one night in cowtown...
we all lay on the waterbed. eight of us. we were lying on top of one another in such a way that made it comfortable.
"why do the jocks beat up on us?" i asked, half asleep, slipping from consciousness into sleep.
"they're assholes," s said, yawning.
"that's his answer to everything. they're assholes!" c snorted. "it's the way they were raised. superiority."
"but if they're superior, why do they have to pound on us?" i asked. "being at the top of the food chain isn't good enough?"
"it's a money thing," tiny joe said.
"nah, diane's got money, 'n she ain't like that," s laughed.
i tried to kick him and hit c instead. everybody shifted, which sent waves rolling from one side of the waterbed to the other and back again.
"why are we us?" k asked. k was a new addition, and i liked her. there were boys everywhere, and i had few girlfriends.
"because we are. we are freaks! we are the future!" a yelled half-awake.
then we heard...."FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!"
we all toppled off the bed onto one another in a bizarre human pile, almost like a twister game gone mad. we spilt into the living room to see chris, a punk skin we had picked up earlier that evening with a lighter. he held the lighter right in front of his face, lighting it and yelling, "FIRE!"
we rolled up at the Quik Trip at 8 p.m. The sun sank somewhat in the oklahoma sky, purple and navy blue arced across the sky as the vague sparkle of stars began to appear. we needed cigarettes and beer. we had to bribe to get both.
it was like no other night. kyme's brother-in-law and sister were out of town and said we could have a party. we had told our respective mothers that we were staying the night at the other's house. we knew they wouldn't check. thank god for urban isolation.
we solidified our perfect plan on spiral notebook paper passed throughout the week in our shared classes. we were both experts in the art of secret classroom communications and apparently snowing our mothers.
most of the kids we picked up - 25 in two cars - were just at bell's amusement park. PARTY and BEER - and they followed like we were pied pipers. of course we were okay with beer, cigarettes, and music until james figured out there were pornos. and of course the neighbors saw 25 teenagers wandering into the house next door.
we got about an hour of debbie - the one with the candles because that's all i remember - before eunice gohillbilly came over to calmly ask us not to beat her to a pulp for calling the police.
"OH SHIT! EVERYBODY OUT! THE COPS ARE ON THE WAY!"
And that's about the time we came rolling up on Chris, who was begging for money to buy marlboro's. that's how we lured him in. that night is clear in my mind because it showed me a few things. mainly that there are too many kids running around and too few parents who give a shit. and something subtle, that wouldn't be readily apparent until my 29th year of life.
The very system our elders created and asked us to blindly accept failed us in more ways than i can count. it's a cruel, cold machine that whips human counterparts around like rattling wayward hubcaps. that's what brought us all together.
chris was a prime example. i had met him - not like he remembered - a couple of years before that through a girl named tanya. she explained his father had apparently been a cop who snapped one day. chris was pretty much left to his own devices. we didn't perceive him to be a threat like the other skins running around. in fact, i would later see him with long hair hanging outside of the max.
we no sooner picked chris up did he want to drive. and the conversation preceding that idiotic decision to let him went like this:
"hey" he said - then silence.
"huh?" i asked.
"is it hard?"
eyes wide open. "is what hard?"
"driving."
"um, ... no."
"can i try?"
"yea, can he?" k asked. followed by a string of can he? can he?
"yea, let him." c said.
"um..."
"please?????" he asked.
"ok," i said, pulling the family grocery-getter over. "just go slow."
and he did. and he giggled, a huh-huh-huh-huh-huh giggle, and he honked repeatedly under each underpass. he did pretty good. he only hit a couple of curbs and a median. but of course around 11 p.m., we had to split up to get those poor souls, who had not lied to their parents, home. after meeting at zinc park, we split up 50-50 and went to drop people off.
a couple went home but my car had three who didn't want to go. (this would be the bain of my existence when my first girlfriend and i were together - she never did what she was supposed to do. and who got blamed, i ask you?) they didn't feel the night was over.
and we still had beer.
"hey, just pull over here," tiny joe said. he was a skater friend of s's.
"ok." i hit the lights. we were about a block from his house. we were out by garnett, an area of tulsa littered by modest homes. many of my skater buddies lived on the east side of tulsa. we could see the house. he went into the tiny, brick structure, and about 10 mintues later, he fell out of a window on the side of the house. he made it to the car before a light emerged from the house. the next thing i know, there's a hillbilly running toward the car in his tidy whities.
"HAY! Y'ALL!"
"OH FUCK A DUCK!" i yelled starting the car.
he caught up with his stepson, who had froze in the middle of the street, glaring back like a deer caught in headlights. burly and huffing, he grabbed the boy's arm and flipped him around. then he knocked the kid to the ground.
i threw to the woody into drive and opened the front door. i hit the gas and before this asshole knew it, he hit the pavement. s grabbed the kid by his shorts and his drawers and pulled him into the car.
"hit it d! we got 'im!"
now the whole neighborhood began to wake up as the car screeched out of sight, with hillbilly joe sitting on the ground cussing up a storm.
"what the fuck?" i yelled.
"he's a fucking asshole!" joe screamed, fighting tears. it's not cool for skaters to cry. especially when it doesn't involve skidding down a half pipe on your face.
"he kicked his ass last week for being 10 minutes late," steve said, lighting two squares, one for himself and one for joe.
"what if he calls the cops?" ally asked.
"yea, we gotta go somewhere, man. we gotta get off the main roads," s said.
"dude, go north," c said, after about 20 minutes of silence. so we drove north, and we got lost.
"where are we?"
"i dunno."
"where's the beer?"
"in the back."
most of the back roads in okahoma, like backroads everywhere, don't necessarily have signs and trees look the same everywhere in the light of the moon at 1 a.m. by the time we returned to the house, the sun was coming up, and i had to be at soccer practice at noon. man, no sleep. i should drink coffee.
i don't suggest it because about 120 ounces of coffee when you're a coffee virgin after staying awake after 36 hours is a bitch. especially when you have soccer practice. oh having the body of a teenager. but i made it through.
a week later, c, s, and i were up at the tulsa police department answering questions. it seemed a couple of kids at the party stayed behind and stole a shotgun and a pile of really rare playboys. the screen on the back window of the house was bent and one of the windows was broken.
it didn't seem right to tell the police when and what context the stuff was stolen. what to say?
"uh, he said we could drink at his house, and the neighbors called the cops. we left and dude didn't..."
it would be one of the last times that i would see kyme. she was moved to another school. apparently bishop kelley was a little too provacative - and let that be a lesson to those who would put their kids into a catholic school to keep them away from the riff raff. but it wouldn't be the last time i would see the fucker who stole the shotgun. no, unfortunately later he would decide to piss out of the window of my car while we were traveling at 70 mph down the highway. and yes, i made him clean it up.
i think about these kids a lot. Primarily because as you grow up, people grow apart. i see each of these kids in my students: angry, obstinate, rebellious. the hardest part about being an educator is knowing when to push the student or cushion them from the blow. some of them can really make the journey much more difficult than it need be, and if memory serves, i'm not sure i deviated from that tradition. sometimes, they can really surprise me.
oftentimes the future leader isn't the straight-A student or the active college athlete; the future leader is the one who is most resistant to the class, who questions, pokes, and prods, who tries to find a way to organize and define his or her own space, rather than attempting to meet my criteria. my feeling is that when you approach young people with a standardized, one-size-fits-all approach, they not only will resist, they will become the cunning pack of wolves biding their time to pick off their prey. harnessing that type of ingenuity to take students to new heights, well, that's just brilliance.
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