Such Misery

This is a character sketch that was inspired by some taunting in the halls I saw. 

Such Misery

Gary was tired of being pushed around. He was tired of having his backpack put in the trash can, or his lunch box put in the toilet or his shoes stolen from his locker. He especially resented his nipples being twisted. A worse torture was when other guys grabbed his boobs. Yes. He had boobs. He was a fat kid and they were much larger and much softer than the guy's pecs on the cover of the Muscle  Magazine he was always reading. A few guys even made that his new name: “Tits”.  “What’s up Tits?”
He felt like killing them. Sometimes. Or damning them to Hell with the dogs and the worms and the shadows. Other times he wished they would just wind up dead somehow, without any of his assistance. And if he were watching from a bridge, too far to do anything and without access to a phone, then he would just have to watch.  

He would get mad at them, but was never able to stop them. Maybe that was the reason: he never told them to stop.  “They wouldn’t anyway”. He felt bad that he was fatter than most kids, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that either. His mother always told him he was born that way and he should just accept it. But there was nary a fresh vegetable in the house and the only fruit was once a month when his father would drop off a bag of oranges or a pineapple from the guy on the side of the freeway off ramp.

What really brought on the sorrow was that he was a coward. His hands and his mouth were not capable of doing what his mind impressed on him to do. His mom always wanted him to be a good kid and she did a great job of making him feel bad about himself if he ever talked back to her. That was a skill she had successfully cultivated and then practiced on her child. Gary was unable to say anything to his mother. Even if she were wrong. It was Auschwitz.  Bergen Belsen. Dachau. At times, her behavoir was so grievous that he wanted to run away and be alone, or later as a preteen, drink all the liquor in the cabinet, or later still, cut himself. So he was always afraid of talking back to anyone, even if it was important to him. 
He had been sick for nearly a week and was not sleeping well. Uncle Trent had been crashing on the couch again and he always made it tense and uncomfortable in the house. Gary missed breakfast that morning and before his mom came in, he ignored his report card which had to be signed and returned. He would throw it away when no one was looking.
He had considered how sad his life was all the way to school and the sentiment continued on for most of first period. By time the bell for Nutrition rang, he was at his low spot again. Then, when Charlie Dundleson called him “Tits” and went to grab his breasts, something in Gary caught fire and exploded. But just as he was about to crush Dundleson’s existence with the first time he would ever throw his fist at someone and shout all the curse words he had ever learned, and then scream out an angry laugh, the campus police officer turned the corner and accidentally bumped into Dundleson. "Oh. Excuse me."  His revenge was foiled again. 
He screamed inside. His body’s stress response bumped up to Code Red and he clenched his fists trying to control himself, but also pretended he was choking him. He couldn't restrain himself. So he reached for the officer’s taser (he thought it was a gun) and it slipped right out of the holster.  He was going to wave it and yell in an angry, helpless threat, to gain the attention that was needed for someone to ask him if anything was wrong. He did not mean to pull the trigger.  But it was immediately discharged into the officer’s leg. Both were worthy of dying. Dundleson for being the worst human being ever; the officer for being the laziest, sorriest, sackashit police officer ever to graduate an academy. 
   There was another shot in the taser, so in less than thirty seconds, Dundleson was also on the ground and both were twitching and unconscious. Gary removed the firearm (the one with the bullets)  from the officer’s holster and aimed it at Dundleson’s pectoral muscle. 

At least that is how Gary imagined his revenge to manifest. 

That was twenty years ago. Gary became the senior vice president of Krakow Foods Corporation.  He had not done any jail time, since state and federal laws do not prosecute the imagination. He rarely did anything bad and broke no important laws. He never actually touched that cop’s taser. He focused on his hobbies, did well in college and advanced in the business world. He got through the bullying and teasing. He lost some weight and gained confidence. He had a nice wife, one really smart kid and one really athletic kid. 
He thought his need for revenge on Dundleson was gone, a castoff of high school days along with an awkward prom, one student of the month award and a 2.8 GPA. Little did he know that a raging beast of revenge hid within him and would be released when he came into the knowledge that Charles Triton Dundleson was just hired as a package sorter in a warehouse he supervised.  

He had hoped Dundleson wouldn’t amount to anything, but didn’t know that karma really was a bitch. Dundleson wasn’t smart and his weekly intake of alcohol diminished what brains were there. He always had a physique, but wasn’t athletic. He got with several women but never had a relationship. He didn’t go to college, not even a community college. Dundleson was a cloud that never gave rain, and now he was 30-something year old who was excited that he procured a job two dollars above minimum wage. 

Gary never thought of himself as mean. As a teenager, he loved pumping bullets into criminals, monsters and terrorists in video games.  He even did the same to villains in the movies, but he never thought we would be able to carry out anything in the real world. He had even considered becoming a vegetarian, hearing his sister talk about how all animals can feel pain and that they have plans of their own.  

But as his memories, tussled and roiled and clawed at his intestines, his revenge molded to a form, and Gary was forcefully becoming aware of his capability to inflict on a fellow human being, such enduring and acute misery. 

HOWW - Drinking Moonshine

This "His Only Weakness Was..." came about when I was thinking about some of the middle-range social vices of humans.  

     Polo’s only weakness was drinking moonshine.  It was a habit he started in primary school, no doubt a result of being related to his father. It caused a delay in knowledge about the world in some areas, but ignited explosions of experience in others. He was able to have a quality to his life, not of mere sustenance and material items, but of adventure, of outlook, of disposition.  After The Accident, he felt so bad and cried so much, and talked himself so down that he up and quit moonshine.  He quit eighty-three times actually. The shortest bit of moonshine sobriety was four hours. The longest streak of not drinking moonshine would have been a whole week, except on that Sunday, the Boon Rascals showed up, so really it was just six-and-a-half days.  But he told everyone it was seven, so it was seven to anyone that was asked.  And there was that time he got a birthday present from Bard Cooney. A jug a’ gin. Folsem’s brand.  Now that’s a drink you can serve to your grandmother.  Polo drank that for a whole month instead of moonshine. And he told everyone in town that he had been thinking about things, had a talk with someone and that he would stop drinkin’ shine and would switch to proper spirits instead. He told all about Bard's birthday gift and everything. Sheriff Tinney said he was right proud of him and that this was a start to a new chapter in his life. The Women’s League even came out and sang him a song, gave him a pamphlet and told him they would be prayin’ on their knees, cryin’ and sobbin' too, so that he would get sober. But we all knew that prayer for other folks don’t work as good unless that person is praying for the same thing. I never seen Polo pray. Never heard him talk about doin‘ it either. And if he did pray up to Almighty God, I’m not sure it would be to stop drinking. During the Folsom's Month, Polo dressed himself up proper, started working and even went to church for the Easter service of 1902.  
      Much later Bard told him that it was bathtub gin that he put in a Folsem’s jug. Why would he do something like that?  Everyone else in town knew that Bard made gin in his other barn and they kept it to themselves. So when Polo come around braggin' about his month, they all smiled and congratulated him and wished him good luck. Polo looked at Bard like his only child was just kidnapped. Things degraded swiftly for Polo, Bard, Tinney and a few others in town. 
     At the end of August in 1908 Sheriff Tinney began talking about jailing him again because something had to be done. Complaints increased.  So, it was on the last day of that month that I went over to Polo's with a string of lake trout as an offering. I had planned to talk  some sense into him and fix him once and for all.