ANDREW: I said goodbye to my mother and made my way down the crowded hallways of Sequoyah Junior High for the first time ever. It was day one of my 7th grade year, and I knew the elementary school world I had known for the last 6 years was about to go to shit. This new place was big, loud, and unfamiliar. As I passed by all the kids in the hall that morning, looking for their homerooms, I searched each face, hoping that my eyes would meet those of someone familiar. Didn't matter who. In minutes a korean girl from my old school passed me. Although we'd never spoken, we exchanged a shaky, "hi" before going our separate ways. Luckily, I had my GUNS N' ROSES t-shirt on, which helped me defend myself. Goddamn that was an intense day. In spite of it all, I made a friend in my first class that day...a crazy-ass black kid named Darryl Harris. The guy was friendly, funny, liked GI Joe, and was fearless. We hit it off instantly.
So I eventually hooked up with my old tribe, now pretty much in shambles, in front of the library the following morning. Darryl was now a part of it, as was a guy named Jimmy that he brought along. From what I recall, a friend named Scott Howard introduced me to a new face, and that was Santiago (Scott was something like half-retarded, he was way older than us and had a temper problem. But, apparently he and Santiago lived in the same apartments and rode the same bus). Nothing particularly struck me about him then. He was my height, had a crew cut, and wore a gray jacket. Little did I know, this guy would one day be my best friend. But before that, he had to become my worst enemy...
SANTIAGO:
Sequoyah. 7th grade. I knew NO ONE. I had just moved to Doraville
(Doraville? More like BOREaville!) from Fulton county (Fulton? More
like.....Fulton.) and I was shaking in my boots. The only guy I had
managed to meet so far was Scott Howard, who lived behind me. Not the
smartest turd in the toilet, but hey, I had to get a connection somewhere.
He introduced me to this girl named Jennifer Brown who had a crush on me
from a picture she had seen. Then there was Paula Piedrahita, neighbor and
fellow Colombian, who I had known shortly before moving. And that was it
for acquaintances: A temper-heavy dunderhead, a psychotic stalker-girl,
and a Colombian lass with a penchant for telling gross-out stories to get
attention (AKA: How she once got a guy to ram a needle into his pee-hole
for 100 bucks). I was definitely ill-equipped for a first day ANYWHERE,
much less the chamber of death, destruction, and slimy things that was
Sequoyah Junior High.
To be honest, it went okay. I had expected to make at least 10 enemies in the first day (the guys there wore Bass shoes, slacks, and white turtlenecks with "Jimmy Z" printed on the neck. The girls had hairspray sculptures on their heads and wore color combinations that would send Jose Feliciano screaming to the ground while clawing at his bleeding eye sockets). I only made 5 (Kevin Odle being one of them....what an asshole). The end of the day came, and I stumbled out to the back of the school where the buses waited to cart us off. It looked like a scene from the Holocaust: dozen of kids in bad clothing huddled in long lines waiting for the their final train rides to the shower rooms. I was depressed. I felt alone, and I couldn't see anyone that looked remotely interesting. Was I destined to spend my Junior High years twiddling my balls at home while awaiting the anal rapes at school the following day? Who had I been in a former life to deserve this? Heinrich Himmler? Why me? Why anyone? And hey, why is Scott hanging out with that kid with the long hair? Who the hell is HE? Is that a Guns N' Roses shirt he's wearing? Holy dogballs....is that a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic book he's holding? (Hey...we were in the seventh grade....)
So I walked up to the group that had huddled around this kid. He was
rather scrawny, but his voice held everyone's attention. Scott noticed me.
"Who is that?" I asked under my breath.
"That's Andrew." Scott said.
We stood in awe as he showed us how violent the Eastman/Laird comics were
as compared to the shitty TV cartoon.
Then the buses came, and we all went home.
The next morning I hooked up with Scott and he led me to the front of the
library, where Andrew stood with several other misfits. The morlocks of
Sequoyah, destined to live underground while the Jimmy Z's of the world
stepped over them.
"Andrew, this is Santiago."
Andrew glanced at me.
"Oh...hey...."
And that's how it started......
ANDREW:I used to get an immense high turning friends on to things they'd never seen or heard before. Not that it made me feel better about myself, but it brought us all closer. More often than not, it was either a matter of their parents trying to keep them from the dark side, or that they never gave in to natural curiosities for fear of the backlash from their peers. I had the advantage in that, no matter what I did, I was made fun of and left out of everything. Throughout my grade school years, I managed to get totally overlooked by females and picked on by the males. Not that I didn't try to fit in at first, but for some kids it just didn't work. They could see through me, they didn't accept me, they called me 'weird". I grew to like it, to pride myself on it. My parents thought I was great, and I managed to meet a few other kids that liked me for who I was. Slowly, we built our own little universe that nobody could touch. If you wanted in, that could only mean you'd been rejected by every other peer group. With us, you fit in because you didn't fit in anywhere else.
At the time I met Santiago, he was at a point in his life where he had nothing to lose. The guy was new in town, didn't know anybody, and was just as scared as the rest of us. One thing he was sure of was that he didn't care for the way most people looked and acted at our school, and that was something this band of misfits had in common. He didn't listen to rock music, wasn't that into comics or art, and hadn't seen half the movies I had. To be honest, I couldn't figure him out. He just seemed to listen to everything I said, taking it in, and soaked up all the stuff we were into like he was a sponge. Well, except maybe the music. That took a little more time, but only because he was already into his own stuff. That's right, rap music. Sure, I listened to some. My favorite rap group was PUBLIC ENEMY, and I found out soon how much Santiago liked them too.
So why didn't we just go riding off into the sunset immediately? Well, that first year was a bitch. In all senses of the word. He and I both had to walk through fire many times before we could jump on our horses.
And my new friend Darryl? Well, he was fast becoming my best friend, and immediately recognized Santiago as a very real threat to that.
SANTIAGO: Ah yes....Darryl Harris. My nemesis. The yin to my yang...the
Parkay to my butter....
Threatened by the presence of the evil Colombian, Darryl Harris, Nubian
Prince, devises a plan to get rid of the pesky Latino villain. A plan so
perfect, so marvelous, so stupefying in it's complexity that it would take
hundreds of years and a team of philosophers to dissect and set it for
display. But you know what? I'm going to do it in a two sentences:
"Hey Andrew...Santiago says he's going to kick your ass."
"Hey Santiago...Andrew says he's going to kick your ass."
There. Done. Finished. Those philosophers can suck my balls.
To give Darryl his due, it was an effective plan. Despite the fact that
we were truly ahead of our time, we were still, in essence, seventh
graders. And as such, we were privy to falling for cheap
divide-and-conquer tactics. So it worked. Andrew and I became bitter
enemies for a good while, avoiding each other in the hallways and cracking
mean jokes about eachother to the string of friends that we shared (Sam
Wiley, Jimmy "snot-nose" Stewart, Scott Howard, and others).
So Darryl had his way, for a while. He and Andrew became great friends,
and Darryl instilled a lot of things in Andrew that have helped shape his
personality over the years (his love of toilet humor, for example). In the
meantime, I figured out Darryl's scheme and started conjuring up a way of
destroying the facade he had so cunningly created (okay...maybe not
cunningly, but I had an ego to protect). I'll let Andrew take it from
here, but before I do, here's a few interesting little side notes:
I first heard the song "Patience" (by Guns N' Roses) in Andrew's room on his tape player in 1989. I was mesmerized by it, and asked Andrew to make me a mix tape of songs that he thought I'd like. This begat a tradition of me dubbing Andrew's shit that would stretch on and on...all the way to the present. I'm still taping stuff from him....music, movies, etc, but I've been able to get Andrew into some artists that I discovered as well (Kristen Hall and Michelle Malone, for example), thereby repaying him (in a way) for that perfect GN'R moment in his room so many damn years ago.
And finally....
In the 12th grade, Darryl Harris, by then a promising student at Cross
Keys, pulled a box-cutter on a kid a few days before the last day of
school. He was expelled, and his whereabouts at this time are unknown.
ANDREW:Another factor that played a part in the "Andrew VS. Santiago" situation was a girl that went by the name of Carolyne. First, let me say that there were no females in our little group at that time. Our strange appearance, unexplainable pride, and Darryl's often disgusting antics pretty much ensured that no girls would dare approach us. But then, it happened. Santiago, being the goddamn suave fuck that he is, landed a girlfriend. This was Carolyne. And we, being the jealous inconsiderate fucks we were, clowned him to no end. CLOWNED. We used everything we could to make fun of her. She was white, blonde, skinny, had braces, and was a cheerleader. Darryl found out, and he railed in hard as ever. Deep in my heart of hearts, I knew we were wrong for doing it. And I also recognized why we did it. But that didn't stop me. Little did I know that, by egging my buddies on to make fun of Santiago and Carolyne (who were, of course, just kids holding hands), I created a huge problem for myself. Causing Santiago to avoid us in favor of hanging out with his new girlfriend didn't just put a budding friendship on hold. It created reason for me to hide the first girlfriend I ever got.
That's right. I hid my very first girlfriend, not only from friends at school, but from family as well. In fact, I did such a good job that there are some who believe she never existed.
Her name was Susan, and she first spoke to me on the last day of 6th grade. She was ordinary looking, didn't wear makeup, and had long brown hair. She'd been in my class for the last couple months of school, but actually approached me and struck up conversation at our "end of the year" party. You know, the "kool-aid and cookies" type thing. As I sat at my desk, talking to no one (as usual), she walked up.
"Would you like to see my pet?", she asked. In her hands was a pencil box. I looked up at her, not in the eyes of course, and then back at the box.
"Yeah, is it in there?", I said. She opened the box, and inside was a bunch of cotton and a blue plastic monster.
Then she said, "be careful, it bites".
As I went to touch the pet, she quickly shut the box on my hand. It didn't hurt, but I pulled away quickly and laughed a nervous-ass laugh. She did too.
It was months before I saw Susan again. I thought about her on and off the whole summer, and looked everywhere for her when I started at Sequoyah that fall. Eventually, she showed up in my gym class. I didn't know what to say, and definitely didn't approach her. I was certain she'd forgotten all about me, and I didn't have the guts to even throw her a glance or write a note. Thankfully, I never had to. Sometimes miracles happen, and the morning she got on my bus and sat beside me, I probably smiled so big that my face almost split. She just started talking to me, making jokes and stuff. This was unheard of in the life of Andrew. Then, when gym class came around that day, Susan appeared and did the "guess who it is" thing to me, coming up behind my back and covering my eyes with her hands. Yet another new experience, being touched by a girl.
To make a long story short, we made plans to walk around the neighborhood after school on Thursday evenings (the only time my family was gone), but I strictly forbade her to come to the library, our hangout, in the mornings before class. I didn't want to endure the same treatment we gave Santiago, didn't want to ruin my first-ever relationship. Since I was very close to Darryl, it could potentially have been an explosive situation. He was the worst of all of us, the funniest, but also the quickest to embarass you and make fun. I never said a word about her to anyone, but in a matter of weeks, she was gone. Her parents put her in another school or something. Since I didn't have her phone number and she no longer rode my bus, I had no idea how to contact her. She and I always met halfway on our walks together, so I didn't even know where she lived. And that was it.
I found myself identifying with Santiago a lot more after that. His thing with Carolyn didn't last too long either.
I will always consider Darryl a good friend, but can't help but wonder what it would've been like if Susan and I could have spent our brief time together just being a little closer. Eventually, in 9th grade, my girlfriend Zandi had a lot to do with the fizzling out of my friendship with Darryl. She was black, and the fact that I "got a sister" before he did really bugged him, even though he only joked about it. I've often wished I could contact him, sort things out, and maybe just get some peace of mind in relation to our friendship.
So after all that bullshit ended, Santiago and I finally faced one another near the end of the school year. And you know what? We spent basically the whole summer hanging out every day.
Step 1) Walk to Fast Stop, buy a cherry slushy and a HEAVY METAL magazine.
Step 2) Walk to the Buford Highway Twin Cinema, watch a movie for 50 cents.
Step 3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 for several weeks.
Step 4) Enjoy your friendship...
SANTIAGO: It all ended as abruptly as it had started. Lunchtime had
become a horrid chore for me, having to sit at the table right next to the
one Andrew and the rest of the misfits ate at. It was painful, and I felt
excommunicated from a religion that I had helped create. Darryl would even
flick shit at me while I wasn't looking, and when I turned to see him
giggling, I would notice that Andrew was just looking down at his food, a
solemn look on his face. It hit me, as it would have hit anyone with half
a brain, that Andrew was just as upset about this as I was. We had become
Darryl's pawns (a fact that any eight grader could have seen, but hey..we
were in the SEVENTH grade....), and the game had to end.
I got up from my table and walked over to Andrew. Darryl was cracking jokes and Andrew was laughing, but the laughter stopped when I got there. A look of concern spread over Darryl's face. I think he knew what was about to happen.
"Hey Andrew," I began, the words spilling out of my mouth before I could stop them. "I know you're probably pissed at me. I don't know why you would be, and I want you to know that I'm not mad at you about anything. This was a misunderstanding or something, and I want us to be friends again. I'm tired of this."
Darryl started to say something..probably an insult of some kind, but it never came out. Andrew cut him off by nodding and smirking slightly. I think he knew what had been going on as well.
"Okay." he said. "Deal."
And Darryl's spell was broken.
So that was it. Andrew and I were forged in friendship from that moment on. We would go on to become a force to be reckoned with, and nothing could stop us. The only thing that would ever come close had a lot to do with a band called Evergreen, a duo called Makeshift, and another little group called Thumper.
But that, my friends, comes much much later...