King Dork Approximately

by Frank Portman

  I’m just glad it’s not me who gets called Peggy, because who needs it?

  There’s always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.

  This year, it was an evil omen, like when druids observe an owl against the moon in the first hour of Samhain and conclude that a grim doom awaits the harvest. That kind of thing can set the tone for the rest of the year. What I’m getting at is, the first living creature Sam Hellerman and I encountered when we penetrated the school grounds on the first day of school was none other than Mr. Teone.

  The sky seemed suddenly to darken.

  We were walking past the faculty parking, and he was seated in his beat-up ’93 Geo Prizm, struggling to force his supersized body through the open car door. We hurried past, but he noticed us just as he finally squeezed through. He stood by the car, panting heavily from the effort and trying to tuck his shirt into his pants so that it would stay in for longer than a few seconds.

  “Good morning, Peggy,” he said to Sam Hellerman. “So you decided to risk another year.” He turned to me and bellowed: “Henderson!” Then he did this big theatrical salute and waddled away, laughing to himself.

  He always calls me by my last name and he always salutes. Clearly, mocking me and Sam Hellerman is more important than the preservation of his own dignity. He seems to consider it to be part of his job. Which tells you just about everything you need to know about Hillmont High School society.

  It could be worse. Mr. Donnelly, PE teacher and sadist supreme, along with his jabbering horde of young sports troglodytes-in-training, never bother with Moe or Peggy, and they don’t salute. They prefer to say “pussy” and hit you on the ear with a cupped palm. According to an article called “Physical Interrogation Techniques” in one of my magazines (Today’s Mercenary), this can cause damage to the eardrum and even death when applied accurately. But Mr. Donnelly and his minions are not in it for the accuracy. They operate on pure, mean-spirited, status-conscious instinct, which usually isn’t very well thought out. Lucky for me they’re so poorly trained, or I’d be in big trouble.

  But there’s no point fretting about what people call you. Enough ill will can turn anything into an attack. Even your own actual name.

  “I think he’s making fun of your army coat,” said Sam Hellerman as we headed inside. Maybe that was it. I admit, I did look a little silly in the coat, especially since I hardly ever took it off, even in the hottest weather. I couldn’t take it off, for reasons I’ll get to in a bit.

  I know Sam Hellerman because he was the guy right before me in alphabetical order from the fourth through eighth grades. You spend that much time standing next to somebody, you start to get used to each other.

  He’s the closest thing I have to a friend, and he’s an all-right guy. I don’t know if he realizes that I don’t bring much to the table, friendship-wise. I let him do most of the talking. I usually don’t have a comment.

  “There’s no possibility of life on other planets in this solar system,” he’ll say.

  Silence.

  “Well, let me rephrase that. There’s no possibility of carbon-based life on other planets in this solar system.”

  “Really?” I’ll say, after a few beats.

  “Oh, yeah,” he’ll say. “No chance.”

  He always has lots to say. He can manage for both of us. We spend a lot of time over each other’s houses watching TV and playing games. There’s a running argument about whose house is harder to take. Mine is goofy and resembles an insane asylum; his is silent and grim and forbidding, and bears every indication of having been built on an ancient Indian burial ground. We both have a point, but he usually wins and comes to my house because I’ve got a TV in my room and he doesn’t. TV can really take the edge off. Plus, he has a taste for prescription tranquilizers, and my mom is his main unwitting supplier.

  Sam Hellerman and I are in a band. I mean, we have a name and a logo, and the basic design for the first three or four album covers. We change the name a lot, though. A typical band lasts around two weeks, and some don’t even last long enough for us to finish designing the logo, let alone the album covers.

  When we arrived at school that first day, right at the end of August, the name was Easter Monday. But Easter Monday only lasted from first period through lunch, when Sam Hellerman took out his notebook in the cafeteria and said, “Easter Monday is kind of gay. How about Baby Batter?”

  I nodded. I was never that wild about Easter Monday, to tell you the truth. Baby Batter was way better. By the end of lunch, Sam Hellerman had already made a rough sketch of the logo, which was Gothic lettering inside the loops of an infinity symbol. That’s the great thing about being in a band: you always have a new logo to work on.

  “When I get my bass,” Sam Hellerman said, pointing to another sketch he had been working on, “I’m going to spray-paint ‘baby’ on it. Then you can spray-paint ‘batter’ on your guitar, and as long as we stay on our sides of the stage, we won’t need a banner when we play on TV.”

  I didn’t even bother to point out that by the time we got instruments and were in a position to worry about what to paint on them for TV appearances, the name Baby Batter would be long gone. This was for notebook purposes only. I decided my Baby Batter stage name would be Guitar Guy, which Sam Hellerman carefully wrote down for the first album credits. He said he hadn’t decided on a stage name yet, but he wanted to be credited as playing “base and Scientology.” That Sam Hellerman. He’s kind of brilliant in his way.

  “Know any drummers?” he asked as the bell rang, as he always does. Of course, I didn’t. I don’t know anyone apart from Sam Hellerman.

  THE CATCHER CULT

  So that’s how the school year began, with Easter Monday fading into Baby Batter. I like to think of those first few weeks as the Baby Batter Weeks. Nothing much happened—or rather, quite a lot of stuff was happening, as it turns out, but I wouldn’t find out about any of it till later. So for me, the Baby Batter Weeks were characterized by a false sense of—well, not security. More like familiarity or monotony. The familiar monotony of standard, generic High School Hell, which somehow manages to be horrifying and tedious at the same time. We attended our inane, pointless classes, in between which we did our best to dodge random attempts on our lives and dignity by our psychopathic social superiors. After school, we worked on our band, played games, and watched TV. Just like the previous year. There was no indication that anything would be any different.

  Now, when I say our classes were inane and pointless, I really mean i. and p., and in the fullest sense. Actually, you know what? Before I continue, I should probably explain a few things about Hillmont High School, because your school might be different.

  Hillmont is hard socially, but the “education” part is shockingly easy. That goes by the official name of Academics. It is mystifying how they manage to say that with a straight face, because as a school, HHS is more or less a joke. Which can’t be entirely accidental. I guess they want to tone down the content so that no one gets too good at any particular thing, so as not to make anyone else look bad.

  Assignments typically involve copying a page or two from some book or other. Sometimes you have a “research paper,” which means that the book you copy out of is the Encyclopaedia Britannica. You’re graded on punctuality, being able to sit still, and sucking up. In class you have group discussions about whatever it is you’re alleged to be studying, where you try to share with the class your answer to the question: how does it make you feel?

  Okay, so that part isn’t easy for me. I don’t like to talk much. But you do get some credit for being quiet and nondisruptive, and my papers are usually neat enough that the teacher will write something like “Good format!” on them.

  It is possible, however, to avoid this sort of class altogether by getting into Advanced Placement classes. (Technically, “Advanced Placement” refers to classes for which it is claimed you can receive “college credit�
��—which is beyond hilarious—but in practice all the nonbonehead classes end up getting called AP.) AP is like a different world. You don’t have to do anything at all, not a single blessed thing but show up, and you always get an A no matter what. Well, you end up making a lot of collages, and dressing in costumes and putting on irritating little skits, but that’s about it. Plus, they invented a whole new imaginary grade, which they still call an A, but which counts as more than an A from a regular class. What a racket.

  This is the one place in the high school multi-verse where eccentricity can be an asset. The AP teachers survey the class through their Catcher in the Rye glasses and …

  Oh, wait: I should mention that The Catcher in the Rye is this book from the fifties. It is every teacher’s favorite book. The main guy is a kind of misfit kid superhero named Holden Caulfield. For teachers, he is the ultimate guy, a real dream-boat. They love him to pieces. They all want to have sex with him, and with the book’s author, too, and they’d probably even try to do it with the book itself if they could figure out a way to go about it. It changed their lives when they were young. As kids, they carried it with them everywhere they went. They solemnly resolved that, when they grew up, they would dedicate their lives to spreading The Word.

  It’s kind of like a cult.

  They live for making you read it. When you do read it you can feel them all standing behind you in a semicircle wearing black robes with hoods, holding candles. They’re chanting “Holden, Holden, Holden …” And they’re looking over your shoulder with these expectant smiles, wishing they were the ones discovering the earth-shattering joys of The Catcher in the Rye for the very first time.

  Too late, man. I mean, I’ve been around the Catcher in the Rye block. I’ve been forced to read it like three hundred times, and don’t tell anyone but I think it sucks.

  Good luck avoiding it, though. If you can make it to puberty without already having become a Catcher in the Rye casualty you’re a better man than I, and I’d love to know your secret. It’s too late for me, but the Future Children of America will thank you.

  So the AP teachers examine the class through their Catcher glasses. The most Holden-y kid wins. Dispute the premise of every assignment and try to look troubled and intense, yet with a certain quiet dignity. You’ll be a shoo-in.

  Everybody wins, though, really, in AP Land.

  But watch out. When all the little Holdens leave the building, it’s open season again. Those who can’t shed or disguise their Catcher-approved eccentricities will be noticed by all the psychopathic normal people and hunted down like dogs. The Catcher Cult sets ’em up, and the psychotic normal people knock ’em right back down. What a world.

  “Did you get in any APs?” Sam Hellerman had asked on the way to school that first day. He hadn’t gotten in any APs.

  Whether or not you end up in AP is mostly a matter of luck, though the right kind of sucking up can increase your odds a bit. So considering that I put zero effort into it, I didn’t do too badly in the AP lottery. I got into AP social studies and French; that left me with regular English and math; and I also had PE and band. “Advanced” French is mainly notable for the fact that no one in the class has the barest prayer of reading, speaking, or understanding the French language, despite having studied it for several years. AP social studies is just like normal social studies, except the assignments are easier and you get to watch movies. Plus they like to call AP social studies “Humanities.” Ahem.… Pardon me while I spit out this water and laugh uncontrollably for the next twenty minutes or so. This year, “Humanities” began with Foods of the World. The basic idea there is that someone brings in a different type of ethnic food every day. And the class celebrates cultural diversity by eating it. Day one was pineapple and ham, like they have in Hawaii! We were gifted and advanced, all right. And soon we would know how to have a snack in all fifty states.

  I suspected regular English was going to be a drag, though, and I wasn’t wrong. AP teachers tend to be younger, more enthusiastic, and in premeltdown mode. They are almost always committed members of the Catcher Cult, and easy to manipulate. The regular classes, on the other hand, are usually taught by elderly, bitter robots who gave up long ago and who are just biding their time praying for it all to be over. Getting in touch with your inner Holden is totally useless if you wind up in a class taught by one of the bitter robots. You will not compute. Or if you do compute, the bitter robots will only hate you for it.

  I didn’t get into AP English because my tryout essay last year was too complex for the robots to grasp. So I ended up in regular, nonadvanced English, run by the ultimate bitter robot, Mr. Schtuppe.

  “I don’t give out As like popcorn,” said Mr. Schtuppe on that first day. “Neatness counts.

  “Cultivate the virtue of brevity,” he continued. “There will be no speaking out of turn. No shenanigans. No chewing gum: of any kind.

  “Shoes and shirts must be worn. There will be no shorts, bell-bottom trousers, or open-toed ladies’ footwear. No tube tops, halter tops, or sports attire. Rule number one, if the teacher is wrong see rule number two. Rule number two, ah … if you are tardy, the only excuse that will be accepted is a death in the family, and if that death is your own—mmmm, no, if you die, then that death is, ah, accepted as excusable, mmm …”

  Mr. Schtuppe’s introductory lecture was not only morbid, but had a few glitches, as well.

  It is like his bald robot head contained a buggy chunk of code that selected random stuff from some collective pool of things teachers have said since around 1932, strung them together in no particular order in a new temporary text document, and fed this document through the speech simulator unit as is. And sometimes there was some corruption in the file, so you’d get things like “my way or the freeway.” And of course, all the girls in the class were in fact wearing halter tops, and practically every guy had on some kind of “sports attire.” You can’t have a dress code for just one class. It was nonsense. There must have been a time long ago, in the seventies, I’d guess, when he had been in a position to impose a dress code, and he kept it as part of the introductory speech because—who knows? Maybe he just liked saying “open-toed ladies’ footwear.”

  Mr. Schtuppe was still droning on about forbidden footwear when the bell rang. He stopped midsentence (he had just said “In case of”) and sat down, staring at his desk with what appeared to be unseeing eyes as the kids filed out. I had a feeling that everyone in that room was thinking pretty much the same thing: it was going to be a long year.