Humbling Hercules

The applause sign lit and the crowd went crazy.

She emerged from a massive, decoratively arched doorway and made her way down a long brightly lit ramp like some sort of alien Queen getting ready to sing space-opera to a group of star-struck, earthbound peasants.

"Welcome to the Debra Harper show!" shouted Debra Harper to all her fans, mostly middle-aged to upper-aged women with a couple of gays sprinkled in for good measure. Upon her introductory hello, the applause grew even louder. There were lots of high-pitched "woos" as well. So many, in fact, that the applause sign may as well have read "applause and woo." Okay, let's face it; they didn't even need the sign. The crowd would be going batshit crazy with or without it. She was their hero.

"Today," said Debra, followed by an unusually long, purposeful pause (the type she often used to signify the forthcoming of something of great importance), "they were tormented in grade school and high school... bullied to no end because of their looks. NOW... these former targets have become red-hot, tantalizing babes and hunk-tastic, drool-inducing studs! Watch them confront their former bullies."

With that, exactly in the same instant, every member of the crowd began chanting "Deb-ra," all in unison, as though they existed as a singular entity. Many different bodies and voices, but all connected by one simple mind. "De-bra, De-bra!"

He sat backstage, listening to the chants. His palms were sweaty. He had a slight headache. He had never been on TV before. He had never been up on a stage for a spelling bee or given a "best man" speech at a wedding reception much less been watched by millions of daytime viewers. "When do I go on again," he asked a large headset-wearing crewmember. The crewmember looked at him and held up three fingers. Third. He was scheduled to go on third.

He sat and listened to the show that was taking place on the other side of the fake wall. He couldn't make out every word, but when he heard dance music hit, the crowd really went wild. He knew that meant some sexpot of a babe was probably grinding up and down on a pole right now, giving the bully of her past a big comeuppance. If only that bully had been nice to her, kind to her, he could have had a chance. Maybe then she would be grinding up on him right now instead of that pole.

Two women were slated to confront their bullies before him. He would be the first male victim introduced. Transformed from an absurd nerd to a god with a bod. Only a matter of time now. Soon he'd be confronting his bully. It'd been so long since he'd seen her.

***

He stood now, wearing nothing but a green g-string, behind a doorway that was covered completely with a long strip of translucent paper. On the other side of that paper was the studio audience, Debra Harper, the stage, and her. His bully. Jessica Poveck. It was cold in the studio. He warmed his arms by rubbing them.

The producer spoke to him in a manner so quick and matter-of-factly, it seemed almost as if it were its own language.

"Now, when we come back from commercial, Debra will tell your story. She'll introduce your bully. Your bully will be on stage sitting in a chair. You'll be up here. When Debra introduces you, the dance music will hit, you start dancing... the crowd sees your silhouette and cheers, you break right through this paper and make your way down the stairs and up onto the stage. If you wanna sit, sit. If you wanna stand up and dance around some more, or whatever, you do that. When Debra interrupts though with a comment or question, you stop dancing and you listen and you answer. Remember that pal, Debra is Queen Bee here. This is her show and you're a guest. Just follow what I told you and everything will be all right."

He heard a deep man's voice from the other side of the translucent paper shout, "And we're back, in five, four, three, two, one!" Uproarious, back-from-commercial-break applause ensued. He took heavy breaths to calm himself. Debra Harper started talking.

"Welcome back, everyone. On stage now is Jessica."

She was on stage. He couldn't see clearly through the paper, but he would take Debra Harper's word for it. His heart started beating faster.

"Jessica, back in primary school... what were you like?"

"Smaller. With less knowledge of mathematics and geopolitics. "

"Yes, but how did you treat people? Like, your classmates for instance?"

"Well, I thought I treated them nicely enough, but... I'm here on The Debra Harper Show, so I'm sure somebody's upset with me about something."

"Does the name Mark ring a bell?"

"Not really."

"Well, let's learn a little bit more about Mark." Debra Harper's eyes glanced down at the blue card in her hand every so often, but mostly stayed directly trained on Camera 2. She was a pro. "Mark was in your class from grades 3 thru 7, before he transferred out. During that time... Mark claimed that you would mercilessly pick on him. Call him names. Laugh at him. Do you remember Mark now?"

"No," she answered.

"Let's see what Mark looked like back then."

Photos flashed up on the studio monitors of Mark as a boy. The audience aw-ed. Half of their aw was a "so cute" aw, the other half was a sympathetic aw. He was as scrawny as a malnourished newborn chick. One black and white photo, probably a school yearbook photo, popped up of him with a bowl haircut wearing a bowtie, and giant, oversized glasses that were too big for his face. The audience laughed. In a way, their mocking laughter at his dorky photo made them all bullies of 8-year-old-Mark too, all hypocrites, but that fact didn't seem to dawn on them. After all, they were smart enough to figure out that he was probably very buff now, and so that made it okay to laugh at his prepubescent, skinnier, younger version. They were only hindsight-bullies.

"That was Mark then. Harper fans, are you ready to meet Mark now?!" asked the energetic talk show host.

The audience answered yes, definitely, by way of rapid applause and hooting. Several stage lights shot onto the translucent paper, revealing Mark's chiseled silhouette to the crowd. He forgot to dance as instructed, and instead, stood still as a stone statue. "Go," said the headset-wearing stage manager producer man as he pushed Mark's bare back.

Mark plodded forward and broke through the thin sheet of paper and revealed himself to the horny housewife crowd and boy did they give him the loveliest of greetings. They whooped and hollered and basically shared a mass orgasm as his adrenaline kicked in and he gyrated and flexed his way down the aisle staircase. Pudgy and grubby women's hands reached out and rubbed his muscles as he made his way toward the stage.

Jessica took out a small compact mirror from her purse and began fixing her hair ever so slightly, paying no mind to the raunch-fest that was taking place before her. Mark stepped up on stage. She was sitting in a chair roughly seven feet away from him. He was like a deer in headlights.

"Flex those muscles! Give her a little dance!" shouted Debra Harper into her microphone, despite the microphone existing so she would not have to shout. He didn't feel like dancing anymore, but he was prepped by several different people before the start of the show: whatever Debra Harper says to do... do it. So he danced. He flexed. He gyrated. And Jessica closed her compact, raised her eyebrows high and grimaced ever so slightly in that special, "what-are-you-doing?" way that could make any man feel like an idiot. He stopped dancing. He felt like an idiot.

The music ended and Debra Harper chimed in. "Well, Jessica, I bet you wish you hadn't teased him so much now, don't you?"

Jessica yawned. "If you say so." The audience murmured in annoyance. No one had ever given Debra Harper such sass before.

"Mark. Is there anything you would like to tell Jessica?"

He felt stupid now, seeing her in person, in all her glory. She definitely wasn't impressed, she definitely didn't care, and it was becoming quite apparent that he was making a fool out of himself. But he had to say something. He was on national television. People were watching. And Debra Harper was asking him to.

"It hurt me the way you would tease me every day," he finally spat out.

"So?" Jessica responded. The crowd booed.

"You made me feel like I was two inches tall... the way you called me twinkle toes. And Marci instead of Mark." He turned to the audience. "She used to steal text books and homework papers from my desk and wouldn't give them back to me unless I barked like a dog." The audience gasped and jeered.

Now she remembered Mark. As the memories of her playfully tormenting him crept back into her mind, she smiled widely. She had forgotten all that and wished she hadn't forgotten all that, because it had been so much fun.

"How horrible! Do you have any remorse?" Debra Harper asked of Jessica. "I think you owe him a big apology."

"You're really going to hold me accountable for something I did as a child?" she challenged.

"Well," Debra Harper seemed uneasy and flustered for that one split second of a moment. Then she recovered. "I suppose people change. You may have changed, but one thing's for sure... Mark definitely changed. What do you think of Mark now?"

The audience sat smarmily, every one of them with their arms folded, waiting for her to eat a big helping hand of humble pie.

"I think he's a little pathetic more than anything else."

Upon hearing this, the audience broke out into loud murmurs, their murmurs composed of an odd mix of anger and bewilderment. What could she possibly mean?

"What could you possibly mean," asked Debra Harper, expertly reading the mood of her audience.

"Isn't it obvious? This man- no, I really shouldn't call him that. This little boy is obsessed with me. He's been obsessed with me since we were in the third grade. I barely even remembered him before today, but even after all of this time, I'm obviously still looming very large in his mind. He's gone to the gym and spent years sculpting his body, thinking of me, thinking of this moment. It's all a little... creepy. I will apologize, though. I'm sorry, Mark. I'm sorry I hardly remember you and that you're but a buzzing fly in my life whereas I, apparently, am your goddess and total reason for being."

The large, living, single organism that was the Debra Harper Show audience erupted with an unabashed vocal contempt so vigorous, it rivaled the reception Adolf Hitler might receive should he ever find himself alive and accidently wandering through the front door of a Holocaust Museum.

"You're disgusting," a large, bifocal-ed woman wearing curlers in her blue-tinted hair, garbed in a long black and white checkered muumuu, screamed into the microphone that Debra Harper now held up in front of her snout. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking about another human being as though you was all that, and as though he was garbage. Well, honey, you AIN'T all that... and he ain't garbage!" The pig woman now turned her line of commenting unto Mark. "Baby, if you're looking for somebody to take care of you and treat you right... I have two words for you: Come to Mama!"

The crowd cheered as though the Allied forces had just liberated Paris.

"I agree. You haff NUFFIN'," said an even larger woman, bald with no teeth, her gone-to-shit body tightly squeezed into a green sequined mini skirt and a kitty cat t-shirt. Debra Harper held the microphone right up to her gaping maw. Say what you will about Debra Harper, but she sure knew how to work a room. "He a STUD. You a DUD." The crowd cheered again. Jessica yawned.

"I understand why these people are so angry, Jessica," said the show's host in a gravely serious tone. "You tormented him for so many years as children, and... you're right. It really has stayed with him for all this time. You've moved on and forgotten about him but he can't seem to forget about you. That should tell you something... you hurt him. You hurt him badly. Your words... your attitude towards him... it affected him greatly. Now, I'm going giving you a chance to reflect on that... and then, to look Mark right in the eye... don't talk to me... don't talk to the audience... don't talk to the television cameras. And don't talk about him... talk to him. Look him in the eye," patented Debra Harper pause, "and tell him whatever it is you have to say."

Jessica turned her head and stared directly through him. "Marc," she started, "Come over here... bend down... and kiss my boot."

Shock. Debra Harper's jaw dropped in disbelief. In an instant, the crowd grew deathly quiet, their eyes all white and wide, all staring at the stage. He stood there in his speedo, a masculine hunk of chiseled, rock-hard meat. She sat in her chair, one leg now completely outstretched, defiantly exposing her high-heeled boot to the world. You could hear a pin drop. Would he cave and crumble? Would he stand up for himself and gain everyone's respect? Nobody knew. It was good television.

***

Immediately after the show was over, he rushed backstage. There were tons of sex-starved women in that audience and, believe it or not, some of them were almost fairly good looking (though the majority skewed towards Curly Howard in a wig). They were all dying to talk to him. Dying to give him their numbers, their money, their panties, their virginity. He wasn't interested in any of them and didn't stay on stage during the credits-roll to dance with the other geeks-turned-babes and nerds-turned-hunks who lived for that sort of attention. Most of them had become strippers. Mark worked in a sporting goods store and coached his nephew's little league team. He came here for her and her alone. To confront her, he told himself. To confront her.

He spotted the back of her blouse. She was walking towards the exit, unfazed and unchanged. She didn't care about him, or Debra Harper, or all the loser housewives in the audience, or even how she came across on TV. She had so much confidence and such a sense of security in who she was, it was clear by her performance on the show that nobody's opinion mattered to her but her own. For some of the other former-bullies, this was an experience in humility, guilt and shame. For her, it was a four-day free vacation to Los Angeles. It was being set up in a chic hotel and the chance for a nice little shopping spree and some television exposure if she ever did decide to go into modeling or acting. Who knows? Maybe Spielberg was watching. She had reached the exit and had her hand on the door.

"Wait!" he shouted. A few crewmembers stopped what they were doing and looked at him. She turned around. "I mean, uh." She stared at him. He forced his legs to move forward, to move towards her. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"Back to my hotel," she answered, finishing her sentence just at the moment he reached an arms length away.

"Well do you maybe want to, I dunno, grab a bite to eat... catch up? Talk about all the good times at ol' Jefferson Elementary?"

"Aw, Mark. This wasn't about validating yourself by showing off your new bod or about getting some sort of weird retribution for years and years of pent up angst at all, was it?"

He examined his shoes shyly, like a nervous schoolboy.

"Was it?" she repeated.

"No," he answered, finally.

"What was it about?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"I like you. I always liked you. Even when you teased me."

"And you wanted to reconnect, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And so you thought the best way to reconnect with me, instead of tracking me down yourself and giving me a call... you thought the best way would be to do so through some sleazy, lowbrow daytime talk show? By bursting through some sheet paper half naked and doing some good ol' fashioned gyratin'? By trying to embarrass and shame me before a studio audience full of losers and a television audience full of a few hundred thousand middle-American soccer mom winos? You really thought that was the best strategy?"

Not having an answer, he continued staring at his shoes as a lump formed in his throat.

"Goodbye, Mark. It was nice catching up." She turned back towards the door.

"I'm sorry, " he muttered. "I didn't know how else to... I-I-I... just wanted to see... you. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. "

She stopped, turned again and stared at him.

"Let me make it up to you. Dinner at the finest restaurant in town. We'll order the most expensive champagne."

She looked him up and down. She bit her bottom lip in thought. She waited. Finally she said, "I have a better idea, Marc. Why don't you meet me at my hotel instead?"

***

He wore a 500-dollar dark gray suit that he bought two hours earlier as he rode up in the empty golden elevator holding a big bouquet of roses. He was sweating. Tonight was the night. Oh, it had happened before... he had confronted her, she had invited him to her hotel, he had accepted and they had had wild, wild sex... but that was only in his dreams. His literal dreams. He would have them every so often, scattered over the course of 20 years. But tonight he wouldn't wake up confused and alone. At least... he was pretty certain he wouldn't. He pinched his forearm just to make sure. Yep. It was real.

Ding!

15th floor. He took a big step off the elevator. It closed behind him.

He began to make his way down the long purple-carpeted hallway with big confident strides.

"Why hello there, don't you look nice!" remarked an elderly maid from the laundry room he had just passed by. He stopped and took two long steps backward.

"Why thank you!" he said, then removed a rose from the bouquet and held it out to her. "For you, m'lady."

She reached out and took it.

"Some lucky girl is in store for a very wonderful night," she said with a smile.

Yes she is, he thought, as he continued jauntily walking forward toward the end of the hall. He reached his destination.

There he stood, dressed to the nines, facing her hotel room door. It was only at this moment, despite the fact that everyone had already been telling him ("Oh, wow, you look fabulous," "you went from loser to winner," "you went from zero to hero," "wow, you completely transformed yourself," wow, you're such a great success story,"), that he knew he was not a loser. He reached out his hand and knocked four times in semi-rapid succession.

No answer.

He waited.

He knocked again, this time three times.

He waited.

He waited.

No answer.

He waited.

He knocked twice in a row.

No answer.

He reached into his right pants pocket and removed his wallet. Shifting the bouquet of roses to his shoulder and holding them between said shoulder and chin, he removed the hotel room key-card she had slipped him earlier. He held it up closer to his eyes and checked to make sure that the number on the card matched the number on the door. They did.

He knocked one more time. No response.

He slipped the key-card into a slot beneath the doorknob. He heard an electronic click. The door was unlocked. He reached down and took hold of the knob. He turned it. He pushed. The door opened. He stepped inside. What he found... was an empty hotel room.

He checked the bedroom. He checked the bathroom. He even checked the closet. And then he checked the bedroom again. As though he could have missed her the first time. And that's when he spotted it... out of the corner of his eye... on top of the bed stand. A folded note.

He walked over toward it. He took hold of it, lifted it, and read it.

"Hey Honey, Sorry I'm not here. I had to run out and take care of something first. Be a pet and wait for me, won't you?"

This alarmed him. He was so certain she'd be here when he knocked on the door... the possibility that she wouldn't hadn't even occurred to him. Well... what could he do now but wait? He sat down on the bed, placing the bouquet of flowers by his side, and waited. And waited. And waited and waited.