Another racist tough guy.

In 4th grade, I took a 6th grade math class and a 6th grade science class. I spent most of the rest of the day in a room full of social retards who required extra supervision, lest we destroy something or cause a scene. As a class, supervised by our teacher, we also attended a 7th grade gym class, and also ate lunch with the seventh graders. We had to get our food and then sit with the rest of the class at a table with our teacher, who would shoo away the normal kids who tried to sit too close. It was during our lunch periods that I first noticed the racist tough guy.

I encountered lots of racist tough guys when I lived in Indiana. This guy was notable only in the fact that he was the first of his variety of people I ever encountered. I never had any direct interactions with him, but I learned through casual observation that he was, in fact, a racist tough guy.

When I'd sit at our guarded table in the cafeteria, I'd sometimes notice the racist tough guy. He had a mullet, and looked bigger and older than most of the other kids. He acted like a loud, obnoxious jerk, and the ladies seemed to love him. They giggled as he made fun of smaller students. I feared him, but I also got the feeling that he was cool as hell. He seemed awesome, and he commanded respect.

In 5th grade, our class got a different teacher, one who would let us go to lunch by ourselves. We still ate with the seventh graders. My friend Mike and I relished the freedom, though we never really interacted with any of the normal kids. I noticed that the racist tough guy was still in seventh grade, and I tried to stay away from him while I was in the cafeteria, because though I would have loved to be his friend due to his level of coolness, I was also pretty sure that, given the chance, he would fuck with me.

One day there was a loud rumor that a fight was taking place outside. We went outside, where most of the seventh graders had congregated, somehow without attracting the attention of any authority figures. There was an island of grass and two trees, surrounded by an easily-overstepped chain and pillar fence, in the middle of the sidewalk leading out to the parking lot. Kids circled the island and whispered about the two kids inside of the chain fence, who were moments away from extremely brutal 7th grade violence. One of the kids on the island was the racist tough guy.

Supposedly, at least one punch had been thrown before Mike and I arrived. Supposedly, it was a very loud punch. All we could see, though, were two kids standing around and not fighting. They weren't even doing the standard adolescent boy fighting dance, where two participants puff up their chests and try to intimidate each other by looking tough. Instead, one nerdy looking guy with glasses stood spitting on the ground, while the racist tough guy gestured wildly and swore loudly to his friends on the sidelines.

"Fucking motherfucker wants to fucking fuck some shit! Who does this motherfucker fucking think he is? I'm going to fucking kick his motherfucking ass!"

The swearing and the standing went on for a few minutes while we waited for violence, and then whispers of authority figures spread through the crowd and everybody dispersed.

There was a public pool in the same town where they bussed me to school. It was half an hour away, but it was the only public place to swim that we knew about, so my mom took my siblings and I there a few times. The racist tough guy was there one time.

I never saw the racist tough guy swim. He sat on the side of the pool, stretched out on a beach chair and surrounded by girls, and ranted loudly about the Mexicans who were at the pool that day.

"Fucking spicks! They need to put up fucking barricades to keep these fucking spicks out of here! I'm sick of the fucking spicks coming in here and fucking getting everything fucking dirty! Where are my motherfucking barricades?"

The girls surrounding him laughed at his racist tirade. At some point, they looked at my mom, who is Filipino, and the racist tough guy whispered something to the girls. They snickered, not really trying to hide the fact that they were obviously making some ignorant joke at her expense.

When we went home, my mom couldn't stop telling my dad about how horrible it was, and how she had never experienced anything like that in her life. It's not something that happens in California, where my mom had spent her entire life until moving to Indiana about a year before the incident. My dad just told her that people are ignorant assholes, and not to worry so much about those kind of people.

We saw the racist tough guy in public one more time, when I was in 6th or 7th grade. Our car had broken down at a gas station, and we were sitting in it and waiting for my dad. While we waited, the racist tough guy pulled up in his car. He was with a girl I recognized, and who I always thought seemed like a nice girl. The racist tough guy got out of the car and made a phone call on the payphone. He was loud enough that we could hear him in our car.

"I don't fucking give a fuck!" he yelled into the phone. "Motherfucking cocksuckers need to fucking learn what the fuck they're fucking doing!"

"Oh my god," my mom said, "What an absolute creep!"

"Don't you remember him?" I asked. "That's the racist guy from the pool."

My mom didn't remember his face, but it was definitely him. When he was done yelling obscenities at whoever he was talking to, he smashed the receiver on the phone a few times, and walked back to his car, where he continued to yell obscenities at the girl as he pulled away. She looked really passive, just blankly staring forward as he yelled. I felt bad for her.

Eric Candleass.

I first encountered Eric Candleass when I was in eighth grade. I was talking to a friend during a passing period before class, in the classroom where his next class was about to take place. Suddenly, somebody kicked me in the ass. I turned around and saw a tall, skinny kid leering down at me. I laughed nervously, hoping the assault was in jest. I had never seen the kid before, and thus had no reason to believe that he'd have a problem with me.

"Ha ha ha!" he said, mocking my laughter with a sneer. He shoved me, saying, "You fucking faggot!"

"Whoa, Eric, what's the problem, man?" asked another student.

"I fucking hate that little fucking faggot," he said, as I made my way to the door. "Yeah, get the fuck out of here!" he said.

I didn't know why he hated me, but he was bigger than I was and I learned to avoid him. I didn't have any more encounters with him that year, except for an occasional shout of "Hey, faggot!" as I walked down the hall.

Our school was both a junior and a senior high school. For the most part, the two groups of students were segregated for the majority of the day. In 9th grade, we began to share hallways with the older kids. Some of the older kids, mostly racist burnouts who I referred to as the Nazi stoners, made a sport out of shoving each other into smaller students or knocking the books out of their hands. One day, I was the pin in one of their human bowling games, and ended up being slammed into Eric. He started shoving my violently as the Nazi stoners laughed.

"I was pushed!" I pleaded.

"I don't care!" he shouted in my face, shoving me again, much to the delight of my tormentors. I scurried away as quickly as I could.

That same year, I started getting into zines, small photocopied magazines produced mostly by individuals and traded through the mail. Many of the zines I was receiving had poetry in them, so my friends and I somehow ended up starting a short lived routine of 'Poetry Minute' in the locker room after gym class. We would stand on a bench, read a couple poems, and then move on to our next class. I never noticed Eric at Poetry Minute, but one day after Poetry Minute he noticed me, dialing in the combination to my locker with a stack of zines in my other hand.

"What you got there?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said, knowing he wasn't being friendly.

"Doesn't look like nothing," he said, and tried to grab my zines. I resisted, and he grabbed me by the throat. My friend Aaron pulled him away from, saying, "Leave him alone."

"Fucking faggot!" Eric said as he walked away.

Every Friday in gym class we swam. One Friday, I was one of the last people to finish getting dressed, but my friend Sean was slower still and standing at his locker. The only other person in the part of the locker room we were in was Eric, who was in the other gym class that occurred at the same time as ours.

"Come on, Sean," I said as I walked towards the exit to the pool area. "What's taking you so long? Are you shaving your legs or something?"

I don't know what possessed me to say that, but it was a subtle jab at Eric. Rumor had it that he shaved his legs, because they were always really smooth. More likely it was because, despite being really tall, he hadn't fully hit puberty.

I walked to the exit to the pool area, where everybody was congregated and waiting for the teacher to unlock the door. I started talking to one of my friends, and then was shoved hard from behind. I slammed into my friend, and we both went crashing into the soda machine and then down to the floor.

"What the fuck did you say?" Eric yelled in my face as I got up from the floor. He towered over me, and I stood there, half-naked and scared, completely unsure of what to do. Fortunately, a big kid named Jeremy grabbed Eric from behind and carried him, squirming, out of that part of the locker room. "I'm going to kill that fucking faggot!" he yelled on the way out.

My friend Rick decided to fight Eric when we were in 10th grade. I don't remember exactly what his motivation was, but I think Eric had stolen something from him. When I heard about his intentions, I was jubilant, and followed the crowd down the hall as Rick attempted to start a fight. The kids who walked with us hated Eric, too, which surprised me because I thought I was the only one that had had problems with the guy. Rick would periodically shove Eric as we walked, and Eric would turn around and look at him, and then continue walking. Rick wasn't a particularly big guy, but he was a wrestler, and not nearly as skinny as I was. Apparently Eric wasn't that tough when it came to people closer to his own size.

At some point a bald kid named Jamie said, "Man, I would never shave my legs!" Eric turned around and pushed Jamie. Jamie was unfazed, saying, "Get the fuck off me!" Eric continued on his way, and we followed him, with Rick still periodically shoving him.

A short guy name Jason gently nudged Eric with his shoulder, quietly saying, "Come on, Eric." This time, Eric stopped. He grabbed Jason and put him in a headlock, and then Rick started punching Eric in the face. Before I even had time to know what was going on, Eric was on the ground, and a couple of kids were kicking him. For some reason I was carrying a plastic banana on a plastic string that I had found in the gym, and I began swinging it at him. Eric got up, and the fight went crashing into a classroom, where a bewildered teacher gasped and stood in shock for a moment before breaking up the scuffle. I noticed an older student, one of the tough-guy Nazi stoners, holding Rick by his shirt collar and telling him if he ever jumped in on a fight again, he would beat his ass.

When I walked to lunch later that day, Eric and a bunch of his big, tough-guy friends were standing outside of the cafeteria. They puffed out their chests and snickered at my friends and I as we walked by, but they didn't do anything.

Almost everybody involved in the fight was suspended for a week, including at least one kid who they claimed had encouraged the fight, even though all I remember him doing was following the crowd and waiting for something to happen. The only person who was there but wasn't kicked out was myself, and I had been physically involved, though just barely. I wondered later why I had chosen to hit him with a plastic banana, which weighed less than a pound and which he almost definitely did not feel at all. Perhaps, despite my intense hatred of the kid, I was still reluctant to actually hurt somebody. Maybe the fact that he was outnumbered and on the ground made me momentarily pity him. I don't know.

I was able to avoid Eric for the rest of the year, and then again for the next. His distaste for me no doubt never subsided, and my contempt for him never went away. I once overheard him in 11th grade bragging about how he had "fuckin' stomped a fuckin' bird" to death before school, and showing his buddies the gore leftover on his shoes.

On the first day of our senior year, I was walking around the cafeteria with a friend of mine. He stopped briefly to talk to somebody who was sitting at the same table as Eric.

"Look at this fucking faggot!" Eric said when he noticed me. I was a huge Misfits fan at the time, and wore my hair in their trademark devilock style, with my bangs combed to a point in front of my face. Eric, ever the opportunist, began making fun of my hair, saying, "You think that's fucking cool or something? It looks like you have a wad of fucking chud hanging off of your fucking face!" I stood there with my friend and didn't say anything. Eric threw some food at me, and then we walked away. For the rest of the week, I daydreamed of breaking his face with a food tray. In retrospect, I probably should have assaulted somebody who fucked with me at some point during school. Even if I had ended up getting my ass kicked, in the long run I probably would have had to endure less of that sort of bullshit.

Apparently Eric had beaten up some kid during the summer before school started, and now he felt like a huge badass. Not that huge of a badass, though, because his new target was still a scrawny kid named me. He started messing with me regularly, calling me a faggot and a spick, tripping me in the hallway, and claiming he was going to come to "Spick Town" to beat my ass. The thing is, I'm half-Filipino and half-white, not Hispanic, and I never lived in the area he referred to as "Spick Town," which didn't even really have any Hispanic people living in it, anyway. Furthermore, he was friends with a couple Mexican kids, and his skin was darker than mine. I had always assumed he was mixed himself, despite his white supremacy and pasty siblings.

Taking a cue from The Kids in the Hall movie Brain Candy, my friend Pat and I had begun a campaign of shouting, " I'm gay!" at random people, both to befuddle them and to enrage the homophobes, of which there were many.

"Hey, I'm gay!" Pat shouted at Eric one day as he walked by.

"Hey, I'll kick you!" Eric told him.

"I'll kick you in the nuts!" said Pat.

Eric turned around. He got in Pat's face. More accurately, he put his chest in Pat's face, as Pat was a small, short kid, and Eric still towered over everybody. I stepped closer, indicating that I had Pat's back if things escalated to physical violence.

"I'll kick your fucking ass!" he said, "You and your fucking little spick friend here!"

"Paul's not even Mexican," Pat said, "He's Filipino, and he doesn't live in Sumava, either."

"Oh, he's a fucking spick, alright, and I'll come to fucking spick town and I'll fucking kill all you little fuckers!" His face was contorted in rage, and little beads of white spit were forming at the corners of his mouth. He looked so ridiculous, I couldn't help laughing a little. A few people were watching to see what would happen, among them my brother, a seventh grader only recently introduced to our friendly school.

"You wear that Insane Clown Posse shirt everyday," Pat said, "and they rap about killing racist people."

"Do you see me wearing it now, you little fucking faggot? I'll fucking kill all of you little faggots!"

My friend Jeff turned to me and asked, "Did he just call you a faggot?"

"I believe he did," I told him. What happened next surprised the hell out of me, because I didn't realize that we were close enough friends for him to stick up for me the way he did. He got in Eric's face.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, fucking with people like this?" he asked, inches from Eric. Jeff wasn't a particularly big guy, but he was bigger than either Pat or myself. Eric was still taller, though.

"I'll fucking take all of you!" Eric growled through clenched teeth, his body literally shaking with rage and anticipation.

Throughout the entire confrontation, I was ready for things to get violent. I wasn't sure of the outcome, but I knew that if it came to blows Eric would be facing at least three of us. Somehow, though, the situation diffused itself and we went on to our next class. Eric continued to call me a spick and make threats, and I feared being caught by him alone, as I probably would have been doomed.

He disappeared a couple months into the school year. I think he got sent to the "alternative school," though I was never really sure of the purpose of the place. Maybe it was for assholes who couldn't behave like civilized humans, or maybe it was for kids who couldn't do their homework. Either way, I was glad never to have to see that guy again.

Flo: professional gangsta rapper.

There was a retarded kid at my high school who everybody called Flo. I always assumed he got the name because of his imaginary rhyming skills, but I later found out that it was actually short for Florence, which was his real name. Flo would walk around the cafeteria, taking peoples' trays up to the conveyor belt when they were done eating. Every so often, though, for absolutely no reason, he would decide not to take a person's tray up, and ask, "What am I? Your nigger?" A friend of mine hypothesized that the whole tray-taking routine was nothing more than a ruse that would give him an excuse to say that once in a while.

The true awesomeness of Flo wasn't the fact that he'd usually save you a trip across the cafeteria to drop your tray off. No, the true awesomeness of Flo was that he would "rap." If you gave Flo a few coins, he would generate several lines of gangsta-rap cliches that almost never rhymed.

"I was walking down this street. I had my hoes at my side. And then I saw this nigger. So I capped him in the ass. Damn! Payback's a bitch!"

I always wondered if Flo actually thought he could rap. People were enthusiastic about his raps, and encouraged him by giving him their pocket change, but his raps always ended with the table of people listening to him laughing enthusiastically, and Flo walking away with their empty lunch trays. I didn't know whether or not I should feel sorry for him, but I gave him a fair share of nickels and dimes for his trouble. It was undeniably entertaining as hell.

"I got a fat sack of weed. I got cash money and a gun. Don't mess with me on the street. I'll pull out my gat!"

The last time I saw Flo was on the last day of eleventh grade. Instead of making us go to class and showing us movies, which was the usual last day of class routine, they let all the students go outside. I sat with Flo and a group of friends on the bleachers on the far side of the football field, away from the meddling eyes of authority figures. One of the substitute teachers, only a few years older than the graduating class, was walking around the track that circled the football field with two female students. Every time they'd walk by, we'd all make semi-loud, but vague, comments about how he was going to get laid. On the fourth or fifth time around the track, Flo decided he would join in on the fun. Unfortunately, the art of subtlety escaped poor Flo, but he did his best.

"Hey!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, "You fucking faggot! You're going to fuck them in the fucking ass!"

We all started laughing uncontrollably. The substitute teacher turned around momentarily, puffing out his chest like he was going to beat up a retarded kid, which made us laugh even harder. They walked away, and a few minutes later a different teacher came and told us we weren't allowed to sit on those bleachers since there was nobody there to supervise us.

Hey, taco. Taaacooooooooo. Hey. Hey. Taacoooo.

Halfway through fourth grade, our class got a new kid. He was much bigger than myself, probably older, and had a mullet. His name was Mark, and on the rare occassion when he would actually show up to school, he would put his head down on his desk and sleep for most of the day. A few times he entertained the class by having crazy freak-out tantrums, throwing books and yelling, and teachers would have to sit on his back and restrain him. Every time he did that, we would all scoot backwards in our desks away from the action as we watched the chaos unfold. Once they got him restrained, another teacher would usually escort the rest of us to the library while they dealt with him.

Mark sat behind me when he came to school, and he gave me my first taste of good old fashioned Midwestern racism. He was also the first guy to demonstrate to me how racist people are idiots who can't tell one group of darkies from the next.

"Hey," he'd whisper. "Hey. Hey. Taaaaacooooo. Hey, taco. Taco! Taaaaaacccccoooooo!"

Sometimes this would go on all day long. Once, he even called me "refried beans," but it probably proved too difficult to say because he only said it once.

It was so bizarre to me, I didn't even realize he was trying to make fun of me, and I never responded. I guess if I had known, I could have told him I was half Filipino, but it probably just would have confused him. I'm sure he wouldn't have known to call me Lumpia instead of Taco.

Fight the power!

When I was in 7th grade, controversy erupted at a nearby school. Some girls were being harassed by racist students who labeled them as "wiggers" because they wore baggy pants and braided their hair, and school officials were siding with the racists and saying that they weren't allowed to braid their hair. The ordeal made the news, and the girls even went on Montel to talk about what had happened. My math teacher, whose daughter went to the school in question, weighed in on the issue, seemingly siding with the racists.

"They went on TV and said they burnt a cross! That cross was on paper!" she ranted.

Years later, a neighbor would tell me that she was good friends with one of the "wigger" girls, and had witnessed things like a guy punching her in the face at school with no repercussions. At the time, however, all of my knowledge of what was going on came through the media and third-hand gossip. Regardless, it seemed clear to me that no matter what the circumstances were, even if the girls were awful bitches, there was no excuse for what was happening to them. I was entirely on their side. I signed a completely useless petition to "allow hair braiding in school," but I wanted to do something else to show my solidarity for the oppressed rural white girls. I let a couple of girls braid my hair. It was a sloppy job, but I was proud to stick it to The Man in such a manner, and chicks seemed to dig it.

On the day I braided my hair, I was sitting in computer class staring at the screen when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the computer teacher, a heavy set man whose glasses were sunk deep into his face and who always gave off a strong odor of rancid sweat.

"Have you been to the office yet?"

"No," I said, "Why?"

"You know why. Go to the office."

I got up and began walking out of class. When I got near the door, I turned around and raised my fist in the air.

"Fight the power!" I said, half-shouting.

"Hey!" called the teacher, but I had already turned and walked out the door. He chased me into the hallway and confronted me.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Fight the power."

"Do your parents teach you stuff like that?"

"No," I said.

He shook his head and told me again to go to the office. On the way there, I passed the principal, who gave me a funny look and kept walking.

"Mr. Buxton told me to come to the office," I said to the desk lady when I got to the office.

"Why?"

"Because of my hair," I told her.

"Oh, have a seat."

I sat and waited for a while, and then the principal came in. He called me into his private office.

"What did you say when you were leaving Mr. Buxton's class?" he asked me.

"Fight the power."

"Well, that's the problem," he said, "If you hadn't have said that, I would let you keep your braids, but since you said that, you have to take them out."

I didn't believe him at the time, and I still don't. He wouldn't have let me keep the braids regardless of the circumstances, but my call to arms had provided him with a convenient excuse.

I took my braids out and went back to class.

I ended up going to that school the next year, and staying there until I graduated. During my stay, I got to experience the rampant racism first hand. I got called every racial slur imaginable, except for the applicable ones. I thought it was because the racists didn't want to make fun of my white half by calling me a honkey, and flip is too obscure of a term, but they called my Mexican friend a "sand nigger," so it was probably for another reason: racists are idiots. I also learned that the loud racists, the in-your-face "White power!" shouting kind, are also just complete assholes in general.

Mr. Bayling hates certain white people.

Prior to moving out to the middle of nowhere in the fourth grade, I didn't even know that normal people were ever racist. I was shocked to hear people actually use racial slurs. By seventh grade, I had grasped the fact that racist attitudes were very widespread, but I hadn't yet caught on to the idea of white people being racist against each other. When a teacher casually called me a Polak, I had no idea what it meant, and had my friend not caught it, I'm sure I wouldn't have even remembered the incident.

Mr. Bayling was my seventh grade music teacher. He was a douche, to be sure, but I was also an incredibly obnoxious kid. I would laugh at any spoken word that could be construed as sexual in any manner, and that was probably a nightmare to deal with for a teacher who needed to talk about beats all day long. I don't remember what other sorts of shenanigans I used to pull in his class, but I recall being in trouble in his class basically every day. He would make me sit in the back of the class in a desk facing the wall, and while I was sitting there I would have to copy a letter he had written specifically for the purpose of punishing students. It was a letter to the copier's parents, explaining that they were a rotten trouble maker in class. Mr. Bayling, being the douche that he was, would make me write it over and over again until it looked nice enough. Supposedly, if I got in enough trouble, the letter would be sent home. It never was, despite being written nearly every day.

"This looks like hieroglyphics!" he told me once, crumpling up my copied letter and throwing it away. "You're going to have to copy it again!"

I copied it again, this time taking great care to make sure it the whole thing was printed immaculately. When I was finished, I drew some hieroglyphics along the margin. He crumpled it up and made me write it again.

This continued for the majority of the grading period. Music was one of the classes we were rotated into briefly during 7th grade, so I think I only had him for six weeks. For probably four of those weeks, I spent a good deal of time in the corner. During the last two weeks, though, things changed dramatically.

I was being bussed into the school district from another one, and that meant I had to leave a few minutes early so I could catch my bus. Music was the last class of the day, so it was Mr. Bayling that had to dismiss me when the time came.

One day, as I was leaving, somebody asked why I got to leave early.

"If he wants to ride the Polak bus, that's none of my business."

Polak is the Polish word for "Polish man," but is usually used as a derogatory term for anybody who is Polish. In high school I would wind up hearing a lot of Polak jokes, all of which had a punchline suggesting Polish people are all complete idiots. I'm not Polish, and in seventh grade was not aware of the slur or the stereotype, so I didn't even notice what he said.

My friend Gordon, however, did notice.

That night, Gordon told his mom what he had said, and she had called him.

During the rest of my time in Mr. Bayling's music class, I didn't get in trouble even once.

The eighteen year old eighth grader.

Jeremy came to my school when I was in twelfth grade and he was in eighth. I was 18 at the time, and so was he. He was a tall, skinny kid who the loud racists would always harass for being "too black", despite the fact that he was a pasty white kid. I never talked to him, but he seemed like an alright guy.

Dave was a guy from my grade, who I had never gotten along with. I met him in eighth grade, when he had told me that seventy five percent of all black people were in jail. Another time, for no reason, he had grabbed me by the shirt and yelled in my face that he was going to kick my ass. Dave was among the most vocal critics of Jeremy, and had apparently been trying to start a fight with him since he began attending our school. Jeremy always declined.

One morning while waiting for school to begin, I saw a huge crowd of people run towards the cafeteria. Very few things can make teenagers swarm in such a manner, so I assumed somebody must be fighting. I got up and ran, following the crowd.

The cafeteria was silent except for the packing sounds of Jeremy pounding Dave's face. The fight, as far as I could tell, was entirely one sided, with Dave covered in his own blood and trying to block Jeremy's blows. The fight was very brief, and was broken up by the principal. I later heard some students claim that Jeremy had punched the principal, but I certainly didn't see anything like that.

Dave was hustled off somewhere to be cleaned up, and Jeremy was being lead to the office.

"You fucking racist people. You fucking racist people. I never wanted any of this shit," he said, walking slowly, his hands dripping with Dave's blood. He looked genuinely saddened by what had happened. I felt bad for him because the Nazi stoners used to mess with me, too, but I was never big enough to smash one of their faces in. He was going to get kicked out of school basically because of their constant harassment.

"Come on, Jeremy, let's go," said one of the teachers who had shown up. He spoke very softly in a manner that made me wonder if he was sympathetic to Jeremy's plight.

"I didn't want any trouble...all you fucking racist people..." he said, walking into the office.

Jeremy was 18, so the police came to school and arrested him. I never saw him again, but Dave was back in school the next week.

A few years ago, Jeremy was charged with bludgeoning two people to death with a hammer during a robbery. He was found not guilty. He has three tear drops tattooed on his face that people say represent three lives that he has taken.

I got fired, so I have to work.

Megan was neither intelligent nor physically attractive. In fact, I had previously thought that she looked somewhat deformed; she lacked a proper chin and had the slightly droopy eyes of a burnout. She was racist in an ignorant but innocent country girl way, and had a boyfriend who was racist in a mean redneck way. Megan had no problem lying to him constantly as she fooled around behind his back with any guy willing to talk to her. I know I never would have started talking to her at all had I not been really drunk at a friend's party. She sat with me, completely sober, and listened to me ramble on for hours, and then wrote her phone number on my hand before she left. I probably never would have called her had I not just broken up with my girlfriend of almost three years, but some female company sounded nice.

For several weeks, we hung out all the time. She would get off work, go hump her boyfriend and clean up his apartment, and then come see me. I didn't feel guilty about anything I did, because her boyfriend was a Nazi. I was worried he might find out and kick my ass, but she assured me that he would never find out. Sweet girl. It didn't bother me too much that she would give her phone number to guys when she was out with me, or that she fooled around with nearly all of my friends, because she wasn't mine to begin with. I was happy to have a girl to make out with, and I thought she looked hot when she'd wear my jacket, covered in patches and spikes and safety pins. She was my fake punk girl.

"Do you want to go to a punk rock show?" I asked her one day, "The Queers are playing with Screeching Weasel in a couple weeks. It's going to be great."

"I don't know, I'm kind of scared. Do girls go to those things?"

"Yeah, lots of them. It's going to be a lot of fun. The Queers are the best."

"Alright," she said, "I'm in."

I had been having bad luck going to shows only to learn that they were sold out, so I bought tickets as soon as I could. I wasn't going to risk missing my chance at seeing The Queers and hanging out with Megan on the same day. It was going to be great.

The night before the show, I called her.

"Hey, you ready for that show tomorrow? It's gonna be so fucking great."

"Well," she said, hesitating, "I got fired yesterday, so I have to work."

I didn't care that I had bought her a ticket she wasn't going to use. I ended up selling it to some kid outside of the show when we got there. I did, however, care that she couldn't even be bothered to make up an excuse that made any sense at all. Fucking bitch!

I never spoke to her again.

Brett Flat-face.

"The Klan is going to burn down your house."

These are the words that Brett spoke to my sister shortly before threatening to kick my ass. I don't know exactly what lead up to this statement, nor did I hear it with my own ears. My sister had a class with him, though, and it was there that he said it.

Brett was an excessively tall, goony-looking kid who was in 7th grade, as was my sister, when I was in 8th grade. His face looked smashed flat, like somebody had hit him cartoon-style with a shovel. Given his facial deformities, he had the most tragically ironic name I've ever encountered. His last name was Flat.

My sister was a big Tupac fan in 7th grade, which was one of the reasons she and Brett didn't get along. He had just died, and Brett said he was in Hell, getting whipped and picking cotton. The fact that my siblings and I are white and Filipino half-breeds probably didn't help make Brett like us, either.

The day he threatened my sister, I approached him in the lunch line. He towered over me, but I wasn't scared of him. He seemed vaguely retarded, and thus unintimidating.

"What the fuck are you saying to my sister?" I asked him.

"Tupac is dead!"

"So the Klan is going to burn down our house?"

"Yeah. You little Fill-a-peen. You should be out in the fields, picking beans."

"Fuck you, you fucking retard hillbilly. Don't talk to my sister."

I wandered off to find my friends. I told them what happened, and then looked for Brett to show them who he was. We found him sitting by himself, eating his lunch.

"This is the guy," I said, "The fucking hillbilly who is saying the Klan will burn down our house. Hey, fuck you, inbreeder."

Brett lifted a leg into the air, exposing a cowboy boot.

"You see these boots?" he asked.

"Yeah, so?"

"I'll kick your ass!" he told me.

"No," I said, "I'll kick your ass."

It was a pretty empty threat. Brett was much bigger than I was, and I didn't really imagine we'd ever come to blows. As soon as I said it, though, Brett got up and walked out of the cafeteria. The rest of us got some food and sat down to eat.

A few minutes later, the vice principal appeared at our table.

"Are you Paul?" he asked me.

"Yeah."

"Come to my office when you're done eating."

I finished my lunch and walked to his office. Brett was sitting in there.

"What's this about you threatening Brett? You're going to kick his ass?"

"No. Brett has been harassing my little sister, saying that the KKK is going to burn down our house. He told me I should be in the field picking beans, and then he showed me his cowboy boots and said he was going to kick my ass."

I never referred to my sister as my little sister. I knew in this case it would probably add sympathy to my side, though, so I used it. I also conveniently left out the part where I said, "No, I'll kick your ass."

The vice principal turned to Brett and started yelling at him.

"Don't you ever make threats against people, and especially don't ever make racial threats or use racial slurs!"

"But...but..." Brett tried to say something, but just broke down in tears. I was excused from the office, and suffered no repercussions from the incident.

Brett never said anything like that to my sister again. He vanished from school a couple years later, but from what I understand, stayed in the area.

The Fighting Mullets

When I was in high school, there was a trio of brothers who had a reputation as being some really bad motherfuckers. Their hobbies were well known, as they were vocal about their endeavors: they liked to get really trashed, and they also liked to fight. All three of them had mullets, and would walk the halls with their hands in their pockets and their chests puffed out, terrorizing the small and the weak.

My experience with them was limited, but noteworthy in the fact that I feared them. After high school, I never saw any of them, and I heard very little. This is a documentation of what I knew about the brothers, ending with the last thing I ever heard regarding them, which was that one of them ended up dying of a gunshot wound to the head.

The oldest brother was the meanest. He was a few years older than I was, but only one grade ahead. When I started school, there was a hallway my friends and I would avoid because if we went that way, old mullet and his buddies would either knock the books out of our hands, or shove us into lockers. Technically, they'd never really shove us so much as they would shove one of their huge friends into one of us smaller guys, and it would be our bodies that went crashing against the lockers.

I once had in-school suspension and had to spend the entire day in the corner of a math teacher's class. At some point, old mullet had that teachers class. When he saw me in the corner, unable to even get up without permission, he picked up two chalkboard erasers and started hitting me with them, covering my clothes and hair with chalk dust. Being a tiny little guy, I couldn't do shit about it.

The middle brother was quiet, and by any measure the least mean. He was in the same grade as his older brother, and was once in my biology class. He hung out with the same group as old mullet, but as far as I can recall, he never did any of the shoving or book-knocking. In fact, I only ever heard him speak one time. Standing in a lunch line, I once heard him to remark, "Crack some fuckin' skulls."

There was another violent redneck in my homeroom named Derrick who liked to regale us with tales of horrific animal abuse. He was also good friends with the mullet brothers, and once told us a story illustrating a day in the life of these loving characters.

In the rural area where we lived, there were this things called sandburs. They were like tiny balls of vegetation velcro whose barbed hooks made them attach easily to skin, and were painful to remove. They grew on stalks so that passing animals would inadvertently pick them up and deposit the seeds elsewhere.

Derrick, laughing so hard he could barely speak, told us how the brothers would hanging out, shirtless in the summer heat, when the oldest mullet had taken a stalk of sandburs and smashed it into his unsuspecting youngest brother, embedding lots of them deep within his back. A good laugh was enjoyed by all, save the guy with hundreds of tiny barbed thorns buried in his flesh.

The youngest mullet was few years younger than I was. By the time he arrived on the scene at my school, the oldest one had dropped out, but the new one was ready to take his place as the meanest mullet around.

Young mullet hung out with a crowd I generally identified as the Nazi stoners. They were basically the same crowd the older mullets rolled with, only younger. They were loud, they liked getting trashed, and they were total assholes.

On the way out to the bus one day, the Nazi stoners were spitting into the wind. Young mullet spat and it came dangerously close to me, prompting a laugh from the whole group. One of them yelled, "You fucking faggot!"

"Faggot!" echoed young mullet.

"Yes," I told him, figuring I might get my ass kicked but wanting to piss them off, "I'm gay!"

His smile dissolved into a sneer. He curled one hand into a fist, and then punched his other hand, growling.

Needless to say, I was very impressed.

I don't know what ever became of old mullet or young mullet, but I do know what happened to middle mullet after high school.

Middle mullet graduated and joined the army. The war in Iraq was still a couple years away, so they cleaned him up and sent him home.

He was a changed man. He once lived for no reason other than to get fucked up. Now he didn't do any drugs.

One day he got into a huge fight with old mullet. They fought like they had never fought before, trying to break each other's faces as if they were strangers.

When it was over, middle mullet cleaned the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.

And then he went to his room and shot himself in the head.