Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

4 - What Stupid People Feel (Part 2)

Tom had joined me in the bleachers now, and we watched appreciatively as the cheerleaders shouted platitudes and leapt into the air, giving us tantalizing glimpses of their spanks. In Freshman year Tom had inexplicably decided to join the football team himself, which struck me as a spectacularly bad idea. And it was. Two-thirds of the way through the season, he either quit the team, or was kicked off, I was never sure which. His explanation, such as it was, was terse and vague, with undertones of embarrassment and bitterness. He didn't want to talk about it and I didn't push. But from then on he hated football as much as I did, and that suited me fine.

The marching band began to play the theme from Rocky, which for my generation will forever be the gold standard of motivational music. The band uniform consisted of blue-and-red polygons, a white sash and feather duster hats. It was ridiculous. Unless, of course, the effect they were hoping to achieve was Lichtenstein's-cubist period-meets-house-cleaning-crossing-guard, in which case they nailed it.

At the sound of the triumphant trumpets, the members of the football team ran into the gym, one after another, grinning confidently and holding up a victorious fist or index finger, as the student body went unabashedly wild. There was, to me, something deeply disturbing about this whole spectacle. Because the "band fags," as they were generally referred to, were victimized by the football jocks more than anybody. So playing them on with celebratory fanfare was kind of like having to throw a birthday party for your rapist.

Coach Clecz, neck thick, hair thinning, in his tan sports jacket and brown tie, grabbed the microphone. Tom and I looked at each other. This was the part we were waiting for. "Are we going to stomp those Bullfrogs tomorrow?" Coach Clecz bellowed.

Everyone else yelled, "Yeah!"

But I yelled, "How are we supposed to know?"

And then Tom yelled, "We're not psychic!"

We were mostly drowned out in the roar of our slavering schoolmates, but those nearby could hear us and, by and large, they did not appreciate our contrarian humor. Which, for us, only made it funnier.

"I just called Coach Williams!" Coach Clecz continued. Everyone booed when they heard the rival coach's name.

"Wow!" I marveled, "he knows how to use a telephone!"

"Way to avail yourself of technology, Coach Clecz!"

"I told him, we shouldn't wait for tomorrow! We should play right now!" Everyone leapt to their feet, cheering. Apparently, they didn't remember that he had said the exact same thing last year. And the year before. "And do you know what he said?" Coach Clecz thundered.

"The number you have dialed is not a working number!"

"Please hang up and dial again!"

In my peripheral vision, I noticed that Mrs. Montefusco was glaring at us. Mrs. Montefusco — she didn't buy into that feminist Ms. nonsense — was our homeroom teacher. She wore her hair in a masochistic bun and took the Pledge of Allegiance very seriously. Especially the "under God" part, which she always said loudly and defiantly, although who exactly she was defying was never entirely clear.

"And Coach Williams" — boooo! — "he didn't want to do it!" Everyone laughed. Coach Williams sure was a pussy! "And do you know why?"

"Because the game is scheduled for tomorrow!"

"And doing it now would be a logistical nightmare!"

That's when Mrs. Montefusco had enough. "You two! Get down here! Now!"

The students near us took great delight in this. "Oooooh!" they said in unison, pointing at us. We climbed down the bleachers to floor level, trying not to step on any of our classmates, even though some of them definitely deserved it.

"You are being disrespectful," she hissed when we reached the bottom. Coach Clecz continued his call-and-response with the student body. I didn't get the particulars, but my impression was that everyone remained rather upbeat about our team's chances.

Tom and I were smart-asses, but we weren't rebels. We generally yielded to authority, strategically apologizing to stay out of trouble. We did that here, too, but Mrs. Montefusco had more to say.

"You know, we were just talking about you in the Teacher's Lounge." Tom and I exchanged a look of mild surprise. It never occurred to us that we might be a topic of teacher conversation. We thought we were flying under the radar. "You could make a positive contribution to this place if you weren't wasting all your time trying to be funny."

For us, trying to be funny — or as we thought of it, being funny — was our entire raison d'être, the only thing we did at school that wasn't a waste of time. And as things would ultimately turn out, we were right. Over the decades, there had been thousands of amateur smart-asses who passed through the hallways of Cambria-Clearfield High School South, but we were the only ones who would ever turn pro.

Coach Clecz had stopped talking and now the women's gymnastics team were doing tumble-passes; the administration's perfunctory attempt to show that they cared about girls' sports, too. Although the message was undermined by the fact that everybody started leaving.

"Don't you care about your school?" Mrs. Montefusco admonished. This, we eventually realized, was not a rhetorical question.

"Not... particularly," one of us said, although I honestly can't remember which.

She shook her head, sad for us now. "Honestly, could you two be any more apathetic?"

Like I said, we were not rebels. But we couldn't resist such an obvious set-up, either. "We could..." Tom began, and then we finished the punchline together. "But it'd take too much effort."

It never occurred to either of us that we could get detention for having insufficient school spirit, but we did; the one blemish on our otherwise pristine disciplinary records. It was unclear what, exactly, Mrs. Montefusco was trying to achieve with this punishment. Certainly, we didn't emerge from our fifty-five minutes of sitting in silence among the school's vandals, burnouts and chronically tardy feeling more spirited.

It did, however, make us extra-joyful the next day, when we heard that our football team had been absolutely slaughtered.

Go Bullfrogs!