Why Aren't You Smiling? (4 page)

“Led Zep it is!” Rick pulled the album out of its sleeve and put it on the stereo with exaggerated care. He was clearly one of those people who never scratched a record.

How long had I been standing? It seemed like forever. And what exactly were people supposed to do with their arms while they stood? Mine were hanging straight down but that seemed wrong. I tried them akimbo but that seemed worse. I folded them but thought I might look angry and let them fall again. Wrong. If I sat down would that be weird – to have just stood up and sat down again for no reason? Rick, thankfully, seemed oblivious to my absurdity.

“Is Beth your girlfriend?” The words came out unexpectedly.

“I belong to Christ,” Rick replied with an angelic smile. He returned to the couch and lit up again.

Curiosity made me uncharacteristically bold. “What does that mean?”

Rick exhaled. “You ask a lot of questions, Little Lenny.” He held out the joint. “Want some more?” I shook my head no, having developed a sudden, deep aversion to marijuana. Rick smiled and closed his eyes as if he were going to sleep. “This is some good shit.”

“Do you think Jesus got high?” I wondered.

Rick's eyes opened. “I wouldn't be a bit surprised. We know he drank wine, why not pot? Though they probably called it something different in those days.”

“Wow.”

Rick sat up straight. “Bible time!” He looked happy about it.

“OK,” I said, fearing the worst.

Rick walked over to one of the knapsacks and took out a black leather-bound Bible and set it on the coffee table. He sat down cross-legged on the floor then opened it. “We'll do bibliomancy,” he said, fanning the pages back and forth. “Close your eyes and stick your finger on something.” I did as he asked. “OK, open your eyes and read what your finger's pointing to.”

“From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. ‘Go on up, you baldhead!' they said. He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths…” I let my voice trail off. It seemed like such a horrifically disproportionate punishment. I got teased every day and yet I'd never once wished bear mauling on my tormentors.

Rick smiled. “That is so crazy!” I was momentarily relieved that Rick shared my opinion of the verse, but he continued, “We were just talking about how you didn't need to have long hair to Love and be Loved, and here the Bible is telling us that even a bald man deserves Love.”

“But… like… the… like…” I tried to unscramble my brain. “I mean, the bears, mauling or whatever the youths is not so cool, I don't think, is it?”

“You don't have to take it literally,” suggested Rick. “Too many people get wrapped up in the text and forget the spirit. The spirit is Love.” He smiled and put his hand on my shoulder as he spoke.

“I want to Love,” I said.

“You will, Leonard.”

“Most of the time I don't feel Love. I don't feel anything.”

“I feel like dancing,” said Rick. He stood up and began swaying to the beat of “Tangerine,” the only Led Zeppelin song I truly disliked. His eyes closed, and a confident, satisfied smile graced his lips, the color of which suddenly reminded me of candy apples.

“Will you teach me to Love?” I immediately wanted to crawl out of my skin with shame. I sounded like the worst dork in all of human history.

Rick stopped dancing. “I can't teach Love, but I know someone who can.” I felt a bit peeved he was pawning the job off on someone else until I saw him get down on his knees and fold his hands in prayer. Oh, right… God. I assumed a prayerful position beside Rick on the floor.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Talk to God. Tell him what's on your mind.”

Since I didn't actually believe in God, this would have to be something of a theoretical exercise, but then again, what could it hurt? I closed my eyes and directed my thoughts straight up, where I'd been given to understand the bearded, white robed, Christian deity sat, flanked by angels, on a golden throne atop a fluffy white cloud: God, this is Leonard, though I guess it's stupid to introduce myself because if you exist you know everything, which kind of brings up the point of why should I even be talking to you since you already know what I'm going to say? But I guess I'll just do it anyway. I'm praying because I don't think I know how to Love. And when kids at school hit me and call me a fag, I don't just not love them, I kind of hate them. A lot. Though I wouldn't want to send them to Hell. Burning people just seems. evil. Even if they
are
evil, that's pretty uncool. Like, when I burnt my hand on the stove when I was a kid, it really, really hurt for a long time. Making someone go through that all over their body forever seems pretty psycho. But here I am telling you how to run the universe when I should be asking for your help. I want to Love! Will you make me Love everyone? I mean, sure I love my parents and my dog, but you sort of
have
to love your family and pets, right? I'm not sure I love anything else though. Except Rick. He's been
really
nice to me. I don't think I love Beth or his friends, though. And as for all the total strangers and people in history.

“Yo, my man, where's those rolling papers?”

I opened my eyes and saw the Bandito Mustache Man tromping through the front door followed by the rest of Rick's family.

Beth spied the joint on the table. “You got the kid stoned and forgot all about us!”

“Leonard is hearing The Word for the first time,” explained Rick by way of an excuse.

“Heavy!” said Bandito Man. He was smoking a cigarette, which I thought rather unholy.

Rick's friends sprawled themselves around the room, taking every available seat and most of the floor space. “I think I'd better go,” I said.

“You don't have to,” said Rick.

“Homework,” I shrugged.

“OK.”

“We'll see each other again soon, right?”

“Sure thing, Little Lenny.”

I picked up my book bag. “OK, bye.”

“Vaya con Dios!” said Bandito Man.

I didn't know what that meant, but was too afraid of looking ignorant to ask.

The following day at school I felt reborn.
I had been stoned.
True, I hadn't liked it, had even sort of hated it, but
I had been stoned.
No longer being a Good Kid, I threw as much swagger as I could into my daily routine, opened my locker with a bang, slouched in my chair, and waited a few I-can-take-it-or-leave-it seconds before shooting up my hand to answer teachers' questions. At lunch I sauntered into the courtyard like I owned the place. A few kids on the nerd bench waved hello, expecting me to join them. I waved back to let them know there were no hard feelings, but set off in the opposite direction, into territories that had been, since time immemorial, forbidden to Dweebs. The goody-two-shoes kids seemed utterly irrelevant, perhaps even pathetic. How sad, really, that they were content to spend their lives jabbering about TV shows and brown-nosing authority figures with the hope of one day joining the great plastic suburban conformist middle class. Such was not to be my fate.

First I passed The Lawn, home of the Jocks. Boys secure atop the pecking order tossed balls and clowned around while teasing each other and bragging in loud, confident voices. They all wore new sporty clothing, striped Adidas running shoes, rugby shirts, and flared jeans that clung tightly to their lithe, athletic bodies. A few girls, the precocious kind who'd already started wearing lip gloss and doing things with their hair, sat nearby, checking out the boys and whispering amongst themselves. As I passed, a tall kid I didn't know cast aspersions on my assumed sexual preference and commented unkindly on my weight. I tried to increase my pace imperceptibly so I wouldn't look scared. The kid headed my way on an intercept course, but was fortunately diverted by the arrival of a friend with a new yo-yo.

Next came the Rear Courtyard where the Black kids hung out. Here most everyone wore flashy fashions – patterned polyester shirts, platform shoes, elephant bellbottoms, and big 'fros. Somebody's crackly transistor radio blasted the area with infectious funk tunes, and some of the kids were so cool they could bop along to the music without looking stupid. This area was actually safe for me since, to avoid the unpleasantness of a race riot, bullies of all ethnicities had adopted an unspoken agreement to persecute only Dweebs of their own kind. I slowed down to a normal pace, and to show my solidarity with the plight of the downtrodden, even ventured a sympathetic smile. It went unnoticed.

Then came The Picnic Tables, home of The Popular Kids – another danger zone. Here, two dozen white kids so generic that nobody could think of any reason not to like them sprawled with regal languor, eating their hot lunches and chattering brightly about all the parties they went to and who was dating whom. Wilson, a flaxen-haired Adonis (a disproportionate number of Popular Kids were blond), pointed my way and began jumping up and down, whooping “Ooh, ooh” like an ape. His friends laughed wildly as he threw something at me. The projectile, a wadded-up paper lunch bag, bounced harmlessly off my shoulder. Without breaking my pace, I picked it up, tossed it into a nearby trashcan, and kept walking.

Around a corner I arrived at my destination: The Benches, a long row of wooden seats affixed to the side of the gymnasium. This was the most unsupervised area on campus, and for that reason, favored by a group of reprobate boys (and a small girls' auxiliary) known as The Burnouts. Though there were perhaps twenty Burnouts in all, one never saw more than a half-dozen at one time as they were all prone to playing hooky, getting suspended, and staying home for weeks on end due to bizarre accidents and exotic ailments. When The Burnouts did show up, they affected an air of stoned indolence with conspicuously droopy eyes, bad posture, and a demeanor of sloth-like impudence.

The Burnouts provoked strong reactions. Popular Kids liked to hold their noses when a Burnout walked by and loudly proclaim, “Something stinks!” The Burnouts ignored these slights, smiling indulgently the way an adult might at a toddler who tried the old “Got your nose” gambit. The Jocks, for some reason, were particularly incensed that The Burnouts never wore white socks, and complained about this bitterly and loudly. They seldom dared attack Burnouts, though, because rather than meekly submitting to persecution as a Dweeb would, a Burnout might simply walk off campus and not come back for three days, or else go ape-shit and start throwing chairs and trashcans, completely indifferent to all consequences.

Though invariably too laid-back (or absent) to be disruptive in the classroom, the Burnouts managed to enrage the more conservative faculty by their mere existence. Loaded with resentments dating from the '60s, grouchy, white-haired teachers often cast the Burnouts as representatives of The Counterculture in classroom discussions, challenging them to defend ceding Vietnam to the Communists or people on LSD jumping out of windows. The Burnouts responded with perplexed shrugs and impertinent eye-rollings that often earned them more and longer detentions than even the real troublemakers.

Though the Burnouts intimidated me, I was fascinated that they'd somehow acquired what I considered a nearly adult level of adult coolness. Once I'd attempted to impress a Burnout named Sandy, an elfin boy who sat near me in English, by mentioning in group discussion that I'd read Carlos Casteneda and Richard Brautigan, who I knew to be the preferred literature of potheads. The normally indifferent Sandy had actually smiled at me! It was just a small smile but I treasured its memory so much, it embarrassed me. Had I ever come across a genie offering three wishes, one would have been that Sandy and I become close friends.

Taking a seat on the Benches, I felt too exhilarated to eat but didn't have anything else to do. I took out my sandwich, turkey on whole wheat with masses of sprouts, and began a careful survey of my new surroundings. One boy ate alone, staring bullets into space in a manner that struck me as Disturbed. Another ignored his hot lunch while busily drawing on his faded blue jeans with a ballpoint pen. A pair of kids sang dirty versions of popular songs, turning the Wings anthem “Band on the Run” into “Fag on the Run” and Elton John's “Crocodile Rock” into “Cock-A-While Rock.” Sandy and some other kid played a furious game of handball against a crumbling stucco wall. A frisson of fear tingled my spine. I felt brave, alone, terrified, and transcendently happy.

Then a miracle occurred. Someone sat next to me. He wasn't strictly a Burnout, more of a borderline case. Neither terrible at sports, overly fat, thin, or shabbily dressed, he was still an outcast, possibly because he'd been saddled with the unlikely name of Mordecai in a world full of Davids and Michaels. He could almost have been a Dweeb, except that he wore his dark brown hair in a long Prince Valiant style and kept it out of his face with a black silk headband that had a bad-ass hippie Kung Fu biker outlaw look to it.

Mordecai pulled out a sandwich from his dirty canvas book bag and gave me a little nod. “Hey.”

My exhilaration turned into a sort of cheerful panic. “Hey.”

Uncomfortable silence followed. I racked my brain for something to say while Mordecai stared straight ahead with a grave look on his face. I took the chance that his solemnity was the outward manifestation of a deep soul and hazarded a risky conversational opener.

“What do you think the meaning of life is?”

Mordecai's brow furrowed for a second. “Damned if I know,” he said, thankfully giving no indication he found my question unusual.

“I think it could be to find The Truth,” I said.

Mordecai nodded. “Possibly.”

“Or maybe to Love your fellow man.”

“My dad says Love is just another way of saying Need.”