by Mark Perez
REPUTATION
There are four places to make a name for yourself:
Scoring on the field.
Scoring in the classroom.
Scoring in the ring.
Scoring in the back of a 2004 Hyundai Sonata.
HOW TO BE THE BMOC
Having a reputation can mean many things. If you’re going to a WASPy, entitled-rich-kid school, rep starts and ends with your transcripts. Nowadays this may be a bit more complicated to pull off, with computers and digital records and the like, but in my day, all you needed was some whiteout, a typewriter, and the number to a phony high school. (“Hello, Sweet Valley High, Office of the Registrar. Can I help you?”)
Conversely, if you have the misfortune of going to a more difficult school, and by difficult I mean one of color and/or a diverse ethnicity, you’re better off carrying a different kind of rep from your fake previous school. Like being a person of interest in a homicide case and/or some questionable family ties to la Cosa Nostra. This is a crucial lesson, so commit it to memory: know the game you’re going to be playing before you show up with your ball. For example, my high school was a little Bible Belty, so I became the son of a preacher, complete with good grades and a two-year mission of bringing the Word of the Lord to some miserable third-world country that I randomly picked off a map. (By the way, why do these pious pricks always bring the Word of the Lord to starving kids? How about a hoagie? Or a nonstop plane ticket to a Carl’s Jr.? Anyway, I digress.)
The initial place to stake out is the hub of all high-school socialization…
THE CAFETERIA
The cafeteria can be quite a terrifying place, especially for the new kid. But there are a few ways to make this experience a bit more tolerable. The first thing to do is to think of high school as prison and the cafeteria (as it is in an actual prison) as where all the important shit goes down. Where a new inmate makes a name for himself. Perhaps by shanking a shot-caller or keistering a bag of heroin inside his lower digestive tract or figuring out a way to take down a corrections officer. Believe it or not, high school has a “junior varsity” version of these exact penal situations. Allegorically speaking. If you want to make a name for yourself from grades nine through twelve, I would recommend doing it in the lunchroom, and, more specifically, engaging in one of the following activities to get your high-school career off on the right foot:
SELL WEED
If you want to make friends fast, and I mean really fast, don’t be known as the kid with the great personality. Be known as the kid with the great herb. Remember, you’re not doing this to make a profit. That’s the short game. The long game is to make relationships with all the power brokers of the school: The jocks. The preps. The geeks. The stoners.
And remember, this isn’t 1975 anymore, you dig? Nowadays all of these groups regularly partake in a myriad of cannabis goods, and they enjoy them even more at a discount. And since you could give two shits if you get caught and it gets put on your record (a record that is already fake to begin with, mind you), you can quickly become the Tony Montana of grade ten. The word con is short for confidence, and in every scam, you are trying to gain the confidence of strangers. And nothing helps you gain the confidence of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds like selling them fat blunts for a steal.
BEAT UP THE BULLY
This is also a classic axiom of prison life, one that holds true to high-school hierarchy as well. There is no quicker way to the top of the social ladder than if you find the biggest, baddest motherfucker on campus and lay him out on his ass for all to see. However, this can also be a little tricky to pull off. For instance, paying the captain of the football team to take a dive could totally backfire on you. A couple of things could go wrong in this scenario. Puffed up by the chanting of the cafeteria mob, Tommy Linebacker might change his mind at the last minute and decide to beat your ass anyway. Or, even if he does take the dive, as you stand over him victorious, like Ralph Macchio at the 1984 All Valley Karate Championships, his buddies could look for some immediate Cobra Kai retribution. Next thing you know, you’re in the hospital, drinking meatloaf through a straw and blinking answers to your doctors’ questions.
So to lessen the chances of these negative outcomes, I recommend that you cast the part of the bully. That’s right: you hire a guy to start school around the same time as you. Have him show up at lunch one day; if you’re inventive like me, you forge his transcripts, too, just like you did your own. He should be huge, about twenty or so, and should terrorize the school for a good week or two before you put your plan into action. Then you set your stage. Let your stooge know exactly what’s going to go down like it was a WWE pay-per-view. It usually works like this: The stooge enters the cafeteria and begins to pick on numerous students (particularly the Asian exchangers and the fat kids), shoving them, stealing their lunch money, or some other odious equivalent most of us are all too familiar with. Then, after making the rounds, the stooge ends up meeting you at his preordained mark—in the middle of the lunch tables. Center stage. Lights, camera, action. Right in front of the entire school. Be sure to pick a high-traffic time. Make sure he’s got a cackle-bladder in his mouth (that fake blood packet I mentioned earlier). And let him call you every name in the book, maybe even knock you down a few times if you really feel like pushing the production value. And then get up, like you’ve been cast as the upstart nerd in an eighties teen movie, and pop him in the face like George McFly. (Important: It needs to be a real punch. If you have to pay the guy an extra few bucks, then so be it. Trust me, it’s well worth it. For believability’s sake.)
By the time the faculty breaks it up, you will have become a folk hero the likes of which that fucking school has never seen. And after you do your time in detention (the high-school version of “the hole”), you will emerge a mythical god. Your stooge will have “transferred,” and you will rule the campus like a king, the newly printed protagonist in a present-day Horatio Alger story.
GET THE VICE PRINCIPAL FIRED
There are certain basic truths in this world, facts about this life that cannot be debated or debunked: there are three hundred sixty-five days in a year, guys with tattoos that completely encircle their upper arms are always fucknuts, and all vice principals employed by the vast and varied public school systems inside the United States are insecure weasels that take out their frustrations regarding the failures in their own lives on tenth and eleventh graders. It doesn’t help that the basic job description is “enforcing punishments on the entire student body,” which makes them tantamount to a warden (again, another prison analogy—more on that later). And, just like in the penitentiary, the one thing more impressive you can do than taking down a shot caller is taking down the warden himself. This is the one that worked for me at Providence High West (not the school’s real name).
There are multiple ways to dispose of the most despised character on all school campuses: Murder (too messy). Get them transferred (too much work). Or you can use your head and do what I did to Vice Principal Wong (not his real name). Ruin the bastard’s reputation, never to be rehabilitated. Therefore ending their reign as a VP of anywhere.
Now, there are a few ways to accomplish this goal. So you’ll want to pick the one that’ll be the most notorious as well as the most effective, something so big that he or she wouldn’t be able to worm their way out of it. And subsequently back into your life, looking for revenge. It also needs to be something that you could clearly take credit for, something so amazing that it wouldn’t just get him or her fired but, in fact, get them arrested. And that’s exactly what happened with Vice Principal Wong.
Look at this asshole. The beady eyes and the get-off-my-lawn-glasses. I bet if he had ever actually met her, even his birth mother wouldn’t have liked him. So after my first day at John Adams High School (not the real name), I knew that I hated him (as did the rest of the student body). In order to make a name for myself and get rid of this dildo, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Not in a
subtle way, but in the most spectacular way possible…
FIND YOUR MARK
Like I said earlier, this is usually the vice principal, because they tend to deal with punishments and suspensions. But depending on where you go to school, you could find your dupe in any and all sections of the faculty directory. And mind you, this is America! Assholes come in all shapes and sizes in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
THE GYM TEACHER
Sociological studies show that 90 percent of all PE teachers are douche-nozzles. That is a quantified, empirical fact proven by modern science. They thrive on discovering just how much humiliation they can dish out in fifty-five-minute intervals, typically bestowed upon the weakest and most defenseless of the school (as if the bullies needed any help with that group). Whether he’s shaming you in front of the popular girls for unsuccessfully attempting to climb a frigging rope, or forcing you to take a group shower with the older boys before your young body has had a chance to grow any considerable hair on your undercarriage, the gym teacher is that rare animal that redirects his anger at God (about having to wear coach’s shorts to work and maxing out at $31K a year) and unloads that shit right onto you.
THE HANDSOME PERV
I think we all remember this character, right? Early twenties. Partied so hard in college that all he could manage to attain by the time he graduated (short of genital herpes) was a crummy English lit degree. And even worse, he looks like he could still be a student. In fact, sometimes he forgets that he isn’t. If you’re a dude and you’re unlucky enough to be in this jagoff’s class, you’re fucked. Count on straight Cs because you don’t have double Ds. All the male students hate this jerk because he’s a total poser. And all the girls think he’s dreamy because he always writes a new motivational haiku every morning on his dry-erase board and drives a convertible Smart car (having no idea they’ll soon be judging prospective male mates by the size of their 401(k)s and not by how rad their faux-hawk looks). Getting rid of this fuckwit will get you celebrated by 50 percent of the student body, minus the gay kids in drama class. (By Federal Law, there’s always at least two gay kids in drama class.)
THE LATINO SECURITY GUARD
I know what you’re saying: “Why does he have to be Latino?” Well, he doesn’t. He can also be black. Either way, no matter what race he is, this dude is always super annoying—telling you to pick up trash or to stop smoking butts in the bathroom. He’s usually a thirty-something degenerate who loots marijuana from your locker because he has a master key. He’s typically a graduate of the school and almost always a former athlete who incessantly talks about his inflated forty-yard-dash times and how he used to be runnin’ thangs back in the day. This guy is most definitely a galactic toolbox. If you can get him fired, it would certainly be a notch on your likability belt. Now, back to Vice Principal Wong…
In case you already forgot, this guy was a supremely unlikable soul. And while what I did to him may seem cruel and unusual, even the United States Supreme Court would rule that this prick had it coming. Let me tell you that this was the same Vice Principal Wong who had prom canceled because there had been too much “bumping and grinding” going on the year before (his quote). The same Vice Principal Wong who made all the guys tuck in their shirttails because “this is a high school, not some flippin’ disco-dance club” (also verbatim). Like I said, he had it coming. Why Principal Kelley gave him so much unchecked power, I didn’t understand at the time.
So now that you’ve chosen your mark, like my Vice Principal Wong, let me explain how to get rid of him or her. Once again, please keep in mind that these lessons I’m teaching you to utilize in a school setting also translate to your regular, everyday adult life (work, the PTA, etc.).
Now, before anything else, you need to find their weakness. Which could be any number of things. For some, it’s hiding a fifth of Seagram’s Seven in their morning thermos. For others, it’s hiding babysitter porn on their work hard drive in a file marked “Joel Osteen Quotes.” Maybe it’s a skeleton in their closet—like a hidden Dominican love child or a very recently expunged manslaughter rap. But as soon as you find that thing, that Achilles’ heel, it is your duty to exploit it. And in Mr. Wong’s case, it was obviously Nurse Sanchez.
Each day, I studied Vice Principal Wong, looking for any kind of susceptibility. I watched him eat his lunch. I followed him home to observe him interacting with his terrible family who clearly hated him. (And rightly so, the poor bastards.) I even sat in the stall next to him every single time he dropped a deuce. (You need to be dedicated, folks.) And after all that, I found nothing. Nothing, that is, until I noticed one little thing—one tiny anomaly in the monotonous algorithm that was his horrible excuse for a life. He got headaches. And I don’t mean sometimes. I mean this dude got headaches every other fucking day, and they always seemed to hit him around the same time. You could set your watch by them. Initially, this didn’t strike me as odd. But people are creatures of habit. Specifically, bad habits. And if you can pinpoint those patterns, then you’ve got ‘em cold.
Ordinarily, there are only two reasons that you visit the school nurse every Tuesday and Thursday for a month because of chronic headaches: (1) you have an inoperable brain tumor with only months to live, or (2) said nurse is crazy fucking hot.
And for that reason I set up a sting (a complicated confidence game planned and executed with great care). The next time Mr. Wong got one of his “debilitating migraines,” I followed him into the nurse’s office, figuring I’d catch him with our school nurse in a very compromising position. (Hopefully sexual in nature.) But as it turns out, I was wrong. He wasn’t with Ms. Sanchez every Tuesday and Thursday at 12:35 p.m. The nurse was actually at lunch at that time. No, he was with Principal Kelley. And since this was a school in the backward-ass Bible Belt and less empathetic toward this type of lifestyle—you know, because Jesus and everything—I had him.
If the guy hadn’t been a total dickhead, I would have felt bad. But he was. So I didn’t. And two hundred photocopies later, I was becoming an even bigger player on campus. Hooray for me!
Another way to get your name out there is…
BECOME CLASS PRESIDENT
This one is a bit more problematic, as these elections don’t have much to do with platforms or policy; technically they’re little more than popularity contests (you know, like real presidential elections). And being the new kid, there’s practically no way you’re going to win without cheating (as if any politician has ever won anything without cheating). So, a few helpful hints include:
STUFF THE BALLOT BOX
Teachers are always looking for suck-up kids to help them do the grunt work on shit like this, from putting up posters and setting up voting booths to collecting the votes from each classroom. This last one is vital. But be sure to volunteer for all aspects of the election, so as to not look too fishy. (That’s a rule for everything, too, like pretending to be interested in the ugly friend in order to get closer to the hot chick.) And then, on your way back to the Student Government room, you merely switch the box for one that holds some five hundred votes with your name on them.
THREATEN THE FRONT-RUNNER
I don’t mean to a healthy debate, either. I mean literally threaten them. Don’t be overly dramatic or verbose when doing this. Go with something straightforward and to the point, like, I don’t know, “If you win this election I will kill all of the members of your family who live at 3446 Sandburn Drive where you leave an extra key under the back doormat.” This type of thing’ll usually do the trick.
PAY OFF THE SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER
In the 1990s, when I was in high school, the head of the Econ department made about $24K (I think that translates to a whopping $32K in today’s money). And to add insult to injury, he was charged with the task of overseeing this sham replication of the Democratic process. Much like the UN, these teachers have very little interest in witnessing free and fair elections. And much like the UN, they can easily be bought off. My dad used to
say, “To a dirty dog, all people are equal. Except for those people holding treats.” And the bastard was right.
ASSASSINATION
I don’t recommend this option, but one can hardly argue with its effectiveness.
Another way of getting your name out there is…
THE HERMES EFFECT
Another guaranteed way to get popular fast on campus is to be an amazing athlete. There was only one problem with that option for me (and for the 99.9 percent of you mega nerds reading this book right now). I was not one. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have the reputation of being one. (You will soon realize, when it comes to success in life, an inflated reputation from past deeds is far more important than any present-day triumphs.)
Now, I’d bet right now you’re probably feeling quite dubious about this notion. How on earth might somebody become a varsity athlete when they throw like a Trans-Gen, Special Olympian? Well, look at it this way: you’re not creating a great athlete, per se. You’re merely creating the reputation of a great athlete. Big difference.
Now, I know that in this day and age, this will be a bit more difficult. But sometimes old tactics just need new adjustments. Back in the early 1990s there was no such thing as the Internet, so when I came to St. Ignacious Preparatory Academy for Boys (not the real name), I enrolled under an assumed name: Ronald J. Westerfield. Who was Ronald J. Westerfield, you ask? Well, he was a straight-A student, an all-conference wrestler, and he used to live way on the other side of the country. (Also important: For this scam to work, you need to pick a sport that is out of season. If it’s fall, you’re an all-conference baseball player. If it’s spring, you lettered three times in soccer. Get it?) And arriving at the start of the semester like I did, I was Ronnie J. Westerfield, Wyoming state champ at 163 pounds. And in those days all I needed were a few important items: