Johnny Chesthair (The He-Man Women Haters Club Book 1)

by Chris Lynch

  The crowd went nuts. Screaming, like Elvis—the skinny Elvis from the fifties—had just walked in. And just like for him, this crowd sounded awfully high-pitched.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “What are they so afraid of?” Wendy screeched on in that awful voice of hers. “Why do they need to cluster like packs of craven hyenas?”

  “Why?” the voices screamed back, like this was some kind of gospel show. “Why, Wendy, why?”

  Wendy turned her back on the Captains America guys—who were squirming in their chairs as if they had forgotten to make a stop at the bathroom—and faced her audience.

  “Because you, sisters, are their biggest nightmare!” she screamed. They screamed.

  “Holy smokes,” I said. “Lookit!”

  Every last audience member was a woman.

  “I can’t hold it anymore!” Jerome wailed, running out of the green room in search of a safe bathroom.

  “I’m going with you!” I said, chasing close behind.

  Wolfbang was laughing and eating when we left, and he was still laughing and eating when we returned, just in time to see Boo and Kevin exit the stage to a symphony of hisses and, well, boos.

  “Thank you, you’re too kind,” Boo said, acknowledging the boos.

  Wolf laughed and applauded.

  “You think this is funny?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Wolf said. “Lighten up. What’s the worst they could do to us?”

  That seemed to strike a chord for Jerome. “Oh my god,” he gasped.

  “Jerome?” Wolf asked. “You going to make it?”

  He nodded a none-too-hearty nod.

  “You don’t have to go through with it,” Wolf said, wheeling up close to where Jerome was slumping. “You can stay here. We’ll carry it for you. I’ll wave to your mom and stuff. It’s not like I’ll be tied up waving to my own mother, wherever the rotten old—”

  “No, thanks. I’m going on,” Jerome said. If nothing else came of this, Jerome was showing us all a layer of leather we knew nothing about.

  I looked up at the screen, where somebody was hurling a fat black shoe at one of the empty chairs where we’d soon be sitting.

  “See, look at that,” I said. “I knew this had the potential for violence.”

  “They’re only girls,” Ling-Ling said.

  “Ya,” Wolf added. “Let ’em get violent. That could be fun.”

  “I say we run,” I said. “How do we get out of here before they come after us?”

  “Steven, Steven, Steven,” Wolf said, his voice fat with disapproval and disgust. “I’m very surprised at what I’m seeing here.”

  Ling-Ling’s look, as he turned from the screen and toward me, echoed what Wolf had just said.

  “I’m only thinking of my men,” I said, putting an arm around the withering shoulders of Jerome.

  “Time, kiddies,” Ted called, and even I was impressed with what happened then.

  The three of them—Wolf, Ling, and even Jerome—straightened up and turned toward the door in one seamless, coordinated motion, like the Dallas Cowboys’ offensive line just before the snap. And, led by Ling, they filed out, the squeak of Wolf’s tires on the linoleum the only sound.

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, Steven,” Jerome said from the rear, shaming me into action.

  It was deafening.

  The sound of whistles, moans, shrieks, giggles, and war whoops as we filed across to our positions on stage.

  “Aren’t they just…adorable,” our hostess said with mock surprise. “Couldn’t you just pick ’em right up and squeeeeeze them?”

  Oh, I see your little game. Make us look dinky.

  “Since we’ve only got a few minutes, boys, let’s get right down to it, shall we? Ahhh…” Wendy riffled through her index cards. “…Steven. You’re the leader here, I understand.”

  Is it that obvious? I blushed, but figured the makeup covered it. I sat up straight. “That’s right, ma’am.”

  Why all the giggling at the word ma’am?”

  “Do you hate your mother, Steven? Is that where all this malarkey comes from? What did your mother do to you to make you this way?”

  I heard a gasp come out of me—amplified—that sounded like somebody opening a can of Coke fifty million gallons large.

  “M-m-m-m-m-my…m-m-m-moth—”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” she said. “You can’t even talk about it, can you?”

  I managed to make it worse.

  “N-n-n-no,” I said. “I c-can’t.”

  Brilliant, Steve-o. There’s leadership for you, ladies and gentlemen. There’s backbone.

  “Let me move on, then. Which one is Ling-Ling? Oh…oh my goodness…yes, of course you are. Well, they tell me, Mr. Ling, that you are the club’s rough-and-ready, hell-bent-for-leather, life-size action figure. Tell me, where on earth does a boy your age get all the rage necessary to…”

  I should stop here to comment that, while Wendy Wightman had seen just about everything over the years her sleazeball tabloid creepshow had been on TV—not that it was a bad show, mind you—the He-Man Women Haters Club seemed to have her thrown for a good long loop.

  Because when Ling-Ling started crying, those patented Panda tears blobbing out from behind his cool shades…

  “Oh, my dear…what have I done…you poor thing….”

  And Wendy “The Whip” Wightman, for the first time on TV—probably for the first time in her wicked rotten life—raced up and embraced another human being. Her arms fully extended to reach around Ling’s head, she let out a groan of pity, rubbed his neck, and made a there-there clicking sound with her tongue. For his part, Ling went right with it, leaning into her, removing his beret and burying his face in her padded shoulder.

  I felt my lips moving as I prayed, really prayed, and—Yes!—the closing theme music started playing. Sweat, mixed with makeup, coated my face like cellophane.

  Jerome was a rock. Literally. He was so petrified he didn’t even blink. He kept making that alarming throat noise, though, the kind of small swallow thing you do when you’re fighting to keep something down.

  Wolf didn’t care that he wasn’t being asked any questions. He waved at the cameras, and blurted out, “Hi, mom…you rotten old…” just like he’d practiced.

  While still comforting Ling, rocking him back and forth like the Guinness Book world’s most enormous baby, Wendy said to the audience, “We have time for maybe one question, if there’s anything—”

  Jerome made the swallow noise again. I didn’t think he was going to pull through. He made it again. It was getting louder, right in my ear he was doing it.

  “Okay…yes, you, there, in the Girl Scout uniform.”

  Do not adjust your sets. Yes, you heard correctly.

  “Hey, hey, cookie girl,” Wolf said.

  Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

  Jerome gulped. He gulped. The gulping went out over the sound system.

  The cookie girl pointed at me. “I have a question for Johnny Ches—”

  “Time out!” I yelled, like a fool, jumping out of my chair, making the referee’s T sign with my hands. “Excuse me, Wendy, but can we have some rules, here?…Aren’t there some kind of rules for, like, you know, who gets to ask a question, and what that question might be? Perhaps we could have the questions submitted in writing, and my associates and I could consider them….”

  The tittering was rampant throughout the audience. Monica tittered most thunderously, since she was holding the microphone.

  “Rules?” Wendy asked thoughtfully, stroking her chin. At least she appeared to be giving it serious consideration.

  “No!” she answered with a vile smile.

  “See, I knew it,” I said, as a couple of Wendy’s goons helped me back down into my seat. “No rules. Not for the girls, no sirreee. There are no rules at all for girls. They just go around doing whatever they…I knew it. See, she even gets to stand…how come I have to sit down?”

  �
��Go on, young lady,” Wendy said to Monica.

  “Thank you,” Monica said sweetly. “I just wanted to ask Johnny Chesthair”—she could barely be heard over the roar now—“if the reason he hates girls is because I beat him up…”

  The room began to swim. All those girls in the audience, swimming around my sweaty head like we were in a great big aquarium. Jerome’s froglike gulping grew louder.

  “…and if I could cure him by taking him out for a sundae after the show?”

  When her question finally ended, I responded.

  I threw up, a geyser, all over myself.

  13.

  The Coup

  THEY SENT US A copy of the tape. Thanks, Wendy.

  But we decided to wait. As a group, we decided.

  That was the good thing that came out of our television disaster—we started making decisions together. We decided to decide things.

  First, we decided that no one club member would ever again make such a huge decision alone, such as when Ling got us on TV. This decision was unanimous.

  Second, we decided we were not really a television kind of a club. If the newspapers wanted to talk to us, that would be fine, but no more TV appearances. The vote was three to one. Wolf wanted to do it all over again.

  Third, we decided we should all be together, at the clubhouse, when we watched the program. And since we didn’t have a VCR, that meant waiting another week until the station actually broadcast the show.

  That was not a problem. Except for Wolfbang, I don’t think any of us minded not seeing the program right away. Some of us might not have minded waiting a year or three.

  But we did need to see it.

  Wolf brought snacks, as he’d promised. We were all sitting there already, me, Ling, and Jerome, staring at the dark screen like we were being kept after school.

  “Hey, slackers,” Wolf said, wheeling up at high speed. “Turn it on. It’s time, it’s time.”

  I flipped the box on while Wolf went around handing out the food—a package of raw hot dogs and a jar of radioactive red maraschino cherries. Ling declined community food, as usual. Jerome merely clutched his stomach and shook his head. Could have been the food, could have been the entertainment.

  I took a dog and a fistful of cherries and braced for the worst.

  Wendy came on. Foul evil ratings-queen Wendy. If America only knew her like I know her…

  The Captains America came on, absorbed some abuse, dished out some abuse, but mostly, just got the show all noisy. I honestly couldn’t tell what it was all about.

  I had a little trouble concentrating.

  The He-Man Women Haters Club paraded onstage to much jazzier music, to much wilder fan reaction, than I recalled.

  “Did that really happen?” I asked.

  “Sure it did,” Wolf said, boogeying there in his seat. “Go boys, go,” he yelled at the screen.

  “It did not,” Jerome said. “They added all that noise afterward.”

  “Ling,” Wolf called as Ling leaned closer and closer to the screen. “You still with us there, boy?”

  Ling sighed. His nose was practically flat to the screen as Wendy hugged the little Ling-Ling in the box. “Gimme a hot dog, wouldja?” I don’t think he even chewed it.

  I slapped myself in the head as I heard the part again where Wendy twisted up my whole relationship with my mother.

  “Boy, are you going to have a long night at home,” Wolf laughed.

  “Pass me the cherry jar,” I said.

  I turned from the screen and watched Jerome watching Jerome. A small smile was slowly taking over his face as he saw this thing through.

  “I’ll take a hot dog now,” Jerome said.

  “You made it, Jerome,” I said, punching the side of his head. But not hard. The good head-punch. “You held your cookies. You did the show, you stuck it out, you made everybody watch….It was like one of those Indian manhood rituals.”

  The smile grew broad now.

  “I never thought you’d make it, Jerome,” Wolf said. “Not in a million years.”

  “No way,” Ling agreed.

  And then, of course, we all watched and waited for the big finale.

  “…time for maybe one question, if there’s anything…”

  There she was, Monica Devil Girl, in full close-up.

  “Sorry,” Wolf said, “but there ain’t no way I’m hating that woman.”

  I stood in front of the TV so he couldn’t look at her anymore.

  Why did I do that?

  Ling shoved me aside, and as Monica’s voice snaked its way out of the TV speaker and into my club, the other three He-Men sang along with her.

  “Johnnn-nnnyyyy…Chesthairrrrrrr,” they howled at me.

  This time, I laughed. But I also covered my face.

  Then we watched, anxious, to see just what they were going to show—of my little accident—and what they’d cut.

  I sighed happily when they didn’t show me at all. The camera stayed with Monica as she finished her question. Then it pulled back for a wide shot of the entire audience recoiling, saying yuuuuuuuuck, all at once.

  Monica had her hands covering her mouth—just like the rest of the crowd did—as the closing credits rolled over her wicked, wicked face. Except I think she was laughing.

  “Sure, you think it’s funny there,” I said to the screen. “But you weren’t so amused when Johnny Chest-heave came to collect his sundae, though, huh? What am I, unattractive when I’m covered in puke?”

  Jerome stepped up and snapped off the TV. Then, as one well-drilled unit, the three of them turned to face me.

  “There’s one more thing, Steven,” Jerome said.

  “Huh?”

  “We had a secret meeting yesterday, without you.”

  “Without me?” I practically fell on the floor. “A secret meeting without the leader?”

  “Well, that’s kind of the point,” Ling said. “It was a meeting to address our leadership problem.”

  “Leadership…no…” I said. “No way…you must be pulling my—”

  “The vote was unanimous, Steven,” Jerome said.

  Jerome sounded awfully full of control and power all of a sudden.

  “Nooooooo…” I said, running to take refuge behind the wheel of the Lincoln.

  I slammed the door, leaned on the horn.

  But the battery was disconnected.

  A Biography of Chris Lynch

  Chris Lynch (b. 1962) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the fifth of seven children. His father, Edward J. Lynch, was a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus and trolley driver, and his mother, Dorothy, was a stay-at-home mom. Lynch’s father passed away in 1967, when Lynch was just five years old. Along with her children, Dorothy was left with an old, black Rambler American car and no driver’s license. She eventually got her license, and raised her children as a single mother.

  Lynch grew up in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and recalls his childhood ambitions to become a hockey player (magically, without learning to ice skate properly), president of the United States, and/or a “rock and roll god.” He attended Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, before heading off to Boston University, neglecting to first earn his high school diploma. He later transferred to Suffolk University, where he majored in journalism, and eventually received an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. Before becoming a writer, Lynch worked as a furniture mover, truck driver, house painter, and proofreader. He began writing fiction around 1989, and his first book, Shadow Boxer, was published in 1993. “I could not have a more perfect job for me than writer,” he says. “Other than not managing to voluntarily read a work of fiction until I was at university, this gig and I were made for each other. One might say I was a reluctant reader, which surely informs my work still.”

  In 1989, Lynch married, and later had two children, Sophia and Walker. The family moved to Roslindale, Massachusetts, where they lived for seven years. In 1996, Lynch moved his family to Ireland, his f
ather’s birthplace, where Lynch has dual citizenship. After a few years in Ireland, he separated from his wife and met his current partner, Jules. In 1998, Jules and her son, Dylan, joined in the adventure when Lynch, Sophia, and Walker sailed to southwest Scotland, which remains the family’s base to this day. In 2010, Sophia had a son, Jackson, Lynch’s first grandchild.

  When his children were very young, Lynch would work at home, catching odd bits of available time to write. Now that his children are grown, he leaves the house to work, often writing in local libraries and “acting more like I have a regular nine-to-five(ish) job.”

  Lynch has written more than twenty-five books for young readers, including Inexcusable (2005), a National Book Award finalist; Freewill (2001), which won a Michael L. Printz Honor; and several novels cited as ALA Best Books for Young Adults, including Gold Dust (2000) and Slot Machine (1995).

  Lynch’s books are known for capturing the reality of teen life and experiences, and often center on adolescent male protagonists. “In voice and outlook,” Lynch says, “Elvin Bishop [in the novels Slot Machine; Extreme Elvin; and Me, Dead Dad, and Alcatraz] is the closest I have come to representing myself in a character.” Many of Lynch’s stories deal with intense, coming-of-age subject matters. The Blue-Eyed Son trilogy was particularly hard for him to write, because it explores an urban world riddled with race, fear, hate, violence, and small-mindedness. He describes the series as “critical of humanity in a lot of ways that I’m still not terribly comfortable thinking about. But that’s what novelists are supposed to do: get uncomfortable and still be able to find hope. I think the books do that. I hope they do.”

  Lynch’s He-Man Women Haters Club series takes a more lighthearted tone. These books were inspired by the club of the same name in the Little Rascals film and TV show. Just as in the Little Rascals’ club, says Lynch, “membership is really about classic male lunkheadedness, inadequacy in dealing with girls, and with many subjects almost always hiding behind the more macho word hate when we cannot admit that it’s fear.”

  Today, Lynch splits his time between Scotland and the US, where he teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His life motto continues to be “shut up and write.”