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Authors: Andersen Prunty

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BOOK: Fuckness
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Sometimes, if the parent of a poor kid could afford to send their child to St. Ag, they did. I guess they thought that once their kid was actually in that school, all decked out in that uniform, no one could actually tell how poor they were. Those poor kids’ parents must have been really deluded blobs, thinking their kids weren’t still going to smell poor and talk poor. You can never really hide poor. Like blood, it courses through the veins.

Anyway, like I was saying, Milltown Middle School was in a poor section of town. The only reason it had the honor of bearing Milltown’s name, if that was in fact an honor, was because it was the first middle school built. It was back there with all the factories and fuckness. The factories were where all the poor people worked, if they actually had jobs. Apparently if the workers could keep their minds and bodies intact long enough, there was a good pension involved. After so many years and enough overtime, there was even the hope they could ingrain themselves firmly into the middle class.

Milltown Middle was small and dark and in a horrible state of disrepair. The outside of the school used to be red brick but had turned a dark brown from all the pollution. The playground was very small and dark, also. It was maybe about the size of one of the richer people’s back yard. The school was up near the sidewalk, just off the road. There was a three-story parking garage to the right of the school, on the north side. The Korl Brothers factory butted up against the fence of the playground and sort of wrapped around the south side. It was a steel mill, so not only was there the distraction of those tweedling half-wits coming and going to work, there was also the clanging and clunking of giant sheets of metal being hurled around by even noisier machines. The main building of the factory had once been sort of a greenish-gray corrugated aluminum structure, the pride of Milltown’s economy, but was all soot-covered and rusted when I went to Milltown. All those structures smothered the playground, burying it, looming ominously over top of it. On that day, the day I’m trying to tell you about, huge smokestacks rose into the cold gray March sky, pumping out their smoke and fire.

When I was a real young kid and a lot dumber than I am now, dumber even than when I went to Milltown, I used to think that factory was where clouds were made. Whenever the parents would drive me by Korl or one of Milltown’s numerous other factories, I’d say, “Look at the pretty clouds!”

I thought the black smoke and flashing orange-white fire brought the thunderstorms and the white steam made the cottage cheese-looking clouds you see on somewhat pleasant days. My father, Racecar, would snarl, “Those ain’t clouds, ass, that’s a Death Factory.”

Him saying that changed my whole cloud perspective and I began to think the smoke was caused by burning bodies, which was closer to the truth, I guess. The father blamed the Korl Brothers for taking his legs and making him an angry gimp. A hunk of compressed metal had fallen off a forklift and crushed the father’s legs so badly they had to be removed. The factory paid for the operation but avoided a settlement for years, saying it was the father’s fault. I guess they just figured Racecar was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When they finally decided to pay him it amounted to about what he would have made for working two years, which was inconsequential, considering he’d never be able to work again.

There really wasn’t anything to play on in the playground at Milltown Middle. There was an old rusted swing set we were forbidden to play on and an extremely dangerous-looking contraption called the witch’s hat that hardly anyone would
dare
to even go around, ever since Lenny Lester got gored a few years back. Still, if someone dared, like some new kid who hadn’t heard about the goring, it was forbidden. Those objects sat there, temptation for the bored, a punishment waiting to happen. If the teachers didn’t get you, the contraption would, sooner or later.

The majority of the children were left to run around somewhat aimlessly on the playground unless they wanted to engage in games like Tag or Ring-Around-the-Rosy or another game called Red Rover. Red Rover involved two teams and each team was to send one of its members “over” to the other team when that member was called. All the kids had to know everybody else’s name to play this because you had to say, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send
blah
over,” or some fuckness. This game, on occasion, would turn violent and have to be stopped. The kids at Milltown managed to make just about everything violent. Even Tag usually ended in bruises and tears as though a more apt title would have been “Beat” or “Strike” or “Punish.” It was rare for these games to actually be stopped, however. There usually weren’t any teachers around to stop anything and if they were actually outside on the playground they had a convenient habit of looking away at the slightest hint of a disturbance.

Also, the grass in the playground was always covered in this soot so when the kids went in from recess their hands and clothes were always black and grimy. They wore that soot like a coat of poverty. If they rubbed their faces with their hands, they would leave giant smudge marks that looked like some form of tribal marking.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that there wasn’t a whole helluva lot to do out there on the Milltown Middle School playground and that’s maybe sort of the reason why Bucky Swarth was exactly the way he was, which was real violent-like. There seemed to be a lot of that type at Milltown. They either all banded together to form a massive, brow-ridged juggernaut, or they separated into various camps, destined to do battle for the rest of the school year.

Even though I was sixteen and most of the other kids were twelve or thirteen, I almost fit in; physically, anyway. That is, I think my proportions were about right. Even then, I was a little over six feet tall, but I’d been that tall since
I
was in the eighth grade for the first time. I was also rail thin and completely hairless, freckles all over my face.

If my proportions were about right for the eighth grade then my overall appearance wasn’t right for any age. If I was going to be tall for my age and stick out like a sore thumb anyway, then the least I could have been blessed with was decent if not just plain looks. But this was not the case… I was ugly, almost freakishly so. An ugly person, a regular ugly person who isn’t cursed with being terribly ugly, can go through life with virtually no problems at all. They may have issues with their self-esteem and all that fuckness, but there is absolutely no attention paid them and they’re able to just muck around and pretty much do whatever the hell they want. The extremely good-looking can get through life fairly easily, but that’s just because people will agree with what they say so they can fuck them or sometimes just be seen with them. And they’re almost always attracting some sort of attention, but it’s usually positive. The exceptionally ugly, like me, weren’t going to be given any breaks in life. More than likely, we were the subjects of intense ridicule. Maybe some pity. What’s worse is that I also, through the sheer uniqueness of my appearance, always had attention hoisted upon me. The attention was always negative, of course.

Because I’d grown so fast, I no longer had the ability to walk with a normal gait, so I lasciviously scuffled along, my feet rarely leaving the ground. It seemed like my eyeballs were made too big for their actual eyelids, creating the impression that my eyes were never fully opened but simply slits, like some big doped up snake. My mouth suffered some of the same circumstances. It was too small, the teeth shoved in there with demented abstract abandon—what the mother called a “crowded mouth.” My canines hung down way past all the other teeth and if I tried to actually shut my mouth to where my lips met I looked like someone trying to form a horribly pompous face. Nevertheless, I kept my mouth fully closed most of the time and this may have generated more hostility toward me. My ears were like giant masts. If I slithered fast enough I could actually hear them slicing the wind.

Both years since I started failing, I had to go through a readjustment period and try not to let anyone in my class figure out that I was two or three years older than they were. It was hard enough to remain anonymous, being a hideous beast. And it never lasted very long. Inevitably, some other failure would point me out. “Well,
that
kid, he’s failed
twice
.”

After that happened, the stares and whispers would noticeably increase. I figured some of the parents told the kids to stay away from me. I guess they were afraid my ample helping of stupid would rub off on their children.

I always hated recess because I’ve never really liked having what the other kids considered fun. Playing stupid games and running around aimlessly and that kind of fuckall. So mostly I just wandered around the big rusty fence separating the playground from the factory and thought my own thoughts, which mostly involved ways of getting out of Milltown without much of an education and by doing as little work as possible. Recess was always a bad time anyway because it was one of the only times when being completely alone seemed abnormal. When it finally got out that I was Wallace Black, the dumb boy who couldn’t pass the eighth grade, recess was when the bullies started laying into me.

That year, the Year of Bucky Swarth’s Reign, I’d been pretty okay. That is, I’d avoided being beaten severely by him. I’d never been the subject of more than a few names, threats, or pushes. I think, initially, even though I wasn’t particularly hard to notice, they were kind of intimidated by my age and I had to do something to really piss them off before they decided to let me have it. But on that chilly spring day, he finally came around and, looking back on it, it was probably my own damn stupid fault.

It was a Thursday morning, the year more than half gone, when he finally laid into me.

 

Chapter Two

Drifter Ken

and

The Sucker of Doom

 

That morning, on my walk to school, Drifter Ken had given me a big green sucker. Drifter Ken was this magnificent old guy who hung around the park between my house and the school. He was real suspicious but nobody ever caught him doing anything so they couldn’t do much about it, like having him locked up or some fuckness like that. Besides, he never panhandled and he was never in the park at night. I just thought Drifter Ken liked kids or that being nice to the kids that came through the park gave him something to do with his day. The mother always said to stay away from Drifter Ken because he
really
liked kids, but she wore a wig and I found her hard to trust.

If I ever got home late from school, she would accuse me of hanging out with that “trashy,
trashy
man,” her stroke-induced mumbling giving the words a lusty cant. The way she strumbled on about Drifter Ken made it sound like he was the type of man she’d like to bring home.


You like what he does to you?” she asked me one time.

I had a pretty good idea of what she was talking about and knew Drifter Ken sure didn’t do that. I mean, it wouldn’t really surprise me if he had managed to nail a couple of the high school girls but it wasn’t abnormal to see the high schoolers dating 35 to 40-year- old men. So what if Drifter Ken was closer to 60? In a town like Milltown, the general philosophy seemed to be that you had to snag them young, before pregnancy, drugs, alcoholism, and bad fashion used them up.


You
like
the way that trashy,
trashy
man touches you?” It disgusted me, the throatiness of her voice.


He’s not like that.”


Not yet.”

At that point, I grabbed a heavy glass and threw it across the room. The motion was strained and dramatic but I had trouble expressing myself vocally, so I had a tendency to throw and break things. Then I stormed into my room. It was pointless to argue with the mother.

It was the father’s theory that Drifter Ken sold crack to the kids but, as I’ve already mentioned, the father was crippled and also untrustworthy. I’m guessing the father thought an adult would
have
to be high to get along with children.

Anyway, that morning I walked through the park as I always did. Some mornings Drifter Ken wasn’t there. On the mornings he was in the park we always exchanged a few words, even if it was to just say “Hi.” It was like we both understood each other. You can make contact with people all day but it only seems fulfilling when it’s with someone you truly enjoy.

Drifter Ken was of near giant proportions. I was a little over six feet tall and had to look way up at Drifter Ken. His thick hands were the size of baseball mitts. He had flashy hair, all stiff and gray and piled up on top of his head in wild curls. That made him seem even taller. I thought about Racecar, pathetically sitting in his wheelchair and growling and I thought dads should always be taller than their children, if only by an inch or two. Drifter Ken would have been the perfect father for me. He always sucked on these unfiltered Camels that drew attention to his magnificent teeth. I say his teeth were magnificent because they had
character
. Teeth can really make or break a person. Drifter Ken’s teeth were powerful, like giant evenly spaced blocks, the area between them defining them even further, making them blockier and more magnificent. I complimented him on his teeth one time, mainly so I could tell him about Mrs. Pearlbottom’s, and he said hers probably got that way from chewing kids’ asses. I laughed. I laughed at a lot of what Drifter Ken said. Drifter Ken was a funny man.

BOOK: Fuckness
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