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I liked to think that the kids in my grade were envious of me. After all, on weekends while they went over to each others
houses and ordered pizzas and played basketball and maybe went to the movies if they could get a parent to drive them I was
cruising Slappey and drinking beer and being cool. Surely I was more attractive to girls than them. They would have switched
places with me in a second. One day Krista was talking to someone and I was in ear range but just barely and I wasn't trying to listen in anyhow, but I heard her say something about sid and I knew she meant LSD because I'd heard a lot of the other older kids talk about it. Some guy who had graduated from our school a couple of years before and had then gone off to Valdosta State was majoring in Chemistry and had become a lab assistant and had gotten a hold of a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook which was carried in about two headshops in Atlanta but nowhere else in the whole state. So it was kinda weird that he had a copy. Anyway, he got the recipe for LSD out of the book and discovered that most of what was needed to make it was in stock in the lab and what wasn't in stock could be ordered, and being a really great lab assistant he had the authority to place that kind of order. So he did and before too long he was supplying Albany with tons of cheap but not half bad acid. The acid had tremendous novelty appeal to a lot of kids. With all the farm land close by, weed and mushrooms were plentiful, but acid was something that no one had previously had access to. Back to the point. The older kids were pretty into the stuff and I was curious to try it myself and I heard Krista say something about it that day so after a while I went over to her and said that maybe if it wasn't the kind of thing that would cause her any problems I'd like her to help me get some for myself. Of course I've done it before I assured her. Bunches of times. I'm cool. So three days later this guy Rick comes up to me at my locker and says that he heard that I was looking for some acid. Yeah. I tell him. So he grabs me really rough by the front of my shirt and twists his hand so that my shirt balls up and he pinches the fuck out of me on purpose in the process and next thing I know I'm wedged against my locker and I feel his breath in my ear and it's hot he's saying You a fuckin' narc, boy? Huh? Answer me! and I'm about to wet my pants and next thing I know Krista's there saying Fuck off Rick. He's cool. Let him go. and Rick goes You cool, man? still kind of aggressive but not as much as before and I manage a Yeah! and he says You fuckin' better be. and lets me down and we all look around and nobody seems to have noticed the incident and I tuck my shirt back in and get some but not all of my composure back. Well I gave Rick seven dollars and he slipped me a little piece of tin foil which I figured must have the drug inside it and he told me sorry about that thing a minute ago but, you know, he had to look out for number one and I understood didn't I? And I told him of course I did. No sweat. Rick said he'd give me a beer or two at the next party we were both at just to show no hard feelings and I figured that he must think I was one cool freshman but really he was probably just excited to have ripped me off. See, a hit of this stuff really only went for three dollars but I didn't know that at the time and probably wouldn't have said shit even if I had. It would have been worth twenty dollars to me, seeing as how jealous the kids my age were going to be. Well, for a couple of days I carried the hit around with me. I had to rewrap it in new foil probably five times over those days because I kept having to unwrap it to show it to people to prove that yes, I had scored it, and foil just isn't all that durable. Finally on Thursday Vinnie says So how long you gonna let it age, anyway? and makes some remark about how I must be scared to take it or something so I say Fine, I'll take it tomorrow before school. and Vinnie says You gotta be kidding me. Before school.? You gotta be the stupidest goddamn freshman that I ever heard of. You can't handle that shit at school. Yeah I can I say. You never even done it before he says. Sure I have. Bunches of times. So word gets around that the crazy freshman's gonna show up at school tripping tomorrow and everyone's making bets as to whether I`ll really do it or not and people are actually arguing about who gets to give me a ride to school and get the first witness. It gets decided that Vinnie will pick me up and we'll all meet at McDonald's for breakfast and I'll take it in front of the whole gang. Well the next morning came quick and I was actually getting kind of apprehensive about taking it and I even thought about slipping a little piece of regular paper in some foil and taking that and faking like I was high but the hit had a really detailed picture of Woody Woodpecker on it and I knew I couldn't reproduce that so I figured Well, I guess I'm really gonna do it. and I made myself get comfortable with the idea. So we get to McDonald's and I get a biscuit and a coke and I sit down and Phoedra and Zoe and Clint and a bunch of other really cool people are there and they're like Come on. It's showtime. so I take out my wallet and in the change pouch there's the hit and I unwrap it and stick it in my mouth really quicklike before I can chicken out and everyone can't believe I really did it and there's wagering going on as to how many class periods I can get through before I get busted. Like I said it was Friday and when we got to the school we went straight to the gym for the pep rally and everyone's telling me how weird the pep rally's gonna be for me, what with the acid and all, but I'm not feeling a damned thing yet and I'm thinking it would be just like these guys to have given me a regular piece of paper with a really detailed picture of Woody Woodpecker just so they could see if I would fake like I was tripping. So I tell them whenever they ask No, I don't feel anything and they say You will. and I'm starting to think Yeah, right. So the pep rally came and went and the only really interesting thing that happened, and this was actually pretty cool, was that I got a glimpse of a place under this one cheerleader's skirt were she really should have shaved. And then homeroom came and still nothing. English was my first actual class of the day. We were talking about some book that I was supposed to have read but hadn't and just about everyone else had and they all said that it was so great, especially compared to the crap we had covered up to that point, but from what I could infer it was just junior fiction coming-of-age schlock and I wasn't gonna read it and I was still going to pass the class fairly easily because when you get right down to it high school is joke. So this English teacher of mine had a peculiar skill where she was totally ambidextrous and on the chalkboard she would start writing with her left hand until she got to the middle and then her right hand would take over and her handwriting never changed at all. I had thought before that there was something weird about the way she wrote but I swear to god that was the first (and only) time I had ever noticed the dual hand thing and I don't think anyone else had ever noticed either because if they had they didn't say anything. The teacher had another thing about her, too, and that was a weird kind of appendage about the size of a grape on the back of the bottom of her left ear lobe. Everyone talked about that. Most kids made fun of her for it, behind her back of course, but the one little group of goody-goody girls who were into kissing ass and doing their homework and raising their hands and answering all the questions said that we shouldn't make fun of her. She had a problem that was common amongst and only to colored people, they said, and that was that a lot of times when they get their ear pierced the scar tissue doesn't stop growing and the result is a weird looking appendage. To make fun of her was to be racist, they said, but where I lived most everyone was racist and most everyone wanted the goody-goody girls to shut up and let them have their fun. And then I looked at the teacher really close and and something must have clicked in my brain and I almost laughed out loud because I got this idea that maybe that appendage was actually a little auxiliary brain that she used to store Shakespeare soliloquies and word like "idiosynchric" and "meander". And maybe that little brain was what allowed her to write with both hands like she did and all of a sudden I knew that this teacher was special and different and good and maybe not even human. I looked at the chalkboard and like I said she had written some stuff up there but now I couldn't even make out the words and it occurred to me that it wasn't even about words because words were meaningless next to the beauty of the chalk and the patterns and designs that had been created by it and the patterns were changing and the chalk was still white unless you looked real close and then you could see that it was kind of blue and I concentrated on making it green and it became green and I discovered that not only could I see the patterns and change the colors but I could also smell and taste them too and I wondered if anyone else could but deep down it's like I knew that they couldn't because somehow I could just tell that they didn't know what I knew. They only saw words. They didn't even have a clue that our teacher was a beautiful and possibly an alien and that she was here on earth to create art, and it was the kind of art that only a truly enlightened person such as myself could even see. And I felt a bond with my teacher and I looked again at the chalkboard and the patterns on it were winking at me and smiling at me and they were saying It's okay to be happy and it's okay if you laugh because everything is funny. and the patterns were right. Everything is funny, or at least everything has a funny side to it and since my new-found enlightenment I had learned how to tap into the funny side of things and funny was beauty and so I let myself laugh. My classmates, as I said, weren't enlightened and my laughter was loud and so they all turned to look at me like I was weird or something, and that was especially funny because you know and I know that there's nothing weird about me, but my classmates were simpletons and I thought If you guys only understood you could laugh and be happy, too. but I knew they couldn't and probably never would and I realized how great it was to be me. And then I saw how funny my classmates looked, and this time I mean funny in bad way, and I hoped that I didn't look like that and deep down I really knew that I didn't because how could I be beautiful and funny looking in a bad way at the same time? On to Page 2 of Broken Art |