Reality Boy

“Dude. You’re not Jamaican. Just give it up,” I say.

“What you mean, I’m not Jamaican?” he says.

“I mean you’ve lived in the Black Hills development since you were three. Two developments down from me, remember? And you go to a private school that costs, like, thirty grand a year.”

He pushes me. “You didn’t answer my question, bumbaclaat.” He says this in a really convincing Jamaican accent.

“Will I fight you?” I say. “No. Not even if you rip my head off and piss down my neck.”

My anger management coach would have a field day with Jacko. He has all the physical cues. Clenched jaw. Shaking all over. I walk past him to the speed bag and drop all my stuff on the floor, in the corner. I take off my shirt and start on the bag.

Jacko says something to me, but I don’t hear him.

I stop the bag with my left hand and ask, “So why do you call yourself Jacko, anyway?”

He doesn’t answer me, and after looking at me for a few seconds, he just walks away. Fists tight. Muscles tensed. I go back to the bag and superimpose faces on it. Tasha. Nanny. Tasha. Mom. Tasha. Nanny. Tasha. Nichols. Tasha. The cameraman from the first episode who said, “Look at his little pecker!” Tasha. Mom. Nanny. Dad. Nanny. Tasha. Mom.

I start to sweat. I feel the war paint dripping off my face and arms. The chief rolls down my back and onto the gym floor. Now I’m just Gerald. My arms burn. My neck burns. The bag hypnotizes me, and I’m mesmerized by how it seems to know when my hand is coming toward it. How it knows me. Saves me every day from going to jail. Fuck jail.

There is a rough push from the side into my rib cage. My first reaction is to pull my right back and let it fly. I stop mid-punch and see it’s Jacko. He’s saying some shit I can’t keep up with. I start to back up. I make him dance with me. His two friends are behind him. They walk me around the gym, weaving in and out of the equipment.

He throws a slow punch and I dodge it. He throws a faster one and I dodge that, too. I feel the gym watching us. All other sounds have ceased except the drums in my head. I hop from foot to foot. I feel at one with the universe doing this dance with Jacko. Like I’m on one of the chief’s peyote trips.

Jacko keeps throwing punches. I keep escaping them. I know how to catch his fist and flip him. I know how to knock him right out. I know how to kill him with my bare hands and eat his face, if I want. Instead, I make him dance. And dance. And dance. He’s starting to get tired. He’s getting slower. He’s sweating. I can see his American fat jiggling on the surface of his furious Jamaican muscles.

“Okay! Enough!” A trainer steps in. “You! Back to the bag,” he says to me. “And you—come with me,” he says to Jacko the middle-class fake Jamaican.

I go back to the bag, but instead of working out, I just pick up my things, put my shirt back on, and head out the door toward my car.

14

I AVOID THE boxing gym for the rest of the week. I don’t want that Jacko ass**le sending me away. I bet they already have a reality TV show for that. Teen Jail. Pubescent Prison. I bet I’d get paid a packet to get in there. I am the original reality TV f**kup. What better way to follow my downfall than to air it on national TV?

On Wednesday, I want to go work out because I miss it, but instead I buy a speed bag and when Dad gets home from work, we mount it on the wall in the garage, near my old rusty pull-up bar. He tries it but can’t keep up. When I show him how to do it, he smiles. And then he frowns.

And then the banging sound starts down in the basement and we both leave the garage. He gets a drink and goes into his man cave. Mom throws random fruits and vegetables into the food processor in the kitchen and pretends she’s making a random fruit-and-vegetable puree, when we all know she’s just trying to be louder than the banging below her. I wonder, for the first time, if she does it to block out the sound not for our sake but for hers. I wonder, and then get instantly grossed out, if she and Dad even do it anymore. You know how your mother is. I go to my happy place and spend an hour in Gersday before I fall asleep.

It’s a nice night in Gersday. Dad and I play Ping-Pong in the basement. In Gersday, the basement is still Dad’s home gym, and I lift weights and he runs on the treadmill and then I hit the new speed bag a little and then we play Ping-Pong again and he beats me. When we go upstairs, he doesn’t offer me a drink, and he doesn’t pour himself one. Instead we eat oranges at the kitchen table while Mom tells us funny stories about what happened to her at work today. Because in Gersday, Mom has a job. She doesn’t just turn pages in magazines, make pretend fruit puree, and fast-walk to meditate, and there are no handmade centerpieces.

Then the phone rings and it’s Lisi and she wants to talk to me, because in Gersday, Lisi calls home and talks to me. We talk for an hour about how college is going and what it’s like in Glasgow. After I hang up, we play a family game of Scrabble and I win. Dad and Mom both high-five me. My score is 233.

I have this dream and it wakes me up at four in the morning on Friday. I can’t fall back to sleep because I can’t figure out what the dream means, but I know it means something important. The dream goes like this: I have something in my nose. In my left nostril. So I go to a mirror and I look up my nose and I see this big thing in there, like a huge booger, and so I reach in and I pull out a perfectly wrapped Hershey’s Kiss chocolate candy. It even has the little paper Kiss flag sticking out of the top. And in the dream, I think, I wonder why this hasn’t melted yet. And then I think, Since it’s wrapped, I might as well eat it. And then I unwrap the Hershey’s Kiss and I eat it.

I think this dream is about how messed up I am. I think it’s about eating the crap that comes out of my nose and pretending that it’s a perfectly wrapped Hershey’s Kiss.

On Friday, the last hour of SPED is awesome. More games with linear equations, this time with two variables. More of Deirdre’s sarcastic flirting. More of Fletcher’s happiness and encouragement as if he doesn’t know who I am. As if he thinks his time spent on me is worth it. Can’t he see the permanent boom mike suspended in front of me? The reflectors? The spots? Can’t he see the cameramen following me around the halls? The behay-vyah chart with all the black spots that I wear on my chest?

I have to go straight to work after school. Beth has me on register #5 and I tell her I can’t work #5.

“I have to work number seven. You know that,” I say.

o;Dude. You’re not Jamaican. Just give it up,” I say.

“What you mean, I’m not Jamaican?” he says.

“I mean you’ve lived in the Black Hills development since you were three. Two developments down from me, remember? And you go to a private school that costs, like, thirty grand a year.”

He pushes me. “You didn’t answer my question, bumbaclaat.” He says this in a really convincing Jamaican accent.

“Will I fight you?” I say. “No. Not even if you rip my head off and piss down my neck.”

My anger management coach would have a field day with Jacko. He has all the physical cues. Clenched jaw. Shaking all over. I walk past him to the speed bag and drop all my stuff on the floor, in the corner. I take off my shirt and start on the bag.

Jacko says something to me, but I don’t hear him.

I stop the bag with my left hand and ask, “So why do you call yourself Jacko, anyway?”

He doesn’t answer me, and after looking at me for a few seconds, he just walks away. Fists tight. Muscles tensed. I go back to the bag and superimpose faces on it. Tasha. Nanny. Tasha. Mom. Tasha. Nanny. Tasha. Nichols. Tasha. The cameraman from the first episode who said, “Look at his little pecker!” Tasha. Mom. Nanny. Dad. Nanny. Tasha. Mom.

I start to sweat. I feel the war paint dripping off my face and arms. The chief rolls down my back and onto the gym floor. Now I’m just Gerald. My arms burn. My neck burns. The bag hypnotizes me, and I’m mesmerized by how it seems to know when my hand is coming toward it. How it knows me. Saves me every day from going to jail. Fuck jail.

There is a rough push from the side into my rib cage. My first reaction is to pull my right back and let it fly. I stop mid-punch and see it’s Jacko. He’s saying some shit I can’t keep up with. I start to back up. I make him dance with me. His two friends are behind him. They walk me around the gym, weaving in and out of the equipment.

He throws a slow punch and I dodge it. He throws a faster one and I dodge that, too. I feel the gym watching us. All other sounds have ceased except the drums in my head. I hop from foot to foot. I feel at one with the universe doing this dance with Jacko. Like I’m on one of the chief’s peyote trips.

Jacko keeps throwing punches. I keep escaping them. I know how to catch his fist and flip him. I know how to knock him right out. I know how to kill him with my bare hands and eat his face, if I want. Instead, I make him dance. And dance. And dance. He’s starting to get tired. He’s getting slower. He’s sweating. I can see his American fat jiggling on the surface of his furious Jamaican muscles.

“Okay! Enough!” A trainer steps in. “You! Back to the bag,” he says to me. “And you—come with me,” he says to Jacko the middle-class fake Jamaican.

I go back to the bag, but instead of working out, I just pick up my things, put my shirt back on, and head out the door toward my car.

14

I AVOID THE boxing gym for the rest of the week. I don’t want that Jacko ass**le sending me away. I bet they already have a reality TV show for that. Teen Jail. Pubescent Prison. I bet I’d get paid a packet to get in there. I am the original reality TV f**kup. What better way to follow my downfall than to air it on national TV?

On Wednesday, I want to go work out because I miss it, but instead I buy a speed bag and when Dad gets home from work, we mount it on the wall in the garage, near my old rusty pull-up bar. He tries it but can’t keep up. When I show him how to do it, he smiles. And then he frowns.

And then the banging sound starts down in the basement and we both leave the garage. He gets a drink and goes into his man cave. Mom throws random fruits and vegetables into the food processor in the kitchen and pretends she’s making a random fruit-and-vegetable puree, when we all know she’s just trying to be louder than the banging below her. I wonder, for the first time, if she does it to block out the sound not for our sake but for hers. I wonder, and then get instantly grossed out, if she and Dad even do it anymore. You know how your mother is. I go to my happy place and spend an hour in Gersday before I fall asleep.

It’s a nice night in Gersday. Dad and I play Ping-Pong in the basement. In Gersday, the basement is still Dad’s home gym, and I lift weights and he runs on the treadmill and then I hit the new speed bag a little and then we play Ping-Pong again and he beats me. When we go upstairs, he doesn’t offer me a drink, and he doesn’t pour himself one. Instead we eat oranges at the kitchen table while Mom tells us funny stories about what happened to her at work today. Because in Gersday, Mom has a job. She doesn’t just turn pages in magazines, make pretend fruit puree, and fast-walk to meditate, and there are no handmade centerpieces.

Then the phone rings and it’s Lisi and she wants to talk to me, because in Gersday, Lisi calls home and talks to me. We talk for an hour about how college is going and what it’s like in Glasgow. After I hang up, we play a family game of Scrabble and I win. Dad and Mom both high-five me. My score is 233.

I have this dream and it wakes me up at four in the morning on Friday. I can’t fall back to sleep because I can’t figure out what the dream means, but I know it means something important. The dream goes like this: I have something in my nose. In my left nostril. So I go to a mirror and I look up my nose and I see this big thing in there, like a huge booger, and so I reach in and I pull out a perfectly wrapped Hershey’s Kiss chocolate candy. It even has the little paper Kiss flag sticking out of the top. And in the dream, I think, I wonder why this hasn’t melted yet. And then I think, Since it’s wrapped, I might as well eat it. And then I unwrap the Hershey’s Kiss and I eat it.

I think this dream is about how messed up I am. I think it’s about eating the crap that comes out of my nose and pretending that it’s a perfectly wrapped Hershey’s Kiss.

On Friday, the last hour of SPED is awesome. More games with linear equations, this time with two variables. More of Deirdre’s sarcastic flirting. More of Fletcher’s happiness and encouragement as if he doesn’t know who I am. As if he thinks his time spent on me is worth it. Can’t he see the permanent boom mike suspended in front of me? The reflectors? The spots? Can’t he see the cameramen following me around the halls? The behay-vyah chart with all the black spots that I wear on my chest?

I have to go straight to work after school. Beth has me on register #5 and I tell her I can’t work #5.

“I have to work number seven. You know that,” I say.