If I were to view my life as a road, one that contained many bumpy and curvy portions, but also many smooth straightaways, well, then I would be the mastermind behind a ridiculously bad analogy. So I will skip that. What I will say is that junior high is crappy, or at least it was for me. My parents were in the process of getting divorced, MC Hammer-mania was sweeping the nation at an alarming speed, and Air Jordan tennis shoes had finally crept past the one hundred dollar mark. It was pure chaos, too much for me to handle at times. Perhaps this is why I insisted on being such a major dick to everyone in my life: My parents, my brother, and especially anyone at school who didn’t agree that Swass by Sir-Mix-A-Lot was one of the greatest records of all time. So, I suppose that I shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised when a conversation like this one would strike itself up during an otherwise typical school day:

"Hey Brad, what’s up?"
"Not much, dude. What’s going on with you?"
"Not a lot, just wanted to let you know that (insert name here) is planning to beat your ass at some point today."
"Oh. Well, OK."
"Good luck, dude."

The Infallible Defense of Unbending Timidity

Match-Up Number One: Him- Mike, eighth grade, muscular build, pegged pants, impressive sweater collection.
Me- Brad, seventh grade, tall but frail, frightened, proud owner of two distinctly different pairs of acid wash jeans.

The stories precede your arrival. You hear tall tales of people on the receiving end of generous beatings, for no apparent fault of their own. Yes, we’ve all got problems, especially when we are young teenagers. I guess I refused to believe that people actually attempted to resolve these issues by wailing away on each other. My eyes were opened considerably when I actually arrived in the seventh grade. I began to witness countless bouts of scuffling, often in the halls, or at times in the park behind the school, where the "hoods" were known to frequent.

It was distressing, observing these poor souls rolling around on the ground with each other, landing a kick when they had an opening, sometimes working in the occasional groin shot. There were no holds barred, cheap shots were rarely objected to, and all body areas were fair game for a pounding. It was nothing like the kind of fighting I had seen on television. It was awkward, fast, sounded more like slapping than punching, and usually ended in someone crying. I wanted no part of this. There would be no reasonable way to explain to my mom that since I had bumped Rudy in the hall the wrong way, I would now require radical reconstructive surgery on my face and legs. So, a concerted effort was made on my part to steer clear of this kind of exchange. I learned quickly, however, that trouble has a way of searching out an individual, even one that has no desire to be found.

My initial problem arose when I discovered, through the tightly knit web of school yard gossip, that a kid named Mike was accusing me of making out with his girlfriend at a movie. Mike was a grade ahead of me, gave the appearance that he was no stranger to free weights, and had a reputation as an all-around badass in school. Now, in order to right our situation, he felt it his duty to clean my clock.

I didn’t have much to say about this, because I had made out with his girlfriend at the movies. In my defense, when we were at the movies, she had told me they had broken up. Then, the next day, post-make-out, she had called to tell me that she had been drunk on the night in question. She explained that before the film, she(and her friends who had also attended) had helped themselves to generous portions of daddy’s stash of peach Scnapp’s. I didn’t buy the story, because having been in attendance at the many parties my father had hosted, I was no stranger to the smell of alcohol. I was confident that I would have achieved a sense of it while her tongue was roaming the depths of my mouth for the good part of a half an hour. But, the make out session had been good, and I was willing to let it go. Things became complicated when she continued to flirt with me at school. Being the pool of raging hormones that I was, I held little control over the situation. I took the bait and reciprocated with the flirting, and soon Mike caught wind of this egregious behavior. When I was informed that he was miffed, I backed off completely.

During this time I had suffered a broken wrist, a result of a freak playing-basketball-in-my-socks episode that I was quite embarrassed about. It was not pleasant to have any sort of affliction as a teenager, because one’s peers felt the need to make comments that served as constant reminders of the condition. The most popular joke around the school that was directed at me went like this:
"Hey man, what happened? did you jack off too hard?’
"Yes," I would reply. "I jacked myself off until my wrist broke. Please be careful. Don’t let this happen to you."

The cast was to remain on my arm for about six weeks, and this kept me out of trouble. No one was going to beat up on a clearly disadvanted guy with his arm wrapped in plaster. But soon, the time approaced when it would have to be removed. I was about two weeks from getting the cast off, at home, talking to one of my friends on the phone:

"So, you know, Mike’s still pissed."
"What the hell?" I said. "Haven’t we moved past this? He’s acting normal towards me when he sees me. I mean, he doesn’t really say hi or anything, but he doesn’t give me that look anymore either."
"I heard he’s been bringing a knife to school in his sock."
I swallowed.
"And, he’s been telling people when you get your cast off, he’s going straight for your wrist. He knows your weak area."
"My weak area? What the fuck?" I whispered. My mom was preparing dinner in the next room. She would not be hearing about this. "What the hell am I supposed to do?"
"It will probably happen pretty quick. Maybe it won’t hurt that bad."
"Oh, yes, you’re right. Stabbed with a small sock knife and a re-broken wrist. That’ll feel great."
"Just keep your eyes open."

I spent the next two weeks feeling very different about my cast. Previously, I was impatient for its removal so I could resume my life, and now I hoped it would stay forever. Adding to this, the hair on my broken forearm had grown considerably inside the cast after the accident and I was dreading allowing it to see the light of day, knowing that I would look freakish with a singular ape arm. The hair was thick and coarse, peeking out between my knuckles and the plaster. Maybe this was a sign that it wouldn’t be healed. Maybe I would never heal. If it did heal, maybe I could jack off hard enough to break it again.

When I went to the doctor, it was splendid news for he and my mom, but not for me. Great, he was saying, perfect. Good as new. My mom was glowing as she sat next to me. She had no idea that I was being fixed just to be broken again. I could feel it already, the cold hard steel of the knife driving into my gut as he wrenched my debilitated wrist around my back and up towards my head. He would perform the act for a gallery in the cafeteria, in the middle of the football field, or maybe in the parking lot after school so the parents could catch a glimpse. He was going to end my life in front of hundreds, and I would surely pee my pants before he even worked the knife up under my ribcage. I would be laying there, in the middle of a massive crowd of onlookers and witnesses, blood shooting from my innards, my wrist shattered and slumped over my eyes. I would be still, floating in a pool of my own piss and blood, my acid washed jeans soaked, my Nike Airs covered, My Gotcha T-shirt that I wore way too often would be irreparable, soiled and ruined. Afterwards, my mom would have to clean out my room, and upon finding all the shitty poetry I had been writing, she would realize that I never had a future in the fine arts, and she would cry, but maybe only for a day or two. Then she would sell my things cheaply at a garage sale and my brother would gleefully move into my room. This was certainly the end.

The rest of the week went by and somehow nothing happened, aside from the hair falling out of my monkey arm. I had managed to not run into Mike or his girlfriend and I thought that I might be in the clear. Then, the next Monday, I was standing at my locker before school, talking to a friend, when I saw his eyes widening as he turned and walked away. Mike quickly took his place in front of me. As suddenly as that, we were face to face.

"Hey buddy," he said. "What’s up?"
I could almost sense the urine exiting my bladder. I tensed up in an effort to stop it. "Hey….Mike. Nothing." People began gathering around us in anticipation.
Mike reached towards my shoulder and I flinched a little bit. He extracted a small scrap of paper from my sweatshirt. "You got a little something here," he said with a smile. "We don’t want you to look bad."
"Thanks." I managed. Where’s the knife, where’s that fucking knife…..
"So is what I’m hearing true?" He asked me.
"Oh, well, I don’t know…..what have you heard?"
"That you’ve been messing with Michelle."
"No, no, absolutely not. I’m not even really friends with her anymore. Not that I don’t like her. You guys are great." I was clutching my bad wrist, a reminder that it was still a bit tender.
"So you didn’t say or do anything?"
"Nope."

He was still grinning, looking at me. "All right. As long as we have an understanding."
Understanding? Oh God, where’s the knife? He’s got it taped to the small of his back, he’s got it up his sleeve, he’s going to ram it into the side of my neck and I’m going to shoot blood all over all these people.
"You take it easy." He said. Then he turned around and walked away.

Some of my friends who had observerved the confrontation came up to me, told me I had stood my ground, and assured me that they would have "had my back" if things would have "gotten serious."
I thanked them sincerely and then I went right back to being a dickhead.

Match Up Number Two: Him- Silas, eighth grade, quite tall, curly blonde hair, possibly into inhalants.
Me- Brad, eighth grade, slightly tall, still not much hair on the legs, head hair saturated with Dep gel.

I managed to escape the remaining portion of seventh grade unharmed and without incident. I left Michelle alone, Mike and I ended up playing baseball against each other that summer, and things between us were friendly enough after that. I decided to concentrate on looking forward to the eighth grade. Junior high is based in extremities. There’s not enough time to process the incredible lack of middle ground. One year you’re shit, the next year you think you’re the shit. It’s fairly damaging. Accordingly, I was looking forward, maybe a bit too much, to being a big man on campus.

I was really involved in athletics, and I think this bothered some people. Or maybe it was my spiky mullet. Or maybe it was my overbearing narcissism resulting from the embarrassment I felt about my parent’s divorce, and the subsequent role playing of the asshole which I felt was a healthy and cathartic way of dealing with it. I also felt that cockiness, even my pathetic feigned version, was the sure-fire way to get the girls to like me. It was dangerous and edgy. I was bringing my own unique flavor to the table.

Enjoying my lunch one day, sitting in the cafeteria with some of my friends, I got up to dispose of the remnants of the oatmeal raisin cookies I had purchased from the vending machine that day. As I threw it in the trash, I glanced out the cafeteria doors and into the hall. Standing there, in the middle of a group of his friends, was a kid named Silas, a guy who I had been friends with in grade school, and lost track of since we were in junior high. I had noticed him hanging in the park with the hoods, and this was probably why we were no longer in contact with each other. But now, there he was, flanked by three kids sporting black metal band T-shirts, and he was fixed on me, looking severely amped up, almost to the point of shaking.

He jutted his hand up and pointed at me. "I’m coming for you after school," he said. "Be ready."

I didn’t know how to react, so I pretended like I didn’t see it. Why could he be saying this to me? I hadn’t said a word to him in at least a year. No, he didn’t say it. I didn’t catch that. I went back to my table of friends casually and took a sip from my can of Cherry 7-Up that was still sitting on the table.

I didn’t mention what he said to anyone, instead opting to act like it wasn’t happening. Later that day in the gym locker room, as I was standing at the far side of the room near the instructor’s desk, the door to the hallway swung open. Silas appeared through the open door, his beady eyes peering in at me. He pointed his finger in my direction and then glided it across his throat. "Be ready." He mouthed. The door swung shut. I racked my brain for what I had done. None of my friends had said anything to me about it. No one seemed to know anything, and I didn’t ask.

After school I was standing at my locker, stuffing books in my duffel bag quickly, in an attempt to make an exit without being noticed. I finished, slammed my locker shut, and made my way through the hall towards the front door, dodging a mess of fellow students. I got about halfway to my destination when he stopped me. He pushed me hard in the chest to jumpstart the exchange, and the crowd gathered right away. He then proceeded to move quickly and inaccurately, quite spastically, flailing his hands all around his gangly body, stopping only to push me. He was favoring the bob and the weave, but he also worked in the act of slapping himself in the face.

"Come on, Brad. Come on you big man, come on you pussy. Hit me. Take the first shot." He was slapping his cheeks, indicating that the area being slapped was where he felt that I should strike him. I declined, standing my ground silently, knowing that a teacher would certainly break this up soon. He pushed me again, this time much harder. and he knocked the duffel bag from my shoulder. I heard someone in the crowd of people say "Oooh….." Like things had suddenly become considerably more serious, as if now the gloves were officially off. Silas started back with the face slapping, just in case I was unclear on where I needed to strike him. "Come on you pussy," he kept saying.

I looked over Silas’s shoulder as Mr. Arturo, a large teacher who smelled like an ashtray that never got emptied, walked toward us. Silas was apparently no stranger to this drill, as he ran quickly past me, around the corner, and then out of sight. I was relieved. I reached down, picked up my bag, and took a deep breath right before Mr. Arturo grabbed me by the bicep and marched me to the office in the front of the school. He promptly placed me in a small room with a desk and instructed me that I was to write an essay describing why fighting seemed like the best answer to the problems that I was obviously having. I objected, telling him that I didn’t start it, and that I was as confused as anyone. I didn’t know why he was doing this. I was undeniably innocent. He handed me three sheets of paper and said I had twenty minutes.
"Things happen for no reason sometimes…." I started.

The next day, walking down a sparsely populated school hall, I spotted Silas walking toward me. I quickly crouched over a nearby drinking fountain and sucked on the stream of water, hoping that he would pass. Instead he approached, stopped, and stood next to me. I rose up and faced him.
"Hey, look, I’m sorry about yesterday." He said.
"Oh, all right." I said.
His face was sobering and ashamed. "See you around."
"Yep." I turned around, he turned around, and we went opposite ways. As I walked toward gym class, I figured he was walking toward the park, getting ready to do whatever it was that the hoods did down there.

Match up Number Three: Him- Danny, eighth grade, lots of black clothing, stringy greasy long hair accented by spiky jewelry.
Me- Brad, eighth grade, clothing based in pastel blends, bowl cut accented by clear jelly Swatch watch.

In my eighth grade class there were a group of kids who fancied black trenchcoats, preferred really long hair, and enjoyed blasting shitty heavy metal music from headphones that they never took off. I see nothing wrong with this now, and I saw nothing wrong with it then. However, at the time, I was partial to plaid-Gotcha-Bermuda-type shorts and Nike cross trainers. I had no issues with these chaps, it was simply understood that I wouldn’t be playing Tecmo Bowl with them on the weekends.

During the final semester of class, I served as an aid for a PE teacher during the last period of my school day, and a group of three of these mysterious kids were in the class. These guys did not care for me, that was clear, and I chose to simply leave them alone, hoping they would reciprocate the indifference. It proved to not be so simple. One day, one of the kids walked up to me while I was standing on the sidelines, whistle around my neck, umpiring their softball game.

"So, we heard you been saying some shit about Danny." Danny seemed to be the leader of their gang. He was certainly the tallest, he had the nicest coat, and he possessed the longest hair. In the first term of the year I had witnessed Danny and one of his buddies playing "bloody knuckles" in the back of our science class. They punched each other’s hands repeatedly, bludgeoning one another until their hands literally exploded all over their lab desk. Luckily, we were in science class, so hydrogen peroxide was readily available. No one wants a nasty infection.

I rolled my eyes at the kid. "I don’t even know him, why would I do that?" I was being sincere. I had never spoken to Danny, nor had I said anything about him to anyone.
"We heard you said some shit."
"Well I didn’t."
"That’s not what we heard."
"Well you heard wrong."
"We’ll see about that."

"What does that mean?"
He spun around, turning back to the softball game. He immediately scurried out to center field to talk to Danny. They turned toward me and I looked away. This was not happening again.

The next morning at school I got the word.
"Looks like seventh period," my friend told me. "Well, at least you have some time to prepare. He’s a big guy, so you’re going to want to decide on a strategy."
Dear God, it was all happening again. It continued all day, people asking me how I was planning to live through it. Where was my slingshot to lick this giant?

"I’m not going to fight him." I would tell them. They would quickly counter with the argument that I had no choice. He was going to fight me, whether I put up a struggle or not. I began to mentally prepare for my limp, lifeless beating.

My day of reckoning went by slowly, but not as slowly as I would have liked. The showdown was scheduled for gym class, the last period of the day. I sat in sixth period, my science class, the one that Danny used to be in, and the topic around our lab table turned quickly to my situation. What am I going to do? Do I know the best place to hit him? You gotta hit first. Watch for the ring on his right hand. The ring? The bastard, he had already obtained the extremely important jewelry advantage.

I needed help, and the only authority type in the room was our teacher, a man who, in an attempt to get the team to follow his lead, had showered in front of all of us after football practice one day. He was the special teams coach, so he was part of our football group, but it had still remained an awkward moment for all of us. We were all silently against showering at school, and this display did not turn us. We would never forget the sight of this man naked, standing alone in the multi-spigoted shower room across from our lockers, lathering himself up and screaming: "Hey, this is great! Who wants to join me here? How about you Jimbo? Manny? Anyone? C’mon, it’s great in here." His intentions were pure, I knew that. But sitting there now, looking at him with a test tube in his hand, the foamy liquid spewing over the rim, I knew he was not the rock I was going to cling to.

The moment was quickly upon me and as I walked into the gym locker room, I tried not to look around. I stood at my locker, fidgeting with my things, knowing he would soon approach. He did. He was at least six inches taller than me, and he was wearing his long coat, even though it was almost summer. He faced me,his long hair dangling as he looked slightly down at me.

"You ready to go?"
I looked up at him. "Nope."

"What?" He put his hands up, looking confused, and I caught a glimpse of the ring. It was silver, the size of a small crab. There were spikes crawling out of it from all sides, jutting and protruding from the skull that it framed. He clenched his upraised fist and the spikes seemed to almost jump out at me. He was dumbfounded now. I attempted to explain.

"Look, I never said anything about you and I’m not going to fight you. Look at us, I don’t have a chance." My demeanor reeked of a pathetic last resort.
He stared hard at me. "Wow," he said, "you’re no fun."
"I guess I’m not." I said. He gave me his best evil grin, turned around, and walked away. I was suddenly alone, and it hit me that I was late for my duties.

It was Friday, kickball day, which meant I needed to make my way out to the baseball field. I pulled on my red polo-style assistant shirt, adjusted my socks, and draped my whistle around my neck. I grabbed the black whistle with my hand and placed it in my mouth as I walked out the door, approaching the group of kids gathered by the backstop. I blew hard into it, and the emanating shriek got their attention.

"Hey," I yelled. "Who’s ready to play some kickball?"