Extreme Elvin (7 page)

I was once a football player, have I mentioned that?

“Your problem is out of control, friend,” Mike correctly said. “I think as long as we came this far, we should really get you fixed up. Can’t stand to see you like this, man.”

I punched him hard on the arm. As long as I was facing that way. “Well,
you
didn’t help it any. Scaring me with all that scabies bug crap, when you knew I didn’t even have it—”

“Cut it out already, El. I feel bad about that.”

“Ya? Well not bad enough. So now I’m like, full, like I got a complete grapevine growing out of my ass. I am redefining Fruit of the Loom. Maybe I could get a sponsorship deal... stop laughing at me... so, no, feeling bad is not good enough.”

“I know it’s not good enough. But CVS must have something for, er, people like you.”

And there we were. People like me. I didn’t just have a condition now, I had joined a community. Frankie was right. These things really did happen only to certain kinds of people. And it was looking more and more like I was simply one of them.

I was fourteen years old, and I figured by now I had experienced everything there is, except, of course, the one or two really big ones, but what was to come at CVS was a trip I’d never figured on taking.

“So, how do we do this?” I asked as we walked tentatively into the superstore of medicine and hygiene. We at least knew enough to keep moving. Perpetual motion is the way not to look suspicious when you feel guilty for not doing anything. Once you stop and stare, the security cameras all train on you, the shoplifting beepers start screeching, the Simon and Garfunkel tape stops humming over the PA, interrupted by the manager’s voice bellowing your name over and over for everybody to hear, and the girl behind the counter starts dialing up your mother.

They think you’re looking for condoms.

I went right to browsing the endless magazine and paperback aisle. They had about two million titles, divided into categories. Women’s magazines, men’s magazines, teen, fashion, sports... paperback best-sellers, romance, John Grisham.

“Everything in the store falls into a category,” Mike said. “There’s a category for you too. We just have to find it.”

I stopped flipping through
Travel & Leisure.
“Well sure, let’s just look for the Ass aisle.”

“Or you could ask someone.”

I tossed the magazine in disgust. “I will
not.
Gimme a break here, will you? I’m embarrassed enough that
you
even know. I’m not asking any stranger for help.”

“Then do your funny walk around the store a couple of times and let them figure it out for themselves. They are professionals. They’ll get it.”

See that? That is the problem. Mike was just playing, and in fact I wished I had said that line. But instead of laughing, I just got worse. It was stupid, really, and entirely my own fault, but I could not get past this. These people had seen it all, and probably nobody cared what my problem was any more than they cared about the lady with the wart on her finger or the guy with the tickly cough. So it shouldn’t have mattered.

But of course it did. This was just one of life’s little jokes, a problem that for no good reason is funnier than other problems. And I like a joke as much as the next person—
more
than the next person, unless the next person is my mother—but there is a large difference between making a joke and being one.

I walked up and down and up and down the aisles without picking up one item that might help relieve my distress. I couldn’t even bring myself to give it an honest effort. I grabbed a tin of Band-Aids from aisle five, which would hardly be the best solution; a box of Kleenex from six, for all the crying I’d likely do if I didn’t get real help; some cold medicine; and a shower cap.

All the time, I must have been doing The Walk. Because as I stood reading all the ingredients in Tylenol Flu Formula, a large red-faced obese man in a baseball cap and farmer jeans crept up on me with a sad smile and a familiar ridiculous sidestep.

I was afraid. I stood frozen.

“Aisle one, friend,” was all the kind stranger said before padding away.

My god, there it was. My community.

Mikie, you ask? My good and lifelong friend? Trailing behind me, keeping just enough distance to allow me to maneuver in relative privacy, but close enough to rush in and help if I got in over my head with the hemorrhoid crowd.

But things got serious when we went to dark and mysterious aisle one. There was no fun in aisle one. Sad faces, puffy faces. I was the only shopper in the region without a hat. We all pretended we were there for something else—sure, grab some Pepto, or have yourself a plantar wart foot pad shaped like a tiny life preserver—but those things were decoys. We knew why we were there.

I wished they wouldn’t make eye contact.

When I finally reached my destination, there were three packages that seemed to address my problem. Two of them actually had the words “Burning” and “Itching” written in acid red there on the cover, which I thought was nice of them.

Some time must have passed, because Mike came up and tried to hurry me through this. “Preparation H, right?” he said, snagging a tube. “Take this. This is the stuff.”

“Duh!” I said. “Of course I know what it is, I live in America, after all.” I looked at the package and growled at it, rather irrationally, I suppose. “Even the
product
is too embarrassed to come out and say its own name. Like we’re going to think it’s for headaches, or heartburn, or hair loss, and those things are all okay.”

Mike tried to bring me back. “So try it, El. It’s on TV so it must be the best one.”

“‘Fast, temporary relief,’” I whisper-barked, imitating the guy on the commercial. “I’ll say! It was so fast and temporary I didn’t even get the cap screwed back on before—”

“All right, all right,” he said, waving me down. “We’ll look for something else.”

Quickly, speed-reading like a brainiac, I whipped through the product descriptions and instructions on the back of another box. I shoved another into Mikie’s hands for him to do the same. It would have gone a lot quicker if the two of us hadn’t kept looking over our shoulders as if it was the nudie magazines we were sweating and panting over.

A big hand fell on my shoulder.

“What is it, boys?” the manager asked me.

“Huh? Huh?” I asked, startled. “What is what?”

“The deal. What is the deal? I noticed you been prowling our aisles for an awfully long time. Now fun is fun, but we get enough prank shoppers in this store—”

“We’re not pranks, sir,” Mikie said.

“Good. So then why don’t you tell me what you need, and I can help you on your way.”

“I don’t need anything,” Mikie said happily. “I’m with him.”

Mike and I must have looked like one of those old married couples I always saw bickering over medical stuff in drugstores. “See that?” I snapped at Mikie, forgetting the store guy completely for a minute. “It’s so bad
you’re
embarrassed, and it’s not even your problem.”

“Okay then, what is it you need?” the man interrupted. He was very tall, that manager. “What are you sweating about, son?”

“I... ah... I, it’s a condition. I have a condition.”

There, I said it, right? Whew, that wasn’t so hard.

“Well then, you’re in the right place. That’s our business. What do you need to help your condition? We only want to help you.”

Come on, Bishop! I screamed internally. It’s Stand and Deliver time. You are a man now. You messed around with a woman, for crying out loud. Messed around with her hands, anyway. You got VD, sort of. You shop at Big and Tall—you can handle this situation.

It’s natural. Nothing at all to be ashamed of. This guy sees it every day. Well, he probably doesn’t
see
it every day...

Tell him!

The manager sighed. “You want condoms, don’t you, kid.”

Oh my god. Stress. Stress.

That was it—something had to be done. It was time to act.

I dropped my basket and ran like a rabbit. Like a sidewinder rabbit.

Mikie followed right at my heels.

“Well, that was an excellent decision,” he said when we were far enough away from the store that I could stop running. “Now you don’t have your cure,
and
CVS is off limits. Pretty chicken there, El.”

“Ya, well if you were any kind of friend you’d have stayed there and bought the stuff for me.”

He paused long, but for effect, not because he really needed to think about it.

“Nobody’s
that
kind of friend, Bishop.”

Bishop. He was calling me Bishop now. The great beast was distancing me from everybody...

“Anyway,” I said, “it’s not really an issue anymore, because I think... ya, I think it’s going away now.” I smiled bravely. I winced. “Ya, there it goes.”

I smiled. I winced.

Damned if Monday didn’t eventually come around. I did feel a little better before that. Didn’t get scabies. Or psoriasis or VD or malaria for that matter. And there were no new eruptions on any other parts of my body since I avoided all stress by spending Sunday reading magazines and watching a
Ren and Stimpy
marathon.

But then, Monday.

“Now, where were we?” Metzger asked. I swear, he spent the whole weekend frozen in the spot where I’d left him on Friday. Same location in the school lot, same grimace on his face, same sumo squat. Looked like he was the one with the ’rhoids.

“Where were we?” I shot back. “Well you obviously were right here. I was everyplace else.”

“There’s no way out this time. I’m gonna kill you now, chickenshit,” he said. He was very angry, apparently. He was also right. I couldn’t run away this time because I had to go to school.

Guys were filing past Metz and on into the school as if he wasn’t there, even though he was making a pretty good spectacle. This was quite a thing, since most of these guys would stop dead and watch if it looked like a pair of
beetles
might start fighting on the sidewalk, but Metzger just couldn’t generate that kind of interest.

So I figured, me too.

I stared straight into his eyes, angled toward him with my fists clenched and my teeth clenched. He stiffened, readied.

And I walked right on past and up the stairs.

Caught the boy pretty well flat-footed, I reckon.

“Hey,” he shouted. I’m sure he could have done better if I’d given him more time.

“What?” I said. “I whipped your butt on Friday, why should I waste my time again?”

“You... the hell...”

I left him tripping over himself. Why not, right? Who’s to say I didn’t, you know, in the big picture, whip his butt?

I was handling my bully issue pretty well, don’t you think? Now if only all my other issues were as stupid as Metzger.

At lunch in the cafeteria that day, Mike, Frank, and I were visited by a major senior personage. One of the biggest and toppest of the seniors—one of the elite whose boots Frank’d been licking on his way up the social ladder—came over and hovered above our humble table. His name, spoken only in hushed tones around here, was Darth. And yes, he’s as warm and fuzzy as it sounds. But not in any obvious way, not like your regular teenage bully. This guy, if we were in an old movie from the 1930s or something, would be smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder. And he’d have a little pencil-line mustache. Girls and their mothers would love him. Nice shoes, quiet, smooth manner. But there is a big-time scariness in there that is kind of like a dog whistle, recognizable only by dogs—meaning guys.

Yet, at the same time, he was—there’s no other way to say it—irresistible. He didn’t speak directly to just anybody, but it was exciting when he did. You got a sense in every conversation with Darth that you were going to get shot to smithereens the next time you sat in a barber chair. But it almost didn’t matter. Like it would be an honor to get creamed by such a guy.

Such a guy.

He came up behind me so I wasn’t even aware until I saw all the other ground squirrels like myself scurrying away, and the table became covered in a darkness like a solar eclipse.

“Hey, Darth, man,” Frank slurped. “Have a seat. Can I go stand in line for you? They got the spice cake today. Can I get you a spice cake?”

Since Frank didn’t have the dignity to be embarrassed for himself, Mike and I blushed for him. The three of us, and Darth, were the only ones left at the table.

“Ya, do that. Go get me a spice cake.”

Frank was gone like a rocket. Darth turned to Mikie. “Go help him get me a spice cake, would ya?”

Mike is no lapdog. But he’s also no punching bag. So when he just sat there in the face of a direct order from Darth, at least I had the good sense to sweat like a pig. Frankie stood frozen halfway to the cake line.

It was a quiet, tense, damp moment, which did not seem to have a solution. Until one just happened.

Darth nodded at Mike. Like an agreement. It was amazing to me, but really it shouldn’t have been. See, if I had tried to do what Mikie did, I’d be wearing my underwear up over my shoulders about now. But this is Mikie’s thing, how he always makes his way, and people just seem to get it, to go with it. And for Darth, well a lesser criminal probably would have tried to break Mikie, but instead he seemed to appreciate him.

Which is not to say Darth doesn’t still get what Darth wants.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Michael,” Darth said, sounding very reasonable.

Mikie nodded back at him, and got up.

Leaving me alone with Darth. A newsworthy event. I’d have never expected it. The other freshmen and sophomore lowlifes—whose eyes peeped and blinked in our direction like raccoons from the Dumpster at night—certainly never would have put this scene together. I figured trembling was probably the right thing to do.

“Quit the shaking shit, will ya?”

Okay, wrong. I froze.

Darth nodded at me and gave me a friendly smile. I returned same.

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever woulda believed it.” He said it like this was the continuation of a talk we’d been having for weeks even though our one previous exchange had consisted of this:

“You gonna finish that?” He was referring to my lunch. It was not lunchtime, we were not in the cafeteria, I had not
started
the lunch, never mind finishing it. In fact, I had been walking into the building at the beginning of another fine school day, swinging my brown-bag lunch at my side.