The Poems And Confessions Of A Mad Man Page 7
The tires squealed and I hit someone with the left corner of my car. People started scrambling all over the place trying to get out of the way. I got out of the ghetto area and was late for work anyway. That was 10 years ago and I forgot about that incident until I ran into hard times and had to work at a grocery store as a butcher in that part of the city. I saw a man who came up to me and place an order. He had a bright pink scar on his left cheek and was blind in his right eye. I gave him what he ordered and he left.
The man was a normal customer at the store, so after a couple of months of serving him, I had asked him what happened to his face. He said that about 10 years ago a man in a car was impatient because of the traffic and when he was walking by, the man called him over to his car and shot him in the face and in the eye with a .22 caliber hand gun. He said that the guy in the car shot a bunch of people and even ran some innocent bystanders over. He then said that the shooter was never caught but the police had an A.P.B. out on him that is still in effect to this day.
I was laughing to myself as he told his bullshit story because I know what happened on that day. I was the guy with the gun who did the shooting and who barely got away with my life. When the man was done lying to me and himself, he left the store. Every time I looked at that Ghettoin’s face, I was glad that I left him with an impression of me in it. I only regretted not shooting out his other eye too. You would think that an experience like that would make a man think twice before hitting someone’s car and hurling insults and threats at them. Well it didn’t, because I’m told that a year after I quit the store in the ghetto, the man threatened someone in a car and was shot to death in the middle of the street. The killer drove away and was never found.
Bill
By: Andrew J. Green
When I was 14 years old or so, my cousin married the coolest guy in the world. His name was Bill. When I first met him, he was this muscle bound body builder who was nice to everybody but wouldn’t take crap from anybody. He could dish out an insult twice as fast as anyone could give him one. Being a young kid who was just starting to lift weights, I was drawn to his attitude and shear strength. After getting to know Bill, he and I became friends. I thought it an honor because I didn’t think my own father liked me, and this cool adult did. After all, I asked myself, “What adult would ever befriend a 14 year old kid?”
Bill belonged to Muscle Head Gym in Utica New York. When I turned 16, I also joined the gym but I lived across town while he lived virtually across the street from it. I had a hard time getting to the gym and sometimes walked the 4 miles just to get there. When he caught wind of this, he started driving all the way to my house to pick me up, and then when we finished the workout, he’d bring me home. I was so grateful because he was spending a lot of gas money just to do this for me. Plus it was at least a 20 minute trip through the city. All I could do was say, “Thank you.” I didn’t have any money to help pay him for the gas. He taught me the proper way to safely handle the weights and taught me everything I needed to know about proper diet for a body builder. He was a great personal trainer because he had been at it for 10 years or so. I learned everything I knew from him.
In June of 1983, I was about to take my History final within the week and I needed a good grade to pass the course. Bill never gave the lecture that most adults did about school and all that. I think that’s why I liked him so much. He accepted me for who I was and didn’t push me into anything. Most kids get pushed into certain fields of education by their parents. Then when they become an engineer or whatever, they spend the next 50 years hating their job because they became what their parents wanted to be and not what they want to be. Anyway, Bill never pressured me. He was just my friend.
I’ll never forget when I walked into the house that day. I was late getting home from school and Bill would be picking me up in an hour or so. I was running behind and didn’t want to make him wait for me when he picked me up. I had a lot on my mind and my History final was at the end of the week. When I walked into the kitchen, nobody was talking. They were all just staring at me. My father said to me, “By the way, your buddy got killed today.” My sister’s head just dropped in disgust, like she thought, “This is how you tell him?” I said, “What buddy? Who are you talking about?” He said, “Your big buddy there.” Like that really narrowed it down. I’m 5’4” tall. Everybody’s big to me. Finally my sister said, “Bill died today.” I said, “No he’s going to be here in a little while.” Again she said, “Andy, Bill was killed at work today.” I stood in disbelief and shock. Everything became a blur. I remember asking, “How?” My dad, the man with the smooth tongue said, “He came out of a man hole and a street cleaner drove through the cones. Bill was sucked into the sweepers brush and was caught in the machine. He lived for 6 hours until they got him out. As soon as he was out, he bled to death. The machine crushed his upper cavity and acted as a tourniquet while he was in it. As soon as they removed the pressure, he died, and that’s it.”
The eloquent speech and gentle words that my father used made me feel like I was hit by a car. I just stood there for what seemed like an hour, but was only a few seconds. I felt I had to defend myself against him. I know he didn’t mean it to sound like it did, but it came out as though it would hurt me, and that he wanted it to hurt. I immediately said, “ I didn’t like him anyway.” I then left the room. I don’t know why I said that. I just did. Probably so I wouldn’t break down in front of anyone there.
What the hell kind of household did I live in, where I didn’t feel I could show emotion when a family member, and best friend died? What a circus. What a dysfunctional screwed up place to grow up. If you wonder why I’m so screwed up, it’s because of instances like this. A whole 18 years of stuff like this. It’s been over 21 years since this happened, and I’m getting pissed off while I’m thinking of it.
I’ve never mourned his death. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even get to go to his funeral because it was on the morning that my History final took place. I asked my teacher if he would let me take the final on a different day, but he couldn’t because it’s a state Regents final. He wasn’t being difficult, it’s just the law. I even asked if he’d just give me a “D” for the year and let me skip the final because of the circumstances. But he said, “No.” What a dick.
I felt guilty for a lot of years because I didn’t go to Bill’s funeral. I couldn’t look his wife and some other family members in the face for a long time because they asked my sister if I was coming to the funeral and she said I couldn’t because of the final. I felt they probably wondered what test could be so important, that I’d miss Bill’s funeral? If I went, I’d fail the course and have to repeat it next year along with being grounded for the summer. No way was I going to let that happen. My friends told me that if my father tells me I’m grounded, then I should tell him to screw himself. Believe me, that duck wouldn’t fly in our household. Someone would be killed.
As an adult I’ve asked myself what I would do if, knowing what I know now, I had to do it again? I have no answers. But for whatever it’s worth now, all I can say is, “Bill, I’ll miss you. Thank you for all you’ve taught me and for accepting me when my dad wouldn’t. I love you and I hope to see you someday, in a place called Heaven.”
The Hitchhikers
By: Andrew J. Green
When I was 17 years old, I got my drivers license and had the use of a car. The car was originally bought by my father, for my brother and sisters’ as transportation to the local community college. The drivers who had seniority to drive the car went from oldest to youngest. When I turned 18 years old, coincidentally everyone older than me had gone out of town for college. The rule was that if you went to college out of the area, you weren’t allowed to take the car. My father didn’t want anyone taking the car to a distant college and using it for partying and all of that.
I had the car for most of my senior year in high school. I never got to drive it to school but had it to go hunting with my friend, or just
about everywhere else. I really appreciated my father for letting me drive the car for most of that year. I was told the whole story about picking up hitchhikers and had heard all of the horror stories about hitchhikers, so I wouldn’t generally ever pick one up. There was one time that I did, and it was an experience I would never forget.
I was alone at night, in a small northern town in New York. I wasn’t usually allowed to take the car more than 30 miles from the house, but I was scouting out a hunting area up there, so I took it upon myself to go there without asking my father. On the way home, I saw 2 young skinny kids on the side of the highway hitchhiking, so I picked them up. They didn’t look to be more than 15 and16 years old and they were pretty scrawny people. I figured if they tried anything, I would just beat them senseless and throw them out of the car.
When they got into the 2 door car, the younger climbed into the back seat while the older one jumped into the passenger’s seat. It was raining quite hard so when they jumped in the car, I figured they would be pretty grateful. They thanked me for picking them up and I told them that kids their age shouldn’t hitchhike because they could be targeted by the freaks in this world. The older replied, “Yeah, and people shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers because hitchhikers have been known to cut up the people that pick them up.” When he said that, the kid in the back seat started to slide across the rear seat and get behind my seat. I could no longer see him when I glanced at the passenger in the front seat. I told the kid who was now directly behind me, to get his ass back over where I could see him.
Just then, the older hitchhiker pulled out a knife and started to tell me that he was going to cut me up, drag me into the woods, and steal my car. When he said that, an evil within me awoke and said to the kids, “You cock suckers picked the wrong car to get into. You both had better get ready to die!” I sped the car up and had the speedometer up to 100 miles per hour in under a minute. The hitchhikers asked me what I was planning to do. They were shitting their pants for sure. Personally I didn’t care if I lived or died, so I didn’t care if I took these 2 bastards with me when I wrapped the car around an oak tree.
I told the hitchhikers that we were all going to die within the next 30 seconds and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. They knew that at that speed, if they stabbed me, then there was absolutely no way they could gain control of the car before it crashed. I knew where a group of trees in a small village we were entering was, and I planned on hitting the trees on the passenger’s side of the car. I knew I’d probably be killed but I was so lost in my life at that point, that I didn’t even care. When I glanced at the older hitchhiker, I saw that he had dropped his hands to his side and was holding on to the seat with all of his might. I figured if there was ever a chance to get out of this in one piece, then now was the time.
I slammed on the brakes and as I did, I grabbed him by the back of the head and smashed his face against the dash board. I then stomped on the gas and gained speed again. I had now passed the group of trees I planned on crashing into, so I had to make this work. I slammed on the brakes again while holding the older passenger by the back of his neck and smashing his face once again into the dash board. This time I felt the vibration through my hand as his facial bones broke. His body went limp and I reached behind me and grabbed the hitchhiker in the rear seat. When I had hold of him, I turned the wheel quickly to the left. The car slid down the wet highway and I threw the kid against the side of the car that was now heading down the road. The centrifugal force helped me launch his body into the hard inside surface of the car. His head bounced against the plastic covered metal frame that the roof was welded to, knocking him senseless.
As the car came to a halt, I reached over the front seat passenger and frantically opened the passenger door. As the door opened, I shoved the older hitchhiker out of the car with my right foot. I then pushed the bucket seat forward and shoved the kid in the back seat out of the car. I stomped on the gas and heard the tires start to spin. As I let off the brake I heard the rear tires of the car run over, what must have been one of the hitchhikers’ bodies.
When I arrived home, I cleaned the hitchhiker’s blood off of the dash board. As I inspected the car for any damage, I found the knife that the hitchhiker threatened me with. I still have the knife as a souvenir to remind me of what happened. I never told anyone about that night but had read in the paper that 2 young men, who were wanted by the police, had been run over by a car and were in intensive care at a local hospital. Within a week they had both died from massive head and neck injuries. Apparently, the rear wheels had run over the 2 men’s upper chest and head areas. I guess that’s what can happen to you when you hitchhike and you get into a car with someone that you don’t know.
The Senior Will
By Andrew J. Green
When I was a teenager, I became best friends with a kid named Boe. We did everything together. He had the same girlfriend throughout high school while I went through them, like shit through a tin horn. He was kind of like, the brains of the bunch, while I was the brawn. If Boe did something that someone didn’t like, they would deal with me and get their ass kicked off.
Boe got caught in the back seat of his car with his girlfriend in the school parking lot. Unfortunately, he didn’t just get caught by anyone. He got caught by the principal who just happened to bring his daughter to school that day and saw what was going on. The kid was probably scarred for life after witnessing that. Anyway, the principal put a memo out to the entire faculty saying that Boe and Lorie, Boe’s girlfriend, couldn’t be seen together in the school ever again. The principal was probably just jealous because he didn’t get laid until he was 30, while Boe was ahead of most 20 year olds by the time he was 16. Boe was a real pretty boy and so his girlfriend couldn’t keep her hands off of him. Poor Boe. He had a good girlfriend. Most guys didn’t get a girlfriend like that until they went to college, so for most of them it was pretty much, self service. If guys got up a girls shirt in high school, they told everyone that they had sex with her. I guess it’s just the nature of the beast.
Boe and I went fishing one day and he was complaining about how that memo had interfered with his lunchtime sex. He wanted to get back at the school but didn’t know how until he caught a big Sucker. He was removing it from his hook and the fish stunk enough to gag a maggot. We had a brainstorm that we would catch a bucket full of fish, freeze them and throw them behind lockers and put them in the radiator heaters in school. When the fish thawed out, they would stink up the school and we would have our revenge.
We went on with the plan and set the fish where we wanted, like perfectly placed charges. The fish were in place at 8:00 a.m. and time was all it took for the smell to over take the entire school. By noon, everyone was complaining about the stench but no one knew what it was coming from. Everyone thought it was something in the lunch room. By the next day, the smell grabbed you when you walked in the door, but not as bad as we had hoped. Apparently the janitors had left the doors to the school open, trying to air it out in there. The heat must have been on all night long and dried out the fish that were in the radiators.
For a week, the janitors were looking in empty lockers all over the school. I was in the locker room one day when a few of us heard the principal talking to the coach. He said that some little bastard in school was filling the heat radiators and empty lockers with rotting fish and he didn’t know who it was. He also said he was afraid to put it over the loud speaker, telling whoever it was that is pulling this stunt, to stop. He said an announcement like that could bring out a bunch of copycat fish bombers and then they’d have a real problem.
Boe and I thought we had the revenge we wanted, but no one knew it was us. We wanted the credit for this but didn’t know how to get it. So since we were seniors and this was our last year of high school, we were going to leave the principal a little something in our Senior Will. I don’t know if they do this in every school, but a Senior Will is like a last will and testament of someone when
they die. In a Senior Will, you write stupid stuff like, “To John Doe I leave my reputation for being a jerk off artist, and to Suzie Q, I leave my old jock strap.” You can write anything you want within reason to be printed and the best part about it was that, it doesn’t come out until the very last day of school. Boe and I knew our finals would be over and they couldn’t stop us from graduating. So we wrote all of the gay stuff that everyone writes every year but in both of our Will’s, we left to the principal, a bucket of fish.
We were hesitant about the whole thing, but we did it anyway. The only problem came when the adult in charge of printing the Senior Will was going to leave the school a week early, because her mother was sick. She was going to print the Senior Will early and put them into circulation before school ended. Boe and I nearly died. We consoled each other by agreeing that it’s only a few words and that no one would even read them. Maybe if we weren’t well known in school, no one would have noticed it but everybody knew us and everybody noticed.
Soon everybody was asking what those few words meant. I told them that they meant nothing. The frightful day came when we were in class and both of our names were called to come to the office. The sweat started to pour and I thought that I was going to get expelled from school. Boe’s uncle was one of the best attorney’s in the area and has gotten Boe out of trouble in the past, but I wasn’t sure he’d extend his free services to a family friend who helped poison the school with the stench of rotting fish. Besides, I was already signed up to go into the Army that August, and had to get the hell out of my house.