The Indifference League (2 page)

SuperKen and SuperBarbie glance at each other, and seem to telepathically agree to ignore them; the Male and Female Athletes of the Year may be fitter, but Miss Demeanor and Psycho Superstar have the potential to be a lot meaner in a fight.

“Come on, guys, let's not get personal,” The Drifter says.

(Mr. Nice Guy was
going
to say something like this, but The Drifter beat him to it.)

The Drifter figures that his comic-book knowledge will not make him look like a geek in this particular instance, so he says, “This discussion is about Zan and Jayna on
Super Friends
, remember? Zan always turned into things made of water
, and Jayna always turned into an
animal
. It's just the way their superpowers worked. There was nothing
political
about it.”

“Everything is political,” Miss Demeanor says.

“Whatever,” SuperKen says, “Jan and Zayna still
sucked
.”

“And, no offense, ladies, but as much as I hate to agree with Sergeant Rock,” Psycho Superstar adds, “the rest of those add-on, politically correct Super Friends were
bullshit
, too. I mean,
Apache Chief? Samurai? Rima
the fucking
Jungle Girl
? Gimme a break.”

Hippie Avenger sighs. “But, like, the creators were just trying to instill some cultural sensitivity into their young viewers, at a time when, like …”

“Then they should have created culturally sensitive characters that didn't
suck ass
!” Psycho Superstar says. “The
real
superheroes are the five originals: Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman.”

“Aquaman is
useless
,” The Statistician says, with unexpected emotion. He adapts a Saturday-morning-cartoon-superhero voice. “Superman and Wonder Woman, you two go fly around the world at supersonic speed to prevent the disaster that's been set in motion by the Legion of Doom! Batman and Robin, you guys get your asses into the Batmobile and stop the villains from escaping their lair! And Aquaman … uhhhhhh, yeah …
Aquaman.
Um, what are your superpowers again? Oh. Right. Um, then you go for a
swim,
okay?
And while you're in there, you should have a
talk
with your friends
the fishies
. Yes, you go do
that
. That'll really help.”

Everyone laughs, except for The Drifter. He takes a slurp from his beer and mutters, “I
like
Aquaman.”

The Drifter is the closest thing to a real-live Aquaman in the group. He was on the Tom Thomson High School junior swim team in grade nine, but he wasn't allowed back in grade ten because of his lacklustre grades. From the beach here at Mr. Nice Guy's parents' cottage, The Drifter can swim all the way out to the island and back.

“Aquaman,” The Statistician pronounces, “is
useless
.”

“Fuckin' right,” Psycho Superstar agrees. “
Robin
could beat him in a fight. The friggin'
Boy Wonder
. Hell, Batman's
butler
would kick Aquaman's ass.”

“Not in the
water
,” The Drifter says, his eyes narrowing. “The neutered, Saturday-morning-cartoon version of Aquaman we all saw on
Super Friends
wasn't a fair representation of the King of Atlantis! I mean, in
Superman vs. Aquaman
, Aquaman took down Superman by flooding his lungs with water, then …”

He stops, and his face flushes red. He's crossed the Dork Line yet again.

The Statistician laughs. “You'd better put away the comic books and start hitting the textbooks, little brother.”

“Stop calling me ‘little brother.'”

“It's what you are.”

“Fuck off. I'm just as big as you are.”

“What? Are you gonna go tell the fishies on me?”

Hippie Avenger, who can't swim at all, has already consumed a six-pack of strawberry-flavoured vodka coolers, and she always gets sentimental or amorous (or both) when she's drunk. She throws her arms around The Drifter (who is momentarily distracted from his funk by the feel of her braless breasts against him), and she says, “All of you guys are, like,
my
Super Friends!”

“More like the
Super Dorks
,” The Statistician says, rolling his eyes, hoping to deflect yet another maudlin, tearful, it's-our-last-summer-together moment. “Perhaps we should call ourselves the
Not-So-Super Friends
.”

“You're such a dick,” The Drifter mutters.

Without unlocking his gaze from the second bratwurst sausage he's scorching, The Statistician says, “Perhaps
you
should shut up and go study for your remedial summer-school courses,
little brother
.”

The Drifter jumps up, fists clenched.

“Hey now, boys,” says SuperKen, in that fighter-pilot voice of his, “calm down, now. I don't want to have to intervene.”

The Statistician turns and glares at SuperKen. “What are you, the United Nations Security Council? Perhaps you should mind your own business.”

“Yeah,” The Drifter says. “This is between us. Go back to fondling the Female Athlete of the Year.”

“Hey,” SuperKen says, easing his grip on one of SuperBarbie's breasts. “Watch it.”

Mr. Nice Guy feels obligated to ease the tension by saying something funny, so in his best Ted Knight voice (who did the narration for the
Super Friends
cartoon on Saturday morning TV), he cries out the motto: “
To fight Injustice. To right that which is wrong. And to serve all mankind!
”

Again The Statistician rolls his eyes. “Perhaps our motto should be: To
talk about
how
somebody else
should do something about Injustice! To
get
drunk
while
discussing
right and wrong! And to eat
bratwurst
while doing it!”

He thrusts the scorched sausage in the air, brandishing the crooked coat-hanger wire like a general leading a cavalry.

“You're
such
a superior being,” The Drifter snipes. “The rest of us have
so
much to learn from you.”

“Actually,” Miss Demeanor says, “he's right. Our
modus operandi
is sitting around together, drinking and eating and throwing bullshit around. We never actually
do
anything”

“And there are probably, like, a thousand other little groups like us all over the Western world,” Hippie Avenger ponders. “We've never had a Vietnam to bring us together. Or a Kent State. Or a Woodstock.”

“Or a World War One,” SuperKen adds. “Or a World War Two.”

“Nor
a depression,
nor
an inquisition,” says The Statistician, in that professorial tone of voice, “
nor
a Renaissance,
nor
a revolution.”

“And fucking amen to that!” Psycho Superstar says. “Who needs any of that shit?”

“And fucking amen to that!” Miss Demeanor seconds, grandly raising her bottle in the air. “To
Indifference
!”

“To the Not-So-Super Friends!” Mr. Nice Guy cries, also raising his bottle.

Not wanting to look like the sucky-baby his brother often accuses him of being, The Drifter reluctantly lifts his bottle, too. “To the Indifference League,” he says.

“Good one!” says Hippie Avenger.

“Nice,” says Miss Demeanor

Mr. Nice Guy shrugs, and mutters, “What about the Not-So-Super Friends?”

“It's good, too, buddy,” Hippie Avenger says in that soothing, dovelike voice.

“To the Indifference League!” The Drifter cheers again.

Hippie Avenger, Psycho Superstar, Miss Demeanor, and The Statistician hoist their drinks and repeat the toast in unison. As the co-chairs of Teens Need Truth, the Perfect Pair are still clucking to each other over the blasphemous use of the term “fucking amen,” but in the spirit of the moment they join the toast anyway, waving their antifreeze-coloured athletic beverages at the airplanes and stars twinkling overhead.

Bold declarations are made.

“Collectively, from this point forward,” Hippie Avenger says, “we will be known formally as
The Indifference League
, and informally as the
Not-So-Super Friends
. All those in agreement, say ‘Aye'!”

“Aye!” the others cry.

“My cottage,” Mr. Nice Guy declares, “will be henceforth known as
The Hall of Indifference
. We will all pledge to meet here at least once a year for the rest of our lives. All those in agreement, say ‘Yeah'!”

They all cry “Yeah,” even The Statistician, who is pretty sure that he will soon be moving on to Bigger and Better Things.

“Signed,
the Breakfast Club
,” says Miss Demeanor.

“Another good one,” the Drifter affirms. “You rock, Molly Ringwald.”

“I'm more like the fucked-up Ally Sheedy character, I think,” says Miss Demeanor, as she reaches stroke the crotch of Psycho Superstar's shredded jeans. “But I
do
rock.”

“Oh, baby, you
k
nowwwwww what ah like!” Psycho Superstar croons, Big Bopper style, placing his hands behind his head and performing several spastic pelvic thrusts.

The Perfect Pair look away in disgust, even though SuperBarbie has been casually grinding SuperKen's erection between her gym-toned butt cheeks all evening.

Her wine-cooler-fuelled euphoria unrestrained, Hippie Avenger cheers, “Now, like, all we need are superhero names!”

Since they are aware that everyone calls them Ken and Barbie behind their backs, anyway, The Perfect Pair are good sports about it. They simply add the prefix “Super” to their nicknames, and then they run off giggling into the cottage, where they will kiss and fondle and suck and stroke and finger each other, but they will not have actual intercourse, since they have promised God (via the Teens Need Truth club) that they will wait until their wedding night to consummate their bond.

Mr. Nice Guy and Hippie Avenger invent one another's Indifference League names. They have been dating for the past couple of months, and they're going to the senior prom together; they have not yet stumbled upon Just the Right Moment to have sex with each other, though.

As far as the rest of the gang can tell, Miss Demeanor is not so much
dating
Psycho Superstar as simply exchanging bodily fluids with him. Nevertheless, she is so moved when Psycho Superstar names her after his second-favourite rock song (a track from the
Kim Mitchell
EP), that she jumps up and hugs him, kissing him on both cheeks. Miss Demeanor's lips have spent much time on other parts of Psycho Superstar's body, but she's never kissed him
there
before. Her lips normally hit him like punches, like challenges, but these ones are more like whispers. He has to holler
“Fuckin' RIGHT!”
at the top of his lungs just to keep things in balance.

Without girlfriends or sex buddies to assist them in selecting their own alter-ego titles, The Statistician and The Drifter pick their own. The other Not-So-Super Friends agree that their new aliases suit them.

The Indifference League spends the rest of the night becoming superheroically intoxicated.

“Hey, Statistician!” The Drifter calls out, now full of cheap, sweet beer and renewed brotherly love, “Cook me up another bratwurst, wouldja?”

“Indeed,” The Statistician replies, “but first you've got to activate the Brat Signal.”

It's a pretty good joke for The Statistician.

Mr. Nice Guy smiles drunkenly at the stars; even if the other members of The Indifference League don't realize it yet, he knows that the day that has just passed by will be a defining moment for all of them, that they have just formed the sort of esoteric bond that keeps friends together for the rest of their lives.

And it happened
here
, at
his
cottage, because of
him
.

I am happy
, he tells himself.
All is well. Yeah.