Disclaimer:
The names in the story below are, like the story itself, fiction - made up - fake. You get the point, right? Any correlation between thice chipsese characters and real people is purely coincidental etc. etc. The song quote at the end is real though: I pinched it from the Barenaked Ladies, may they live forever and ever…
Spanky Bullwhips
Spanky Bullwhips wasn't as fucked up as he looked. Nobody is that fucked up. Disturbing, not disturbed, might be one way to put it - one of a kind. Unlucky enough to look 'challenged' and sharp enough to play the part, if you know what I mean.
I'm not the best person to give a first impression of the guy. We grew up on the same block, just a few houses apart. Honestly, I never gave his looks much thought until our first day at school. The reactions of the other kids drove the point home: laughing, pointing, whispering. A little girl started screaming; it took her mother forever to peel her tiny fingers off the doorframe and wrestle her into the classroom. Percy didn't pay her any mind though - he was used to worse from adults.
Yeah, his name was Percy. Percy Darkin. I doubt many people remember him. I don't doubt that his parents are happy about it: the no one remembering part that is. They made no bones about the fact that he was not the Golden Child. I think he wore the same clothes for two years at a stretch. That – or his closet resembled a forest of identical yellow and blue striped sweaters that all shrank at the same rate. I used to trade lunches with him a lot, even though I hate bologna and ketchup sandwiches – especially when the ketchup leeches through the bread.
He got his nickname in second grade. It was Billy Owens - he was a Little Rascals fan. One day Billy was leading the 'let's kick the shit out of Percy' fan club and made the inspired comment that Percy looked like Spanky after a bullwhipping. It stuck.
That's when I picked up the rock. Billy seemed smaller at that moment. His eyes were nailed to my hands. I felt the grit against my fingers – saw the dust trailing behind the granite just before it bounced off his skull. Billy stared, unbelieving. His eyes swelled big and black like a frightened puppy - I felt terrible. Terrible like a bomb - terrible like a beaten dog taking its first bite. After that, Billy's friends started calling him 'Billy girl-fight'. Billy's nickname didn't stick, but Percy's did - and Billy is still an asshole: an asshole of the ex-husband variety.
On our way home that day Percy said it for the first time, tears running this way and that over his puffy red face, his broken glasses sliding again and again off the end of his nose.
"Ah ooh I bet fend?"
"Yeah Percy, I guess I am."
We walked home after school, hand in hand; it was the first time in my life I felt comfortable with anyone. That was a long time ago - but springtime turns to summer and on to fall and winter. Sometimes, if I try really hard, the nights don't seem so long.
**********
Fast forward to fall, my twelfth birthday party: not much of a party. Percy and I sat at the table eating our cake and ice cream, taking care not to let our merriment rise above a whisper. My dad locked himself in his office that morning – my Mom walked around on tiptoe. That was the best birthday present my Dad ever gave me. I could breathe easier when he left me alone: my hands didn't shake. I could go outside to escape. I could smile.
It was a good day to smile. The leaves, red, yellow and brown, danced around the yard on a warm liquid breeze. It was Percy's idea, jumping in the leaves. Sometimes he got an idea into his head and no one could shake him out of it. We took turns jumping into huge piles of the crispy things until we were covered from head to toe in leaf confetti. We looked like two pieces of cookie dough, rolled in candy and ready for the baker's rack. It was great fun until we started to itch. I felt the jagged crumbs sticking me like thousands of tiny pinpricks - I needed to get them out of my clothes and there was no way I was going back into that house.
That's how we got caught. It's funny how I still think of it as getting caught; we weren't doing anything wrong. It never crossed our minds that we were doing anything wrong – but there we were, standing in the garage in our underwear, shaking out our clothes and brushing leaves off each other; looking at my mom's face as it boiled from white to red like a stuck traffic light.
"Cathy, you Little SLUT!"
She screamed – and my face exploded. Red finger-marks in the shape of Mom's hand tattooed themselves on my jaw. My ear became a bright stab of pain. Percy ducked and ran out the door in his underwear; his yellow sweater trailed behind him like a flag. I felt abandoned – but I don't blame him.
"Comon' Little Slut," mom ranted, dragging me across the yard by my hair, mumbling the words I didn't want to hear: "let's see what your Father thinks about a Little Slut playing doctor in the garage!"
Now, this story isn't about me, else it would be titled "Little Slut." That's what my Mom and Dad called me for over a year.
My Christmas present the following year? Little Slut once again bestowed with the title "Cathy." The farce was iced with ceremonial hugs, inexpensive presents and cold kisses. Percy was allowed into the house again to play, supervised, with Little Slut.
**********
But, as they say, the Lord givith and the Lord taketh away. I don't believe in God anymore, but I like the saying. In Percy's case the taking came at birth. The giving started sometime in our second year of High School - if you can call it giving. You see, for some odd reason, some divine cosmic joke, many women found Percy irresistible.
I never understood the attraction. Maybe I was just used to him – to me he was just a friend. Sure, he smelled good: like bread baking, like kitten fur full of fresh air, like a warm summer breeze – but that was it. I was into eyes. That's how I got hooked on Billy Owens, his bright blue eyes – more like beady little ice chips – but my opinion is colored by experience. Back then all it took was a cute face and great eyes to get Little Slut all hot and bothered. With Percy it wasn't like that. I could say anything to the guy and he listened to me. He was the only person I could really connect with. His tutoring was the only reason I was able to get passing grades. He made me laugh.
"What are you looking so worried about?" I asked him one day as we sat in a pile of papers and textbooks. He sank his teeth deeper into the end of his pencil.
"Not-in," he said, eyes downcast.
"What do you mean nothing? You've brushed you hair out of your eyes like sixty times in the last three minutes."
I eased the pencil out of his shaking hands – he folded them in his lap.
"Come on, spill it."
"Ms Feg-maher..."
"What about Ms Fegenmacher?" (Betty Fegenmacher was our tenth grade algebra teacher. Young, almost a kid herself at the time, maybe twenty-three or four. Not exactly a Van-Halen-video kind of teacher, but attractive nonetheless. Not all there, if you ask me.)
Percy just looked at me with his good eye; his face flushed crimson.
"Do I have to drag it out of you?" I reached out, laid a hand on his arm. He shied away, adjusted his glasses with one stubby finger and looked back at the floor.
"Mahe move." He snatched the pencil and stuck it back in his mouth.
"What?" I was short with him, unbelieving. "You sound like the assholes on the football team! Stop it!"
"No!" He stared up from the floor, "not ike tat! She n me…" His shoulders shook with little sobs.
My heart jumped. My face began to burn. I knew him well enough to realize he wasn't bullshitting. He was the world's worst bullshitter. I could feel knots turning my belly to panic fire. I tucked my feet beneath me on the bed, wrung my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking. I felt like I was standing in front of my Dad, listening to one of his endless rants as I fought to stand straight and still, my body swaying back and forth. All I wanted was to sink into a barrel of ice water and let the numbness wash over me.
"Just stop it, I don't want to know…"
He bolted from the room before I could finish speaking; my bedroom door crashed into the frame – a spiderweb crack ran up the wall. I felt like shit. I wanted to go after him but didn't. I could say I was numb, but that wasn't it. I could say I was in denial, that it was too much for me to process, that I was too young to understand. Not true – not any of it. I just didn't want to deal with it – I didn't know how to make it better – but I did understand. I'll always understand and that's what hell is: hell is regret for things done or not done; things I can't change and things I can't stop thinking about. It's personal.
We didn't speak much for the next couple of years; we only glanced at each other when we passed in the halls – especially when one of us was with someone. Switching partners and trying to better each other became a kind of unspoken competition between us and Little Slut was up for the challenge. I never said a word about what Percy told me, though I listened to the rumors - never letting on what I knew but never doing anything to stop it.
**********
I never saw Percy outside of school until the summer after graduation - a party at Janet Manning's house. There were always parties at Janet's house. Her dad was long gone and her mom often spent nights elsewhere, sometimes several nights in a row. Janet and I spent those hours cleaning up – spent even longer hours perfecting our reputations. Infamous, we were – and proud of it.
That night was like most others: drinking, loud music, pot smoking, guys in the basement fiddling with guitars, guys in the upper bedrooms fiddling with girls - typical eighteen-year-old bullshit. By eleven-something I was more than half in the bag, sitting between two guys sharing a joint, grabbing two hits for every one of theirs. That's when I saw him watching me.
