“Ripped Pants Twice”
I didn’t wear underwear once for a whole year.
I was thirteen and the sun was beating down on the black asphalt and callouses were being born on my naked feet.
FLASHBACK!
Earlier that day:
It was P.E. Physical education my ass. The coach was blowing his whistle to signal another pushup. I was wearing my brother’s old brown shoes. They were like dress shoes but cooler. They looked like clown shoes on me. I wanted to be thought of as unique. I was thought of as unique but much later on, and for other reasons.
Then my pants ripped and the crotch became history. I hadn’t worn underwear because I had rapidly gained weight the year before and progressed sadly into the category of too obese. I didn’t tell my mom I needed new underwear because I was embarrassed of going to the store, checking out and the cashier seeing me and my underwear side by side. I’m still this way. Paranoid by childish bullshit. I waited for Christmas and for Santa to bring a new pair that fit.
Worried my dangles would dangle I stood up faster than I have ever stood and walked with John Wayne’s grace to the coach.
“I need to go the front office and call my mom,” I told him.
“Why do you need to that,” the coach asked.
“My pants ripped,” I said.
“Where,” he asked like a jackass.
“My crotch,” I answered reluctantly.
“You can still stay in class and fini…”
“I’m not wearing underwear,” I interrupted.
“Oh, sure thing kid. Go ahead.”
I grabbed my shit and booked it holding the bag in front of me through the halls of the school. I wasn’t sure how far back the rip had went and I didn’t want to make a fool out of myself by checking.
Sitting in the office was scary. I waited for someone to notice. I wasn’t sure how they would react if they saw a fat kid’s penis. I didn’t want to find out.
Mom eventually arrived. My grandmother was there too. I hadn’t told mom why I needed to leave school. I think Mamaw laughed and then choked on her cigarette smoke.
At the house I changed my pants, threw the ripped ones away, ate some junk food, watched some cartoons and waited for my friend Paul to get home. When I realized he should have been home and hadn’t come over to see me I decided to walk up the hill to his house.
I was walking in the middle of the road when Paul came ripping down the hill on his neighbor’s four wheeler. The sun was beating down on the black asphalt and callouses were being born on my naked feet.
Paul was good at driving that thing for a thirteen year old, but his judgment could have used a tuneup. I stepped off to the side of the road as he roared past me. I turned to walk back down the hill when he made a one-eighty and came back to meet me.
I didn’t move as I waited for him to stop. Then he hit me. My legs went behind me as I skidded along the asphalt. I opened my eyes and Paul was on the ground too. His four wheeler was on its side. When he stood up my pain came. My knees were on fire. My right leg was telling my brain not to move.
Paul walked over to me and asked, “Why didn’t you get out of the way?”
“Why didn’t you get out of the way man,” I answered.
“Because I thought you were going to get out of the way. Can you stand up,” Paul said trying to justify himself.
“I don’t know just leave me alone,” I said.
The pain was too painful for me to cry about. It was then I first noticed I was becoming a man. Eventually I wiggled my leg. It still worked thank fuck. I rolled over to look at my legs. Both knees were bloody and the new pair of pants had ripped too and again. Paul helped me up and I limped silently to my front door. Paul went back to check the four wheeler.
In the house I walked past my sister who was lying on the couch watching “Real World” or something equally septic.
“Hey,” she said, “What are you doing?”
“I just got hit by a four wheeler,” I said.
“What! Are you okay,” she started to laugh.
“Yeah, I just need to lay down.”
Making it to the top of the stairs I collapsed in the bathroom. My face rested in a puddle of what was more than likely my own piss. I was a horrible shot. I’m not sure how long I laid there but I thought twice about puking before I got back up. I found a new pair of pants and walked back outside.
Paul was standing in the front yard wringing his hands nervously. He asked me how I was and I laughed hysterically. It was barbarian. It was maniacal. It was a sign of craziness.
“Please don’t tell my parents,” Paul told me.
“Don’t worry. I need to get cleaned up. Can I do it your house,” I asked.
“Sure, but don’t tell my mom what happened. Say you fell down the hill.”
“Okay, can you give me a ride on the four wheeler,” I asked and limped over. The push bar was dented where it had hit me in the right knee.
When he returned the four wheeler the owner asked why the bar was bent and why there were scratches down the side. Paul told him he had hit a small tree and rolled over. The owner revoked Paul’s driving privileges for a year and I was thankful. Fuck four wheelers.
- - -
“A First”
(explicit content, but funny)
We were three boys up to mischief passing a photo of a naked woman back and forth walking down the hill of Rosewood Way. I was the one who printed it off the internet. I showed it to Paul and he showed it to Joseph. It was the spring of 2002 in Loganville, Georgia.
I can’t remember who the lady in picture was. I had kept it in my pillow case for safe keeping. These were not the days of my father. In his day you had to come across a naked woman in a magazine or talk a girl into showing you her goods. You had to look and strive and hope.
With the rise of the technical overlord that subdues my generation you could find naked women at anytime your parents weren’t home. Hell, you didn’t even have to do that. You could just flip through the nine hundred and ninety-nine channels and eventually come across a side boob. If you had the endurance you could stay up until two in the morning and watch the sales commercials for Girls Gone Wild. They had stars over the nipples which didn’t cover up the power of a young boy’s imagination.
The three of us would hangout in a ditch just across the road from my house. The houses of our neighborhood were dispersed of their pastel colored, cooky-cut designs by trees and a creek that swerved through it. The creek formed a barrier around my house and cut under the road in a large drain pipe which was big enough for the three of us to walk through. Once on the other side the creek would drop two feet into a five foot deep puddle and from there would carry on throughout the neighborhood.
I call it a ditch. It was more a pit. Down there we would slide down the muddy bank and play and explore the wild river.
We took turns staring at the naked woman and wondered about sex. We were nine and we hadn’t quite figured it out yet. Then Paul said, “My cousin says girls get pregnant when you pee in their vagina.”
I didn’t say anything. Up to that point I had never seen the physical act of sex. Hell, I hadn’t seen a vagina either. The woman in the picture was only naked up top. The picture had real “class”. The wind was blowing in from the viewers point of view. Her hair was cast into the wind and her top was a see-through almost window curtain material. It flowed behind her exposing her chest. Her navel was there too. She sat in a seductive lotus pose. Her eyes looked into yours. Like I said, real “classy”.
Though I had never seen a vagina I knew that you shouldn’t pee in one. I think it was intuition from becoming one with man’s animal nature. We hadn’t taken a biology class yet and our only life lessons so far had been to not get ourselves killed and to be back before the sun sets or else.
But Paul was onto something with the pee thing. I solved the equation later that year once fall came. I was watching a movie starring a well gifted actress. The lights were off and I was no longer sleeping regular hours. My insomniac life style had just begun.
I had been getting erections since I was six. I knew what they were but not what they were for. I enjoyed them and played with them. They were my only true friend. On that night one was sparked when the actress began seducing a man who would not let her into wherever it was she was trying to get into. She undid the button of her coat and her cleavage bubbled out from the low cut neck line of her red dress. Full figured indeed. They were hills the hobbits would envy.
And that was all she wrote folks. I popped. It had never happened before. I didn’t know that could happen. I didn’t even know what had happened. It was dark and darker still under the blanket. It was warm and the only things I knew that were warm and wet were urine and blood, but his had a thicker property. I freaked out.
I ran to the bathroom, turned on the light and looked in the mirror. I thanked god it wasn’t blood. Not knowing what it was I decided to keep it to myself.
I went straight to bed after that and recalled to my mind the sensation. Then came a realization and a childish fear. This was how girls got pregnant. That’s what Paul had been talking about. I figured out the great mystery but couldn’t tell anyone. Then I thought, ‘Can guys get pregnant?”
That was true fear but a fear that couldn't make me stop.
- - -
“Dead Cats”
The house I grew up in was big enough. The subdivision was nice with roads named after various flora and fauna. The yard was ample. Random trees, it seemed, grew in the yard; one in each quadrant. The left side and rear of the house were bordered by woods and a small creek. Beyond the creek is where I would disappear when I missed the bus. Often I missed it on purpose. I would retreat into this forest with a cassette player in hand listening to Meat Loaf. My favorite hobby in the woods was to take a metal baseball bat and bash trees. I often pretended to be a great and feared swordsman.
We had a pool that was used for only one summer. It was green during the last few years we lived there. My sister had a cat. Scooter Two had been the last of her six siblings to survive. Scooter “One”, my kitten (and Scooter Two’s brother), died of starvation in the woods. His back legs didn’t work – hence why I named him Scooter. Scooter was eaten and disposed of by various carnivorous birds. The others had died in equally horrific scenes. Two had been run over. Another was neglected by its mother while the other had fell down a well. Scooter Two had been a trooper.
We found Scooter Two’s body steaming in an early Easter morning Sunday sun, but being on our way to church that morning we decided to just leave a trash bag over the cat. I suspect the cause of death to be caused by one of two things: One, the cat had simply fallen in and inhaled the water, climbed out and then died; or two, the cat had eaten a mouse out of the pool filter and died of rat poisoning. However, the latter hypothesis did not explain how Scooter Two had come to be soaked.
I have a sick humor when it comes to dead animals. It’s from an early exposure to songs about them: “Dead Puppies” by Ogden Edsl, “Fish Heads” by Barnes & Barnes, “My Dead Dog Rover” by Ian Whitcomb, and my personal favorite “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” by Tom Lehrer are just a few.
I also like jew jokes… I cannot explain why. Here are some original jokes from me to you (or should I say from me to jew?). Feel free to use them.
1.) “So, a jew walks into a mosque…”
2.) “What do you call it when you think you’ve seen the same jew twice?”
- Punchline, “A Deja-jew”
3.) “What is a dishonest jew’s favorite month?”
- Punchline, “Jew-ly”
4.) This one’s just something for you to say next time you talk about how bad of a movie “Space Balls” really is.
“The movie would have been more jewish if Mel Brooks had called them Hanukah Solo and Jew-baca.”
And if you happen to be wondering why I think I can say these things let me say this. My grandfather thinks all white people are jewish. Its a long story.
KJ out.
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