WELCOME TO PARADISE
In my junior year of high school, I saw thirty-five fist fights. The violence arrived one day like a mass psychogenic illness no one had ever seen, and no one knew what to do.
One fight the first day.
Five the next.
Just before Christmas break, we had two assemblies. In the first, the principal said it was our responsibility to break up the fights. “These are your peers,” he said, “your friends … aren’t they?”
Obviously, he knew we weren’t going to do anything, so between each period, teachers were stationed in the hallways.
Another fight broke out during lunch.
A second assembly was called. The principal didn’t even bother this time. The football coach stood up and blew a whistle until everyone in the gym had their hands over their ears. “Since none of you degenerates have any loyalty to your classmates, we’re going to do this a different way,” he said to us. “I’m ashamed to be in this room with every single one of you.”
His plan ignored the students and went right to the teachers. They were supposed to join hands and form a chain across the hallway. He said it would split the crowd as they moved toward the fight.
“If a student tries to break through, lift your arms to their throat.” He put his back to a female teacher in the front row. “And if they try and go under,” he continued, “use your combined force to sock them in the gut.” He swung his fist down and stopped an inch from her stomach. She gasped and jumped back as if he’d actually hit her. “These are legal tactics, folks,” he said, while somehow making eye contact with every student. “If you want to act like animals, I promise you will be treated as such.”
His name was Coach C, and even though he’d just taken our football team to States, his plan ignored a cardinal rule in sports: defense cannot stop momentum.
After lunch, I walked to the bathroom. My science teacher, Mr. Tarpinsky, was sitting at a desk between the girls’ and boys’ rooms. We were supposed to show him a hall pass, but I was skipping that period and didn’t have one. He nodded at me and closed his eyes. We watched pro-wrestling highlights in his classroom every Friday. He was twenty-three. He didn’t care if I had a hall pass.
Jake and Jimmie Jones were crouching Chinese-style in the open part of the bathroom, past the two stalls. One-dollar bills were scattered around the floor. This kid Todd had just moved over from a trailer-park town across the highway and taught everyone how to play Cee-lo. The dice game was passing more dollar bills through the school than a strip club saw on a Friday night.
“Yo,” I said.
Jimmie pointed at three dice on the floor.
“Look at this.”
I bent down. Two of the dice rested against the wall. The third had gotten caught mid-roll in a tile groove.
Jimmie asked me about the third.
“What number does that say?”
Jake slapped the back of his hand into his palm and said, “It’s obviously a six.”
“A six?” Jimmie said. “Fuck you, a six. That’s a one.”
“I can’t tell,” I said. I looked at the other two dice. A four and a five. “I’m calling a re-roll.”
They stood up and lit cigarettes while I faced the urinal. Jake tried propping open the window, but the glass kept sliding down.
Jimmie handed Jake his cigarette and said, “Let me go see if Mr. Tarpinsky has something to hold it up.”
Jake blew his smoke up at the ceiling and started laughing.
“Did you see Joe’s face yesterday?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “But I heard it was so bad his mother wouldn’t even look at him when he got home.”
Jimmie Jones came back into the bathroom with a dictionary. He pushed the window up and let it slide down onto the book.
“Are you guys talking about Joe?” he asked.
“Yeah, man,” Jake said. “Tell him what you told me.”
Jimmie took his cigarette back.
“I saw the whole thing,” he said. “Craig broke Joe’s nose in one punch. Principal Sherman and Coach C grabbed Joe by his back and ankles before he could hit back. He used his free hand to try and blow bloody snot rockets at Craig.”
I left the bathroom, and my science teacher was asleep at his desk. It was mid-period now, but the hallway was jammed with students as if the fire alarm had been pulled. I put my hands on someone’s shoulders and lifted myself up to see what was going on.
A girl was on the ground trying to cover her face. Another girl was kicking her repeatedly, but with a prolonged setup, as if each one was a last-ditch field goal. I could make out some familiar faces in the crowd, but something was happening. Nobody looked exactly like themselves. Their faces were contorting before this nightmarish requiem like hungry lions circling a carcass. Eyes red with feral delight. Mouths smiling like they’d paid admission for the slaughter.
I smacked Mr. Tarpinsky. He climbed out of the desk just as the classroom door in front of us swung open. Frankie danced out into the hallway with both fists up, waiting for whatever was coming next. A gold cornicello charm hung from a chain around his neck. He picked up the horn and kissed it and then he banged both his fists off his head like a boxer.
Two varsity football players came out after him. One wore an extra-large FUBU shirt (this was the kind of white town we were). The other one I’d often seen jogging around the track after school. They’d each won Homecoming King at least once. And a rumor was traveling around the school that Frankie’s new girlfriend had been getting rides home from them after cheerleading practice.
A circle of students chanting, “Fight!” surrounded us immediately.
My teacher looked at me and sat back down.
“Frankie’s gonna kill them,” he said. “But he’s twice my size. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
Before this month, our school had only suspended one person for fighting, and it was Frankie. He hadn’t started the last fight, but he had ended it so brutally that the school was forced to send him home anyway. When it came down to a matter of meat, Frankie was the weight class, and nobody had been dumb enough to fight him since.
Until now.
I cheered with everyone else while Frankie banged the Homecoming King’s head’s off lockers. When they were both lying on the ground, Frankie took his shirt off and held it against their faces. It turned red from all the blood, and he held it up like a heavy-weight belt so everyone could see. Then he put it back on.
We roared.
Frankie beat his chest like a gorilla.
Rachel was standing next to me. She watched me clap and laugh with the rest of the idiots. I really liked Rachel. She was popular, one of the girls who went to Catholic school for a while before she transferred over. She was done with rehab before I smoked my first cigarette.
And now she was looking at me, and I was smiling.
“I thought you were better than this,” she said.
Our high school, in the course of three weeks, had gone from the second safest school in the district to the most dangerous. The pressing question in the teachers’ lounge was why is this happening? But like schools with pregnancy or suicide epidemics, the why? was pretty simple: the taboo had been broken. Whatever that thin line of morality is that keeps everyone in check had been crossed. And now they wanted to fix a couple hundred kids all angry for different reasons but manifesting that anger in the same way. How could they put a pin back in a grenade they hadn’t known was going to explode?
By the time last period came, students were getting called down to the principal’s office. When the intercom went off in class, a collective “Whew” could be heard from the hallways from those who weren’t summoned. Everyone was a potential delinquent now. And the principal started suspending everyone. Unless, of course, you could give up the names of people who were thinking about fighting. But that plan backfired, too. If you came back to class, everyone knew you were a rat, and there was a target on your back until the score was settled.
Some girls in my class were talking about Adam. Adam was my partner on the basketball team. I was the “three” (the power forward). I dribbled. Shot. Rebounded. Adam was the “five.” The tallest guy on the team. He rebounded and hooked up my jump shot. And I was pretty good at throwing him an alley-oop when things looked hopeless.
The girls were saying that Adam was a “fag.” They said they were glad Jimmie Jones was going to “kick his ass tomorrow.” I didn’t know what to do. Adam was my partner, sure, but I was still a virgin. I hated myself already. And I didn’t want to look any lamer in front of the girls. Did I even owe him anything? After all, we weren’t the football team. We didn’t shower together after practice.
I didn’t say anything.
We had an away game that day. I never took the team bus to away games. My dad always drove me so he could give me a thirty-minute monologue about discipline and foul shots.
I saw Jake on the way out to my dad’s car.
“Yo,” I said.
“Yo.”
“Is Jimmie Jones fighting Adam tomorrow?”
“It’s going to be a blood bath. They’re boxing at The Hill after school.”
The Hill was short for Agony Hill—a little patch of woods between the high school and the middle school. The name came from an old town legend: once upon a time, two kids fell off their sleds and broke their necks in the woods. They were dead out there all night before someone found them. Now on full moons, or Friday the 13ths, or first snows, you can hear two children crying softly for their mothers. I don’t know if any of that ever happened. For the class of 2003, it was the place everyone got high before school. Or went to cut class. Or made out with a nice girl from a broken home everyone still called a “slam hog” at our ten-year reunion.
To combat the suspensions, someone had the idea to set up boxing matches at The Hill after school. If there was a person you wanted to fight (they egged your car, they slept with your girlfriend, etc.), you just had to call him/her to The Hill. And no matter the height or size disadvantage, the shame of being called a “pussy” by an entire town ensured no one skipped a duel. A beating was much more forgiving than tomorrow’s lunchroom.
I got into my father’s car. He launched right into his pre-game speech: “Remember, K-I-S-S. Keep It Simple Stupid. When they’re running down the clock, remember: K-I-S-S. It’s basketball. You dribble up. You defend back. K-I-S-S.”
This routine all spawned from a Warped Tour he had taken me to a few years earlier. Those were the days when Nazi punks still openly gathered at shows. My parents would only let me go if my dad chaperoned. Green Day played that year, and during their set, Billie Joe Armstrong said, “Look at this. We’re idiots. This song is stupid. It’s three chords. Any idiot can do it. Keep it simple, stupids.” I remember seeing some kind of glow spark in my father’s eyes. It all suddenly made sense to him. Green Day was the band that made me a punk, and now, through some insane irony, I had to listen to my dad use Billie Joe’s words reworked into an unmotivating monologue before every game.
I watched the highway from my window while my dad repeated “K-I-S-S” over and over. He was old school, and things like “emotions” and “self-doubt” didn’t make any sense to him. But I was starting to get nauseous from all the guilt I was feeling, so I told him what had been going on at school. And then I told him about Adam.
“You’re not going to stand up for him?” he asked. “He’s your teammate.”
“I know. But they’re not even really fighting.”
“He’s your teammate. What if he hits his head on the floor?”
“They’re not fighting. Everyone is going to The Hill tomorrow to watch them box.”
“What if he falls and hits his head on a rock? Then he’s paralyzed. I’ve seen it. How are you going to look at his mom knowing you could’ve kept her son from being a vegetable? Are you going to tell her you wanted to look cool? You know what’s not cool?”
“What?”
“Your friend getting paralyzed. You’ll see.”
Adam and I ran the show that day. We were up by eight points in the last thirty seconds. I gave my dad a thumbs-up, but suddenly we lost control. The other team hit a three-pointer. Then they hit another three.
My dad was in the bleachers screaming, “K-I-S-S. SLOW THE GAME DOWN!”
I took the ball and stepped out of bounds to pass it in.
My dad screamed again, “STOP THE MOMENTUM. K-I-S-S. Slow the game down! K-I-S-S.”
I called a timeout. I didn’t even leave the court. My dad was right. We needed to stop time for a second. Momentum was moving for them.
I passed the ball inbounds to Adam. At half-court, they stole it. I already had four fouls on me, but they were about to break away for a layup. I intentionally smacked the guy with the ball. The referee blew his whistle, and I got thrown out of the game. The guy I’d hit missed both of his foul shots and we won by two points.
My dad didn’t say he was proud of me on the way home, but I thought he should have.
There were no fights the next day during school. Three boxing matches were scheduled for The Hill that afternoon. Everyone was wondering how an operation this organized had started. Some people said it was Henry, the kid who’d been suspended for putting a pipe-bomb down the toilet the year before. A few whispered that it was Principal Sherman’s idea, but in a world still ruptured by 9/11, no one paid much attention to conspiracies.
When the bell rang after last period, most of the school headed for The Hill. I knew I wasn’t going to stop the fight, but I walked to the woods anyway.
Each guy was given a set of boxing gloves. The first two matches went quick. A few punches landed. A lot of dancing. No blood. I kept praying for an earthquake, but we were a Godless lot, and we received no divine intervention.
I stood at the back of the crowd and learned a lesson most wouldn’t until much later: the idiots have the numbers, and the numbers prove you right even when you’re wrong.
Morality is no match for entertainment.
I watched Jake and some other guys walk around with wads of money. Jake had a clipboard in his hand. He was taking bets, calculating odds.
Adam never really faced us and that made me feel better. A friend of each boxer pulled the gloves down over their wrists. When Jimmie Jones’s gloves were on, he just started swinging. No countdown. No bell.
His first punch landed. Adam’s nose looked like a plum exploded.
He hit back a few times, but I knew where it was going. Anyone can fight like prey on its back when pushed enough, but Adam, like me, didn’t have whatever that instinct is to finish it. And no one in school was ever going to let him forget it.
I didn’t wait for the end. I walked down The Hill by myself and thought about what a complete loser I was. A few times, the crowd got so loud I braced for a stampede of fleeing students. But death would’ve been too easy. No one followed me out.
Rachel was pulling out of a parking spot in her white VW Jetta. I asked her for a ride.
“You’re leaving the animals on The Hill?” she asked.
“Just so you know,” I said, “I don’t think fighting is cool anymore.”
But Rachel didn’t care about my new perspective. She was dating a guy in college. Everything was boring to her.
On the way home, she told me about her dad. How he had left her mom for the secretary at his dentist’s office when she was ten. How he was never proud of her. Not for grades. Not for cheerleading.
“What about you?” she asked. “Is your dad ever proud of you?”
“No,” I said. “But at least today, I gave him a reason not to be.”
