Superhero Laundry List, Chapter Three Part One

If you haven't go back a couple entries to Chapter One.

            Maybe you’re thinking, “Doogie, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you remember Spider-man, and how he tried to make money with his super-powers, and all that happened was his uncle got killed?” I’ll tell you right away that story was bull$h*t. How many random homicides happen a day? How many people have their primary care-giving male adult, who is law-abiding, killed in a random car-jacking? Not that many. All that was just Stan Lee (the comic writer) forcing Spider-man into a life of crime-fighting. I’m not worried about my dad. And if I bump into a criminal, I’ll smack him upside the head, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

            Just cause I could beat people up didn’t mean I could stop a crime. You ever notice how every time Clark Kent goes to the bank it’s getting robbed? I don’t see many crimes. I’ve never seen a person abducted or killed. People get beat up sometimes, but usually they said something they shouldn’t have, or walked down the wrong block. I mean, when I tested my powers, when I went for these long jogs that were more like sprints, and punched holes in things (or dents, it’s not like I could punch a hole in everything) I would have loved to run across some thug trying to steal a woman’s purse. I’d beat him up, and she’d thank me. “How old are you, teenage hero? Let me thank you.” Kisses and eroticness ensues.

            Miss Farr said that Hamlet is a chauvinist, that once Ophelia breaks up with him, he has no use for her, he becomes dishonest, and mean, and calls her a whore, and that was the way every man was back then, and still was. The men around Ophelia all sought to control her sexuality. She said anytime we made a woman a sex object, like in my little fantasy, we were chauvinists. I didn’t say it, but I was like, “You’re saying I’m not supposed to have sexual fantasies about women? Why does the internet exist then?” I didn’t like what she said, but I still thought about it. My fantasy did kind of suck for the woman. I mean, she was supposed to recover from the drama of being mugged by hooking up with a fourteen year old kid.

            So anyway, superpowers. Yeah, there weren’t a lot of crimes. Maybe people started committing obvious crimes in broad daylight just so they could meet Spiderman or Superman. “Yo, the coolest thing happened. I pretended to take this old lady’s purse, I’d have given it back, and Spiderman showed up and kicked my ass. Don’t worry, I landed a good shot.” It’d be worth it, I think, the ass-kicking for the story.

            Coach felt weird putting me in. I had only practiced for half a day, and the other kids had been working out for a month. We were playing against Northeast away and we’d been undefeated in the public league up to that game, and so was Northeast. Their team was bigger, and faster than us and we’d get a couple of good passes before one of their players would bump us off the ball, hit it down the field, and we’d scramble back. One of these times their forward, a lean Haitian kid got the ball and scored. Then he did it again. Everyone on our bench was relieved when the whistle blew for half time.  

I knew Coach was thinking about putting me in up top in the second half. We hadn’t generated any chances of getting those two goals back, and pulling out a win, He was wrestling inside between his ideas of fair, because I’d only practiced for half a day while the other kids had been working for a month, and I’d be taking their playing time, and his desire to win. He looked at me, and I knew winning won in his small and coachy heart. “Doogie, go in for John.”

I went in like I did in every little league game I ever played in. Butterflies in the stomach, worried how’d I do. I ran around the field, worried my first touch on the ball would be crappy. It was. Aiden hit me a pass from the wing, and too eager, uncalm, I hit it too far from me and their goalie picked it up. If I didn’t do something soon Coach would pull me out of the game.

The next chance I got, I made a diagonal run, and the ball was slid through to me. My first touch was better, and in two strides I unleashed a shot that powered past the goalie.

  The stopper pretty much rode my butt for the duration of the game. He was a senior and twice my size (but he had no super-powers). The second goal came off a through ball that a kid on our team just kicked up field, then I turned on the jets, and if I didn’t have superpowers, the goalie would have had it, but I got there first, took it around him as he dived at me, and passed it into the net. Tie game.

            At that point they double marked me. Everywhere I went, these two big seniors were banging into me, throwing elbows, and grabbing my jersey. We set up for a corner, and they were basically both hugging me. I shook, bringing up my super-powered elbows and swinging them into one of their groins, and throwing my shoulder into the other’s gut (they were a lot taller than me). That gave me the space to run, and I took off in time to see the ball curling in. I leapt way up, heading the ball into the net.

I could hear the bench screaming. The parents rooting for Northeast shook their heads in disgust. After the game, Coach said, “Doogie, you played well.” Well? Coach that was better than you ever dreamed of playing. I was spectacular.

            The other kids congratulated me on the hat trick, but they were half-hearted. They had hoped they’d become the kid who scored a hat trick against the best team in the league, then I showed up out of nowhere and took that job.

            The next day in advisory I tried talking about the win, but nobody in my home room cared about soccer, so it didn’t matter. I was starting to regret the sport I picked, thinking football would be a better way to become cool, when I got to fourth period. Mike looked over at me and said, “Heard you turned into a soccer god.”

            I said, “What do you know? Illumen remembers the weak.” It was a quote from the video game when Shyheem prayed to get his flames that helped him defend the little guys.

            Mike said, “He forgot about me.”

            I said, “You’re more like Burt.” That’s the sidekick character.

            “Thanks.”

            Miss Farr had us opening up Hamlet. It was a little later, when we got put in pairs, and were discussing the text that my achievement on the soccer field started to pay off. My pair was pretty much done, and Alexandra leaned over and said, “Hey, Doogie, Aiden told me you had a great game.”

            “Yeah,” I said. I tried to think of anything to add to that, but I couldn’t, so I said it again, “Yeah.” Fortunately she was ready to talk for the two of us.

            “That’s great. Aiden said the team really needed a good striker and you just came out of nowhere.” I was mad at myself that Alexandra talking to me and even complimenting me, made me this happy, but it did. I had to duck a little to hide the grin.

            I said, “Yeah. I’ve been training.”

            She said, “Keep doing whatever you’re doing.” There it was. A hot girl, approving of me, complimenting my performance.

            At lunch that day, Mike was like, “You were talking a lot with Alexandra.”

            “Yeah, she heard about my game. She was impressed.”

            Mike said, “Did you tell her about my impressive record of completing “Illumen’s Children” without dying once? I bet that would impress her.”

            Kyana, who had her Bio textbook open and was preparing for the test next period looked up and said, “I don’t know why you like her, Mike.” I knew why, I just didn’t know what the point was. I didn’t even dream about myself having a chance, and I had superpowers.

            Mike said, “How’d you get so much better so fast? Maybe if you show me how I can become a star too.”

            I mumbled some stuff about soccer being a life-long pursuit, and how the skills are hard to pick up. I didn’t want to tell him, because he wouldn’t believe me, and also because he’d tell me I needed to go stop crime. I couldn’t believe he would consider playing sports to get her attention. This is a kid who told the gym teacher that he is allergic to spherical objects. It bothered me because I’d had a similar crush in eighth grade. I lost a lot of sleep over Sara Mills.

            Sara was the prettiest girl in Mayfair Elementary. She didn’t talk to any of us boys except Max, and the rumor was that she and Max cut school some days and had sex at his house. Sara wore a lot of make-up, but the thing that really was amazing was that she had the breasts of a full grown woman. Somehow they showed up over the summer between sixth and seventh. Now, all the guys were amazed by this, and found our heads swiveling away from math problems to try and take in this bigger problem--where did these grapefruits (they seemed that momentous) come from? Why were they so powerful to us, inspiring our imagination, drawing our attention like the tractor beam pulling in the Millennium Falcon?

Over the next year, the other guys developed a strain of realism I couldn’t understand. They made out with the girls that would make out with them, and who were developing their own lower powered tractor beams. Maybe I didn’t think any of them would make out with me. Maybe I was just stupid, but I stayed in love with Sara Mills. I’d stumble out the door after her, walking behind her, hoping she’d drop something so I could pick it up. After a few weeks she said, “Doogie, stop following me,” and I said, “Sara, I need to follow you.”

            “What a loser,” she pronounced. You can imagine how I felt at that moment. Until she said that, I believed that the strength of my feeling about her would convince her, that she’d turn around and say, “Doogie, you keep following me and I can tell you must love me more than anything. I’m so overwhelmed by your passion. I want to see what it feels like to be with a crazy in love person.”

At that moment, I knew she was right, and more importantly, that she wasn’t going to change her opinion. I’m not going to say that I cried that night, just in case my dad reads this book. The summer after eighth grade I considered my passion for Sara. I decided that the other boys had it right. “If you can’t be with the one you want, love the one you’re with.” It pained me to see my friend make the same mistake I had made, following his desire, with no respect to reason, or his own feelings.

            Usually Mike and I would hang out and play Illumen’s Children at my house after school. I was scared to go to his house, and he was kind of scared to take me. He explained that he didn’t have a lot of respect as it was, and showing up with a loser white kid would just make him a bigger target. I had practice, so I told Mike maybe we could hang on Saturday but he frowned, because our transpasses only works on weekdays.

            After practice I got home, and found another big surprise. Alexandra had friended me, so had three other girls, and about half the guys on the soccer team. I accepted all the requests, and then clicked through Alexandra’s photos. For the first time I thought about what it would be like to be with Alexandra. Sorry, Aiden, sorry, Mike.

            Miss Farr asked us when we were through Act III and Claudius had just given it all away by losing his cool in response to Hamlet’s play, what Hamlet should do. The kids from the tough neighborhoods are like, “Kill Claudius.” The rest of the class kind of agreed, though they were not used to saying characters ought to kill other characters in English class. It’s usually more about peace and stuff.

Miss Farr started to point out how complicated it all is. “It’s not easy to fix bad situations. The king is guarded. The king is his step-dad uncle.” She went on and explained how English people at the time of Shakespeare, after a bunch of civil wars, wanted clear lines of succession. They didn’t want kingship called in question because that meant civil war, which is basically a shit show for everyone.

She said to us, “But the real point here is, Hamlet never says, ‘I should be King. He never even brings that problem up.’ You really have to see that Hamlet doesn’t view himself quite as an adult in this situation. He thinks he’s a kid, and he’s waiting for someone to show up and take responsibility. That’s part of the challenge here. At what point do Ophelia and Hamlet move beyond trying to sort through all the expectations, and be themselves, and live for themselves and choose what they will be responsible for? When do they be?”

            I hear you, Miss Farr. I’m taking responsibility for who I am. I’m about to go score four goals today, and have all the girls scream my name.

Super-hero Laundry List Chapter Two

Chapter Two

            Mike talked about how hot Alexandra was, and I tried to point out to him that she was out of his league, and already had a boyfriend. Her boyfriend was a sophomore, who lived in Chestnut Hill, which is a rich neighborhood. He wore hipster shoes that were part of this line of green, eco-friendly not the color, shoes that cost a couple hundred dollars. Also, he made the soccer team.

            The second week of school a girl from our English class walked by. She was a short girl, a black girl who didn’t talk in class, but she had that look of a kid trying to pretend they’re going somewhere.

            “Kyana,” Mike yelled.

            “Hi, Mike,” she said.

            “Come over here,” he yelled.

            She walked over.

            “You need somewhere to sit,” Mike asked.

            “No,” she said. This was an obvious lie. I scooted over, and patted the faux-wood surface of the table bench. She shrugged and sat. She agreed that Miss Farr was her favorite teacher. She didn’t know anything about Illumen’s Children, or Zelda, but she was a girl and cooler than us.

            She didn’t really take my side in the discussions about Alexandra, saying things like Alexandra would be lucky to have Mike, but she was probably too stupid to know it.

            I said, “The world is in tiers. I might think Beyonce is super hot, but she’s a nine point five on the hotness scale, and I’m a 5.5- medium looking, intelligent, my family is not rich. It’s not going to happen, I don’t care what Miss Farr says.”

            Mike said, “Beyonce is a ten. You are a four.”

            Kyana said, “I think couples are based on who is right for who. Some people just want a hot girl, like me, and some people want a nice girl, like Mike.”

            Mike said, “Thanks for calling me nice, but I think you’re not so much hot as luke-warm.”

            Kyana said, “You’re shaped like the big gym ball, the one they play crab soccer with.”

            I said, “I like that gym ball. You guys stop fighting.”  

            Kyana said, “I don’t belong here with you nerds.”

            I said, “Yeah, you’re like an eight, and me and Mike are fives, which proves my point.”

            Kyana didn’t respond, she was busy picking the pickles out of her lunchroom hoagie. She would break down the hoagie, searching amidst the shredded lettuce and meat slices for the pickles. When she found one, she ate it in three or four tiny bites. I thought liking Kyana, a girl who actually talked to us, would be a better plan for Mike, but I never talked to him about that. I knew her family wasn’t rich from the way that she dressed in gym clothes half the time, but her butt looked cute even in sweats. I thought that she was like us, not a total loser, but without any clear friends at that period, she made sure she found somewhere to sit, or more importantly, someone to sit with. I wondered what the week was like before she found us. Did she wander the whole school during her fifty two minute period, trying to appear as if she was going somewhere the whole time?

***

            Monday Mike came over to my house.

            Mike said, “How are you, Mrs. Foley.”

            My mom said, “I’m fine, Mike. How was school?”

            “We got a lot of English homework.”

            She laughed because I talked about English homework all the time. We went upstairs and got situated. Mike played as Shyheem, this kid who has these fire powers that he recharges by praying, and I was Seketeme, a tree person who shoots arrows straight as lasers. We were playing for a while, I defended Mike while he prayed up his energy bar, and then he purged the screen of enemies with holy fire bursts. We were so into it, we didn’t realize what time it was. “Shit,” Mike said.

            “What?”

            “It’s eight o’clock.” The school district gives us transpasses to get to and from school, but they expire at seven thirty. Mike had no way to get home. We sat there for a moment.

            “You think I could sleep over?”

            “I don’t know, probably not on a school night.”

            I found my mom. “Mom, Mike missed the transpass time. Can you give him bus fare?”

            She said, “I’ll drive him, it’s late to be taking the bus.”

            Mike said, “Mrs. Foley, you don’t need to do that.”

“I’m not letting you ride the bus now, Mike. It’s no big deal.” My mom really liked Mike because a) Mike’s existence saved me from being friendless, b) he was respectful, and c) having him around made her feel less bad about my dad’s racism, so she wasn’t going to miss this chance to help out. We got in the car.

            Mayfair, where I live, it’s not great, but it mostly has lawns, and twins, two houses built together. You don’t see a lot of litter, and to me the houses look kind of small and stupid. We drove down the boulevard, past the shopping center that my mom says has too many people in it. The houses got closer and closer together, and exited at Broad St. We drove through the streets to Mike’s house, and I could see my mom was tensed up a little at the groups of young men on the corner, half of their shirts off. Some of them were slap-boxing, and one group was cursing at the other. One saw my mom and started walking toward the car, “Got that hot tip!” he shouted. Mom drove off, even though it was a red light.

            The house windows were covered in plywood, or had no glass, and little kids where running around like no-one cared, even though it was eight thirty and dark out. Trash pooled in the gutter and the whole place looked like no-one cared about anything.

            Mike said, “Welcome to my neighborhood.”

            “Nice,” I said.

            “Douglas Regan Foley!”

            “What, mom?”

            “Don’t make fun of his neighborhood.”

            Mike said, “It’s okay, Mrs. Foley. This place sucks. I’m getting out of here as soon as I can.”

            She didn’t know what to say to that because it was true, but she thought it was rude to agree. We dropped Mike off and he was really thankful. My mom didn’t say anything on the ride home, but she was thinking the same thing as me, how come a nice kid like Mike had to live in such a bad place.

***

           

I was doing my homework, reading Hamlet, and writing my paraphrase, when my dad yelled upstairs. “Where’s the fucking remote.”

            “I don’t know, ask mom,” I said.

            “I’d rather ask Satan.”

            My mom yelled, “Why don’t you go see him then.”

            My dad concluded, “I”m going to the bar.”

            She shouted, “You might find him there!”

            He slammed the door going out, and my mom started banging stuff in the kitchen. I don’t know why they talk that way. They’re nice people to everyone else.

            I got up and walked downstairs, wanting to get outside before my mom brought me in to the conversation. I grabbed my coat, and she yelled, “You going out too?”

            “I’m just going for a walk, Mom.” 

            “Fine, I’ll stay here by myself.”

            “Steve is here.” Steve is my little brother.

            She dried her hands on her butt and stepped out of the kitchen. “Doogie, I just want him to stay home one time. Why does he go to the bar every night?”

            My mom used to be hot, I’ve seen the pictures where my dad and her are going to senior prom. They’re gazing into one another’s eyes like they belong on the cover of a romance novel. I stared at it a long time, because it doesn’t make sense, how they used to be that, and now it’s how it is. She’s mom-butted now, and her cheeks have these red spots but that’s not why, I mean, my dad grew a big belly since then. They used to be seven point fives, now they’re both fours. I don’t understand how you go from love to what they do now. I wished I knew why they went from love to hate, but I don’t and it just depressed me to even think about it so I said, “I don’t know, mom.” I walked out the door before she said anything else.

            I walked up toward the R8 tracks. It was icey and there was still snow on the ground but I got up on the tracks. It was quiet up there. A half-moon hung above the trees and I could see my breath. The tracks reflected the moonlight.

            This is where my story gets weird. Or maybe I should say, this was when I actually became all I could be. Basically, imagine I just gave you a really good sentence that let you know that what is coming up is really momentous. I was thinking about Hamlet’s parents and mine, about how angry he gets when he thinks about his mom having sex with Claudius, and how I felt the same away about my mom and dad not giving a shit about each other, and how helpless I was to do anything about it. “Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt . . .” I couldn’t help but feel that Miss Farr didn’t really understand Hamlet. It wasn’t as if he could just run away to school, become all, be all he wanted to be, and not listen and not care about what was happening. Gertrude was still his mom, even if she pissed him off. Here I was, only a couple hundred steps away from my mom, and feeling guilty about that. Imagine how guilty he’d feel when he was an ocean away.

            I thought I heard a train, it was loud, and whirring, and then light like super-powered headlights came flooding down. The problem was, whatever was shooting the light all around wasn’t on the tracks, it was above them, coming down toward them. Peeling off it, like a comet, were sparks. I stepped back, maybe to get out of the way, but mostly just amazed. The lights turned toward me and swallowed me.

            Okay, that sounds weird. All I know is, it came toward me and then surrounded me and I heard voices. I could see light all around me, and beyond, and kind of dimly was the rest of the world, like the people I knew were there. I could hear two voices, I thought, and I thought I saw two golden figures in the midst of the lightning showers of light.

            I thought I heard them say, “Who then will wear the mantle?”

            “This is the one.”

            “But he has not the strength.”

            “That is for the mantle.” I’m going to interrupt the story. The next day I asked Miss Farr what mantle meant. She said it was like a cape, but that it was also used metaphorically to mean a role of responsibility. She said, “I’m old, and I find a young teacher to take my spot, and I say, ‘I’m passing the mantle to you, young teacher.’” So that’s what the weird golden dudes were talking about, some sort of garment of a responsible role. Yeah, it didn’t make much sense to me, either.

            “The mantle has been salvific before, but never for one such as this.”

            “Such is the will.”

            I couldn’t say anything, too much shock, and looking back, I wonder if the conversation was just made up in my head.

            The light seemed to turn from yellow bright to blue incandescent, and then it took off, a ball of shimmer and spark, leaving me on the tracks. Then the light lifted, and zoomed off up through the air, dwindling like a shooting star.

            I looked down at myself to check that I was alright. Light was shooting out of my fingertips, and my arms were glowing. It seemed that brightness was boiling out of my collar, and under my pant cuffs, like I’d been filled up, and now it was leaking out.

            “Shit,” I said. The same moment I said that I felt strong, and I just took off running. There I was, zooming down the tracks, jumping over ten or fifteen ties at a time, choosing when to put my foot down. Then I leapt up and started running on the rail, and even though I was running twice as fast as I ever had, I had no problem running on that thin metal ledge.

            I started laughing, and then I jumped in the air and did a full flip. I never did that before, but I landed lightly on two feet. I felt fantastic like just about anything was possible for me.

            Now, you probably want to ask a bunch of questions about the weird light. You’re figuring, either this guy is cray cray, or I want to find that light for myself. I wish I could tell you more. I don’t know what it was all about, why the aliens, or spirits, or whatever, decided to give me super-powers. That’s a question I found myself returning to later on, but at the time all I could feel was what it was to be a boy squared. I thought a lot about that moment, and what it meant to me and what it might mean to others.

            Miss Farr, she’d probably have scientifically investigated. Any adult would have been careful, even terrified of the unexainable event. Me? I was still half boy, and I still loved to run and jump. The wind going by my ears was excuse enough for sprinting, and the thing that stopped me before, running out of breath, barely happened that night. When I leapt into the air, it was with so much power- I was thrown, catapulted up. There in the air, I calculated flips and turns, before landing as easy as a cat. Every so often I punched things.

            If you have never been, or don’t remember being one, I’ll explain: boys punch things. Even things that are harder than human flesh, like concrete and trees. I guess boys think that maybe, one time, their fist will prove harder than these things, or maybe, they just want to show they can stand the pain. Well that night.

            I punched a plastic wall in Fox Chase station. It shattered. I punched a steel girder going over a bridge. It didn’t hurt that much. I shook my hand and forgot I hit it. I punched a tree, the bark came off. Sorry tree.

Those train tracks run out past Fox Chase, I zoomed along them, leaping tie to tie, racing along the rails. I raced through the trees of the parks, behind the backs of houses, imagining people looking out and seeing only a blur. Next thing I knew I was on a steel girder bridge looking down at the green glinting waves of the Delware, almost in Trenton, New Jersey. That river looked like I felt, a mighty mass, a multiplicity of movements, a murmuring of energy. (That’s alliteration for you, Miss Farr.)

I turned home, not because I needed to, but because somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that tomorrow was a school day. I started to walk when I was a mile from home. I was a little tired, but mostly I had something to think about, beside how hopelessly uncool I was.

I asked myself what I could do with it.

            Then it hit me. I wasn’t a five point five guy anymore. I was a nine point five, maybe a ten. I could run faster, hit harder, jump higher than any other guy at our school. All the girls would like me when I became an athletic hero. I was going to be on the soccer team. I was going to be a star. Here I come, Beyonce.

            It always bothered me that superheroes never used their abilities to get money or become superstar athletes. Didn’t any of them want what every kid wants, which is to be liked, admired, and seen as insanely sexy? I was going to live the dream, go back to Wittenberg, and use my talents to get what I wanted. Miss Farr would be proud.

***

            When you’ve already been cut from a team, and a surprise alien visitation gives you superpowers, you can’t walk into the coach’s office and tell him, “I’ve got superpowers, let me on the team.” I wandered down the staircase to the coach’s office. I was confident about it, although there was no reason to be. I walked into the coach’s office and I said, “Coach, I’ve been training really hard. I think, when you see what I can do, you’ll want me on the team.”

            He shook his head. “Doogie, there’s only one try-out. You want to try-out again, wait until next year.” He looked down at some paper, pretending he knew how to read so I’d leave.

            My next step was to go out to practice. I stood on the sidelines with my own ball. Some of the guys said hi, others made comments, “Wasn’t he cut?” I ignored most of them. When coach set the team to juggling the ball, I dropped the ball onto my right foot, kicking it up with small taps. It was as if time had slowed down, the ball moved slower, and I moved faster. I flicked it to my left foot, and kept it up there for a while. Then I passed it to my head, and with small headers kept it up. I walked over to the coach doing the seal (bouncing it on the head) dribble. If you don’t know, this takes a lot of skill.

            “See,” I said.

            He said, “How’s that going to help in the game.” Once I had him in a conversation I knew I was going to get on the team.

            I said, “This is just some of what I’ve learned.” The ball was still bouncing on my head. You need to see me in a game.”

            He put me in the practice scrimmage later. The first time down the field, I took a bad touch, a little too much power, and the sweeper cleared the ball. I imagined Coach thinking, that kid still sucks. The second time down the field, the winger put in a cross that was behind me. I took two steps back to where the ball was falling, a couple yards behind the eighteen. I twisted into an acrobatic side volley, basically kicking the ball while doing a back flip, my feet behind me and above my head, my right foot connecting perfectly with the ball, cannoning it into the upper ninety of the goal.

            It was so amazing a play that no-one said anything for about three seconds afterward. Then they all started clapping. After the scrimmage, Coach came up to me. “I’m willing to put you back on the team. We’ve got a game tomorrow.”

Super Hero Laundry List: Chapter One

This is my new project's first chapter. Earlier I had the first page, but the first chapter gets more into the social scene for a kid who finds he no longer has the credentials for the nerd niche and doesn't have the swag for anything else. I think of this as a working title, so feel free to add suggestions. 

Super Hero Laundry List

Chapter 1

Miss Farr was getting kind of animated. She’s got this red frizzy hair that shakes when she’s making a point and right then it was vibrating. We all watched her, even if we weren’t really paying attention, because her green eyes dart around the room lighting on math textbooks, cell phones and closed eyes. Her energy that day came for the You-Can-Be-Who-You-Want-To-Be-topic. She was going on about it. 

I usually did the eye contact, head-nodding, fake listen for this speech. Every adult in my life gave it at some point. I figured out that it’s a big lie. If it was true, how come there were janitors, and McDonald’s employees? Did they say to themselves when they were kids, “Hey, my dream is mopping up all the urine that misses the target?” Personally, I had a few dreams already that hadn’t worked out. I wanted to be on the soccer team, but the coach cut me the third day of try-outs. I also wanted to be a superhero since I was six. I wanted to be able to shoot webs like Spider-Man swinging through skyscrapers, delivering justice for beautiful girls. 

My parents were living proof that it was a lie. My mom wanted to work at a daycare, wiping snot off three-year-olds upper lips? My dad liked roofing? (This is rhetorical, but I realize you haven’t been up on a roof in the Philly summer. You sweat so much, carrying everything up a ladder, working with a torch, melting rubber on one hundred degree days.) Even Miss Farr, who we could all tell is really into her job, talked about how she was going to become a lawyer someday.

So like I said, I usually don’t listen to the You-Can-Be-Anything-You-Want-To-Be Speech. That day I listened because Miss Farr was talking about Hamlet. For some reason she thought that freshmen could understand Shakespeare, not to mention Hamlet, which she was always telling us was one of his hardest plays. She had these elaborate assignments were we interpreted scenes for homework and had other kids acted them out. At first I was mad, because it was really hard to understand, but then after a couple of weeks, I got into his story. He was basically like any other kid, caught in the middle of his parents’ dysfunctional relationship and weighted expectations. Imagine how heavy that shit is, “Revenge, Hamlet!” It sure makes getting As and Bs seem easy.  

Miss Farr said, “You know, Hamlet is an gifted young person. He could have done anything. He is respected by commoners like the guards, and also the nobles, like Horatio. Imagine a student at Central who’s cool with the jocks, the nerds, the white kids, the black kids, everyone. That’s the kind of guy Hamlet is. 
“Every speech he makes shows that he is quicker witted than those around him. He’s an athlete; we learn about that later. So, I think when he says, “To be, or not to be” he’s not just contemplating existence, but whether it’s worth pursuing his dreams. He wanted to go back to school, but his mother asked him not to. 
“I should say that I think saying you can live your dreams doesn’t mean you can be anyone, but it means you can be the best possible you and live the life you want to live. You are free, young Americans, to pursue your happiness. It’s going to take some courage. You’re going to have to decide to be, to be you.”
That sounded nice. The idea that I could be the next soccer superstar or president pissed me off. The idea that I could work and live the life I wanted, well, that’s a little better (like the super-hero option is out, but at least I can be happy). I’d like to live a good life. To me that’s doing a job that’s not roofing, something where it’s not just a hurting body. I’ve got a brain, right? I also would like to be spending more intimate time with girls. 
Miss Farr went on, “Why isn’t Hamlet pursuing his dream, here, in Act II?”
Alexandra, next to me, raised her hand. Alexandra was hot with long brown hair and a thin French looking face. She wore nice clothes and she was very developed in the chestal area if you know what I mean. Mike and I, two weeks into the school year, were glad we knew each other. I walked behind Alexandra on the way to class, and everyone we passed said hi to her, including upperclassmen. When she spoke in class everyone, except Miss Farr (who listened equally to everyone) perked up.
Miss Farr looked for another hand, then called on her, “Alexandra?”
“Well, his mom wants him to stay home and the ghost wants him to get revenge.”
Mike said, “Good answer.” Alexandra ignored him.
“EXACTLY.” Miss Farr always greeted our right answers with great energy. Her frizzy red hair seemed to crackle with electric current. “Is this following his dream, living his life, BEING himself? What do you think?”
Mike raised his hand. 
“Mike?”
“Well, no. Alexandra pointed out that he’s staying for his parents. He actually wants to go to school.”
“VERY GOOD, Mike. I would like to say that this is Hamlet’s tragic flaw. He tries to fulfill expectations, rather than be himself. He chooses, in effect, not to be himself but to be who his parents want him to be. This makes his story a parallel to Ophelia’s.”
In case you haven’t figured this out yet, Mike was pretty into Alexandra. I felt bad for him. He had dumb taste, and he was my friend. Really, he was my only friend. The first day of school at the end of Miss Farr’s class, Mike leaned over to me and said, “Do you know where the lunch room is? I’ve got lunch next.”
I had lunch next too, and being a freshman in a new school, the thing I was most scared of was sitting alone. I said, “I don’t know. I’ve got lunch too. We can look together.” 
There was relief on his face. He said, “I’m Mike.”
“I’m Douglas, but everyone calls me Doogie.”
Thus was an alliance formed against the dread dragon of appearing friendless on the first day of the school year. 
On the surface, you wouldn’t think Mike and I would be friends. He’s a black kid from North Philly; I’m a white kid from Mayfair. Mike and I both had been the smart kids at our old schools. Being the smart kid at Fitzsimons or Mayfair was an alright identity. You helped people with homework, they respected your smarts and treated you like a normal human. You were the teacher’s favorite kid. The teacher tried to hide it, but you knew they loved you for answering questions when no-one else could or would. You weren’t going to be super cool, but you weren’t the biggest dork either. 
Then we came to Central, which is an academic magnet school. The smartest kids from the whole city were there. Mike and I weren’t the smart kids anymore. We were just somewhere in the middle. Neither of us were jocks. I got cut from the soccer team , and Mike was built like a Lego man, thick around the middle with short square legs. Mike could make me laugh, but he didn’t have the confidence to go around making friends. We were intimidated by the pretty girls and loud upperclass boys. 

Still, the friendship wasn’t instant. We knew nothing about one another that first day, except that we both didn’t have an friend for lunch. I ate the PB&J and chips my mom packed, while he ate a cafeteria sandwich. 

I said, “You like it here?”

“It’s alright,” he said. 

Yeah,” I said. Silence once again. We sat, our meals consumed, as serious and sad as Eastern Island Heads. “You play soccer,” I asked, hoping to find a fellow failed athlete. 

“Man, I’m from North Philly. I don’t even know what that is.” North Philly is the hood, all black, and famed for basketball talent. As Mike explained, nobody there cared about soccer. 

The silence returned, yawning out in front of us as vast as the Pacific Ocean that surrounds the Eastern Island heads. 

“You play videogames,” Mike asked.

“Yeah, all the time.”

“Zelda?”

“Definitely. I love RPGs.” 

Role Playing Games. The game for the kid with imagination set in fantastic worlds. In RPGs you start a little loser, and go on quests to gain skills, knowledge and treasure. By the end, you march through the landscape, monsters fleeing before you, peasants running up and thanking you. By confessing we played such games we had an instant link. Soon we were lost in a trip down memory lane. We had, in separate places, We had gotten the same silver bow and shot the same arrow in the same  battle against Gannon. We had saved the same land and princess. 

That Friday we walked up the hill together. I was planning my weekend in my head, the games I would play and how I would get my mom to leave me alone, while Mike fished in his bag for something. Loose crumpled papers flew out, and it seemed like fifty dirty t-shirts were in there too. “How’d your bag get so messy after one day?”

We were passing the other kids who were taking their time walking to the subway, hanging out. The girls, black, white, Puerto Rican, Asian, all looked hot in their tank tops and skirts. The boys yelled too loud, excited by the presence of the girls. 

Mike, at my side, was not going to help me get to know any of these girls. His hair was a little ungroomed. His glasses were awkward and a little too heavy, his shirt a generic, worn, hoodless sweatshirt. His jeans were neither skinny, nor boot cut. They sagged around his butt, and bunched at his ankles like old man jeans. 

He looked up at me from amidst the chaos of his bag and saw my look. “I’m not going to win any cool contests. Who cares?”

I felt stupid. I liked this kid and didn’t know anyone else and not being his friend just because I hoped to be cool later was foolish and mean. I didn’t have any options. I wasn’t about to be one of the other kids with or without Mike. 

“What you looking for,” I asked.

“You got to check out this game.” He hooked a box from the half sheets and tee-shirts and handed it to me. On the cover four black kids stood battle ready, armed alternately with a blue fireball, a club, a bow, and a knife. Around them circled soldiers, monsters, and wizards. It was a game that promised the chance to play hero in a field of magic, an escape from getting cut in the first round during try-outs, from looking around and learning how far we were from cool. 

“Can I borrow it?”

“No man. I love it too much.”

“Want to come to my house and play it?”

“You think that would be okay?”

“Yeah, just lemme call my mom.” 

I called my mom; he called his, and we got on the 26 headed for Mayfair. My mom was super happy to see Mike, mostly because he was polite, “Hello, Mrs. Foley, thanks for having me,” but also because Mike meant that I had a friend at my new school. There were cookies, Famous Amos, out on the table with milk. I ate some and listened as Mike chatted to my mom about Central, our teachers, and how much he enjoyed the cookies. 

I dragged him upstairs so we could start playing. The game was fun and I got pretty into it. We stopped for dinner (pizza), got permission for Mike to stay the night, and kept playing. My dad came home and shouted some stuff around one. “What I got to do to get some respect!” But that didn’t last long, and Mike pretended not to hear, and for that I was grateful. At two I went down to the kitchen and came back with a couple of cokes. Mike challenged me to drink the whole can without stopping or burping. I did, then unleashed a long, pleasantly horrid string of belches. We cracked up. 

We kept playing the game- we had it on multi-player, and set at Clurikin, or easy, level. Mike said he was tired a couple of time, but I kept saying one more level. He wouldn’t let me skip the videos between levels, and at first this annoyed me but then I got into the story and wanted it to unravel all the way. We unfurled blue fire balls, charged and lanced the enemy, and in the end saved the kingdom. When we beat the game, daylight was showing through the window.

Review of Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

I wish I could give "Magic for Beginners" both 2 and 5 stars but this is not a goodreads option. It reads likes Jorge Borges teamed up with the Brother's Grimm, (maybe add Joss Whedon in there) and adopted contemporary US, with its vast array of mythologies as their topic. Borges added halls to the labyrinth of metaphysics, leaving the reader with a desire to re-read to actually understand, but also a fear and knowledge that perhaps not understanding was the closest thing to understanding. His work is mostly cerebral though, where Brothers Grimm get at the desire and fears in the pits of our stomaches and the apex of our nethers. 

Kelly Link does both of these, while consisting failing to follow the modern rules of story-telling. Her stories have no established conflict, but follow as many old fairy tales do, a wandering path, switching protagonists, and stories, mid story, multiple times. Symbols are left unexplained, over-used. A search of the interwebs quickly reveals that this medley of Dionysian fairy tale, sci-fi, fantasy interspliced with our time and people is a conscience choice by Link. It is clear from her art that she could do the Raymond Chandler, New Yorker style realism that progresses into epiphany, if she wanted to. 
She says that it is boring. 

But Link's writing also is different from most science fiction and fantasy. She consistently disappoints with her ability to create expectation and then wander off in another direction. The stories have little eternal logic. 

Dionysius, the god or drunk high poets, has found a priestess in Link. Her stories are votives to the unknown, casual attacks on our carefully constructed rules of narrative that we guard so jealously. We would believe, and every story that we allow ourselves to tell reinforces this, that we control our world, that it progresses through logic toward justice. In Link's stories we find a whimsy that if we are honest we must confess is a truth that is other. 

For me a contemporary application of this is the upcoming American election. Both candidates talk about their plan for the economy. They patiently explain how they will fix it, working out their logic in steps, promising progress, a victory through right policy. Nobody says the truth. The economy is a monster we pretend is our pet. When it bites us we make explanations, when it beshitteth all, we explain why, but we cannot teach him not to bite or train him to our household. No-one understands him, but he can destroy us. It is fickle, immensely complex, and gambols through our houses and floats in amongst the clouds. 

Which is just to say, Link is right to roughshod over our stories that insist on control, happy or at least logical endings. We don't know anything. Sometimes that can be a lot of fun.

Hands, the Pickpocket, Meets the Real World

I wrote a fantasy novel, and I feel like I owe the world an explanation. There's a real world all around us, full of gripping problems in need of compassion, and wisdom, and instead of writing about that, I wrote about a place that only exists inside my head.

I worked in a behavioral facility for a year, back in 2005. The idea of the place was that we'd take kids with self-destructive behavior, show them it was destructive, and that they would change. These kids had seen stuff that made Sandusky seem like Santa Claus. They were untrusting and relentlessly combative. Then I got myself into a North Philly high school, where many of the kids were the same, though a little more resourceful. I watched those kids, ready to curse someone out if they felt something was unfair, ready to fight in response to perceived insult, untrusting, and ready to grab your attention by acting like a fool. I kept asking myself, "How are they going to make it? How are they going to become something beside a drug dealer or addict?"

Those kids, in some form, show up in my book. Hands, the neighborhood thief, insults the dead father of another kid, then gets beat up, and keeps talking trash. When Hands gets caught up in kingdom level drama, his toughness helps him but his pugnacious attitude keeps getting him in trouble.

As I was writing, there were a couple of take-aways I worked in. Kids make it cause they find people they can trust; basically it takes one person caring. Also, I believe that there is higher power who cares about these kids, even if society ignores them. We ought to care, and we will be judged based on our compassion. Sometimes, that part of the story that seems the most fantastical is not the imaginary creatures, or magical powers, but that there will be justice in the end, that the forgotten will be remembered. I love that part of the story.

Today one of my neighbors, a former student of mine, knocked on my door, and asked me to tie his tie. He's been out of school for a couple of years, living the trap life, and is trying to get back into school. I help him with the tie; I pray that he finds the a school were his humanness is honored, and his mind respected. There aren't a lot of places with the people, the money, or the heart for it.