King Dork (2 page)

August

KI NG D OR K

They call me King Dork.

Well, let me put it another way: no one ever actually calls me King Dork. It’s how I refer to myself in my head, a silent protest and an acknowledgment of reality at the same time. I don’t command a nerd army, or preside over a realm of the

socially ill-equipped. I’m small for my age, young for my

grade, uncomfortable in most situations, nearsighted, skinny, awkward, and nervous. And no good at sports. So Dork is accurate. The King part is pure sarcasm, though: there’s nothing special or ultimate about me. I’m generic. It’s more like I’m one of the kings in a pack of crazy, backward playing

cards, designed for a game where anyone who gets me auto-

matically loses the hand. I mean, everything beats me, even twos and threes.

I suppose I fit the traditional mold of the brainy, freaky, oddball kid who reads too much, so bright that his genius is sometimes mistaken for just being retarded. I know a lot of trivia, and I often use words that sound made-up but that actually turn out to be in the dictionary, to everyone’s surprise—but I can never quite manage to keep my shoes tied or figure out anything to say if someone addresses me directly. I play it up.

It’s all I’ve got going for me, and if a guy can manage to leave the impression that his awkwardness arises from some kind of deep or complicated soul, why not go for it? But, I admit, most of the time, I walk around here feeling like a total idiot.

Most people in the world outside my head know me as

Moe, even though my real name is Tom. Moe isn’t a normal

nickname. It’s more like an abbreviation, short for Chi-Mo.

And even that’s an abbreviation for something else.

Often, when people hear “Chi-Mo” they’ll smile and say,

“Hippie parents?” I never know what to say to that because 5

yes, my folks are more hippie than not, but no, that’s not where the name comes from.

Chi-Mo is derogatory, though you wouldn’t necessarily

know that unless you heard the story behind it. Yet even those who don’t know the specific story can sense its dark origins, which is why it has held on for so long. They get a kick out of it without really knowing why. Maybe they notice me wincing when I hear them say it, but I don’t know: there are all sorts of reasons I could be wincing. Life is a wince-a-thon.

There’s a list of around thirty or forty supposedly insulting things that people have called me that I know about, past and present, and a lot of them are way worse than Moe.

Some are classic and logical, like Hender-pig, Hender-fag, or Hender-fuck. Some are based on jokes or convoluted theories of offensiveness that are so retarded no one could ever hope to understand them. Like Sheepie. Figure that one out and

you win a prize. As for Chi-Mo, it goes all the way back to the seventh grade, and it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning except for the fact that this particular nickname ended up playing an unexpectedly prominent role in the weird stuff

that happened toward the end of this school term. So, you

know, I thought I’d mention it.

Mr. Teone, the associate principal for the ninth and tenth grades, always refers to Sam Hellerman as Peggy. I guess he’s trying to imply that Sam Hellerman looks like a girl. Well, okay, so maybe Sam Hellerman does look a
little
like a girl in a certain way, but that’s not the point.

In fact, Mr. Teone happens to have a huge rear end and

pretty prominent man boobs, and looks way more like a lady than Sam Hellerman ever could unless he were to gain

around two hundred pounds and start a course of hormone

therapy. Clearly, he’s trying to draw attention away from his 6

own nontraditionally gendered form factor by focusing on

the alleged femininity of another. Though why he decided to pick on Sam Hellerman as part of his personal battle against his own body image remains a mystery.

I’m just glad it’s not me who gets called Peggy, because

who needs it?

There’s always a bit of suspense about the particular way

in which a given school year will get off to a bad start.

This year, it was an evil omen, like when druids observe

an owl against the moon in the first hour of Samhain and

conclude that a grim doom awaits the harvest. That kind of thing can set the tone for the rest of the year. What I’m getting at is, the first living creature Sam Hellerman and I encountered when we penetrated the school grounds on the

first day of school was none other than Mr. Teone.

The sky seemed suddenly to darken.

We were walking past the faculty parking, and he was

seated in his beat-up ’93 Geo Prizm, struggling to force his supersized body through the open car door. We hurried past, but he noticed us just as he finally squeezed through. He

stood by the car, panting heavily from the effort and trying to tuck his shirt into his pants so that it would stay in for longer than a few seconds.

“Good morning, Peggy,” he said to Sam Hellerman. “So

you decided to risk another year.” He turned to me and bellowed: “Henderson!” Then he did this big theatrical salute and waddled away, laughing to himself.

He always calls me by my last name and he always

salutes. Clearly, mocking me and Sam Hellerman is more im-

portant than the preservation of his own dignity. He seems to consider it to be part of his job. Which tells you just about 7

everything you need to know about Hillmont High School

society.

It could be worse. Mr. Donnelly, PE teacher and sadist

supreme, along with his jabbering horde of young sports

troglodytes-in-training, never bother with Moe or Peggy, and they don’t salute. They prefer to say “pussy” and hit you on the ear with a cupped palm. According to an article called

“Physical Interrogation Techniques” in one of my magazines (
Today’s Mercenary
), this can cause damage to the eardrum and even death when applied accurately. But Mr. Donnelly

and his minions are not in it for the accuracy. They operate on pure, mean-spirited, status-conscious instinct, which usually isn’t very well thought out. Lucky for me they’re so

poorly trained, or I’d be in big trouble.

But there’s no point fretting about what people call you.

Enough ill will can turn anything into an attack. Even your own actual name.

“I think he’s making fun of your army coat,” said Sam

Hellerman as we headed inside. Maybe that was it. I admit, I did look a little silly in the coat, especially since I hardly ever took it off, even in the hottest weather. I couldn’t take it off, for reasons I’ll get to in a bit.

I know Sam Hellerman because he was the guy right be-

fore me in alphabetical order from the fourth through eighth grades. You spend that much time standing next to somebody, you start to get used to each other.

He’s the closest thing I have to a friend, and he’s an all-right guy. I don’t know if he realizes that I don’t bring much to the table, friendship-wise. I let him do most of the talking.

I usually don’t have a comment.

“There’s no possibility of life on other planets in this solar system,” he’ll say.

8

Silence.

“Well, let me rephrase that. There’s no possibility of

carbon-based
life on other planets in this solar system.”

“Really?” I’ll say, after a few beats.

“Oh, yeah,” he’ll say. “No chance.”

He always has lots to say. He can manage for both of us.

We spend a lot of time over each other’s houses watching TV

and playing games. There’s a running argument about whose

house is harder to take. Mine is goofy and resembles an insane asylum; his is silent and grim and forbidding, and bears every indication of having been built on an ancient Indian burial ground. We both have a point, but he usually wins and comes to my house because I’ve got a TV in my room and

he doesn’t. TV can really take the edge off. Plus, he has a taste for prescription tranquilizers, and my mom is his main unwitting supplier.

Sam Hellerman and I are in a band. I mean, we have a

name and a logo, and the basic design for the first three or four album covers. We change the name a lot, though. A typical band lasts around two weeks, and some don’t even last long enough for us to finish designing the logo, let alone the album covers.

When we arrived at school that first day, right at the end of August, the name was Easter Monday. But Easter Monday

only lasted from first period through lunch, when Sam

Hellerman took out his notebook in the cafeteria and said,

“Easter Monday is kind of gay. How about Baby Batter?”

I nodded. I was never that wild about Easter Monday, to

tell you the truth. Baby Batter was way better. By the end of lunch, Sam Hellerman had already made a rough sketch of

the logo, which was Gothic lettering inside the loops of an in-finity symbol. That’s the great thing about being in a band: you always have a new logo to work on.

9

“When I get my bass,” Sam Hellerman said, pointing to

another sketch he had been working on, “I’m going to spray-paint ‘baby’ on it. Then you can spray-paint ‘batter’ on your guitar, and as long as we stay on our sides of the stage, we won’t need a banner when we play on TV.”

I didn’t even bother to point out that by the time we got

instruments and were in a position to worry about what to

paint on them for TV appearances, the name Baby Batter

would be long gone. This was for notebook purposes only.

I decided my Baby Batter stage name would be Guitar Guy,

which Sam Hellerman carefully wrote down for the first

album credits. He said he hadn’t decided on a stage name

yet, but he wanted to be credited as playing “base and

Scientology.” That Sam Hellerman. He’s kind of brilliant in his way.

“Know any drummers?” he asked as the bell rang, as he

always does. Of course, I didn’t. I don’t know anyone apart from Sam Hellerman.

TH
E
CATCHER
CU
LT

So that’s how the school year began, with Easter Monday

fading into Baby Batter. I like to think of those first few weeks as the Baby Batter Weeks. Nothing much happened—or

rather, quite a lot of stuff was happening, as it turns out, but I wouldn’t find out about any of it till later. So for me, the Baby Batter Weeks were characterized by a false sense of—

well, not security. More like familiarity or monotony. The familiar monotony of standard, generic High School Hell,

which somehow manages to be horrifying and tedious at the

same time. We attended our inane, pointless classes, in between which we did our best to dodge random attempts on

10

our lives and dignity by our psychopathic social superiors.

After school, we worked on our band, played games, and

watched TV. Just like the previous year. There was no indication that anything would be any different.

Now, when I say our classes were inane and pointless, I

really mean i. and p., and in the fullest sense. Actually, you know what? Before I continue, I should probably explain a

few things about Hillmont High School, because your school might be different.

Hillmont is hard socially, but the “education” part is

shockingly easy. That goes by the official name of Academics.

It is mystifying how they manage to say that with a straight face, because as a school, HHS is more or less a joke. Which can’t be entirely accidental. I guess they want to tone down the content so that no one gets too good at any particular thing, so as not to make anyone else look bad.

Assignments typically involve copying a page or two

from some book or other. Sometimes you have a “research

paper,” which means that the book you copy out of is the

Encyclopaedia Britannica.
You’re graded on punctuality, being able to sit still, and sucking up. In class you have group discussions about whatever it is you’re alleged to be studying, where you try to share with the class your answer to the

question: how does it make you feel?

Okay, so that part isn’t easy for me. I don’t like to talk much.

But you do get some credit for being quiet and nondisruptive, and my papers are usually neat enough that the teacher will write something like “Good format!” on them.

It is possible, however, to avoid this sort of class alto-

gether by getting into Advanced Placement classes.

(Technically, “Advanced Placement” refers to classes for

which it is claimed you can receive “college credit”—which is beyond hilarious—but in practice all the nonbonehead classes 11

end up getting called AP.) AP is like a different world. You don’t have to do anything at all, not a single blessed thing but show up, and you always get an A no matter what. Well, you end up making a lot of collages, and dressing in costumes and putting on irritating little skits, but that’s about it. Plus, they invented a whole new imaginary grade, which they still call an A, but which counts as more than an A from a regular

class. What a racket.

This is the one place in the high school multi-verse

where eccentricity can be an asset. The AP teachers survey the class through their
Catcher in the Rye
glasses and . . .

Oh, wait: I should mention that
The Catcher in the Rye
is this book from the fifties. It is every teacher’s favorite book.

The main guy is a kind of misfit kid superhero named Holden Caulfield. For teachers, he is the ultimate guy, a real dream-boat. They love him to pieces. They all want to have sex with him, and with the book’s author, too, and they’d probably

even try to do it with the book itself if they could figure out a way to go about it. It changed their lives when they were young. As kids, they carried it with them everywhere they

went. They solemnly resolved that, when they grew up, they would dedicate their lives to spreading The Word.