We Were the Dumbest of Boys

We were the dumbest of boys, ready to believe any story of badassedness just because it was said, like an oral history. That’s when I met Barry Hutton, aka Harry Button, and was taught to fear him. He was a pudgy kid who looked older than us, the kid version of a refrigerator mover, an old man in a kid’s body with a baby’s face. It wouldn’t be until years later that I realized he was harmless.

7th grade is not for the meek. The smallest fish in the junior high school pond, you were going to get dogpiled with all the shit rolling downhill. Having thought you were the shit in the 6th – kissing a girl for your first time, feeling a boob for the first time – you were suddenly awoken to the fact that you weren’t shit, a stupid kid that just one year ago shared a school with kids that cried for their mommies and pissed their pants. It’s the first time I heard someone talk about weed. It’s the first time I realized that not all kids come from “normal” homes.

Barry was one of these kids. He seemed distant and pissed but I guess he was just underloved and hyperaware that he was fat and sweaty and smelled more than other kids did. But he had one thing going for him – we were afraid of him. You didn’t dare whisper “Harry Button” in his vicinity. Like invoking some kind of mythical creature, you just knew he’d rise up kill you. I kept my distance.

One day after lunch I was hanging out outside, trying to not seem scared. “Azima. Come over here,” I heard. I turned and it was Harry.
“Yeah?”
“What’s your sister’s name? Mali? Where are you guys from?”
“From Iran.”
“Eye-ran? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” was the best I could do. It was a stupid question but growing up in suburban Texas I was forced to think more simply than I could on a daily basis.
“She got a boyfriend?” he asked, tilting his head up suggestively, smiling his gap-toothed smile.
“I don’t know. You should ask her.”
“Why don’t you ask her for me?” he said, suddenly becoming serious.
“Ok.”
“Thanks.”

And then he let me go. Catch and release. Little fish swimming.

About this time is when my sister separated herself from me definitively. She was a grade ahead so she’d already had a year of this grown up world and maybe that’s what changed her. She had a lot less patience for me and my questions. Before I thought we were friends. Now I just annoyed her.

She was really into Duran Duran. Her wall was literally wallpapered with their posters. Her favorite one was Nick. Maybe because he seemed the whitest.

This was the year I’d really discovered TV. It wasn’t like I wasn’t always watching it before, but now it became much more powerful, like a drug addiction. I’d literally come home and not even make it past the TV into my room, but just sit in front of it and watch cartoons, reruns, whatever was on. I wouldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom or fix myself something to eat unless there was a commercial on.

Our parents were always working. They’d bought a restaurant and were there from early in the morning until late. Before cellphones and even pagers, we were free to get into any trouble we could find. We were on autopilot.

“Hey Mali,” I said, as if approaching a stranger.
“Hey.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” It was the most intimate question I’d ever asked her.
“What business is that of yours?”
“I was just wondering.”
“Did dad tell you to ask me?”
“No!”
She thought about it a second, looking at me like she didn’t believe me. “Yes.”
“Really? Who is it?”
“Lance Masten.” She produced his football picture. I knew this guy. He was one of the Big Kids. He was practically a man. She snatched the picture away. “Don’t tell dad.”
“I won’t.”
“Or mom, either.”
“I won’t, really.”
“And don’t walk up to him or me in the hallways and bug us.”
“Ok.”

She gave me one last jab with her eyes and then disappeared into her room. After a moment I could hear “The Reflex” coming through the French doors.

7th grade was the first time I’d felt depressed. I’d lie awake at night, unable to sleep, turning things over and over in my head. Just last year, I was the new kid, the cool kid, the one every girl wanted to go with. I’d gone with Mindy Karlson, Amy Hallock, Michelle Tischler. I’d win the speed skating competitions at the Skate World every Friday night and get to hang out after everyone would get kicked out and play on the roller turtles with the cool, older kids. I was the first to wear parachute pants, going into the 5-7-9 and trying them on in the women’s dressing room. I’d hit every note perfectly. I was a rock star.

But by the end of the year, there were challenges to my power. Frank Skidmore, the first kid I’d met and become friends with, didn’t like that I was pulling more weight than he was and he challenged me to a fight. We were a little like cavemen that way – you didn’t really need a reason to fight, or at least you didn’t need to be able to articulate it. You just knew someone had something you wanted and you were big enough to take it so you did.

I was scared of Frank. He had a bicep that when he flexed looked like a ball in his arm. His father was in the military and they ate Alpo because they were poor. He didn’t have a mother. He had facial hair.

I avoided him as long as I could. I told him I didn’t want to fight a friend but that was a lie. He’d tease me walking home and the other kids would watch. My status was eroding but I was too chicken to do anything about it.

“What’s wrong, Azima, are you chicken? C’mon fight. Fuckin’ chicken.”
One day, I’d had enough. I threw my bag down and we fought in someone’s lawn on the walk home. It was brief and sort of a blur but somehow I think I got the best of him, like he never actually expected me to fight and then when I did that I wouldn’t be that aggressive. It didn’t last very long. Mrs. Sims – the 6th grade teacher with the huge tits – was driving by in her Silverado when she saw us and got out to break it up.

We walked home together since we lived 2 houses apart. It was awkward.

We sort of became friends again, but it was never the same. The other kids didn’t treat me the same either, although I didn’t really get it at the time. I wasn’t special anymore. I was a coward. The damage had been done.

So I’d lie in bed and think about that and wonder if that’s when it’d started. I was suddenly a nobody and the world seemed huge.

The next morning, I saw Harry Button sitting on the steps near the side door to the school. He called out to me.
“So, does your sister have a boyfriend?” he asked, while two older boys laughed.
“Yeah, she does.”
“Who?”
“Lance Masten,” I said.
“Bullshit.”
“No, really. She told me.”
“Fuckit, I don’t care. I’m gonna fuck that Eye-ranian pussy anyway.”

My father told me a story once about how I came home from our first day of Kindergarten and told him how a boy was picking on my sister because we couldn’t speak English. My father got really upset and told me to beat the boy up. The next day, he came up to meet us as we were getting out of school and he said that as we walked out of the classroom, I jumped on this boy and pounded him to the ground with my fists.

It took a teacher and an assistant principal to get me off Harry Button. He was crying and he looked like a giant baby who’d been scared by something sudden. I was sent to the principal’s office and was given licks. He never fucked with me again.

I don’t even talk to my sister anymore.