“I mean, it was fifty years ago, so…”
The old guy’s eyes are tired. Exhausted, desperate, like it’s fifty years of poison.
I sip my beer and try to stay calm. “Why does that matter?”
“C’mon, it’s just the way they did things then.”
“They say the same thing about slavery. OK. Does that make it right?”
“Well… well, hell no. But nobody ever complained, nobody ratted him out to their parents. If it happened to me, I mean it didn’t, but if it did, my parents and the school principal and everyone else would be like, ‘hey he’s a teacher, that’s his job, you shouldn’t have screwed up, and you wouldn’t have gotten it.’ And everyone else knew it too.”
Photo cred: The Atlantic
“Gotten it? What’s ‘it?’”
“Maybe I’m… um, well, it’s been fifty years…”
“You said that. So what? Tell it how you remember it.”
“So, seventh grade, gym class, you know you’re in there with sixty other guys, you’re all like 11 or 12, and the gym teacher’s this big burly dude who takes no crap. Bald head, built like a giant fire plug, all super macho and he just lords his power over all these boys who don’t even have hair in their pits yet.”
“OK, he was a douche. Still happens today, right? Douchey gym teachers?”
“Yeah, fine. Just another douche. Until class is over, then he takes these sixty boys into the locker room and tells ‘em all to strip down, get in the shower, scrub off, and line up so he can check ‘em all out before he lets anyone dry off and get dressed. So he could, y’know, make sure everyone’s actually clean.”
“Big on hygiene, was he?”
“If you say so. Anyway he says nobody better screw off in the shower, in fact, nobody better even talk. And of course…”
“Somebody screws off. And the douche has to remind them who’s in control.”
He chokes a little, sucks in a breath, stares at an untouched whiskey.
“Fifty… it’s been… I mean, why am I even talking about this? Maybe I’m remembering wrong.”
“Or maybe you still dwell on it because you remember it exactly right. Maybe it still hurts.”
“And it’s supposed to hurt less if I tell you about it after fifty years?”
I shake my head. “No guarantees. And I’m no expert, I’m just a guy in a bar. Easy enough to tell me about it and never see me again. Or not tell me anything. Either way. Your call.”
“Fine. Here goes.” He lifts the glass, knocks back the double in one gulp. “So yeah, someone talks, or laughs. I got no idea who the kid was, what he did, can’t even remember any other kids in that gym class.”
“Well, it’s been fifty years.”
“It’s all foggy except for what happened next. And after fifty years, what happened next is still clear as a summer morning. A naked little 12-year-old gets pulled from the crowd of naked little 12-year-olds by this gym teacher – the guy’s about two-thirty, solid muscle. ‘Bend over, grab your ankles,’ he says, and sixty other naked little 12-year-olds stare right at his naked little 12-year-old butt. Just wide open for everyone. Teacher pauses for effect, like he knows he’s in complete control and he knows holding off for just a second’s gonna make it hurt even more, then he raises his arm, rares back, gives that kid everything he’s got, open palm, right on that naked little 12-year-old butt. Sounds like a gunshot.”
“Jesus. Naked? Right in front of everyone?”
He ignores me. “Kid loses his balance, flops into a row of lockers, hides his face, heads off to find a towel. You can already hear the snickers. Coach stops it with a ‘who’s next?’ then looks us all over, up and down, paces in front of the shower bays, finally says ‘dismissed.’ He was all into military commands. Fall in, march, halt, right face, all that. Made him feel like he had one more thing on us.”
“So that’s it?”
“Whaddya mean ‘that’s it?’ You think that was nothing?”
“Just wondering if that’s the end of the story. Kid walks away, dries off, gets dressed, everyone goes to their next class…”
“Not exactly. Not for me anyway.”
“I guess not, if it still bugs you after all these-”
“Bugs me? It rips me apart. That piece of crap gym teacher never touched me. But he touched that kid, and I saw the whole thing play out just like that at least two other times with two other kids, and how do you think it was for a kid like that, the teasing about a big red hand print across his bare ass, the gossip around school, the girls looking at him funny, the fear someone’s gonna tell his parents and he’ll get beat again at home… can you imagine? All because one giant dude with steel beams in his arms and a loose screw in his brain, he’s gotta be in control, and how does a guy get away with that?”
“Was he cool?”
His eyes bulge at me, incredulous. “Huh?”
“Think about it for a minute. What did the other boys think of him?”
He watches me study my empty glass, waves to the waitress for another round. “God dammit. You’re right. They adored him. They followed him around like the Pied Piper. They wanted to… be just like him.”
“Perfect timing in a young man’s life, isn’t it? Big bulgy-armed guy like that to look up to? Those boys needed a mentor, a role model, and they got a bully. Be like me, fellas. Big strong muscles, little weak-ass character.”
He whips out a twenty for the waitress. “I guess. Here’s to smart guys ruling the world.”
I relax into a smile as he kills another double. “So, what now? You going to the cops? It was assault, plain and simple, and he’d get a sex rap on top of it.”
“Right. If that punk’s even still alive, he’s drooling on his bib in a rest home somewhere. You think a sex offender verdict’s gonna change anything? Besides, it was…”
“Fifty years ago.”
“Yeah.”
The “fire hydrant” with “steel beams in his arms and a loose screw in his brain” was wrong. He was a bully. He was using power in a really ugly way–a way that scared kids, worrying them about screwing up in some way. Terrible model for the kids–who want to look up to him. Wrong. Well written, scary reminder that being a bully hurts the kid you bully and give permission to others to act the same. Thanks for writing and posting this. Important! kjc