“The Party” from my High School Days

I’d like to tell you about a kid from my High School days named Dirk Badass. I can’t though, because Dirk Badass isn’t the name of anyone I went to High School with, and possibly isn’t the name of anyone, ever. But I did go to school with a kid who may as well have been named Dirk Badass because he was, well, sort of a man apart, if you know what I mean. And if you don’t, don’t sweat it, because – and I’m sure you saw this coming – I’m about to explain.

Dirk Badass and I were not really friends. Sure, we both ran cross-country, and sure we had a few classes together, and we were certainly cordial in the hallways of our learning institution, but he was sort of aloof and I was sort of a giant fucking nerd, and ne’er the twain shall meet.

Dirk Badass was too good looking to be one of us “nerds” and not interested enough in social frivolities to be one of the “popular” kids. Truth be told, I’m not actually sure if the young Master Badass hung out with anyone outside of school. He occupied an odd space in the social strata where the girls would simultaneously mock him behind his back for being different, and also pine over him for being a swoon-worthy specimen of male physique. Everyone sort of made fun of him and wanted to be him all at once. I mean, look, he probably had a shitload of friends whom I never saw simply because I didn’t really hang out with the guy; these are just my impressions of him. What can I say? High School is weird.

What Dirk did have was perspective. He was on the outside of all of the social circles, and he could look at them from afar and see how they worked from a relatively objective standpoint. Not being mixed up in the internal politics of various cliques, Dirk was able to tell, with clarity, who the good folk and bad folk of our school were. I’m sure you can guess where this is going, and if not, let me explain that I’m probably an egomaniac: I’m writing a book about me, full of stories about me, and now I’m telling you that someone else could tell who the cool kids were. So yeah, Dirk clearly thought I was worthy of knowing and would, from time to time, take me under his wing and tell me something about life.

“Don’t fuck crazy.”

“It’s okay to pop your zits.”

“You need some new shoes.”

This was sage advice. Hell, even the sex advice, which I wouldn’t need for years, I took to heart immediately. Dirk seemed to know what was going on in the world, even though we were the same age, and it was his wisdom and broad shoulders that made me think he knew what it was like out there in Real Life.

If Dirk is the hero of this tale (and that’s not entirely clear to me in my Cassandra-esque knowledge of how events are soon to unfold), then Sally Steve is the villain. Sally Steve was in my carpool. She was the sort of average looking girl of average intelligence you meet at upper class private schools who has literally nothing going for her except that her parents are rich, and who thinks she is better than everyone else by that same token. She dressed like she was hot shit and spoke with an affected accent I imagine she borrowed from reruns of the Golden Girls she’d been forced to watch at Nana’s house as a child. Sally Steve thought she was Heather from Heathers when really she was barely tolerated by her “friends” and widely reviled by everyone else.

This revulsion was with good reason. One day when it was my Mom’s turn to drive car pool, Sally Steve got into my mom’s car and promptly declared, “your car smells like shit.” It had not, I assure you, smelled like shit prior to SS entering the vehicle, and when we pointed this out, SS further declared, “well I know I don’t smell like your shitty car.” Of course she did, because there was dog shit on her shoe that she had apparently stepped in just before entering the vehicle, and which she had then smeared all over the backseat floor mats of same. And, in true SS fashion, she blamed us for, I guess, parking near a grassy patch of curb in front of her house where dog owners, knowing what sort of person Sally Steve was, encouraged their dogs to do their business and then, after confirming the creation of refuse, refused to clean it up.

Take also the time that another student at our school poured a bottle of Musk on the backpack of Sally Steve (on account of her being the sort of hateable person to whom this level of prank was not only acceptable, but deserved). Sally Steve then proceeded to declare that everyone in this entire school smells like a rhinoceros’ nutsack. This statement confused the hell out of me at the time. Either her nose didn’t work at all, because she clearly couldn’t tell that she, herself, was the source of the odor, or it worked really, really well because that right there was a description worthy of being written down in a book (perhaps a semi-autobiographical collection of humorous essays?) and was oddly specific in the sort of way that makes one wonder if perhaps SS had some kind of fetish for the reproductive organs of endangered African herbivores. Of course my take-away from this incident, and indeed the take-away from the entire school, was that SS was sort of a horrible human being who believed herself blameless, thought her shit (or backpack) didn’t stink, and was quick to pass judgment on literally everyone else.

There are many similar stories. SS once told our fellow carpoolers that I was a toad who probably masturbated to the Victoria’s Secret catalogues my mom got in the mail (for the record, I am not a toad). One of the other girls in the carpool had a long-standing appointment with a very expensive music teacher after school one day a week, and the carpool had to leave by 3:30 to get there on time, no questions asked. When we left without SS, who had been standing not five feet away, talking to her “friends,” SS refused to run to catch the car as we slowly eased through the bumper to bumper traffic in the parking lot (because, she later told us, she didn’t want to embarrass herself). She later had to wait at school for her parents to get off work and come pick her up, which in my mind is far more embarrassing than running six feet to a car (or, god forbid, walking those six feet five minutes earlier so you wouldn’t have been late in the first place), but I’m also not a spoiled good-for-nothing rich girl with a C- GPA and nothing to offer the world except my mom’s inheritance, so what do I know.

All of this exposition was to bring us to the point where Sally Steve decided that today was the day she was going to tell every girl in school that I had called them a ‘bitch’ in our car ride to school. In typical SS fashion, she chose a day when I had not even been in the car to school because I had to get to school early for a cross country practice. I do not know why SS decided to pick on me, other than I was the only boy in our car pool, and I was a bit socially awkward, and the other girls were both prettier and smarter than SS was, which made them, shall we say, harder targets. Why SS needed a target at all was, and still is, beyond me. People like this exist in the world, however, so we should be forewarned and forearmed against them, as well as … (and here I need another word that starts with “fore” in order to satisfy the Rule of Threes). Foreshadowed? Foreboding? Foreskin? That doesn’t make any sense; I apologize.

So Sally Steve told everyone I was a piece of shit who thought they were pieces of shit, and word very quickly got back to me that SS was saying I said mean things about me to all of the girls in school, and also that none of those girls believed SS because SS was pretty universally known to be a shit smear on the shoe of society. The boys, however, did not know that the girls did not believe Sally Steve. Herein lies an interesting phenomenon that exists in early schools, and which I only became aware of because of this specific event: Boys and girls do not actually talk to one another that much, if at all, about social issues. You may talk about math homework or the school play or sports or whatever, but the amount of conversation boys and girls have with one another regarding human to human relationships at this age is miniscule compared to those they have with their own respective sexes.

So in this moment, with all of the girls in school knowing Sally Steve was smearing my good name and feeling sorry for me as a result, and all of the boys in school knowing Sally Steve was smearing my good name and feeling sorry for me as a result, but with the boys also thinking that the smear was working, I found myself in Home Economics class, sitting next to none other than Dirk Badass.

Dirk leaned over to me, “You heard Sally Steve was talking shit about you to the girls today?” Sally Steve, in case you hadn’t gathered, was one of those people whose names are forever entwined. Everyone called her by both her names at all times. Even the SS shorthand I’ve been using in this story feels awkward since she is forever ensconced in my mind as Sally Steve, or perhaps more accurately SallySteve. My point being that everyone called her that, not just me and not just in this story.

“Sally Steve is a piece of shit,” Dirk continued, “on the sole of humanity’s shoe.”

Holy fuck Dirk was wise. It was impossible not to hang on his every word.

“We should do something to get back at her,” he told me. And then, significantly, he nodded.