We Were Like "No Way" But He Was Like "Yeah, Totally"

What I did over my summer vacation

 

 

We Were Like “No Way,” But He Was Like “Yeah, Totally.”

 

            This happened a couple of years ago when I was 11.  Or maybe 10, I don't really know.  My life has been pretty busy since then and it's a little hard to remember.  It was summer and the first meeting of the “Hunter Is An Asshandler” club was underway.  Hunter lived up by the lake and so during the summer he got to do all kinds of cool stuff like ride jet skis and go tubing behind his father's boat, and plus he had a pool and a big deck you could jump off of right into the water (although his parents did not let us do this).  It was determined that Hunter was an asshandler because he was our friend during the school year, but when summer came around he never called anyone or invited anyone over his house to enjoy jet skiing or any of the other stuff you could do over there.  At the first meeting of the club, we established in the by-laws that Hunter was not only an asshandler, but a dicksmacker and a pantywuss, although there was a specific stipulation that these latter titles could be rescinded if he were to initiate a really cool act like inviting everyone over for his birthday party or letting us borrow, like, half of his X-box games.  However, we found it our sad and solemn duty to affirm that, due to his attitude toward us in the past, he had proved himself to be, and would always remain, an asshandler of the first rank.

            This summer was super hot and all of the girls in the neighborhood were hanging out down at the playground in tank-tops and swimsuits and stuff, but we never went down there.  I don't know why, I guess we were just being gay or something.  It was the perfect weather to invite all of those girls down to Hunter's deck and then, when they were least expecting it, push them all off into the lake, and then jump in, ourselves.  Of course, you already know why that particular plan never came to fruition, and if you can't figure it out I'll give you a hint:  it had to do with Hunter and his proclivity for handling a certain part of the human posterior.  We were really ticked and there was nothing to do except ride our bikes around or go down to the public access beach, but that sucked because there was no deck and there were always a lot of fat people over there, baking in the sun and getting the sand all soaked up with fatty sweat.  It was the second week of July and it was already shaping up to be the lamest summer ever... thoroughly smashing the former record for lameness, which was held by the summer of the previous year.

            And so say we all, “Hunter is an asshandler.”  Hear, hear.

            The first club meeting lasted about five minutes before breaking up into a general caucus and informal networking session.  This was largely because there was nothing on the agenda besides a public confirmation of Hunter's status, and because the only sworn members of the HIAHC were me and Jeremy.  The meeting probably would have been formally adjourned, but we heard the approach of Hunter's bike (he got one of those off road bikes with the bouncy shock absorbers for Christmas).  Quickly, I pulled the insignia off of the podium and stashed it, and Jeremy folded up the minutes and tossed them in the leaf bin. When Hunter rolled around into the backyard, it looked just like Jeremy and I were hanging out in an informal, nonofficial capacity.  We felt it best that the HIAHC to maintain a public posture short of official censure of Hunter, for the time being.

            “Guys,” said Hunter breathlessly.  His flabby cheeks were red and sweat was beading up on his forehead just under the hairline.  “I'm totally freaking out.”

            “Hunter.  Good to see you.  It's been a long time.”

            “Yeah, I've been busy with some personal projects...”  Hunter quickly regained his composure.  “Anyway, I just came across something you guys might be interested in and I thought I'd pass it along.  It's really kind of a special opportunity, but since we've all had such a good relationship in the past I felt...”

            “Well, whatever it is, let's make it quick,” said Jeremy.  “I've got to be home by five.”

            Jeremy's brother is a retard and he goes to some kind of special school in the summer where they learn how to make things out of wood or something.  Both of his parents work, so Jere has to be there when his brother gets home, so he doesn't set the house on fire or do something totally retarded.

            “All right,”  Hunter paused a minute, shifting his bike between his legs uneasily.  “I was hanging out on my deck this morning, just trying to relax a little.  When I looked down at the lake and I saw something drift by.  Well, I went down there and took a look, and, you'll never believe this-- there were like, four or five skin magazines floating around down there, in the lake under my deck.”

            Jeremy looked over at me, his eyes frozen, pupils dilated in shock.  His lip began to tremble, slightly.

            “No way.”

            “I'm telling you, it's true.”

            “Real skin magazines?  Not just those stupid ones with girls in bathing suits and they try to sell you a bunch of iPods and s**t?  Like real ones?”

            “Yeah, totally.  If you guys want you can come down to my place and help me fish them out.  And, dude.  You just said 's**t.'”

            Well Jeremy's retarded brother had to wait.  We got on our bikes and headed out, and, sure enough, there were seven skin mags floating around down there, totally soaked with water, but the real thing.  They weren't even Playboys or something like that; they were the real raunchy off-brand ones about girls with big butts or black girls or girls that just turned 18.  They were so soaked through with water and pondslime, though, that when Jere tried to open one, the pages all stuck together and started to rip.

            “Hold on!”  I stopped him, grabbing his arm.  “This is quite a find.  Preservation is going to be key here.”

            “Ah, man... it's going to take these things, like, days to dry out.  And where are we going to keep them?  Not at my house.”

            Jeremy looked despondent. Hunter turned to me, hopefully.

            “Robby, you're the idea man here.  What do you think?”

            It was a tough call.  Really, what we were looking for was a way to dry the magazines out quickly, and discreetly, especially with a view toward avoiding parental detection.  Luckily I keep my eyes open all the time for potential connections and opportunities.  A plan began to form in my mind.

            “Hey, you guys know that space behind the library, with the vents?”

            “No.”

            “Exactly.  I had to hide back there that day Ricky Norton was trying to beat me up.  No one even knows about this place, and there are these vents that are always blowing out air.  They'd dry the magazines out really quick.”

            “I love this guy,” said Hunter, clapping a meaty hand over my shoulder.

            We threw the sopping mags in a plastic bag and went down to the library, being extra cautious to make sure no one saw.  Hanging the magazines out over the vents to dry, we vowed to meet there again in two days, to compile the results and work up some scheme of division and rotation so we could all enjoy the fruits of our labor.  I went home feeling like a king, totally excited but trying to control myself, if only to show a certain asshandler the way a real human being behaves.

            I spent most of the next day at home, fighting fires and locking up some key details on another, unrelated project.  We met at Hunter's place on the second day and headed over to the drying site together.  Everybody was freaking amped.  Hunter's cheeks were ruddy and he spoke in a high, breathy tone, making nervous attempts at jokes, reminding us every now and then that the magazines had been discovered in his lake.  Jeremy was largely unable to speak, and literally shaking with anticipation.  We set out like pilgrims, our bikes swaying easily between our legs, spending most of the trip just thinking to ourselves, the only sound the occasional squeak of Hunter's fat shock absorbers.  We parked one street over and walked the last block or so to the library.  There was some lady in the parking lot trying to get her baby into a minivan, and Jeremy wanted to just rush right in, but I made everyone circle the block once.  When we came back, there was no one around.

            Quietly, we crept around the side of the library, keeping a sharp lookout for Ricky Norton or any of the other neighborhood bullies.  I could hear the low throb of the vents and the blood was pumping so hard in my body I could feel it in my ears.  My mouth was dry and there was a wiry energy building in the bottom of my stomach.  Finally, we slipped around the corner of the building into the little space behind the library.

            The vents droned on mechanically, a low, eternal sound that penetrated the atmosphere so totally, you almost forgot to notice it after a while.  The air continued to blow in a steady stream, catching an errant leaf and tossing it up haphazardly.  The dull, metallic slats of the air vents were utterly bare.  The magazines were gone.

            “No... no...”  Hunter rushed over and began to pry at the vents, frantically trying to look inside, like a dog digging for a toy that's slid under the couch.

            “Somebody took them,” said Jere slowly.  I thought I could see a small bead of sweat, or even a tear, forming at the corner of his eye.

            I coughed, looked at the ground, and straightened my shoulders, trying to compose myself. 

            “We are in drastic need of a new operating paradigm,” I said, quietly.

            The mystery of who took the magazines persisted long into the summer.  At first Jere and I suspected Hunter, who, after the incident went right back to his asshandling ways of never talking to anyone or inviting them over to have fun on the lake.  But I didn't think the Huntster would have told us about the mags if he had just been planning to keep them to himself the whole time.  And I doubted it was someone like Ricky Norton, who lacked the guile to wait for us to leave before sneaking in to steal the magazines; if he'd seen us leaving the back of the library, he would've just rode up on his bike and demanded to know what we were doing.  Since I was sure no one else knew about the vents, I decided it was Mr. Markle, the librarian, or some fat janitor dude who found them and took them home for an intimate gathering of him, a six pack, and Ms. Hunney Hole.  It was a devastating blow, but we were young and resilient then, and as we spent the rest of the summer doing our usual stuff; it turned out to not be exactly as lame as we'd expected.  The HIAHC convened only once more for an emergency session, at which it was declared that all of the censures previously applied to Hunter would stand, and we might as well tell him so next time we saw him.  Also, an official declaration was made that our neighborhood totally sucked and was populated in the main by a prize bunch of wankers.

            That would have been the end of the story, if I hadn't gone over to Jere's house for one final sleepover before the school year began.  It was early September and already starting to get cold; I mean, it was still pretty warm but every now and then you could smell that Fall chill in the air, which meant school, Halloween, a new season and a clean slate for investments and projects.  It was getting late over at Jeremy's and we were bored with his stupid X-box games, because his parents only buy him the ones with puzzles and magical elves with swords, not the ones with guns and car crashes.  Jere's brother was at some tard summer camp, so we decided to mess with him a little bit, by going in his room and re-arranging everything and putting it in stupid places so he couldn't find it.  Which actually meant putting most things in normal places instead of retarded ones, which is how he usually kept his stuff.  Well, we were going about our business when, deciding to put all of his underwear under his bed, I threw the sheets over and there, sitting in a neat but retarded stack, were all of the porno mags from behind the library.

            “Dude what the--”  I couldn't even finish before Jere started freaking out.

            “Oh man,” he said, rolling his eyes and shaking like an epileptic.  “Oh man...”

            “Jere, these are our magazines.  What the--”

            “OK, man, I'm sorry.  I'm really sorry.  I went back the next day and I took the magazines for myself.  I was going to share them with you, honest.  I just thought Hunter was going to steal them...  Well when I got back home my parents were there so I hid them in the back shed.  But then when I went to get them, they were gone.  I thought my dad had found them or something.”

            I knelt down and slid the skin mags out from under the bed.  They felt pretty dry (maybe a little stiff and warped), but there was something wrong...

            “I was going to share them with you, Robby, honest.”

            “Jere.  Look at this.  Oh, man, what did your brother do?”

            I flipped through the first magazine, then the second.  I'd never seen anything so retarded in my life, even having known Jere's brother since I was like 6.  The magazines were all cut up and scribbled on.  The tard had used them for coloring books or something, cutting them all up and pasting them back together so the girl's faces were covering their private parts and stuff.  He'd even drawn underwear on some of the girls with a black magic marker.  They were totally ruined.

            I knelt there by the bed, looking up at the ceiling as a skin magazine slid limply out of my hands.  Jeremy knelt, too, and in communal silence we mourned the loss of the greatest find of the summer-- perhaps of any summer.  This was like two or three years ago, but that feeling of melancholy mingled with a kind of dark, almost funny closure has stuck with me ever since.  It was probably the defining event of my young life, or at least of grades 5 and 6.

            Finally, we took the magazines out into the backyard, sprayed some lighter fluid on them, and lit them up, letting the smoke curl up into the starry Autumnal sky.

            “Well,” said Jere finally, “at least that asshandler Hunter didn't get to look at them.”

            I smiled, and slung my arm over Jeremy's shoulder.  I had to agree.

            We stayed up until like 5 a.m. the next morning, rehashing all of the best moments of the summer and laughing about how totally retarded you have to be to draw clothing on a girl in a skin mag.  When I wandered home the next morning, bleary eyed and giddy with lack of sleep, my father was waiting for me in the kitchen.

            “I was getting ready for leaf season,” he said, frowning.  He held up a crumpled, dirt-smeared piece of paper-- it was the minutes of the first HIAHC.  “I don't think your mother would be too pleased to find out about the language you boys have been using.  And I thought Hunter was your friend.  Your attitude is really becoming a non-starter around here, my friend.  Maybe we need to talk about a readjustment of your allowance...”

            I just smiled and shook my head.  I'd been on such an emotional thrill ride over the past night, I was already above his overbearing posturing.  I took the minutes from him and went upstairs to my room, where I dropped into bed, totally wiped out.  Summer was over and a new school year was about to start.  Things were looking bullish and I was all ready to roll on the next actionable opportunity.

 

 

Bob Oswald

Author's Note

This story was published a few years back in The Iconoclast, but if you have any comments on it I'd love to hear.