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Violent Youth

Zach Murphy

    My junior high school experience was dominated by sex and violence. Since the response to my asking someone out for the first time was “no way,” it was hard to imagine a girl going out with the likes of me. I settled for the next best thing: feeling up pretty girls in the school’s corridors. I only struck when I thought the hallway was crowded enough. When it was, I started looking for pretty girls. Then I’d get behind one and feel the curvature of her ass with my hand. One of them jumped so high that she landed on the floor. She was smiling afterward, though.
    When her friend helped her up, she asked, “Who did that: Mike?”
    She was referring to a Neanderthal football player who made my life a living hell: more on him later. That’s what I was counting on. The girls wouldn’t suspect me because I was such a nonentity. They would think that I was incapable of such a ballsy endeavor, even though I was right behind them whenever it happened; I never ran away. I also had my favorites that I felt up more than once. Later on, in high school, I realized that I hadn’t gotten away with it entirely. The first day in science class, in front of everyone, this girl announced that I have touched the ass of her friend Gail, and the contact had not been sanctioned by her. I denied it, but I was guilty. She was one of my favorites, wearing tight Jordache or Sergio Valente jeans that drove me crazy.
    There was one girl in junior high that titillated my young loins the most. She had a beautiful face and body, but her most remarkable features were her fully developed and perfect titties. They were the biggest and the best in the school. The opportunity that I had been praying for presented itself when I saw her at the outer edge of a crowd in the hallway. I was so excited, that I literally ran over to her and pressed my whole body against the back of hers.
    It has been said that karma is a bitch. Perhaps karma sent bullies to punish me for sexually assaulting turn-of-the-puberty girls. Maybe that’s why I was bullied frequently in junior high school. Three friends, at least two of them were football players, bullied me the worst. Mike was stocky and ugly. Clay was taller and uglier. Jeff was tall, and he had curly blonde hair. They sat behind me in more than one of my classes. They smacked me really hard on the back of the head whenever the mood struck them (and the teacher wasn’t looking). They thought that this was funny and so did my classmates. I was so pathetic, that I even laughed along with them sometimes. Sometimes they smacked my head repeatedly with a burst of quick, hard ones. I never fought back. I was a coward. Considering what I know about the human brain now, it’s clear that I shouldn’t have let them batter mine around the inside of my skull as many times as they did. The teachers somehow never noticed this bullying, or they just ignored it. All of my classmates knew about it. Those smacks were loud.
    School shootings suck, but at least they have brought attention to the subject of bullying. Perhaps kids aren’t as likely to get away with physically assaulting other kids as much as they used to. Such beatings were just considered to be part of growing up. Hopefully, that has changed some, and kids have the right to not be abused by their peers. If there was a gun in my house, who knows? I might have used it against my tormentors.
    I was riding my bike near my house one day, and a bunch of kids starting throwing acorns at me. Apparently, I had reached my bullying limit just prior to this incident, because I snapped. I went home, grabbed a baseball bat, and rode back over to those kids. I threatened to hit anyone who threw anything at me. I clearly meant it, so I saw fear in some of their eyes. Satisfied, I remounted my bike and pedaled homeward. Of course, at least one kid hurled an acorn at me as I departed, spoiling my victorious freak-out.
    That wasn’t the only time this cowardly junior high school student fought back. This kid in my music class, Freddie, didn’t like me. Join the club. Well, I didn’t like him either then. We insulted each other regularly. We eventually decided that we would fight it out. We planned to get to the classroom early on fight day so we could do it before the teacher arrived. That fateful day came, and we stood in front of each other and started talking trash. The fistfight began when I shoved him. Some girl told me to leave Freddie alone because he was shorter than me. The rest of the kids wanted blood, and they got it. Freddie bloodied my lip, but I didn’t even feel it. I got him in a headlock: bad news for Freddie. However, as an acquaintance of mine who witnessed the bout noted, I was only giving him noogies on the top of his head, when I should have been beating his face in. Finally, a teacher heard the ruckus and broke it up. Freddie pointed at my bloody lip and laughed, which was when I became aware of it.
    Then he declared, “This is not over,” which was an obvious threat.
    Since Freddie was shorter than me, and he gave me a bloody lip, the consensus among the kids was that I was the clear loser of the fight. Now I was the loser who started a fight with a smaller kid and got my ass kicked. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. We both received detention, where Neanderthal football player Mike was already serving time (shocker!). Not surprisingly, he berated me for losing to a smaller opponent. I can still recall the look of disgust on his face. Freddie never did finish the job; in fact we became friends after that.
    Violence was all around me in junior high, though. I’ll probably never forget an incident that involved my asshole locker partner, Ryan. Ryan was a tall and moody sort. He and I had been randomly assigned to share a locker with each other. A girl, who took art class with Ryan and I, seemed to have a crush on him. She was big boned, but pretty. She decided to tease him by hiding his pencil: bad idea. Ryan kept asking her where it was while she giggled like, well, a schoolgirl. He was standing over her and becoming increasingly frustrated while she continued to giggle in her seat. Then it happened really fast. His arm was a flash as he hit her nose hard with the palm of his open hand. Large drops of blood fell from her nose and formed red circles on the table as she started to cry. Ryan was sent to the principal’s office. Her nose bled quite a bit. I don’t remember, but he might have broken it. It was a sudden, reprehensible act of violence.
    Scotty and I were best friends, but he was very competitive. When we played sports on the same team, everything was fine. It wasn’t always fun to be on the team that opposed his, though. For Scotty, the ends justified the means, which is why he lied and cheated. I heard that he’s a lawyer now: that figures. An example of his Machiavellian tactics occurred when we were playing football. My team kicked off to his, and the ball hit his hand, then the ground. That meant that possession of the ball was up for grabs. Someone from our team seized it, and we celebrated. Scotty claimed that he didn’t touch the ball. We all saw him do it, so we argued. Scotty stubbornly continued to deny it, though, and he eventually got his way.
    He was also very physical. We very rarely played tackle football on a field; it was mostly touch football in the street. That didn’t stop Scotty from getting rough. On a day when he and I were playing for opposing teams, he kept running into me hard and illegally interfering with me before I could attempt to catch the ball. I called pass interference on him every time he did it. The more I did it, the harder he glared at me. I had seen him intimidate several kids this way. Regardless, I continued fearlessly because I thought that our friendship would allow me to challenge him with impunity. I was wrong. He treated me especially roughly on a particular play, then he looked at me fiercely, as though he was going to hit me. He saw the fear in my eyes, and it made him smile with delight. I don’t think I called any more penalties on him that day.
    This time, we were playing street hockey, and Scotty and Rob were involved in an intense physical battle for the puck. Rob was a skinny kid that we played sports with whenever we could drag him out of his house. Scotty decided that the game was turning from hockey to boxing. He had lost his patience and was preparing to hit Rob. I was mesmerized by this turn of events. Is Scotty going to beat the shit out of him? Then Rob looked at me with wide-open eyes that made his fear clear. His very effective nonverbal communication snapped me out of my reverie, and I got between them before Scotty could demolish him. Too bad Rob wasn’t around to return the favor when I needed it.
    Completely fixated on Star Wars, I wrapped black tape around one end of a neon-green broomstick to create my very own lightsaber. As I played with it, I imagined that I was Luke Skywalker. Scotty dropped by. I showed him my new lightsaber. I went a little too far and ended up behind him, holding my lightsaber tightly against the front of his body. I don’t remember if he warned me to stop or not, but he managed to turn around and punch me in the eye. I immediately released him, and after a moment of shock, I lay down on the ground. It wasn’t a knockdown. I hoped that lying on the ground would prevent him from hitting me again; he didn’t. He apologized, but I wasn’t impressed. I told him to leave. I didn’t want to be his friend anymore. I was sick and tired of having a best friend that was bigger than me. I’d rather have a friend who had an ass I could kick, if it came to that. Scotty kept trying to apologize to me, but I wouldn’t take his calls. He was very persistent, though, so I finally agreed to go to his house. The bastard gave me a get-well card. He wasn’t sincere about it at all. He was smiling when he gave it to me; he clearly thought it was funny. Despite his lack of respect for the major tragedy which had befallen me, I accepted him as my friend again.
    While I was enrolled in high school, something happened to me that left a dark cloud over my head for years. The homely girl on the block, Rachelle, managed to get herself an ugly, tough-looking boyfriend. I don’t remember his name, so I’ll call him Thug; it suits him. He and I initially got along well together. He was on our block to see Rachelle, saw me shooting hoops by myself, and asked me if I wanted to play a game with him. We played one-on-one, and I won. I’ve played several sports, but I was probably better at basketball than any other sport I attempted. Even when there was no one to play with, I could always improve my abilities by practicing. It was the perfect sport for a loner like me.
    Another time, I was playing basketball with my best friend on the block, Todd. Thug, Rachelle, and her little brother, Dean, walked over to where we were. Thug played ball with us for a while. Then he and Rachelle went back to her house. Dean started asking me all these loaded questions about Thug.
    He asked me, “Do you think that you could beat Thug in a fight?” He also asked, “Are you scared of Thug?”
    I was somewhat diplomatic when responding to these questions, but I didn’t want to seem like a pussy either. I didn’t realize, at the time, that I was being set up by this instigating little shit. He went back to his house. When he returned, he was accompanied by an angry-looking Thug. I can still picture the dramatic sight of him getting closer and closer.
    “Watch out for this guy,” Todd warned me.
    Thug walked right up to me and started interrogating me about the things that Dean told him I had said. I suppose that Dean made it seem like I had voluntarily said all these things about Thug when he spoke to him about me: leaving out his involvement. I tried to explain the situation to him, but Thug was having none of it. Like a dog, he could sense my fear. As I kept trying to avoid conflict, he became more aggressive. He pushed me. I couldn’t believe this was happening! I hadn’t said or done anything to deserve this. Then he punched me hard in the mouth. That was extremely startling, and it threw me into a panic. I tried to get away from him and go to my house, but he was in the way. I went left, and he blocked me. I went right, and he blocked me again. This is where my football experience came in handy. I faked left and went right. I got by him and ran to my house; he chased me. When I reached the front door, he gave up the chase and left our yard. I was too scared to venture out and get my basketball, so I asked Todd to throw it to me while I was standing in the doorway. He did, but he was clearly disappointed by my cowardice. As Thug walked by my house, on his way back to Rachelle’s, he predictably called me, among other things, a pussy.
    I went inside and looked at myself in the mirror. My upper lip was swollen and bloody. He had broken the skin just above the lip and left a deep, ugly cut. I have the scar to this day: a scar of shame. There was a knock at the door. I approached it with caution and saw that it was Dean. I opened the door, and Dean apologized for what he had done. I accepted his apology and tried to act as though getting punched in the mouth and completely humiliating myself didn’t really bother me. However, because of that incident, I have very strong feelings about people who initiate fights between others and then watch them from the sidelines. Even if a woman incited a fistfight (for no good reason) between her husband and me, I would seriously consider slapping her once I was done with her better half. This event crushed me, and I was ashamed of myself for several years afterward as a result.
    However, when my friend Scotty called me the next day and asked me to play street hockey near his house, I accepted the invitation. Now, I don’t believe in God, but something strange happened. When I arrived at the location of the hockey game, the face of the opposing team’s goalie caught my eye. It was Thug! I was very surprised to see him there, because I had only seen him a few times before that day, and only on my block. It seemed possible that some mysterious force was giving me another chance to hit him back. I didn’t, though. At least I didn’t turn around and run like hell. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it sure seemed like he was telling his friends the story of how I got cut and the aftermath. I suppose that one of his friends questioned the veracity of the tale. He asked me if I had fought Thug. I meekly confirmed it without going into detail. We played our hockey game. I scored a goal against Thug; that was all the vengeance I could muster. I hope that scumbag is rotting in a prison somewhere.

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