Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (35 page)

GO VIKINGS!

P
ep.
It’s an obnoxious word. Gordon associates it with fidgety, insincere beauty queens and junior
aides-de-camp
for sleazebag Republican congressmen. Pep is uncool. There’s no way Gordon wants to see his own pep rallied, or anyone else’s, but that’s exactly what he’s had to witness every Friday for the past three years during high school football season. Pep rallies are mandatory. Last year, the Kingsburg Vikings won the state championship in their varsity football division, going undefeated against much larger and better-funded schools. It’s because they had pep, according to their school principal–that moralizing, Reagan-loving hypocrite, Mr. Donald Witzkowski.

The odious Mr. Witzkowski has dogged Gordon ever since junior high, climbing the administrative career ladder in tandem with Gordon’s ascent through the academic ranks. There was just no stopping the guy. Shrugging off the label of Sanctimonious Fishman, Witzkowski rose from his lowly post as assistant vice-principal at Roosevelt Junior High to the far more exalted position of vice-principal at Kingsburg Joint Union High School in the same year that Gordon started classes there as a freshman. Then the school board–in what must have been a fit of collective madness–made Witzkowski the high school principal two years later when Gordon became an upperclassman.

With every liberty that Mr. Witzkowski robs from his students, with every new draconian rule he chooses to impose, the PTA just loves him more–thus proving Erich Fromm’s thesis that most people secretly wish to escape from personal freedom. What particularly sucks about the situation is that Mr. Witzkowski has it in for Gordon–and with good reason. Gordon’s interest in journalism has continued unabated (he’s now editor-in-chief of the high school version of
The Viking Voice
) and over the years he’s written numerous editorials criticizing Mr. Witzkowski’s authoritarian policies. Gordon thinks of their rivalry as friendly and fun, but Mr. Witzkowski acts as if they’re deadly foes. As a result, Gordon holds a new high school record. No other straight-A student in Kingsburg’s history has racked up more hours in detention.

Pranks have recently become part of Gordon’s arsenal in his escalating campaign against the humorless administrator. He and Jimmy stayed up past midnight devising the latest one. They assembled the materials up in the framing room at the lumberyard after closing hours. Later, under cover of darkness, Hideo “Hideous” Nakamatsu met them out in front with his jacked-up, jade green Dodge Ramcharger. Skip Sorenson and Doug the Hermaphrodite were in the cab with him. Gordon and Jimmy stowed their gear and deployed bungee cords to secure a 32-foot extension ladder in the pick-up’s bed. Then the five of them cruised through the silent streets of Kingsburg, on high alert for the local cops. No one saw them as they pulled up next to the high school gymnasium and unloaded the truck. They all felt like ninjas as they executed the plan. As far as Gordon could tell, it was flawless.

Now the prank is in place. It only remains for Jimmy to set it in motion at the designated hour. Gordon would have liked to pull the cord himself, but ever since his diagnosis as a narcoleptic three years ago, he’s tried to avoid certain emotionally stressful situations–especially ones in which he might need to run.

So instead, he walks into the gymnasium for the usual Friday afternoon pep rally. But this one’s going to be different. October 29th, 1982, is a day that will live in infamy–at least for Mr. Witzkowski. Provided everything goes right.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Sitting high up in the gym’s bleachers, Gordon, Skip Sorenson, Hideous, and Doug the Hermaphrodite are feeling famous to each other, giddy with excitement over what’s about to transpire. They’re all misfits in their various ways, but as a group they have a kind of anti-glamour. Outcast freshman and sophomore boys sometimes look up to them, speaking of them as the Cool Nerds Club.

Skip Sorenson is the only conventionally handsome one in the bunch. He has the jutting chin, broad shoulders, and well-defined musculature of a superhero. The others feel more manly and desirable in his presence, as if Skip’s physical glory somehow lends strength to his friends as well. Skip is something of a legend at Kingsburg High. He was the star running back on the varsity football team, and seemed poised to set a new high school record for total yards rushing, until he took his first hit of acid.

It happened at a keg party on the banks of the Kings River last year, after Skip had scored the winning touchdown in a play-off game against Exeter. Skip didn’t think the LSD was having much of an effect on him until he realized he was hungry–starving, actually–and it occurred to him that a tuna sandwich would be very tasty right at that moment. Suddenly, a ferocious humming filled the night sky. Skip looked up and saw the Bumble Bee Tuna bee bouncing and buzzing through the air above the other partygoers’ heads. It had a wingspan of about thirty feet and one humongous stinger. In a friendly insectile voice, it started singing the Bumble Bee Tuna jingle:

Yum-Yum Bumble Bee

Bumble Bee Tuna.

I love Bumble Bee

Bumble Bee Tuna….

Everyone else ignored the giant bee, but Skip was excited to be meeting such a well-known celebrity spokesinsect. As the evening progressed, many more of Skip’s favorite characters from television ads and cereal boxes showed up in person, including Cap’n Crunch, Count Chocula, Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and the Ty-D-Bol Man (paddling his tiny rowboat through the foamy waves in Skip’s plastic beer cup). Skip had delightful conversations with all of them. He even got a few autographs. When he came down from his high two days later, he quit the football team and swore off all other sports. Skip’s only remaining ambitions were to take more hallucinogens and learn how to pinstripe cars.

Gordon hasn’t been able to buy that Corvette he wanted back when he first hit puberty, so he won’t be sending much business Skip’s way. Narcoleptics aren’t allowed to drive. He did, however, get the growth spurt he was hoping for. Gordon is now almost six-foot-two, but he weighs only 133 pounds. He finds his own skinniness distressing. He often has a jittery, haunted look on his face. His blonde hair has grown long and unruly, down past his shoulders. Errant strands of it are always falling into his face (he’s stopped using hairspray). He looks like a rock star or an underfed 18th-century poet. He might even be mistaken for a heroin addict, although he’s shunned all drugs since his experience at Dinkey Creek–despite Skip’s entreaties to see the pretty colors and meet Chef-Boy-R-Dee. These days, the only substance Gordon abuses is beer, which he drinks to excess. Everyone calls him Crash, for reasons he’d rather not dwell on.

Skinniness is a trait shared by Doug the Hermaphrodite, whose life-defining moment occurred four years earlier while he was attempting to install a CB radio antenna above his bedroom and fell off the roof. Upon hitting the ground, a four-foot section of the fiberglass antenna broke off and pierced Doug’s scrotum, erupting through the tip of his penis. The pain was akin to what General Custer must have felt on his last day of battle, only with more humiliation. No one knows whether his dick still functions; D.H., as he’s usually called, chooses to let that remain a mystery. What’s clear is that the accident left him weirdly effeminate. He has a high voice, porcelain skin, and limpid blue eyes that always seem on the verge of tears. There’s speculation that the antenna severed D.H.’s gonads before they could deliver their adolescence-inspiring jolt of testosterone. He certainly looks like a possible castrato, mooning about town with his fine chestnut hair curling up like a baby girl’s ringlets around his perpetually slackened face. He likes to wear hats, a Sherlock Holmes-style deerstalker cap in particular.

No one would ever guess by looking at him that D.H. is extraordinarily intelligent (and perhaps he isn’t), but he knows more about music than just about anyone. His special area of expertise is obscure Bob Dylan covers by foreign bands. He got started on that course at the age of eight when he heard someone’s drunken mangling of “Like a Rolling Stone” in Italian
("Come Una Pietra Scalciata")
at a mafia wedding reception in Sicily (long story…). Bob Dylan is an enlightened prophet sent down to Earth to put a steadying hand on the tillers of our souls, according to D.H. And you haven’t heard the angels sing until you’ve heard “Visions of Johanna” sung in Japanese.

Hideo “Hideous” Nakamatsu thinks Bob Dylan sucks. He’s into punk rock. His parents own a thriving kiwi orchard just outside of town and even though they moved from Kyoto only three years ago and still speak Japanese around the house, Hideous–their only son–has already been assimilated into American culture. He went through a shit-kicking Lynyrd Skynyrd phase (straw cowboy hat, pearl-buttoned shirts, armadillo boots). Then he discovered The Ramones, The Dead Kennedys, and a band out of Los Angeles called X. In short order, Hideous bleached his black hair half-blonde and cut it into spikes, he started wearing a dog collar, and he exchanged his cowboy clothes for slashed black jeans, Doc Martens, and a leather motorcycle jacket.

Hideous also took out a loan from his parents so he could buy his jade green Dodge Ramcharger. He turned out to be a preternaturally skilled driver. It’s almost uncanny how he can thread the Ramcharger through traffic at twice the legal speed limit. But aside from breaking traffic rules, Hideous is a law-abiding citizen. He takes kung fu classes after school three times a week. He doesn’t drink, or do drugs, or even talk all that much (his English still isn’t great). Privately, he thinks he must be boring, but Crash, Skip, D.H., and James all seem to like having him around, anyway. Hideous repays their friendship by driving them wherever they want to go, which usually means taking them as a group to see schlocky drive-in movies in Fresno. His all-time favorite drive-in movie is
Death Race 2000
, in which Sylvester Stallone portrays a race car driver who deliberately runs over children, dogs, and little old ladies. Bruce Lee’s
Enter the Dragon
runs a close second, although Hideous believes it could have been vastly improved with a punk rock soundtrack.

His latest punk accouterment is a nose ring with three tiny silver balls threaded along the bottom of its loop. It makes him look fierce–or ridiculous, he’s still not sure which. Hideous just had his septum pierced two weeks ago. Because the ring is so new, he tends to flick at it obsessively whenever he gets excited or nervous–as he is now, watching the gym fill up with over 400 students. He wonders if their prank is going to get them arrested.

The cheerleaders in their alluring green-and-gold uniforms shake their pom-poms and do a warm-up cheer as everyone finds their seats:

“Two, four, six, eight! Who do we appreciate?”

“Joyce Carol Oates!”
Gordon stands up and shouts.

“Mahatma Gandhi!”
D.H. yelps, standing with him.

“Tricky Dick Nixon!”
Skip shouts from a sitting position.

“Jerwo Biafah!”
Hideous yells last and somewhat lamely. Jello Biafra is the lead singer of The Dead Kennedys, but Hideous sometimes has trouble pronouncing his L’s and R’s. He goes back to flicking at his nose ring again. He doesn’t realize until it’s too late that everyone in his immediate vicinity is staring at him as if he’s pulling long boogers from the depths of his nostrils.

“What happens if you get a cold, Hideous?” Skip asks him without irony.

“Yeah,” says D.H., sitting back down, “doesn’t the snot, like, get all balled up behind that thing?”

“I take out,” Hideous tells them. “Piercing is so awesome! I do scotum next.”

Skip and D.H. both grab their own crotches, aghast. “Oh, dude!” they exclaim. D.H., in particular, knows of what he speaks when he says: “That’s just sick and wrong!”

“It’s perverted,” Skip agrees.

“Plus, it’ll hurt like hell.”

“Pain not so bad, I think,” says Hideous, staring between his legs.

“Dude–” says D.H. “– if you’re so into this whole punk rock Modern Primitive shit, why don’t you just go full-out and bore a hole through your skull?”

“Why the hell should he bore a hole through his skull, D.H.?” Gordon asks, appointing himself as Hideous’ defender.

“Because these holy monk dudes up in the Himalayas have been doing it for centuries. It’s called triptophantasia–”

“Trephination,” Gordon corrects him.

“Whatever…. Supposedly the hole lets out some of your cerebrospinal fluid, so more blood goes to your brain and you feel totally high and groovy all the time. Plus, it opens up your third eye, which makes you more sensitive to electromagnetic vibrations, so you can see auras and shit.”

“You make up. Tell Hideous lie,” says Hideous.

“I’m totally telling the truth, I swear!” D.H. lifts his eyebrows to reveal his blue-eyed innocence. “I saw this show about it on PBS. It’s been going on forever. They even found these old caveman skulls in Africa with holes drilled in their foreheads.”

“Waitta second, man!” Skip cuts in. “I think I saw that show! Wasn’t that the one where those Canadian research guys had the electromagnetic motorcycle helmet? And when they strapped it on their mailman, he hallucinated that he got abducted by aliens!”

“You’re talking about Michael Persinger’s experiments,” Gordon informs Skip.

“Dude, that was it!” D.H. claps his hands in recognition.

“Man, the poor guy thought they probed all his orifices and everything!”

“You guys foo-ah shit,” says Hideous, unconvinced.

“Dude, we are so
not
full of shit,” D.H. says. “This show explained everything. Check this out… there’s a part of our brains that hallucinates a classic alien abduction scenario whenever it’s exposed to intense electromagnetic waves–which can happen around geological fault lines and places like that. Mostly our skulls keep us protected from normal electromagnetic shit, but then there are these sort of sky creatures–”

“Orgone monsters,” Skip fills in.