Dan Versus Nature
Authors: Don Calame
Charlie and I are getting our asses punched.
That’s right,
punched.
It’s the wrestling team this time. The fists come fast and furious — to the back of my head, my kidneys, my shoulders.
And, yes, my ass.
I don’t know who the hell’s punching my ass, exactly, because I’m rolled up on the gymnasium floor like a pill bug. When you’re sickly skinny, in a school rife with steroid abusers and future ax murderers, and you happen to be best friends with a wiseass like Charlie Bungert, you learn fairly quickly to protect your face and vital organs when you’re taking a beating.
Particularly if you don’t want to be grilled for details when you get home.
“What did you call us, you little snot socket?” someone asks, punctuating his sentence with another stinging slam to my ribs.
I
didn’t call them anything. It was Charlie who referred to them as a bunch of “uriniferous homunculi.” I was merely a bystander.
A bystander who made the fatal mistake of snorting at Charlie’s creative slight.
Which they deserved, by the way. Charlie was only trying to take a team photo for the school paper, and the guys wouldn’t cooperate. They kept flipping birds, picking their noses, and flashing their hairy butt cracks just as Charlie was about to snap the picture.
Coach Pullman started muttering stuff about how “artistic types” don’t know how to take command of a situation and that he had “much more important things to deal with.” Then he grabbed his
Sports Illustrated
and headed to his office.
And that’s when things really got out of control.
Charlie lowered his camera and stared at the team. “I wonder,” he said, “if it might be possible to feign — for the fleetest of seconds — a mere soupçon of decorum.”
Of course, no one on the wrestling team had any idea what Charlie had just said. But instead of admitting this, one of them called him a “snobby crotch waffle,” which got a big laugh from the team.
And then someone started chucking tape balls.
And dirty jockstraps.
And ratty wrestling shoes — one of which knocked the lens off Charlie’s camera.
“Stick that up your decorum!” somebody shouted, sending another wave of laughter through the squad.
Charlie’s face darkened. There’s nothing in the world he cares more about than that camera. His parents gave it to him for his tenth birthday — the last birthday they ever got to celebrate with him.
“It’s funny,” he said far too loudly, examining the body of his Nikon. “I didn’t know uriniferous homunculi could actually speak.”
And that’s when I snorted.
Big
mistake.
“Excuse me?” Rick “’Roid Rage” Chuff spat, his caveman forehead jutting. “What was that?”
“I said . . .” Charlie replied. “You’re surprisingly articulate for a bunch of uriniferous homunculi.”
Rick glanced at his nine buds, each of whom shrugged.
“Would you like me to translate?” Charlie offered.
“Aw, fuck, Charlie, don’t,” I begged under my breath, taking a step backward.
“Yeah,” Rick said. “Why don’t you do that for us?”
“Urine. Bearing. Trolls,” Charlie said, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “Trolls who carry around sacks of their own piss. Certainly explains the unwashed vagrant smell wafting off of you.”
Then they rushed us. Like lions pouncing on a couple of wounded gazelles.
And now here I lie on the gritty gym floor. Taking yet another beating with Charlie.
“Who smells like piss now, Bungert?” Rick Chuff says, hauling Charlie up by his camera, the black-and-yellow Nikon strap wrapped around his neck like a noose.
And damn if Charlie doesn’t sniff the air through his bloody nose as he dangles there.
“Hard to tell,” he rasps. “Your fecal-scented breath is overpowering every other odor at the moment.”
Rick quickly yanks the camera higher into the air, lifting Charlie off the ground, the tips of his toes barely brushing the floor. “Not so easy to make jokes when your windpipe’s being crushed, now is it?”
Charlie wheezes, his eyes bulging, his face turning blue as he desperately claws at his neck.
I don’t have time to think. I quickly roll away from my attackers, reaching out and grabbing whatever’s close at hand — a jockstrap, as it turns out. I stumble to my feet and hurl the dirty, limp thing at Rick.
It whiffles in the air and lands right on Rick’s hand, the one holding Charlie’s camera, where it dangles for a moment like an ornament, the nut-brown ass stain on the thong in full view.
Everyone freezes.
“What the Christ?” Rick drops the camera like it’s on fire and shakes the athletic supporter off his hand.
Charlie crumples to the floor.
Rick turns to me, his eyes full of all the world’s hate.
“You’ve just signed your death warrant, bitch,” Rick says. “Grab him!”
The entire wrestling team lunges at once, gripping my arms, my legs, my shirt, my hair, stretching me out like da Vinci’s
Vitruvian Man.
Someone wraps the jockstrap around my face, the molded plastic cup covering my nose and mouth like a respirator. Several curly pubes cling to the cloth, tickling my cheeks.
“Breathe deep, shithead,” Owen Rocco says.
I try breathing through my mouth, but it’s impossible not to smell the horrible, farty stink of sweaty sphincter.
I gag and choke back some vomit.
’Roid Rage Rick towers in front of me, his fist clenched and cocked.
I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for a horrible pounding.
“Hey! Screwheads!” Mr. Pullman calls out from somewhere. “Cut the crap already. Save it for the meet.”
Not exactly the response I would have hoped for — a few years in San Quentin would have seemed more appropriate — but at least it’s enough to stop the onslaught.
I peek through one squinted eye. Rick’s fat finger is in my face.
“This is not over, dicktard,” Rick says. “Not even close.” He flicks my nose hard. “I can see the future, and yours is filled with blood and pain.”
And with that, the Willowvale High School wrestling team releases me. I drop to my knees and pull the filthy jockstrap from my face as Rick and his buddies lumber off toward the gym doors.
“You OK?” I ask Charlie, struggling to my feet. I flip my left wrist and check the black face on Dad’s old Timex, make sure the crystal isn’t cracked. It’s the first thing I always do after taking a beating. Even though the thing hasn’t worked since he took off six years ago.
Charlie clears his throat. “I’ve had worse.” He runs his tongue over his blood-rimmed teeth. “No money from the tooth fairy this time, but it was still worth it.”
I laugh, which sends a screaming pain shooting through one of my ribs. “Shit.” I wince and clutch my lower back. “You’ve got to stop doing this, Charlie. I don’t know how much more my body can take.”
“You can run, you know,” Charlie says, picking up his camera lens and his glasses. “It’s not a precondition of my friendship that you take these beatings with me.”
“It’s not like I had time to consider my options.”
Charlie replaces the lens on the Nikon and checks for damages. “Oh, please. A Magic Eight Ball could have predicted that was coming. And yet you stood by my side.
And
you took a soiled jock to the face for me. I am forever in your debt. If you require something — help with a paper, an adjustment of your report card grades, porn site passwords, anything — you just let me know.”