew one in her direction from across a room. I never went on a date. I never even had a female look at me without screaming at me to stop staring before unleashing their boyfriends on me.

I was as pure as a newborn baby - with a slightly more impressive penis.

Only slightly, though.

In fact, the only parts of a naked woman I’d ever seen were either in my head or in any of the various pornographic materials I’d managed to catch a glimpse of over the years.

To say that I was a teeny bit hard up for human contact would be the understatement of the century - the equivalent of saying Michael Bay is a bad director.

While true, it doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story.

My senior year in high school I earned a scholarship to an art college in Ohio. It wasn’t too long afterward that I learned the required courses of the first year included a figure drawing class – a nude figure drawing class.

Oh, yeah.

I was finally going to see some real life boobs!

I fully understand just how pathetic that last sentence must have read to the vast majority of you. I assure you, it sounded just as pathetic in my head. I’m not proud of it. It’s not something I’m going to put on my resume or tell the grandkids when I’m old. It’s out there and I can’t take it back. What’s done is done.

At the time I didn't even care that there would likely be a guy or two thrown into the mix. I’d been in locker rooms. I could suffer though a few eyefuls of penis for the chance to gaze upon the flesh and blood form of naked female.

It was going to be awesome - naked women awesome – which is the most absolute awesome of awesome when you’re a sad and lonely eighteen year-old.

Months passed.

During that time I moved to Ohio and I settled into the dorms at school. I was raring to go! I was chomping at the bit! I was chomping at the raring and going with the chomp!

I don’t know that that last one is supposed to mean and I really don’t care. That’s how excited I was.

It was the first day of the figure drawing class. I was at my desk with my pencils out and pad of paper opened. My fingers were tapping on the desk anxiously. They wouldn’t stop. The instructor said something along the lines of, "The model is getting ready. She'll be out in a moment."

She’ll?

He used the word “she’ll.”

Hells to the, yeah.

It was a woman - a girl – a female - a homo sapien with sexual organs entirely different than my own. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was going to have a womb.

‘Fo shizzle.

I slid my midsection a little more underneath the desk, on the off chance that something began to stir below. I wanted to be prepared.

Keepin’ it real, homie!

Moments later, the model walked into the room.

She was at least seventy-five.

Dayum.

In hobbled an elderly woman named, Rose. Her face was like a catcher’s mitt and her hair like an old bird’s nest. She was probably one of Thomas Jefferson’s mistresses and it was safe to assume she’d been getting discounts at Denny’s since the ‘80’s.

Rose dropped her robe and my world crumbled with it. She looked like a garbage bag filled with drippy-wet pee-poo diapers. She looked like a Barbie doll someone melted in the sun. She looked like a textbook definition of the word gravity. Needless to say, my fears about hiding my midsection were completely unfounded.

In fact, my penis took the initiative and hid itself.

I spent the next hour and a half drawing Rose in various positions I wished she’d never gotten into while listening to her complain that that she was cold, or aching, or that she needed a rest because the arthritis in her hands was acting up.

As I stared at the wrinkly exterior she called flesh and I called the Devil’s hammocks, all I could think was, "Those aren't supposed to be down that low, are they?”

I also never wanted to eat, or see someone eat, or be in the presence of a roast beef sandwich again.

Half way through the class the instructor gave everyone a break. While most of the students went outside to smoke a cigarette or throw up, or throw up then use the cigarette to burn their eyes, I sat in stunned silence. It’s not that I couldn’t move so much as I didn’t want to move.

I never wanted to move again.

With everyone gone, Rose put on her robe and started walking around the room, looking at the drawings everyone had done of her. She nodded her head at some and shook it at others.

Turns out she was a real art snob - you know, for a bag of old beef jerky.

She eventually made her way to me and stood behind me with one hand on her hip and the other scratching at those pesky black hairs dangling from her chin. There was little more than a thin sheen of nylon separating me from her wrinkled nakedness.

She was quiet for a minute, examining my work with her discerning, cataract-riddled eyes. When she’d seen all she needed to see, Rose leaned down and pinched my cheek from behind. "That's really wonderful, sweetie."

I'm not even kidding. She pinched my damn cheek.

Just like my Grandma used to do.

How I made it through the second half of class while comparing Rose to my nanny (who by a cruel piece of fate, also happened to have been named, Rose) is completely beyond me.

Rose, the nude model, was the very first woman who ever flashed me her junk while in something fairly close to the doggie-style position.

Rose reminded me of my grandma.

Sometimes all you can do is laugh at life.

Other times you want to throw a brick at it.