In Spite

The fists feel like therapy. Like the prescribed treatment to a prolonged and laborious wait...1

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It starts, when one minute I am making my way down some concrete stairs, the next I feel a quick shove, and even though my years of figure skating should allow me the balance to compensate for this, I am blind sided by it, and my legs take on a lethargic clumsiness unfamiliar to them, as my knee's buckle, and I go down. Not having any idea where I am going to land, my hands reach out blindly flailing about for something thicker than the air they are now grasping at, and then they grasp a girls sweater, but I can't get a good grip and I slam into her, but manage not to knock her over as my other hand slams down against the stairs and I feel pain shoot up my wrists. Then the rest of that arm clapses as the wrist can't hold it, and I have just enough time to shield my face with my other arm that somehow managed it's way around, and I feel the rest of the weight crush my bones against the concrete stairs. This all happens so fast that the reality hasn't hit me yet, but somewhere from behind and above me comes "You're fuckin' dead." Somewhere.3

The embarassment is what get's me up. Not the fear. Because I am feeling like an idiot since I wasn't prepared for it, I don't really register what's different this time around. As I get up, and try to collect myself quickly, and take a look for my books to make sure no one has kicked them somewhere down the hallway, I have time to realize my knee's feel like they are on fire. I have felt this kind of pain before on the ice, and I know it means trouble. My wobbly knee's are trying to find strength when the second hit--this one much harder, sends me flying the rest of the way to the bottom--where the carpeted floor burns my skin. My wrist feels a whole new round of pain, and I cry out against my will. I didn't want to give anyone satisfaction, but this hurts more than I thought it would. 4

I want to cry out for help, but I don't know if it would do any good. In fact, I know it will only make my moment worse. Maybe someone will help me. But in the long run, I am afraid, because it will make me weaker than I already am.5

Maybe I am crying, but I don't care, because this time, it's really coming. It's more than an empty threat. This has led somewhere, and my little universe, which has up until this point only been invaded, and embarassed and bruised from time to time has finally smashed into something unabsorbable.6

My mind reals against it's reality. A mistake, surely a mistake. Surely they didn't mean to hit me that hard. Maybe they will know they went too far, maybe there will be some semblence of guilt.7

"Faggot. Where is your brother this time you chickenshit? You didn't actually think you would get out of this?"8

The voice is a kid named David Anderson, and I should have seen this coming, but it's unraveling so fast, I am still trying to catch up. I know his voice well, because he called me a month ago, and said he was going rake my face across a curb. 9

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"Tommorow you better be ready to fight, faggot. I am going to hurt you bad." 11

I can tell there are other boys with him. That maybe he is in a car on his way to somewhere since I can faintly hear the whir. Maybe something pathetic and weak like "leave me alone", or "why are you doing this?" or other useless phrases come sputtering out of me. 12

I only really remember what he says, and how I feel afterwards. How violated and terrified I am at the notion that he has invaded my home. How easily he can just pick up the phone and bring the nightmare of middle school right into my bedroom. 13

I am infuriated that I can't do anything about it, and I sit and listen him to ramble on about what he is going to do to me; then like that, click. Nothing. An empty line. 14

It should be easy to pretend it didn't happen except that my mind is not strong enough to deny anything at this point. I am too afraid. And in front of my big brother, no less, who wouldn't know at all if he wasn't standing in the room we share. So the truth of this matter is not my secret alone. 15

My brother has always known a little about what has been going on with me outside the sanctuary of the bedroom we share, but he believes I just need to toughen up, and people will lose interest. He thinks maybe I am making it up to draw sympathy. Maybe I am drawing it in for inspiration to write a melody or lyric. He has no idea what it feels like. He has no level at which to relate. He knows at the time that I am a half way decent story and song writer, and he has his own troubles, his own life. 16

Yet, the black emotion he sees in me that day inspires him to act. He feels compelled by that unspoken love that brothers have. That unspoken pact that says I can pick on you, but I will be damned if I let anyone else have that duty. I think that until this day, I have always told him not to get involved, begged him because of how embarassed I am at the whole thing. That my older brother has to see me so weak and powerless and pathetic like the rest of world always seems to, throws me into a white fury. 17

I tell him all of it that night. It's too much. I go back years, and years. I dig deep. Elementary school, sunday school. Vacant playgrounds. Honked loogies. Even the most meaningless taunts. Mistaken hostile gestures. I baptize my brother in the blood of my rage. 18

When I finish, he looks stunned, and yet he knows, that this time it's not my overactive imagination. Not my need to churn my pain into a grungle melody. He gets silent, and then starts talking about playing video games, and nothing more is said. 19

The next day, I am feeling really foolish, for having the gaul to fall for David Anderson's crap. 20

I am pissed honestly. 21

Because for years people have been telling me things. For years nothing has ever come of it. I have lived in a constant state of fear. The alarms always on full. I imagine he has probably had a good laugh with his friends, and today I will get reminded of it, and that will be it. Then I will have to explain to my brother, it is just a false alarm. 22

But strangely that day, David Anderson is silent...all of them are. 23

When it comes time to go home, the bus is crowded with faces I know, but that don't belong, including his and I know immediately that he is going to go after me once the bus drops me off, and since it is almost a block back to my house, I am going to have to book it to have any hope of outrunning all of them. 24

As it turns out, my brother has a hero in him, because as I show up at the stop, prepared to run, my brother and five of his friends are there waiting for me. 25

I want to cry. I want to hug him, though I know I never will. 26

David Anderson and the small audience with him never even get off the bus. I think my brother is disapointed because he is hoping for a fight, as are his friends. But I am smiling the whole way home, because this time I get to walk, and I don't have to run.27

After, David Anderson forgets about me. 28

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Until now. I don't why it's taken him so long, but that doesn't matter, because I somehow have gotten back to my feet only this time to be knocked down again. I am looking around, confused, stunned trying desperately to get my barings, and utterly stupid to the ball of anger bearing down on me.30

My brother is not going to come save me this time.31

It's never been this bad, and I can tell the crowd of students are closing in, screaming FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT. Crying out for their entertainment, demanding payment in my blood. Not like the bus stop at all, because I have nowhere to go. I can't run, because I can't get up. It's finally going to happen this time. I am going to get it. I have written about this moment before, in countless stories as my heroes get ready to take their hits, but to be honest I have never been hit before. I talk about abuse and all this physical pain in my songs and yet it doesn't prepare me in slightest as to what to expect. I have never felt the pain a fist can make with so much hate attached to the other end, and now all I can do is wait.32

But it's not his fist I feel first, as I ant scramble back trying to get to my feet. The hard underside of his boot kicks me in the side of the ribs, and I feel the air rush out of me like a balloon, and I can't breathe.33

His onslaught continues with more kicks, which feel like hammers now that he knocked the wind out of me--some of them miss entirely, some of them graze my arm, and some of them hit right on. Maybe someone is yelling enough, and maybe someone is saying stop but nobody is doing anything about it really.34

Maybe I am asking myself why no one is stopping this, and that's when he get's the golden perfect shot sinking right into my left cheek, and immediately all my thoughts are of pain. Blinding, and immediate. It feels like the entire inside of my mouth has been filled with scalding hot soup, as I bite down on my tongue and that metallic taste of blood immediately follows. 35

Then somehow I am launching myself at him, grappling blindly with no notion of how to fight him properly, only knowing that I need to get off the ground, because if I don't, he is going to deliver on his promise, and kick my teeth in. I have my hands on him, but I am not throwing fists. I don't know what I am doing really, and he says: "Get off me, don't touch me!"36

He shoves me back easily, and I am still overwhelmed from how much pain is racing through my gums, and one of my hands is planted on my jaw trying to give it relief, as I am still backing away.37

"Fight me. Your fists faggot, don't give me hugs." 38

I raise my fists, and am thinking of how to go about hitting him when the first of his fists crashes into my cheek throwing me back, and making his second shot at me with his other fist whiff by close to my face but miss me completely, as the first fist slams into the side of my head crushing my ear, and the next fist nails my arm, and so on and so on...his rain of blows overwhelming me, all over my arms, my face, my neck, as I try futilely to block what I can. It feels like he is hitting me everywhere. The pain is tremendous, but I don't really have time to think about it.39

The most pathetic thing about this, is my thoughts are not about saving myself, but rather are dwelling on when someone else is going to break this up, and save me. I only have to fend him off, and I am thinking to myself I am not doing that bad here, and everything is going to be alright, when his knee crushes my groin.40

If pain can be a color, maybe I would describe this pain as blue, rushing up in waves. Blue flooding my field of vision as my body contorts itself, falling to the side. All the pain until this moment forgotten as the embarassment of being kicked there by another man just blossoms into a whole new kind of pain. My whole body is pain, and I am crying for it to stop. Please, stop. Please. I haven't kicked in the nuts since fifth grade, and that was by a girl. 41

This is insanity. I would have stopped this for someone else. I would have gotten help; I would have done something.42

But no one helps me. No one stops it.43

I can no longer block his blows. My strength is gone. What little power I may have possessed has been taken from me, and everyone knows it. With me down like this, he can aim. He can take his time and make sure that each blow hits me precise; that each blow inflicts the maximum damage he intends.44

In the end the fists feel like therapy. Like the prescribed treatment of a prolonged and laborious wait. When they keep coming hard and fast, raining down on my bruised arms, caving in the skull that held my eyes in place, I find myself bonding with the pain, giving into the blackness it makes me feel. He is slamming down on my nose, smashing my gums, kicking at my ribs. This isn't a beating, this is a disection. He is taking me apart piece by piece, blow by blow, and eventually I am not even raising my hands anymore. I'm praying it will stop, and the last thing I see are the big hall monitors, not kids, dragging him off me, and I wish he had just killed me at this moment. I want to die, or sleep, and before they are able to fully get him off, he gives me one more kick to the nuts. This pain lingers, as he even somehow spits on me before they pull him away, and looking around at all the faces--some of them staring in awe and horror, and some of them laughing uncontrollably, I let my thoughts become a dark comatose. I just want to die. But first I want a gun, so I can take everyone of those laughing motherfuckers with me. 45

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Fifteen minutes later, I stare at the mirror in the nurse's office bathroom, surveying the damage. My face is a bright blushing red, and I can tell I have been crying. I suppose I should feel lucky, I am thinking, that he does not know how to fight better, since in the end the only damage he has really done, is the damage I did to myself by biting my tongue, a tender and bruised face, a bloody nose and swollen groin. My knee's are bruised but not busted, my arms are pretty sore, my breathing still feels strained, my ear burns, but I am otherwise alright. The other damage--the one that lawyers call punitive; the one they so kindly refer to as pain and suffering, I have no way of measuring. 47

I sit on the floor for a while until I can gather myself and I try to replay the events that have just happened to me. I am in the big leagues now. I am thinking that hopefully this isn't some pandora's box that opens up and invites me to become a punching bag. I have now become part of the statistics--the bad ones. The one's you read about after they recap their pain into the form of bestselling memoirs about the hassles of growing up, this or that. My story, I think, can now make Hallmark movie of the week. 48

It makes me sick and nautious and I want to throw up, but I can't. The bile just hangs inside me, hiding somewhere like the breathing that I should but can't bring back to normal. Then I start to cry, and man or not, I don't give a crap, this time I don't try and stop myself. 49

Strangely the school nurse never knocks on the bathroom door. Just lets me cry for what's probably at least fifteen minutes until I regain my composure. 50

Which, I eventually do.51

As the nurse cleans the dirt and puts ice on my face, examines my bitten swollen tongue, and my bleeding gums to make sure I still have all my teeth, I silently thank her for not talking to me. She and I both know that there is no comfort she can offer that will serve to lessen anything that has just happened. I only tell her about the pain in my face, my chest, my arms, and knees. She doesn't need to know anything else. 52

The one thing she does ask though: "Should I call your parents to bring you home?"53

No.54

I decide for some reason to stick out the last hour and a half of the day, since the class I am missing currently is math (and I know she will let me lay down until this hour is over missing math completely) and because the last class of the day is Art, which I know I can make it through.55

The hall monitor brings in my backpack, and then sets a pile of textbooks on the nurses desk. My history book is torn to pieces, my math book looks okay, and somehow my literature book got the cover ripped off it. I can see the dusty shoe prints covering my backpack from where people kicked it around for who knows how far.56

"I had a Stephen King book," I say. "THE STAND. Did you ever find it? It's my brothers and he'll kill me if I don't get it back to him. You can't find that cover anymore."57

The hall monitor, a tall man who the nurse calls Bob, looks at me and frowns. "I'll tell you what," he says. "I'll have the hall monitors keep a look out for it." 58

No one talks to me in Art class. No one asks how I am feeling. But that doesn't mean no one notices. 59

Everyone notices.60

Everyone looks, and whispers about me without actually acknowledging to me that they are doing it. I am front page for the gossip tree today, and unless something really amazing, or awful happens, I will remain that way until at least the end of the week.61

When the day ends, I don't take the bus home. I wait until all the buses leave, and then I cut across the soccer field and walk through the trailer courts to the main street where there is a hostess bakery and I can get an apple turnover. Greta, the lady that works there knows me, so when she sees my marks, and I tell her I got into a fight, she gives me the apple turnover for free. I thank her when I leave, looking carefully down the main street to make sure I wasn't followed (not that I thought I would be, but one never knew) and continue towards my house. As I pass the Hmong church, I am trying to think of how I am going to explain this to my parents, that their quiet and doting son just got the shit beat out him for reasons he'll never understand. I am trying to figure out how to explain it to them when I don't even know myself. I know they will ask me if I fought back, and at this point I am not sure what I am going to tell them. I don't know what good it would do to lie. Maybe it will make it easier for them to understand if they think I fought back. 62

Finally clear of the sight of school, I let the anger I have repressed all day surface. It's all I can to do to keep from screaming, and thoughts of wrath consume my next three hundred steps. 63

I know this shouldn't have happened. No one needs to tell me that I didn't deserve this. 64

This is only supposed to happen to people that deserve it, bad people. I am a good person. Why?65

I want blood. I am imagining getting a gun, no, I am imagining having a gun in this scenario, and instead of the bruises I can feel hardening and swelling against the cold autumn air, David Anderson get's a bullet in the head. 66

I see my fists pummeling David Anderson's face until it becomes nothing but a hole of blood, bones, and broken teeth. I keep beating in this hole because my mind is telling me, this is all David Anderson deserves, and because my rage is too stong at this moment for me to stop it. See how he likes it.67

I think about these things my whole way home. 68

I think about the fact that somewhere in here is a song, and that I should cling to this rage as long as it takes for me to learn the lesson from it. I focus on this until I am lost to thoughts of anything else. 69

I could have been killed. 70

No one helped me. No one. No one stopped it. 71

How could no one have helped me today? 72

Maybe because I gave up and let myself be humiliated. Maybe they had the right to humiliate me because of that. They wanted it to happen to me. They knew it was the way the universe worked. They didn't want it to stop, just like though they know there will be victims they also know they have to see it through to the end. Maybe they underestimated his propensity for violence. Maybe they underestimated their own.73

Or maybe I just really am nothing.74

I am just someone to be stomped. destroyed, for the entertainment of others. To be marked. 75

To be bled. 76

I get to my house, and look down at the grass, and listen to the cars whizzing by behind me, and think how easy it would be to just take a couple steps back into the street at the last moment and the last sensation I would know would be flying.77

I think about how I want to go inside and hack at my wrists with one of the kitchen knives. Take a bath and drop a toaster in the water.78

What fun would it be for him to know that his need to destroy me was only outweighed by my own. Maybe I could I end it simply. Just take a ball point pen and shove it as far into my eye socket as it would go. All the way in. Pierce the brain, then game over. I am so filled with rage that I need to take it out on someone, even if it's myself. 79

I can't get a hold of these feelings. I thought it would get better the further I got from school. It has only gotten worse, because I know I have to go back tommorow. No one will blame me for calling in sick, but I can only call in sick so many times. Eventually I have to go back. What then? Who next. My parents can't afford private school, and I am too young to drop out. I need to finish if I am going to have a future. 80

As I reach out for my door handle, I realize the only lesson I learned today was that the world is a mean and cruel place, and that it can take from you as much as it wants, anytime it wants... 81

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A few years from now, I will see those kids from Columbine, and feel sick, wondering just how close I came to being them. How much more of this would I have been able to take, before I lost it? Before my kind and loving nature was filled with such hate and bile, and resentment that I couldn't see anything except my own contempt and I no longer cared. Would I have started shooting? I don't know.83

I just don't know.84

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...but as I close the door behind me and listen to the silence resonate through my living room, I realize that I am hearing music, and the rage I am feeling strangely fades, and even as I try to summon it again, I can't.86

My brother is not home yet, and for that I am thankful. This gives me time. 87

I take off my shoes, drop my backpack and walk towards my guitar. The music that I have been ignoring up until now, is playing louder and clearer than ever. It doesn't have to play very long for me to realize that this has inspired something brilliant. I stand here for a moment and just listen. Yes, this one is going to be good. In fact, the song, as I pick up the guitar, has already written itself. Perhaps, I allow myself to think, this had a purpose. This is the part I was meant to control. I was meant to use my anger and channel it into something beautiful.88

The day's events still play, but they don't seem to matter as much as they did before. There are better things now for me to worry about. I am going to channel my rage. Hanging onto it won't do me any good, at least for now. 89

I put down the guitar and look in the high cupboard where my mom keeps her cigarettes, and steal one out of the open pack. I light it, inhale deeply, open a can of Mountain Dew from the fridge, clear my head, pick up the guitar again and strum, even smile a little, because I know in spite of all this, everything will be alright. I am angry, I am sad. I am confused, but somehow sitting here in my livingroom, listening to the sounds of my guitar, and thinking about rockstardom, or whatever, makes everything alright. I know it now. I can feel it. Even if it continues. Even if it happens again, I will comfort myself in knowing that the music that comes from me in this moment, fills my home not with hate, but peace.90

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