Rats Saw God (17 page)

“Trumpet a new age! Desecrate rosemary and sage! Frail as puppy love! New and improved dadaists, Pizza Hut beckons. Thursday six
P.M.
Be there or be a polygon.”

Dub swiveled. “Did you know anything about a meeting?”

“No.” I was still considering the possible intentions of that
frail-as-puppy-love
business. Okay, so I'll admit that maybe I wasn't spending much time with Doug. Maybe I had let a couple messages slip by without returning his calls, but I had a girlfriend now. He needed to grow up, get it through his head.

I had every intention of querying Doug, not only about his word choice, but his failure to notify me—his appointed public relations specialist—about a meeting. I didn't get a chance to ask, however, before the next evening at the Hut. I picked up Dub from her house, but we were running late and the meeting had been called to order before we arrived. Doug neither paused nor looked at us as we took the available seats in the back of the room.

“The talent show is right after lunch the Friday before Christmas break. People with tickets can skip sixth period and go home when the show's over, so you know everybody's going to be there. I thought we could come up with something to shock the sheep.”

“Wanda,” Doug said, using my girlfriend's Christian name, “you're usually good for an idea. Any inspired suggestions?”

“Momentarily,” Dub answered saltily. She let go of my hand.

“How about something multimedia. Something like you did with the video camera,” Veg said.

Several members nodded. Trey suggested we keep brainstorming, and the onslaught began. Everyone, save Trey and me, had a vision. I made faces at the especially batty suggestions; he jotted everything down, regardless. It wasn't until the arrival of the food that the floor came open again. Bill spoke.

“Trey, which of the ideas do you think we should do?”

Trey looked around the table. “I think we should do all of them.”

I felt sorry for Jeff DeMouy. As he continued to tap a humming microphone, the some three hundred seniors assembled before him volleyed gargantuan wads of paper—the handouts DeMouy had prepared for the session—like spectators given beach balls at Padres games.

“All right, everybody, listen up.”

Few students stopped their conversations or diverted their attention from their paper-wad games.

“You're not going to lunch until we're done here!”

This time people shut up. DeMouy used the silence to speak of graduation. The materials in our hands, he said—or in some cases, the materials that had been compacted—contained information about graduation gowns and mortarboards, how many people we could invite to the ceremony, class rings, invitations, and order forms for the yearbook. DeMouy pointed to tables set up around the gym where we could carry out the tasks set forth in the paperwork.

“If graduation is still in doubt for you, we've highlighted your name on your report card. And one last thing, you can get your
prom bids at the table by the drinking fountain.” DeMouy stepped away from the podium. The crowd booed him again. This time just for the warm, robust feeling of esprit de corps it provided.

I walked over to the table where report cards were being distributed. There I was surprised to discover I was making a couple A's. It had been a long time since I had seen a report card that wasn't completely consonants. The only comment that appeared in the box at the bottom was a “showing improvement” from my anatomy teacher, Mr. Reyes, who had awarded me a C nonetheless. Due to the missing English credit, my name was highlighted in yellow. I scanned the gym for a line that didn't seem overwhelming. I spotted Allison Kimble joining the back of the graduation-gown-measuring column. I moseyed up beside her.

Allison wasn't difficult to pick out of the Wakefield crowd. While other girls fell in with the low-maintenance Marcia Brady trend—long, straight, center-parted hair, poufy, midriff-baring tops, bell-bottom jeans with ragged hems, and cork-soled clogs—Allison was significantly behind, or ahead of, the times, depending on how you view fashion cycles. Her brown hair was pulled back and French-braided into a thick, shoulder-length ponytail. Today she wore a red-and-green tartan skirt with a knee-length hem, a plain, starched white blouse, white ankle socks, and tan-and-white oxfords. She looked like a schoolgirl in an AC/DC video—
before
the innocent hears Angus play. She didn't see me approach because she was, as usual, scanning her organizer/planner.

“Check Saturday. See if you're busy that night.” Allison faced me and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She turned
her attention back to her planner and began flipping pages. My palms stayed dry. My heart padded along lackadaisically.

“It looks like I've got that night open,” Allison said. Then she appraised me suspiciously. “But I'm sure I could think of something. Why?”

I was wearing my Cap's T-shirt—the one with their slogan, B
EAN
T
HERE,
D
ONE
C
AP'S.
I mention this only because I became conscious of how odd the two of us would look on a date together. Most of my cohorts were still covering their T-shirts with high-priced grunge flannels bought in malls at Urban Wearfair. Flannel in a San Diego spring. Shoot me if I ever do this.

“I've got tickets to Pearl Jam. Do you want to go?”

“Sounds great,” she said.

There was neither hemming nor hawing. The two of us continued standing in line together. I explained the part about not wanting to drive home after the show. She didn't freak out. We talked about who we would pay the most or travel the farthest to see in concert. I said Soul Asylum. She said Bryan Adams.

So what.

GOD's slot in the talent show put us on after two real crowd pleasers. First was the show choir's choreographed rendition of “We Go Together” from
Grease.
Guess what. The girls wore poodle skirts and ponytails; the boys wore leather jackets and greased their hair back. Some of them, the geekiest by the light of day, even tucked decks of cards inside rolled-up T-shirt sleeves to look like cigarette packs. Duh. The senior football players used balloons and wigs to affect sex
changes, then danced to “You Are So Beautiful” wearing ballerinas' tights and tutus. The “girls” executed their jetés and pas de quatres as wretchedly as one might imagine, and the sheep bleated with delight at the spectacle. I was busy setting up for my mission from GOD, but I glanced up at the performance to see a 280-pound lineman Baryshnikoving right off the stage and into the crowd. Now
that
was funny.

The crowd grew restless during the lengthy intermission our technical requirements demanded. We walled the back of the stage with three vast screens. Dub and I worked slide projectors aimed at the two outside screens. The middle one was reserved for the Super 8 movie Veg and Doug had filmed for the cause. Those two, along with Bill, had also formed a three-piece band to perform center stage. They had, during their first week of existence, named themselves Get A Grip, but thinking the name too teenish, shortened it to The Grippe, in honor of the disease. Veg learned to play bass in ten days. Doug asked me, originally, if I wanted the position, but I assured him I would be happier offstage, billy-clubbing ten-year-old autograph hounds and auditioning groupies. Besides, I really didn't have time to practice and all that. “Yeah, that hectic schedule of yours. I know what you mean,” he said in response. I just blew his sarcasm off.

Setting up our microdada parade was even a bigger pain in the ass than getting the band onstage. We had twined ten red Radio Flyer wagons together. These were to be pulled from stage left to stage right to show off the artwork created by our other members. This artwork had been created in isolation by individual GOD members. There was no unifying theme, and
this was the first time any of us would see what the others had done. Unless we operated in some unexplainable synchronicity, this would be a sublime three-minute dadafest. When Matt dimmed the house lights and the curtains parted, I fired up my projector.

An hour later I was in the principal's office.

I had never been to the principal's office before. Well, maybe once to pick up honor roll citations, but never to face disciplinary measures. At least I had company. I waited with thirteen members of GOD for our fate to be decided.

Though bizarre, our performance had been, for the most part, innocuous. My slide show consisted of tiny plastic World War II miniatures that I had positioned in sundry square dancing routines—thirty Pattons and Rommels do-si-doing to “Turkey in the Straw.” Dub had traveled, unbeknownst to me, into the Fifth Ward to get documentary-quality photographs of junkies and hookers. These she interspersed with shots she took of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mixes. The Grippe butchered the Clash's “I'm So Bored with the U.S.A.” Our remaining members were responsible for the dada parade:
Skeleton at Typewriter
by Beverly;
Vacuum Cleaner with Handcuffs
by Holly and Samantha; an open, upright coffin occupied by a radiant, white-gowned bride courtesy of Virginia and Zipper; an ornately framed charcoal of a smiley face by Missy and Rhonda; and our grand finale—Trey's basketball backboard and goal featuring an earth globe electrically lit from within and poised for descent through the hoop. Matt added an appropriate touch by lighting the stage with the mirrored disco ball used so effectively at the homecoming dance.

None of that got us in trouble.

It was Veg and Doug's cinematic efforts that had us sweating it out. The two had infused clips of a particularly spirited Grace pep rally with late 1930s footage of a German throng frothily responding to Adolf Hitler. Shots alternated between stone-faced paratroopers and stone-faced linebackers,
siegheiling
Berliners and pom-pom thrusting cheerleaders, uniquely mustached führer spitting and uniquely mutton-chopped Coach Yeager barking. For the coup de grâce, the two showed a series of wide shots of Clear Lake Mall. The last one, a postcard-worthy clip of the sun setting beyond the mall's rusty spires, they cut off with the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.

The crowd sat silent for a moment as the curtains were drawn. Then someone booed. And someone screamed. I think I may have even heard crying. Within seconds, the rest of the audience found their voices, and the hall began to rock with furious booing and the chant, “GOD sucks! GOD sucks! GOD sucks!”

As we waited for Principal B. J. Stokes to arrive, Doug began opening drawers of the man's desk. He pulled out a cigar, stuffed it in his mouth, and imitated our principal's drawl.

“Prahd. Prahd in yo'sef. Prahd in yo school,” he bellowed.

I thought Matt was going to faint. “Stop that. You're gonna get us all kicked out,” he said, trembling.

Doug stuffed the cigar in his pocket and returned to our side of the desk. Seconds later, the real McCoy entered and took the seat Doug had just relinquished. When he began speaking, it was impossible not to think of Doug's impression.

“Trey… Bill…” Stokes said, naming only the senior boys sitting in front of him, “I simply can't believe you were a part of this.” He held on to the lapels of his powder blue sports coat with fat little fists. “What was it supposed to mean, anyway? Did someone think this little film would be funny?”

“It wasn't supposed to mean anything, sir,” Trey answered. “It was dadaistic expression. Totally disconnected, random images meant to make us think about art in a new way.”

This didn't register with Stokes. “Son, you showed the mall getting blown up.”

“Sir, we'll just be on our way,” Doug interjected. “I'm sure you'll want to have a word with those transvestites who were dancing up on the stage before us.”

Stokes tightened his grip on his lapels and gritted his teeth. “Don't get cute with me, boy! This is serious. You kids just about started a damned riot in there. It seems your fellow students don't cotton to watching themselves get compared to Nazis up on the big screen.” Stokes rose from his chair and assumed a one-cheek perch on the side of his desk next to Trey. “You're right in the middle of a play-off race, son. Don't you have more important things to do with your time?”