Adventures of Daz and Alex  
 
The Bullies' Comeuppance  


A couple of big ugly white jock types had somehow picked me to spike in junior year. They called me "Hagan Daz" and whipped towels at my bare butt in the locker room. I didn't have protection from the home boys because I wasn't in any gang, didn't live in their neighborhood, hell, don't even speak Spanish worth a damn.

I went out a couple of times with some of the wimpy shy ones who were like me, but the older guys were in another location. Their women looked about thirty, the type who would suck you off in the front seat while you're driving, spit it out the window and then kill the taste with a swig of tequila. They looked, how you Americans say, experienced. And all this jank about guns and drugs and who screwed who and was gonna die a dog's death and cars and cheap beer, sitting around looking tough waiting for something bad to happen—it's not me. And these guys see me as white, so they don't feel comfortable with me either. I speak good English, I'm wimpy, no tattoos, I don't smoke or listen to their music, got no girl friend, never adiosed anyone, just not a whole hell of a lot in common. Plus I live in a white neighborhood, so I'm a stranger even if I had looked exactly like them.

So they ignored me and the white jocks called me "Hagan Daz," as in "ice cream butt," har-de-har. One day I said something back, something wise, and it went unappreciated. They pantsed me on the far end of the field during P.E. and I had to slump over so my gym shirt would cover my dick and kind of shuffle off like a hunchback to the showers.

You get the idea. I was their chosen plaything. After the pantsing I was a total laughing stock. Even my friends were ashamed to be seen with me for a few weeks. And they, I mean the big white guys, kept referring to it in the locker room after that. I tried to ignore it, I mean what else could I do? I knew all my friends were just glad it had happened to me instead of them.

Alex was the new kid in senior year, some guy from Hawaii who kept to himself. He was on the football team, but only the other guys on the team knew who he was, and I guess he never said much to them. I'd spocked him the first day, maybe because I had a feeling about him.

So we're out on the field in between games, the kind of situation I dread. With nothing better to do, these assbites would start jerking somebody around.

Sure enough, these guys start their usual line, "Hey let's pants the ice cream cone again, see if his dick got any longer." This is still early in the semester, right? Alex is standing there with his arms folded while these numbnuts taunt me.

I put on a grin and try to go along, yeah, ha ha, it won't be much fun, you've already done it before. But that doesn't stop them, even though some of the scholar-jocks are starting to look uncomfortable. One even says, "Why don't you lay off," and the biggest scumbag challenges him to, quote, "Shut up or do something about it," unquote.

I turn to my tall skinny friend, but he's getting scared and puts some space between us. He knows if the conditions are ripe it will be him that's hobbling off the field trying to cover his nuts instead of me.

This asshole feels a little cocky so he pushes me, to aggravate me or maybe just to lord over me a little. Alex steps over with his arms still folded and says, "Stop fucking with him."

The big scumbag turns to him with a stupid grin and says, "Who the hell are you and why should I care?" Alex says, "If you mess with him then you're messing with me."

This big assbite must weigh at least 200 because he's six-four or close to it and beefy—he's a shot putter on the track team. He has about thirty pounds and six inches on Alex. He says, "Am I supposed to be scared now?"

I turn to Alex and say, "Hey, it's okay," but he's staring intently at this big scumbag.

Nobody's ever seen this jerkoff get close to a real fight. Alex makes it easy on him. He tells the guy, "You mess with him again and I'll break your ass." Some of the other jock jerks start hooting, because now their friend has his nuts in a wringer. He can forget the macho posturing if he doesn't take Alex right now.

But the big gorgon isn't totally stupid, he tries to buy some time. He says, "Okay, moke, after school behind the auto body shop." He knows the cops or the principal will stop it and if not, he'll have all his friends there to make sure he wins. But Alex says, "Not later. Right now." And he walks up to this guy, about three feet away, his arms still folded.

I figure Alex is going to get punched out and humiliated, and all because of me. Now the other guys are really quiet, looking around for the coach, but he's jacking off or talking to the girl's coach or some other slackmaster action.

So the buttwipe is in a real quandary. Finally one of his friends, one of the guys who's always right with him when they're in my face, says, "What Tod, too much for you?"

Now the guy has to do something because of the audience. Thirty guys are watching him melt down. So he acts like he's starting to turn away and then throws a punch at Alex's head, a real wicked punch that would have taken my head off.

But Alex is human lightning. He dodges the fist and then grabs the guy, spins him around, buckles his leg from behind and pushes him down. Then he twists the jerk's arm up behind his back and shoves his face deep into the grass and shouts, "Eat!" The guy is struggling, he keeps turning his head and trying to free his big legs that could press 250 pounds, but Alex has him pinned like an insect in biology class, Alex is a demon, and he tells the guy he's going to break his arm. Then he jerks it up so hard I figure it broke right then.

The asshole is kind of whimpering and he finally turns his head into the turf and takes a big bite, just like it was spumoni ice cream instead of grass. Alex twists his arm one more time with a powerful jerk, and I see his muscles are rippling under his smooth brown skin like steel cables. Then Alex looks up and spots the assbite's friend, the one who egged him on, and he points to him and says, "You!"

The guy freezes like a big dumb animal who just spocked a cheetah, and then he starts running toward the locker room. Alex is after him in a flash and the scene looks just like "The Wild Kingdom" because Alex is running low and smooth and this other guy is running like a scared ox. Alex catches the big numbnuts, drags him down and after a brief struggle the second asshole is tasting his first big bite of grass.

Now here is Alex's genius. I don't know how the guy thought this up. He could have broken their arms, or made their faces look like gargoyles or whatever, but they would still have had some pride. It was a fight, and they lost. But there was no fight. Alex put them down and made them eat dirt. Made them eat dirt, can you grip that? The news spread like wildfire that this crazy moke had stood up for the little half-breed greaser and made the two big proud jocks eat dirt. Eat dirt! You have no pride left, assbites; you have just suffered total and nominal humiliation.

Now the coach comes running up the steps as Alex is crouching on this second jerk's back. The coach is swearing, "Jesus Christ, I was only gone a few minutes," and Alex gets off the guy's back, and slaps, just slaps, the back of this guy's head as if to say, remember this well, asshole. You egg your assbite friend on, you suffer the same fate.

The coach grabs Alex by the arm and Alex shakes free. The coach wants to know what the hell is going on and I'm afraid that Alex will make him eat dirt too so I jump in and say that it's my fault.

The coach seems relieved that there's a simple answer to the who-is-guilty question, and he grabs me by the arm and says. "Okay, what happened." So I say that these two guys were razzing me so I flipped them off, they grabbed me so Alex stepped in to help. By this time the first big asshole is up and ambling over, with dirt all over his jaw and a look of pain on his face, which doesn't look so intimidating to me or anybody else now.

"Looks like you bit off more than you could chew this time, boys," the coach says to the two size extra-large assbites, and the line follows the rest of the story through the whole school. The Coach knew these guys had pantsed me before, and I think he was pleased they got taken down a notch.

I tried to thank Alex but he brushed it off, saying something about hating big talkers.

All four of us were suspended for a week, which was a blessing to those guys. Not that they were suddenly pussycats. One of their buddies made a joking reference to the action the following week and he visited the infirmary and met with the school cop as a result. Both of them were suspended for a week, too. I heard the principal called up the biggest assholes' parents and read them the riot act.

I was thinking, "Gee, Mr. Wizzy, I thought miracles only happened in the movies" when I saw that big jerk struggling, twisting and turning, grunting and swearing, all to no avail. See how it feels, assbite! And the way that Alex just tapped the other jerkoff's head, with that, you know, haughty flip, like, hey kitten, don't try it again. I am your master.

Of course they wanted revenge. I found a note in my locker when I got back to school that said, "Someday we'll find you without your moke bodyguard and then you will eat shit." Shit was underlined, just in case I missed the importance of the word. They wanted even more extreme humiliation than their own and I was scared.

I asked Alex for some advice. "Should I buy a gun?"

"No, man," he says, "guns are for cowards. I'll teach you some moves." That's the first time I go over to his house. He shows me his room and garage. The garage has punching bags, one hanging down and one up by the rafters. "Why up so high?" I asked, and to answer he did this kung fu kick that nearly reaches the bag. He looks chagrined and says, "Usually I make it." In his room he has Bruce Lee posters and pages from magazines that show Asian guys doing stick-fighting and other kung fu stuff.

He shows me his weights, and then we go out to the garage again where he unrolls this mat. He shows me some moves from Filipino and Hawaiian martial arts. That's when I found out how much work it is to get good at kung fu. I'm too lazy to crank it out like Alex does every day. Weights, jump rope, meditation, katas. That's why he got the Summer Phys Ed job with the city after we graduated.

Needless to say, Alex's stock went through the roof as a result of this takedown. Everybody gave him wide berth in the hallways and the football guys were afraid to tackle or hit him too hard. He played defensive guard and linebacker. When the season started, everybody found out that he was a demon on the field, too. He turns into a single-minded machine, I'm telling you. One day I walk over to his house and he was messing with his helmet. I ask what he was doing and he explains that he's adjusting it so that if anyone ever face-masked him he could just jerk the helmet off and adios the guy.

He also started getting dates with the lapis lazuli women. But that's another story.

                                                           



Excerpted from I-State Lines by Charles Hugh Smith (The Permanent Press, April 2006)

I would be honored if you linked this story to your site, or printed a copy for your own use.

                                                           


Copyright 2008 Charles Hugh Smith all rights reserved in all media. No reproduction in any media in any format (text, audio, video/film, web) without written permission of the author.


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