(I) The Reluctant François
Fuck this stupid fucking name.
(Rejected high school senior quote, 2004)
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Goddamn Old Style. Sonja Strasser can barely see through her bonfire headache. The thirty shrieking brats below her only stoke its flames. Summer parties are only fun til sunrise draws the curtains, and then it’s hotter than hell with that spitfire sun cooking all the furniture. Being a lifeguard–confronted with a undulating expanse of beckoning water, yet exiled atop a little metal tower in a sticky plastic chair–can seem like the cruelest job indeed. It’s almost enough to make Sonja want to have to save someone, to be a hero in order to swim, not to swim in order to be a hero. The operative word being almost: Sonja knows that she doesn’t actually want that, not when she has mounted her stove top sentry tower. It’s like softball in right field, praying for a strikeout. She hasn’t actually jumped from her seat into the pool to "rescue" someone since training, and that was some odd years before with a weighted dummy. Now chair to pool might as well be jumping from the moon into the ocean–an impossible distance.
She arches her back, stretching, until she can grab the steel pole that elbows up and out from the structure below to the backrest behind her. Her breasts push against the nylon of her red one-piece and gravity pulls gently at her hair; twenty teenaged eyes are on her, then, for a second, though she long ago learned to disdainfully discard such casual, impersonally carnal compliments: they are confetti for a furious and fleeting holiday. Theirs are gazes unreturned; behind a pair of cheap gas station aviator’s sunglasses, Sonja’s eyes are bloodshot, closed, and directed skyward, neglectfully away from her wards. Thinking of Wendy Peffercorn, she laughs.
As she straightens, her attention is captured by a young boy–twelve, maybe thirteen–staring at her. It is not the slavering leer she is accustomed to, the oily, calculating imagination of old men that washes over her and provokes nothing but an uncomfortable shiver; perhaps because he’s making no effort at stealth, this doesn’t feel sexual in the slightest. This surprises Sonja, because she has chalked up the vast majority of experience since puberty to be fully due to and explained by straightforward sexual politics. Things outside of that easily parsed realm make her entirely uncomfortable, and right then, a pound of feathers swirls about in her stomach. She forces her gaze to wander, her carefully manicured fingers nervously twirling her long, brunette locks. Carefully, from the corner of her eye with her head still turned, she can see that he is still watching her, with a peculiar oblique tilt to his head, as if he were analyzing or memorizing, thinking deeply. He is wearing red swim trunks, too short to be fashionable, and a purple Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beach towel draped over his shoulder, not yet vintage enough to be fashionable.
Just then, Mrs. Williams’ kid–Walt, Sonja is pretty sure of the name–casually struts up behind the mostly unoffending young man, and then, with amazing alacrity, pulls the entranced young man’s bathing suit down to his ankles. Screams of shock and laughter ripple out from the scene. The boy, obviously shell-shocked, does not immediately react; chin on chest, he simply seems to consider his prepubescent genitals, now free in the hot Texas air. Suddenly (and Sonja is quite aware of the moment, as his body jolts as if defibrillated), he understands his own situation. Instead of simply pulling up his suit, he moves as if to flee, his hands over his privates. The trunks around his ankles tangle his legs, and his momentum is too much; he sways forward like a felled tree and falls, hands still covering his privates, his face bouncing off the wet pool cement with a sickening thwack, a sound like a line-drive single. There is a collective in-drawn breath around the pool; swimmers have ceased their paddling, glistening hands covering gaping mouths. The stunned boy’s arms straggle limply to his sides. Sonja tastes iron in empathy. And then, after a moment spent ass-up in the sun, and as if in a futile attempt to escape, he rolls towards the water slowly, intractably, inexorably. Walt pivots away, his expression a revolting yet reassuring mix of mirth and shame, and runs toward the exit. The people part for him, and he is darting through the parking lot in less than a minute. Sonja stands, her feet on the top step of her sentry tower, her knuckles white as she stabilizes herself using the armrests behind her. Don’t do it, you idiot. Don’t make me let you drown. I make seven dollars an hour, and not to be a savior or murderer. She should be calling out something, doing something, she’s sure, but she’s equally sure this wasn’t covered in orientation. Sonja’s view of the boy’s buttocks and genitals alternate as he spins, and his face is crimson with blood–Sonja figures his nose is broken. He reaches the tiled edge of the pool; he seems frozen on the edge of it, defying gravity, flaccid penis arcing sideways and pointing directly at his frightened lifeguard–and then he splashes in.
Sonja watches him sink. Her mind is not blank; there are a million buzzing bees fighting over a single flower. She carefully takes off her cheap sunglasses and places them on the seat behind her as if they were an important family heirloom. She takes a deep breath; she can no longer feel the cling of the nylon or the Texas heat or the iron step digging into the arches of her feet. She can still feel gravity, however. It is insistent. The body of the boy is sinking face down–little clouds of blood are hovering upwards from his unseen face. You idiot. She is on a step: she is in the air: she is in the water. The explosions in her ears as they submerge are deafening; the chaos is above, on buoys, safe from the surreal and lulling safety found at the bottom of the pool.
When she reaches him, he is sitting on the floor of the pool, his eyes closed, his face calm. The medium-length hair gyrates sinuously, Medusa-like. He could very well be meditating. Like the mannequin. Expressionless. Neither helpless nor expectant. She grabs him by the armpits and lifts him over her shoulder, his slight weight made even lighter by the buoyancy. Before she swims upward, she is struck by a uniquely lucid thought: The boy’s swimsuit rode to his knees–pull it all the way up. She does so, in as decent a manner as she can manage, the backside of her wrist only brushing the side of his scrotum. Halfway up, she steals a glance at his face, expecting a reaction at the contact–a satisfied grin, maybe, or a look of terror, probably; his eyes are still shut, his countenance still serene; his pallid face is painted chlorine blue, his Paas nose trailing red dye.
With strength that surprises her, she hoists him up mightily on to the side of the pool, receiving no help from the gobsmacked schoolchildren around her. As she kneels over him, staring into his gray, concussed eyes, the smell of blood and chlorine heavy on them both, she demands of him, "What were you doing down there?" Gray is a beautiful color. The color of ambivalence, of awareness. The blood streams from his nose down both cheeks, forking and then forking again as it touches the rivulets of pool water. It looks like a river delta on a map.
He smiles sadly at her question, as if the question is stupid or the answer is hopeless. "Waiting." There is more to say, probably, but there always is, and rarely to any effect. He gingerly brings his index finger to his broken nose. Touching it, he winces. "Fucking motherfucker," he mutters. Sonja frowns at the excessive crassness.
"Waiting for what?" she asks, her hand grabbing his wrist, pulling his fingers away from his face. With her other hand, she lifts his chin upward, to stop the flow of blood from his nostrils. She could remember that much from orientation. "Waiting for me? To come save you?" Sonja feels like those words are idiotically silly as they leave her mouth, and afterward, her teeth come together with an audible click.
"No." His smile fades. "Not at all. Though the cliché is pretty enough to give me fuckin’ goosebumps." Children have gathered around, now, and he seems to shrivel beneath her, her whistle dangling an inch above his crumpled face; he is made more uncomfortable by his classmates’ attention than his broken nose, she realizes, though she knows that could be a temporary effect of having been intimately exposed to all of them. Sonja deliberately lowers her voice, bringing her lips down near his ear.
"Why were you staring at me? Before, I mean, before that jerk…did what he did?" His sad smile returns, but his mouth remains shut.
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François is a stupid fucking name. There, I said it, with half-assed apologies to all others so named, but with no retraction. No fucking way, and if you don’t like it, you can go fuck yourself, fuckface. These little unpleasant unavoidables and unfixables and inevitables can metastasize, little cancers that fuck up the growth of all the tissue around it, and my name has sabotaged all of the formative moments of my life. If all of my formative moments are fucked up, I can’t help but be malformed, right? Damn straight.
The kids had been calling me "François Pants-wah" and pulling my pants down for weeks. This was especially problematic, as my Mother had not yet reconciled herself to the fact that I was twelve years-old, no longer a toddler nestled into her side in a big mostly-empty bed, and this willful delusion manifested itself in slightly too-small Mighty Mouse underwear. Add the faint brown streaks in the back, and the whole episode was rather regrettable.
He who smelt it, dealt it–smells like rodent, don’ it?
Assholes. There is no species that takes more pride or devotes more creative time to douchebaggery than humans aged eight to fifteen. But this shouldn’t be surprising, this is not a new discovery. Unless a person grew up in a cave or on a distant planet or alone in a ruined Atlantis in a massive, protective bubble at the bottom of the sea, they conceal within them various bumps and bruises dealt them in their schoolyard youth. I accept that this in no way makes me special.
However, I do believe that all children approach this abuse in different manners, and it inevitably affects them in different ways. And when I think of those episodes that affected me most, I reticently hearken back to that day in the seventh grade at Eisenhower Public Park and Pool.
Did I say "reticently?" I meant, "angrily as fuck-all."
He was originally suspended for a week for what his mother told the school board was an "innocent, yet admittedly childish, prank." Yeah, real fucking innocent. Everyone thought my penis was an inch-and-a-half long through high school. I heard the more worldly girls tell the less knowledgeable that it would make a good "starter dick." And I didn’t escape "Baby Balls" until college orientation. However, upon learning of the board’s week-long punishment of her child, she, as we say in the movie-quoting business, "shit a chicken." She hired a local lawyer, famous (infamous?) for representing the middle school gym teacher who was fired for showering with his students (including Walt Williams), and he pointed out to the powers-that-be that we hadn’t been on school grounds during the incident in question. Suspension reversed. The relief with which they rescinded their prior decision offended my mother mightily, though I handled it with inexplicable equanimity. Throw in the fact that his uncle was the county sheriff, and the whole incident blew over like an April raincloud. And I owe "Starter Dick" and "Baby Balls" and the indelible sensation of the red hot Texas sun on my bare ass to my bullshit name, and its amazing ability to rhyme with a word that kind of sounds like "pants."
Oh, but Walt was banned from the pool, which him and his friends blame me for. So…there’s that, I guess. __________________________________________________________
François is a nice enough boy, a hard worker [sic], given to bouts of introspection and general withdrawal. A little bit precocious, too; I must question his mother’s propensity for bow ties, in consideration of future relationships with his peers. Also, a shockingly foul mouth for a boy so young.
(Entry in Mrs. Williams’ journal, a first-grade teacher at Taft Elementary.)
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François means "Frenchman," so it’s the equivalent of naming a child Russian, Uruguayan, or Senegalese, or as idiotic as naming an NFL franchise the Houston Texans. It’s as stupid as a scarf in summer, and I’ll be fucked three ways toward the weekend before I possess the cruelty to name my hypothetical spawn François, Junior. Can you imagine a "François, Junior?" Can you? Fuck, a "François, Junior" would be picked on in France.
The kicker is I’m not even French. Not 1/16th, 1/32nd, 1/64th French. My grandfather didn’t fight in France. I don’t like French dressing. I eat a good amount of French Fries, but usually with a shit ton of quality American Heinz ketchup while softly muttering the Pledge of Allegiance, just in case. So being named François is kinda like being a cat named "Rex" or a woman named Joseph P. Bigdick. It’s a misnomer. No, no, scratch that, that could imply an honest mistake. It’s a big fucking lie, is what it is, but I’ll tell the truth–every one of us comes from a long line of liars. You, certainly–me, especially.
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François’ father knocks on the door in a firm, even fashion, as one might expect a robot or a well-dressed, over-serious police officer would do–or maybe as one might expect a well-dressed, over-serious police officer robot would do, depending upon one’s time frame and/or love of Robocop. This time frame is 1978; the horseshoe mustache and paislies elsewhere are conspicuously absent in our scene here, though his hair is a touch long, tumbling halfway down his elfin ears. His father–François’ grandfather–regularly chides him that he looks absurd in his yarmulke. As if every Jew since David himself had joined the United States Marine Corps at eighteen and then kept it high-and-tight until death, and only because of his fucking yarmulke that he never takes off. He brushes an offending hair to the side, coughs nervously, and raps again; he forces himself to keep the rhythm and force of his prior knocking, less a tentative tapping and more an honest rap-rap-rap–he decides against a militant pound. This, after all, is not a drug raid, though he’d probably feel better if it was. At least then I’d have a good reason for being here. He counts to ten silently, telling himself that if she doesn’t open the door by ten, then he will leave. He begins his count; he forces himself to do so slowly. Agonizingly slowly.
On seven, the door is suddenly flung outward, striking him in the thigh; That’s a bruise, he is sure, because these are the thoughts that occupy our minds when other matters press; why we keep the flashlight on the vacant corner when we know a monster lurks in the other. Fear. What an idiot; everyone looks at least a little ridiculous in a yarmulke. Whatever, whatever, a kipa. Whatever. And looking ridiculous is the lion’s share of religion. Though "ceremony and tradition play an important role in…" "Well," the monster demands from her darkened corner, impatience writ large on her face, "are you going to stand there rubbing your leg like a vapid idiot or are you going to tell me what you want?" She is wearing a beret and wielding a paintbrush; she is a non-French person’s idea of what a French person looks like. She is a lovely monster. A lovely, terrifying beast of a monster.
Mind not blank–not empty–but rather consisting of a million manic office workers speaking foreign languages, sending letters to the Orient, and making interoffice phone calls that connect to no where, he marries two unfortunate partners: panic and speech. "I just remember there’s something I have to do." He turns to leave; realizing that what he has done is ridiculous–he vigorously tapped, and then rapped, on her door, uninvited, simply to inform her that he cannot stay–he turns back. He tries to elaborate, create, lie, invent. "Just remembered. I…need to buy…a new…yarmulke." He has invented something that he does not need. "Yarmulke?" He exasperatedly questions the nature of his choice out loud. I’m so fucking stupid. She is bemused, a bit irritated, and she cocks her head: she understands what happened, but unlike him, she possesses the grace to question the nature of his choice silently. "Yeah, yarmulkes. They wear out, you know. Just a little thin layer of cloth. Take it easy. Ha, Bon voyage. French, right?" Good trip? Is she going somewhere, you clown? "I mean for me. Bon voyage to the yarmulke shop–for me." He checks his ego; that’s a bruise, he is sure. Mortified, and thoroughly hating himself, François’ father leaves Zaria Goodrich standing on her front step, the paintbrush in her hand absently tracing unknown shapes, her head still cocked.