Kick Me (15 page)

Finally, I got down to my butterfly underwear. The moment of truth had arrived. I was now going to have to take it off. The problem was, I truly couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had never been naked in public before. Not totally. And I didn’t see how in the next few seconds I could be without my underwear. It didn’t seem possible. It was against everything I stood for. As we go through our everyday lives, a lot may happen to us and we may experience a lot of trauma, but we always have the physical and mental support of our underwear to keep us going. It’s the one thing that keeps us together. With it, we feel complete, we feel contained, we feel protected. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we always know that our underwear is there for us, supporting us. If you’ve ever walked around without it, you know what I mean. Those occasions when my family would go on a camping trip and I wouldn’t pack enough underwear and just couldn’t stand to wear the same pair another day and so I’d have to walk around with no underwear on under my pants—those were the times I felt terrible. I’d always end up doing that readjustive hitchstep as I walked, trying to get everything back in place without having to actually stick my hands down my pants and put things back in order manually. It would affect my mood. I would be physically uncomfortable. It was as if Mother Nature had pulled some key linchpin out of my body, and my whole existence just fell apart. That’s what it was like for me to not have my underwear on. And that was when I had other clothes on over my underwearless midsection. But now I was expected to take off my underwear and be absolutely, positively, no-holds-barred BUCK naked. It was at that moment I knew that I definitely couldn’t do it.

“Feig! This is the last time I’m gonna tell you. Drop that underwear and get in this shower!”

I tried to but I just couldn’t. I felt faint. I couldn’t bring my hands to grasp the waistband and pull my underwear down. I felt that if I did, my skin would give way and my organs would spill out all over the locker room floor. I started hoping it would happen so Wendell would feel guilty that he made me do this. The loud, echoing horseplay increased in intensity from inside the shower room. It sounded like a war. The whole scene was surreal. I started to realize that if I didn’t go in and shower now, my classmates would start coming back to their lockers, having finished their showers, and it seemed far worse to have to drop my underwear in front of them as they were getting dressed than it did to simply appear in front of them already sans briefs.
Just pull them down,
I yelled inside my head.

My hands truly wouldn’t move. It was against all my better judgment. Trying to get naked in a locker room at my junior high school was in direct opposition to my basic code of survival. Some people’s code was, “Don’t go down without a fight.” Others’ was “Never trust anyone over thirty.” Mine was,
“Don’t get naked in public.”
To be forced into this was a violation of my rights as a member of the human race. I’ll take this all the way up to the Supreme Court, I thought. This can’t be constitutional. As a matter of fact, I’m gonna get dressed right now and go find my congressman—

“GODDAMN IT, FEIG! I SAID GET IN THAT SHOWER NOW OR I’M GONNA
THROW YOU IN!!!
”

The next thing I knew, I was standing there with my underwear in my hand. Stark naked. I don’t know what happened. My mind disconnected. Mr. Wendell had come at me with death in his eyes. It was the same look and tone that my father had the time I stole money out of my mother’s purse.

The realization that I was naked sunk in. My body suddenly went into panicked overdrive. I guess I figured that if I moved quickly, I would have the appearance of being dressed. I threw my underwear into the locker and grabbed my towel. The brightly striped one. It was folded and I didn’t bother to unfold it. I just held the one-foot-by-one-foot square of terry cloth in front of my genitals and headed toward the shower. I didn’t allow my mind to speculate on what would transpire in the next few minutes. I just moved.

“Well, finally,” Mr. Wendell said with a shake of his head. “His Highness is ready to grace us with his presence.”

It was bad enough having to endure Mr. Wendell’s taunts fully dressed. But naked, it was like throwing a bucket of salt water on a freshly skinned rabbit.

I walked up to the entrance to the shower room. Against the wall was a bar where we were supposed to hang our towels. However, the bar was right next to the open doorway so that it caught the full force of the spray coming out from the showers, thereby rendering the area absolutely useless, unless its purpose was to predampen our towels. I took a deep breath and peered into the shower room.

I saw a sight I will never forget.

There, before my very eyes, in this white tiled room that had water spraying out of the walls, were all the boys I had grown up with, been tormented by, and at one time or another wished injured, engaged in a naked pubescent frenzy. Twenty or more wet, bare bodies running wild, jumping up and down, sprinting back and forth, pushing and shoving each other, sliding on their butts and stomachs, wallowing like a bunch of Greeks at an olive-oil orgy. It was what I imagined a riot during the ancient Junior Olympics might have looked like. The guys were playing a game of hockey with a bar of soap, kicking it with their bare feet and chasing it around the floor, smashing into one another as they tried to gain possession of it. Or at least that was their excuse for going as berserk as they were. As I watched this spectacle in front me, I realized that these guys, who had each accused me of being a homosexual about once every five seconds, were now engaged in what was truly the gayest event I’d ever witnessed before or since. Talk about the jackass pots calling the beleaguered kettle black. How could I possibly walk into this festival of preteen testosterone?

“Well, Feig, you’ve made it this far,” said Mr. Wendell with a smirk. “You’d might as well go on in.”

What could I do? I was naked. That didn’t put me in much of a position to argue. The next thing I knew, I was hanging my towel, my final line of defense, on the soaked bar. Wendell had done it. I was naked. Absolutely naked. It wasn’t a feeling of freedom. It wasn’t a feeling of release. It was a feeling of being totally and utterly exposed. I didn’t know what to think. I was numb. I was now more vulnerable than I had ever been in my life.

Like a POW who’s been broken by his captors, I figured I might as well do what Mr. Wendell had said. I might as well go in and take a shower. At this point, I felt like I had nothing else to lose.

I slowly entered the shower room. The last thing I wanted was for the homoerotic hockey team to notice I was in there. I was going to do this as quickly and as painlessly as possible. All I’m required to do is get wet, I said to myself. Mr. Wendell didn’t say anything about lathering up or washing your hair or anything like that. And if he was thinking about forcing the issue, he could forget it. This was about as far as I was going to be pushed. I was defeated, but not without a few final kernels of self-respect left. I looked around for the nearest showerhead. My classmates were too involved in their raucous “hockey game” to notice me. The sound inside the shower room was incredible. Every yell and scream was amplified ten times by the echoey acoustics of the tile. An insult hurled a minute before still echoed around the room. I saw a shower spout in the wall next to the door. Just run under it and leave, I told myself. It’s as easy as that. I looked at the doorway. There was Mr. Wendell. Standing there. Watching me. The guy was staring directly at me, leaning against the doorway, observing my every move. Say what you will, this man really seemed to take his job seriously.

I stood under the water for a second. It was unpleasantly cold.
Refreshing
would not be the word I’d use to describe this shower. Uncomfortable, at best. Soul-crushing, at worst. So, I let the water hit me for a few seconds and then figured that was it. If I left now, I could be dressed and out of there before they had even finished the first period of their game. I got out from under the water and headed for the doorway.

“Just a minute, Feig,” Mr. Wendell said loudly, alerting everyone in the shower to my presence. “I need you boys to stay in here a minute. There’s something I’ve got to do.”

Before I could even begin to feel angst over why Mr. Wendell wasn’t letting us out of the showers, I realized that the room had gone completely silent.

Something was terribly wrong.

I felt something hit my foot. I looked down. It was the bar of soap from the hockey game. I froze and heard laughter. Evil laughter. I slowly turned toward the sound. Behind me, I saw a terrifying sight. The entire class was standing there in a group, staring at me with demented smiles on their faces. They were hunched low, arms tensed and set, ready to pounce.

. . . oh, no . . .

I looked back at Mr. Wendell. He had a smile on his face. An “uh-oh, watch out for those kooky guys” look. He apparently knew what was up. I didn’t. But I was about to find out. And it was far worse than ANYTHING I could have imagined.

My classmates all yelled at the top of their lungs in unison:

“DOG PILE!!!!”

And with that, they all came running at me, the whole bare naked bunch of them, their wieners flopping and their faces wild and sadistic. I looked quickly at Mr. Wendell for some sort of support or protection, but there was none to be found. The man had a big grin on his face, barely able to contain his excitement over what was about to happen to me. When I turned my eyes back to the approaching mob, it was too late. All I had time to see was the first volley of them leap through the air toward me. The next thing I knew, I was slammed into the tile floor as what seemed like a thousand naked twelve-year-olds dog-piled on top of me. All I felt was wet flesh everywhere and the impacts of other idiots slamming down on top of the pile, quickly making me part of the floor. More and more bodies piled on top of me. It felt like they must have gotten every boy in the school out of class to help in my moment of hell. I knew what a gazelle must feel as it’s being killed by a pack of lions. When I had been caught in the middle of a dog pile in elementary school, my main concern was not being able to breathe. I used to go wild trying to get out from under everyone and into the fresh air. But in the shower room, caught naked under a mountain of naked bodies, my mind just went dead. I was literally in shock.

“All right, boys,” I heard Mr. Wendell say with a chuckle. “That’s enough. Everybody up.”

One at a time, they all started to get off me, laughing and congratulating each other on a job well done. When they were all off, I stood up slowly, sore, bruised, and broken. They had crushed my spirit, along with my rib cage. I no longer cared that I was naked. I don’t even think I realized I was anymore. All I could do was stand there and think about the fact that this was merely the first day of gym class. Nine more months of preteen locker-room torture awaited me. And then the entire eighth grade after that. And then four more years in high school after
that.

Raise the white flag. I surrender.

However, as in all tragedies, just when I thought nothing worse could happen, it did.

“Boys,” said Mr. Wendell, “before you can towel off and get dressed, I need to give you a little visual hygiene check.”

Mr. Wendell looked directly at me as my jaw dropped to the floor.

“Feig, you’re first. Bend over and crack a smile.”

I woke up in the nurse’s office.

CAN
BUY ME LOVE

T
he whole time I was in school, from kindergarten all the way through graduation, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a crush on some girl.

But I never had fleeting, casual crushes. I had terminal, obsessive crushes. The kind that would last all school year and occasionally flow into the next. The kind that make you sit up at night and stare out windows and walk around in Hallmark stores. The kind that make you misty watching romantic movies, wishing that it was you and Beth or Tina or Julie and not that good-looking movie-star couple who were walking down the beach at sunset, totally and passionately in love. I have a feeling I spent more class periods staring longingly at girls who didn’t know I existed and wishing they were mine than any other kid in the history of the educational system.

Or at least it felt that way to me.

One of my biggest crushes was on a girl named Yvonne. We were in the eighth grade together, and she sat across from me in homeroom. Our class was laid out with two groups of thirty desks facing each other on opposite sides of the large room, creating an open area in the middle where our teacher lectured from—sort of an educational theater-in-the-round. Because of this, I had a direct view of Yvonne each day as she sat forty feet away from me, completely unaware of my existence.

She looked like Veronica Lake with black hair. My mother had made me watch
Sullivan’s Travels
that summer on the afternoon movie, and I thought that Veronica Lake was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, even though she only existed in black and white. Even when my mother told me that Veronica Lake was dead, I still couldn’t stop thinking about her. And on the first day of eighth grade, when I saw Yvonne for the first time, I felt as if she had been sent to me from afar, that perhaps Miss Lake had come back to Earth in this form when she heard that the gangly kid with the John Denver haircut had been dreaming about her every night. Yvonne had the same kind of long straight hair as Miss Lake and always had it partially covering her face. Her eyes were very big and exotic-looking. Like the eyes of an Indian princess, I thought poetically. And I would wish for hours on end that those eyes could be staring longingly into mine.

Unfortunately, her eyes were usually staring at our homeroom teacher, Mr. Parks. He was a handsome young guy with a neatly cropped beard like Kenny Loggins’s, and I was convinced that she had a huge crush on him. Mr. Parks would always bring his guitar to class and sing sappy 1960s love songs under the guise of opening us up to the music of his generation. But I knew he was just doing it to steal Yvonne away from me. I was sure of it. It didn’t matter, though. Even the way she looked while she sat and watched Mr. Parks with passion in her eyes made me love her all the more. She always wore short skirts and sat at an angle, extending her exposed legs out into the aisle while resting her cheek on her hand. The effect was stunning and only strengthened my resolve to make her my girlfriend with each passing day.

I’m not really sure if I had any idea what it would be like to have a girlfriend back then. I knew I wanted one, but beyond that the image was murky and undefined. I guess more than anything I wanted a girlfriend so that she would walk around with me and hold my hand and I could point to her when I was with my friends and say, “Hey, check it out, you guys. That’s my girlfriend.” But how I would make this happen without actually physically having to talk to her was the unknown part. Because there was no way I could simply walk up to her and start chatting. That was far too terrifying a prospect. No, a sneaky little plan was needed. How could I make her come over and throw her arms around me with a minimum amount of risk on my part? How could I make her realize that out of all the guys in our school, I was the one she should fall in love with—the shy kid with the plaid dress pants and the romantic thoughts who sat silently across from her, staring at her longingly instead of listening to his teacher and learning things he might really need to know later in life?

Well, there was only one way that I could think of, and that was to buy her off.

I was going to give Yvonne a present.

You know . . . bribe her into it.

The idea was based on the time I gave Pam McGovern a forty-five record of “I Honestly Love You” by Olivia Newton-John. She was my sophisticated seventh-grade science lab partner whom I
also
had a crush on, and she had told me one day that it was her favorite song. So, that night, I went to the mall and bought her a copy. The next day, sweating profusely, I gave her the record. She gasped and kissed me on the cheek, and I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day, head over heels in love. It was this feeling that prompted me to do what I consider to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. I wrote her a syrupy note thanking her for the kiss. I left it in her science book the next day. The day after that she didn’t mention the note, but she was never quite as friendly to me. She moved her chair farther away from me than usual and I kept catching her looking at me weirdly. And that same day, Kevin Phelps threw gum in my hair. The note had been a bad idea, but the bottom line was that the actual gift had done what it was supposed to do.

And now I was going to try to repeat history.

I went home that night and tried to think of something I could give Yvonne. Something special. Something that would scream “Look what a great boyfriend I’d make.” I looked around my room, but all I could see were dragster models, magic tricks, and hand puppets. Not exactly items that made girls want to kiss you. The problem was I had no way of knowing what Yvonne liked or needed. All my friends were too chicken to go over to her and do any investigating for me. And without the proper reconnaissance, the wrong gift could be a disaster, an accidental “Gift of the Magi” that could possibly drive her away from me and end our affair before it had even started. And so, figuring I needed to approach this from a woman’s point of view, I decided to consult my mom.

“Mom,” I said, approaching her timidly, “I’m . . . uh . . . I’m in love with this girl who’s . . . uh . . . kinda my girlfriend and . . . um . . . I wanted to give her a present, but I don’t know what to get her.”

My mother had a very surprised look on her face. I knew that she was aware of my crush on my next-door neighbor Mary, but beyond that I don’t think she even thought I interacted with girls at school.

“Oh, Paul, that’s so sweet,” she said in a tone that made me feel kind of creepy. “What kind of things does she like?”

That was a stumper. I felt like saying “If I knew what she liked, I wouldn’t be asking you in the first place.” But feeling that this was my only chance at doing things right with Yvonne, I decided to suck it up and navigate my way through this weird moment with my mother.

“Well, she’s really into dressing up. She always wears nice clothes to school.” That
was
true, even though it was information that could be gleaned by anybody with a pair of eyes and wasn’t necessarily the intimate knowledge of a beau. But my mother didn’t care. I could see that she was already getting an idea.

“I have
just
the thing,” she said, getting up.

Feeling a bit guilty that I had fooled my mother into thinking I had a girlfriend who actually liked me—or at least knew my name—I followed her into her bedroom to see this perfect gift. She opened up her jewelry box on the dresser and pulled out a dark gold necklace. It was an exotic piece of jewelry that looked like a bunch of miniature boat chains that had been welded together and then driven over with a steam roller. Looking back, I think it was copper or bronze, but at the time I entertained the thought that it was solid gold. It wasn’t a very pretty piece of jewelry by any means, but it was substantial.

“This belonged to my mother. She gave it to me when I was a little girl.”

Geez, this is great, I thought. Yvonne’ll want to
marry
me if I give her something
this
good. My mom looked at the necklace a little sadly, because my grandma had just died. But this made me feel happy because I knew the necklace would now stay in the family. Yvonne and my mother could have long talks comparing their childhoods and swapping stories about all the things that happened to them while they were wearing the necklace.

“You sure you don’t mind?” I asked her, reaching out for the necklace. It was even heavier than it looked.

“No. Besides, it’s your first girlfriend,” she said with a smile. “And I don’t have a daughter anyway, so this is the next best thing.”

That made me want to cry. I started thinking that maybe I should just give Yvonne a copy of “I Honestly Love You.” But the song was no longer a hit, and the necklace
did
seem like the perfect gift. And when Yvonne found out how valuable it was, she’d be putty in my hands. I didn’t know what I’d do with her once she
was
putty, but that wasn’t a concern yet. First things first.

I didn’t sleep much that night. I tossed and turned, imagining what Yvonne would do when I delivered my mother’s heirloom necklace. I kept drifting into dreams that would alternate between Yvonne’s giving me a soul kiss and Yvonne’s laughing in my face. By the time I got to homeroom that morning, I was a wreck.

Until I looked across the room.

There she was. My love. Sitting the way she always did. Short skirt, legs crossed, out to the side. And today she had a mysterious black beret on, looking quite French. Just when I thought she couldn’t get more beautiful, I said to myself, newly excited about my plan.

My stomach started to hurt. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom. This could only mean that it was time to go into action.

But how? I hadn’t actually thought about how I would deliver the present.

The task seemed easy enough. Get the necklace from point A (me) to point B (Yvonne). Logistically, it made perfect sense. But emotionally, it couldn’t be done. I ran over my options in my head:

Option #1: I could walk the necklace over myself but that would mean I would actually have to talk to her.

Option #2: I could sneak over and put it in her coat pocket, but she’d never know it was from me and think it was from Mr. Parks and then he’d profit off of my mother’s priceless childhood heirloom.

Option #3: I could drop it on her desk wrapped in a note, but my dad had always told me to never write notes to girls. “You should never write down anything that somebody could hold you to legally.” I didn’t know what kind of lawsuit my dad thought I’d get into in eighth grade, but I figured he must know better than I did.

And so, I realized I had only one other option.

Option #4: Have the necklace delivered.

The problem now became which one of my friends would even consider going up to a girl. None that I could think of offhand. We were all about even when it came to the amount of female-phobia surging through our veins. No, it would have to be somebody outside my circle of underdeveloped peers.

I looked around and immediately saw the answer.

Chris Nubellski.

Chris was the most polite kid I knew, which is unusual for an eighth grader. At that age, everyone is pretty much socially retarded. But Chris was just this friendly thirteen-year-old father figure who seemed out of sync with his age. He was the only kid I didn’t worry about introducing to my mother. With other kids, you always had to worry about whether they were going to be rude or clam up or make fun of your mom’s hair or burp or fart in front of her. But the one time I brought Chris over to my house, before we went to see
Young Frankenstein,
he was the most sincerely polite kid my mom had ever met. And so, he was the perfect candidate to act as my delivery service.

I went over to Chris and told him my predicament. Once before I had mentioned to him that I had a crush on Yvonne, so my request for his help came as no surprise to him.

“I’d be happy to, Paul,” he said in his usual brotherly tone. And before I had time to think, he grabbed the necklace out of my hand, immediately leaped up, and headed over to Yvonne’s side of the room. I wasn’t expecting him to deliver it that very second and so was completely unprepared emotionally. I wanted to stop him but he was already halfway to her. In a panic, I hurried back to my desk so that I could hide behind my math book. As soon as I hit the chair, Chris bent over to Yvonne, handed her the necklace, said something to her, and pointed right at me. My heart stopped. My stomach imploded. Everything around Yvonne went black, as if I were looking at her through a long tunnel. All I could see was Yvonne, in slow motion, turning her head to look at me. I started to feel dizzy. All I could think of was that I wished I hadn’t done this. I wished I could have somehow magically transported Chris back and erased the last few seconds of my life. In my suspended perception of time, Yvonne’s head was still swiveling to look at me. What would I do when our eyes met? Should I wave? Smile? Act cool? Pucker up? Throw up? My brain was spinning. Maybe I’ll just run out of the room. No time. Her eyes were almost at mine. And what if she’s so happy about the necklace that she runs across the room and kisses me right here? That would be great. Everyone would see it and it would secure my place in the Junior High Hall of Fame. But I’ve never kissed a girl before. And now maybe I’d have to do it right in front of Mr. Parks and everybody. It was all happening too fast. I should have thought this through more. Oh, God. She’s gonna know I exist now. Somebody help me.

The moment of truth was here.

Her eyes hit mine. My body went numb. She gave me a puzzled look that said “Who the hell are you?” I think my legs fell off. My face immobile, I quickly looked into my math book and stayed there. The whole hour I could feel her gaze burning through the top of my head. I wanted to look up at her, but my neck wouldn’t bend. All the sounds in the room became loud and fragmented, like they do right before you doze off in study hall. I felt like there was an enormous spotlight on me. Everyone in the room had to know exactly what was going on in my head at that moment, I thought. I’ve gotta look up at her, I’ve gotta look up at her.