“Correct. I pushed the book forward and it fell off my desk. The action was pushing. The equal and opposite reaction was that the book moved forward. The foreseeable consequence of the action and reaction was that the book fell to the floor.”
The teacher picks up the book and holds it out to the class as though it were a newly discovered and potentially dangerous vertebrate.
“According to the concept of Chaos Theory, in any sufficiently complex environment, any action, even a simple one, will create a series of chain reactions that are unforeseen and unpredictable.”
The teacher looks at you now. You close your textbook to hide the brochure you were looking at.
“A butterfly flaps its wings in China, and six weeks later a hurricane forms off the coast of Florida. You can’t foresee that. Or, for instance, I didn’t know that by pushing the book and it falling and smacking the floor, that young Master Billy here would wake up and join the class. That was unforeseen. And could this unforeseen outcome set off a chain reaction? Perhaps the startling sound will leave Billy a bit more alert when he leaves here. And maybe that alertness will cause him to be aware of his environment in a way he would not otherwise have been. Maybe he’ll make decisions that will impact the rest of his day. Or the rest of his life. Or maybe he’ll just remember not to daydream in class. It is unforeseeable. And that’s the point.”
You are bright red. You don’t like attention of any kind.
A boy in the back raises his hand. He is a smart boy and does not mind drawing attention to himself.
“If the sequence of events is untraceable, then how do we know the events share a cause-and-effect relationship? How do we know the hurricane wouldn’t have happened anyway?”
“We don’t. And that’s a good point. So you, Hunter, fall into the Is it chaos or is it fate? camp. And that’s reasonable. Chaos theory is just that. A theory. Of course fate, as a theory, doesn’t hold much water either. That’s worth keeping in mind. But let’s assume—for the moment—that chaos is indeed a valid theory. Now let’s look at it on a global scale. If our action is to cut down all the world’s rainforests, what are the possible reactions?”
“A greenhouse effect. Global warming.”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“The ozone hole over the Antarctic could get even bigger.”
“Maybe”
“We lose possible cures for AIDS and cancer.”
“Maybe.”
“We speed up the return of the Ice Age.”
“Could be.”
You do not offer an answer. You never speak in class unless forced.
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. See, we really don’t know what the reaction will be, but we’re pretty sure it ain’t gonna be good. It’s a question of control, of which we have very little.”
Someone, the smart kid, asks, “But if we can anticipate, don’t we have control? In the microcosm of this classroom, couldn’t we have anticipated every possible reaction of your action of pushing the book to the floor?”
“No. Even in this closed environment, the possibilities are beyond number. When scientists were preparing to detonate the first atomic bomb, many of them believed a chain of reactions would ignite the atmosphere. Ignite the atmosphere. Think about that. But they went ahead and did it, didn’t they?”
The bell rings, but you stay seated because the teacher is still talking and you want to hear the rest of this.
“So, anyway, the next time you toss out an old newspaper or throw away an aluminum can without recycling it, remember Chaos Theory. For your every action, you set off a chain of events beyond control. Think about it.”
You follow the last of the other students out the door and you hear the teacher say, “See ya’, Billy.” You half lift your hand in acknowledgement, but you don’t turn around.
Outside the classroom, two bigger boys run down the hall, weaving through the crowd. As they rush past you, one of them slams you into the wall, and the other slaps the books out of your arms. Already halfway down the hall, one of them calls back to you over his shoulder, “Buggie!” Then they both emit high-pitched giggles that sound like jungle animals.
You gather the books up and put them in your backpack. You should have done that before you left class, but that would have taken too much time and the teacher might have tried to have a conversation with you. Teachers are always trying to engage you in conversation. And when they do that, it makes your stomach hurt. And your stomach hurts right now. It hurts bad. It always hurts bad before you have to see Mrs. Hamby. And you do not think that you can endure both the meeting and the pain at the same time. You need to ease the hurt.
The hall has emptied, and you have ten minutes before your meeting with the school psychologist. You head for the boys bathroom.
You take the last stall, the handicapped one. This is your favorite not because it is the biggest, but because the lock on it still works and because it is directly under the overhead ventilation fan.
You unroll a handful of toilet paper from the dispenser. You already know the perfect amount. You wad it up into a ball about the size of a rodent brain with a bit angling off from it like a brainstem. You will hold it from the brainstem.
From your jeans pocket you extract a yellow Bic lighter, stolen from your stepfather, Harvey Peruro. You set the toilet paper rodent brain afire. The trick is to get a clean burn so that there is no smoke. Regardless of the ventilation fan, if there is smoke, it will permeate the bathroom and give you away. You watch the flame take hold, and as soon as it does, the pain in your stomach vanishes. You do not know if it is simply that you forget about the pain, or if fire acts as a painkiller. It doesn’t matter. The flame is beautiful, calming. It pulsates like an orange rose. A burning blossom. A fire flower.
And then, still standing over the toilet, you use your other hand to unbuckle and drop your pants, push down your underwear, and it feels good to have your genitals exposed to the air. No shame. No self-consciousnesses.
You know your cock is kind of small. From gym class and the mandatory showers. Most of the boys your age have bodies of substance. Bodies thick with bulk and muscle or lean with speed and innate strength. Pendulous penises that sway with weighty arrogance from strange dense growths of dark pubic hair as they walk around the locker room.
Your pubic hair only just started to come in last summer. Harvey seems to enjoy referring to you as a late bloomer, and the few times that a drinking buddy of his comes to the house, Harvey inevitably points out that you are a late bloomer so as to explain your skinny pale body and voice that has only a hint of masculine timbre. It all seemed to start around the same time all the stuff with your mother happened. You just kind of stopped growing. The doctor called it delayed puberty. They are supposed to start giving you hormone shots, but then the doctor said that could exacerbate the conduct disorder. And you’ve been held back a couple of grades. Learning disability stemming from emotional trauma. Again, the stuff with your mom. You kind of have a lot of problems.
And so you have only a little bit of pubic hair that has sprung up in two modest patches, each about the size of a quarter, around the base of your dick. The hair is so fine that the light has to hit it just right in order to be seen. In the locker room you keep your back to the other boys because you do not want them to point out the smooth hairless contrast of your boyish body to the sprouting mannishness of theirs.
And in fear and embarrassment and shame your scrotum shrivels, your testicles attempt to crawl up into your groin, and your penis shrinks down and draws itself into nothing more than a tiny cap. And as often as you can, you will busy yourself at your locker. Unlacing your shoes as slowly as possible. Pulling your socks off so that you have to stop and turn them right side out. And as the other boys emerge from the showers and discard their towels into the wire hamper, you grab one and pretend to clean a spot from your shoe and then you pretend that you have already been through the shower and you are drying your body with the gray towel and you have
not had to endure the humiliation of the shower, the degrading walk across the locker room. But often you do. You do have to face it.
But now, in the handicapped stall, with fire in your right hand, you look down and your cock is rock hard. So hard it is pointing straight up, almost touching your belly. And it doesn’t look so small now. Now it looks big. And your balls are hanging pendulums underneath. They feel as though they have weight. Substance. That they are there. And they therefore give you weight and substance. You are here.
And all it takes is two strokes. Two strokes and it explodes. Your cum is watery, like pee, but it is there. Before this past summer, when you did this nothing came out. But now you can cum. Ejaculate. And you see droplets of thin semen jump higher than the burning paper which has burned itself down to the brainstem. You have left the end of the brainstem unraveled, flat, a sort of neural net, and you let the flame touch your fingers before you drop it. You have timed it right. The flame consumes the last of the paper during its lazy drop to the toilet bowl. No smoke. A clean burn. Perfect.
You pull your pants and underwear back up, buckle your belt. You use toilet paper to clean the spilled body fluid from the rim of the toilet, and you flush everything away. You watch the ash and your semen swirl together and then disappear.
You take a minute and lean against the stall door. And you think the thought that you always think after you do this. From your favorite book. The book you have read probably seventy times. You will never forget picking that book from the returns cart at the school library. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. An illustration of a paper man engulfed by flames was on the cover. And you opened the book. And you read the first line.
It was a pleasure to burn.
And your body just kind of went into a state of numb ecstasy. Because it was true. It was the truest sentence that had ever been written. That ever will be written.
It was a pleasure to burn.
The hall in the administrative wing is quiet. You don’t like the loudness of students, but you also do not like the unnatural absence of sound you find here. It reminds you of doctors’ offices. You are missing Ms. Wiggins’s English class to be here, and that is the one class you kind of like. She has you reading Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage. And also some poetry by him. There is a poem about a guy who eats his own heart and hates the way it tastes, and another one about bastard mushrooms that grow in polluted blood. It’s pretty badass stuff. Hardcore. You stop at a door with the word Counselor stenciled on it.
Inside is a small waiting room. You still have a few minutes, so you sit and wait. After a minute, the counselor’s door opens and a girl steps out. Beth Andrews. A cutter. You are not privy to gossip or inside information, but the knowledge that Beth Andrews is a cutter is so widespread that it has filtered down to even the lowest rungs of the social ladder, so you know what Beth Andrews is. Just as she knows what you are. Just as everybody in the school knows what you are.
Mrs. Hamby is all right. She looks nice. Poofy hair. Her perfume smells like bug spray. Raid. You are not here voluntarily. This is not a free choice. You are here as a result of other choices you have made in the past. This is a reaction to your actions. A consequence.
“How’s it going, Billy?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Great. No problems?”
You shrug your shoulders and shake your head.
It always starts this way. Mrs. Hamby doesn’t really want there to be any problems. Not because she cares about you, but because if there are problems, then she will have to do something about it. In the end, it is better for both of you if you pretend that your life is all Little House on the Prairie and shit and she pretends that she doesn’t know you’re lying.
“Excellent. You getting along okay at work? Your family?”
You nod to indicate that yes, yes your life is one of rosy-cheeked wholesome goodness.
“No more problems with your stepfather?”
An image pops into your head. Of Harvey, standing over you, fists clenched, spit spraying from his mouth as he yells at you. I’m glad your mother died. She’d be ashamed to know what a weak little pussy she has for a son. Fucking faggot.
You shake your head and say, “Harvey’s all right.”
Mrs. Hamby smiles and nods with satisfaction. “And if you see he’s getting angry, what should you do?”
You picture yourself lying face down on the filthy carpet of your bedroom, your arms cradling your head, shielding yourself from the blows raining down.
“Sit down and talk it out,” you say.
“Good. And if that doesn’t work?”
And you see yourself running down the street of your neighborhood at night. Blood from a cut on your forehead streams into your eye, stinging.
“I leave the house. Give him a chance to cool off. Give us both a chance to get our thoughts together.”
“Excellent!” Mrs. Hamby beams. So far this recital is going perfectly. Not a note has been missed. “And what about your job? Do you think it’s working out?”
You see yourself in the kitchen at Shoney’s. Sid, the assistant cook, stands too close to you, invading your space. If you’re not my friend, then you must be my enemy, Sid says. So you dig in your pocket and come up with a damp, wadded five-dollar-bill. This is all the money you have. Sid pockets the bill and says friends help each other out.
“Oh, yeah,” you say to Mrs. Hamby, “I like working.” You look down at your feet and see that there is a baby cockroach on your shoe. Just sitting there. No wonder the office smells like Raid.
Mrs. Hamby opens your file and reads from a report. “Your Job Coach says she’s in the fading stage. That she’s phased out the onsite visits. You’re independent now. They say that work is the best therapy. And it’s true. It gives you—it gives me—a sense of fulfillment.”
You are still looking at the baby cockroach sitting on your shoe. It has a whitish stripe near the head. You know that a baby cockroach is called a nymph. You wonder if Mrs. Hamby’s office is infested.
“Do you know what Teddy Roosevelt said about work? He said ‘Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.’ I’ve always put a lot of stock in that. Well, I know you have to catch your bus. And you work tonight, so I won’t keep you.”
You stand and head for the door.
“Oh, and, uh, no more incidents with, uhm, fire?”
“No ma’am.”
“And you’re still taking the meds Dr. Stein prescribed? The uh...” She references your file again. “The olanzapine and sodium valproate?”
You nod your head, but those pills made you sick.
You don’t need pills. You know how to make yourself feel better.
“Bye, Mrs. Hamby.”
“Bye-bye, now.”
You open the office door.
“Billy?”
You don’t turn around, but you do pause in the doorway.
“Just remember that I’m here to help. No matter what. No matter how big or how small the problem. Come to me. Okay?”
You look down and see the nymph crawl off your shoe and escape through the open door. You scurry out after it.
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No Happy Endings Page 16