Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right?
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you
|Stuck in the Middle with You ~ Stealers Wheel
🤡🤡🤡
Thursday ~ September 18th
All things considered, today is an almost good day. May is waiting for me in homeroom to resume our morning repartee during Important Announcements. Or'sir attempts to introduce us to the horror that is the Verona morality tale about a teen suicide pact gone wrong, all in iambic pentameter. Which based on Butchy's murderous glare-stare thing is something he apparently hates almost as much as flocking football liars. Chad attempts to explain proper locker room hygiene to the shower and soap hating freshmeat, without smirking. Which of course is an epic fail for everyone.
Lunch turns out to be a slightly subdued affair of standard peanut butter and jelly on sourdough. Most of our conversation revolves around what pizza will go best with the Maltese showing of Rebel Without a Cause? I am thinking of a return to the Evil Eye pizza of first date night. In honor of James Deans Spyder Porche, the infamous "Little Bastard" of lore. But May is insisting that we might try a more ocean-centric slice of Hawaiian style in honor of Natalie Woods drowning death.
After lunch Striker is really excited about the historically inaccurate and rather racist showing of Gaint. As is was also J.D.'s last flick, I am almost tempted to ask him to solve the Rebel pizza conundrum. But in the end, I ultimately decided against asking, seeing it has nothing whatsoever to do with his Liz Taylor obsession. Besides Striker strikes me as the kind of guy who orders only cheese pizza for some strange reason.
I flash my new get out of class free pass, to skip out on the final five minutes of Dr. Doom's redux rendition of Apocalypse Now. After which I drop down to the theater auditorium, to swoop up May from her theater class, to hit Study Buddies for our usual hour of detention.
I find May easy enough in the theater, sitting by her lonesome and canting something dramatic. Something I can only assume is Shakespearean about some damn dog named Bloody Spot getting out? So I hang back in the corner cheap seats for a minute and watch her singsong the soliloquy to her satisfaction, before making myself known.
"Hey Maybe, it's me." I start out positively.
"Hey, you devil on my shoulder." She immediately beams up at me and smiles some slices right into my soul.
"So you ready to fly this coop and hit Study Buddies, maybe make some more funny money?" I rhyme my reason.
"Sure, why not." May sighs sardonically. "You really need to stop getting yourself in so much trouble, Mr. Devil."
"But then what would I do in my downtime?" I counter back. "You know what they say about my idle hands?"
"Yeah, never been a big fan of playgrounds." She shakes her head sarcastically. "Way too many swinging things and screaming little kids running around bumping into everything ...especially me."
"So let's see if we can find something for those hands of yours to hold Mr. Devil, and get their mind off their troubles." She stretches out her hands up to me and allows me to lift her up off the floor to standing.
We wraith out of her class and around the theater building towards the Other Library. May is all sorts of smiles as she tells me about the second half of her day since we last parted ways at lunch. Even though nothing particularly fun or funny happened with her? I do thoroughly enjoy her retelling of droning through the day.
We slowly cruise inside of the Other Library and up to the reference desk to stamp in my detention time. Only to discover that the ever-chipper Cliffboard is not large and in charge of the punitive punishment show today. Which is odd, because personally, I think that lording over the detention detainee's is the highlight of that dudes day. Like this is the one place where he can be too cool for school. But instead of Cliffboard, the guy running the circus is some skinny senior clown with fuzzy hair and a curling lip leer sneer.
I make the fatal mistake of ignoring this Fuzzyhead clown, when I stamp in and sign us in together for reading time. Then start to head us over to grab our usual carrel in the front corner, where the glass comes together in a small square fishbowl room. It's the best spot I can find so far, where I can see almost every direction. So I can spot April incoming for May's pick up later, after she is finished practicing being cheery. Because if there is one girl who seriously needs to practice being cheerful it's May's sinister sister.
"Grimm you're with Tolliver today, Dean you go with Barnes." Fuzzo rolls up to us and pronounces our punitive sentences with an air of arrogance. I glance over and see Guys Mike shaking his head slowly, and Butchy is starting to seriously glower at Fuzzyhead.
"That's a big no go, bro." I snap back, immediately irritated with this guy. "I'm with Maybe. It's on the signup sheet that way, so it's a thing."
"Not today." He tries to shrug me off. "Today you're with Barnes, and Grimm goes with Tolliver."
"Where's Cliffboard?" I am starting to grow seriously agitated with this ass clown.
"Obviously he's out sick, which is why Mrs. St. Claire put me in charge." He smirks condescendingly. "So if you have any issues with that, I suggest you take up with her. I just read the chart and assign..."
"That's not how Cliffboard runs this show, bro." I cut him off in mid-next stupid thing to say.
"What's wrong with you guy? You act like you've never attended a real school before. Hello, this is detention?" He taps his petty tyrant chart, emphasizing for effect. "You sign up to be here. But we can assign you any buddy we want, not the other way around. So today you go with Butch for English, and Tolliver reads math to Grimm."
May, who could say so much in the way of that question, is standing stone still and starting pale as we engage in this waste of time. I already know from experience how much she hates violent confrontations. Not to mention the outright mayhem and bloodshed that I bring to any party.
"What's wrong with me?" I repeat low and slow, and start vibrating. "Let's start with you, the clown who's just making all this crap up as you go along? Because there's no way Mrs. St. Claire pimped me out to buddy with Butchy. See I'm on the list with May, then suddenly not? Now you arbitrary switch me around to Butch?"
"And no offense to Butchy, but that's not why I'm here for. I'm here to read to May. That's what I signed up for, so that's what I do." I flick this clown clipboard soundly to let him feel my unhappy, causing him to take a step back. "So you got a problem with that, why don't you go take up with Mrs. St Claire in the main office? Seeing she's the one who insisted on arranging all that for me and May."
"Well today you go with Butch, or you leave. And because you already clocked in, I will report you for an additional honor code violation." He counters smugly sure of himself.
Now that a threat has been made, all the dark voices in my head are highly suggestive. That I pick up the pen that fell off this clowns clipboard when I flicked it, and find a new spot for it to call home. Right through Fuzzo's funny ear hole and scramble all the all the fun smugness that lives in there, until it changes that station back to static.
"It's okay Darren, just be cool and roll with this for today." May's pensive tone cuts off the dark voices in my skull screaming for a Fuzzy head to kick around the empty spaces. "Micheal's read to me before plenty of times, so it will be fine."
"Maybe..." I immediately start to protest.
"It's either this, or I have to go home early ...without April?" She cuts me off clean like a queen. "So what's an hour of reading numbers really gonna hurt? It's not like I am gonna learn anything anyway?" She snorts wryly, and poor Guys Mike looks almost hurt. Like he was actually going try to teach her numbers against her will. "Now off you go to buddy with Butchy, and we'll take a long walk in the park after this to cool down. Okay, Dare?"
"Okay, May whatever you say." I intone by rote, as May pushes me off me and totters away towards a table with Guy Mike in tow.
"Oh, and do me a favor please? At least try to talk him out of falling into Someone's Sisters mal charms?" May smirks wickedly back. "We don't want to see poor Butchy have to pony up her half too, on the way to the saddest parking lot after da playoffs are over? Just because Someone's Sister couldn't wait another week and already spent all her allowance on the cutest new sparkly kitty collar ever."
"Damn that cat collar thing was kinda cold." Butchy snorts. "Ape's not that bad."
"Neither is Buster, more or less." I counter evenly. "But I'm sure there are days when you want to kill him to death."
"That is very true." Butchy grunts in agreement, that starts stomping back to our table for two in the back stacks.
I lag behind him, unable to keep my eyes off of May uncertain steps as Guy's Mike leads her astray. My head is in overdrive now, coming up with all sorts of heroic scenarios that I might have to save her from. Chairs that could fall over in front of her, causing her to trip and break her neck. Or big books could fly off the shelves and smash her sweet face. Or the library shelves could suddenly tip over, and break her precious legs. Which I've never actually seen under her standard black yoga stretchy sweatpants things? But can only imagine them in their slender pale splendor.
Thankfully Guy's Mike actually helps May safely finds her spot, and eases her down into the sturdy chair. After which May waves back awkwardly with a smile. I'm not sure the smile is for me or Guys Mike? But I don't really care either way, cause I will take what I can get at this point.
I slowly rotate around to face Fuzzo, and me and this ass clown have an eye boning moment. The one where I let him know, that he and me are so going to have our own defining moment in the very near future. I am sorely tempted to invite him down to Da Frost later for a little walk in talk down that nice back alley to see the beats. Then stomp that smug smile right off his face ...with the heel of my stomping boots. A Fuzzy teeth necklace sounds like just the thing to balance the scales of this karmic iniquity.
"Don't think for a second that this is done, dude." I seethe savagely into the clown, who takes another couple of steps away. "Or that I won't be dropping down on Mrs. St. C after this shit to see what's what. Then you and me are gonna have a little talk all about what time it is."
"Do whatever guy." He rolls his eyes and smirks smugly, and I almost take him down right on the spot. Smash his flocking fuzzy head into the sharp corner of the reference desk repeatedly, until he get's the point. Never separate me from my heresy or suffer the wrath of the faithful.
"Priorities Dare, think priorities." May sings sweetly from her table. I think my dark goddess knows me well enough by now to know exactly where my head is at. I eye bone Fuzzo hard in passing as I reluctantly head back towards me and Butchy's table for two.
"So we got issues, Deans?" Butchy scowls when I finally drop anchor at his table, still eye boning Fuzzo. When I don't immediately return the favor, Butch starts to play his own ground control games.
"Hello, Deans? Butch to Surfer D, come in Surfer D?" Butchy drones to get my attention.
"Naw not with you, Butchy," I reassure the monster of his importance. Because just for a minute I forgot that Butchy has a ton of his own issues, that I don't care about. "Sorry, I know must seem like a total asshole to you right now? But I just got some shit of my own going on, that's got nothing to do with you."
"Don't we all, dude." Butch suddenly turns prophetic. "What, you think I like this shit? Being the big dummy study buddy, that no one wants to buddy up with? Who jacks off everyone else's program? But I got to play, so I got to pay ...same as every other flocking day."
Maybe it's the simplistic sports moto rhyming that makes Butchy easier to understand, than most flocking Falcons that I normally come into contact with here in Hell. Or maybe it's the complete lack of agenda, other than The Team, The Game, and The Pain, that allows me to see him as what he really is? Rather than the stupid stereotype he wants me to see him as.
"Okay Butch, let's start this over. What do need help with, specifically?" I ask bluntly and hope to Nix he doesn't say "reading". Because right now I don't think I can handle, "I don't read too good, all the letters look sideways backwards and all funny and shit to me."
"Flocking Midg'hitler is gonna report me ineligible unless I pass the tomorrow test with 70 or better. Flocking little dickhead, always walking in around pushing his big bulge pants in people's face. I flocking hate that shit."
Pushing the big bulge pants in people's face? Oh yeah, this dude has some serious issues.
I am starting to see that Butch might have lots and lots of undiagnosed mental malfunctions. But thankfully for me, dyslexia is not one of them. As most of Butchy's issues turn out to be just your basic garden-variety jockstrap illiteracy. Because he's a football hero, he's been allowed to skate by on bullshit so far. But now that he's being constantly challenged by Or'sir? He lacks the intellectual capacity to compete on an uneven playing field.
"Preaching to the choir, Butch." I snort in retort.
"Yeah, I just want the baby momma Grant to come back. Sleep-deprived, baby crazy and lazy, I can take. But that prissy little lying ass shit of piece drives me..." Butchy easily gets distracted and drifts as a pair of larger than average local boobs bounce by us. Oddly enough, dutifully followed by Fuzzyhead to one of the private carrels in the back corner.
"Flocking insane?" I finish for him.
"No. I mean yeah?" Butchy shakes off those huge distractions and snaps back into the current again.
"Okay Butchy, talk to me. Try to tell me a something that I might actually solve for you? So that we both aren't wasting our time here."
"Okay." Butchy stabs a massive middle finger down at his dogeared copy of Romeo and Juliette on the table between us. "So how do I get at least C on the tomorrow test for this bunch of bullshit."
"Well, for starters it's not bullshit Butchy, it's actually pretty funny story. Once you can get past all the fancy foreign words and get the real drift on what's what with these two shooting stars."
"Oh yeah, what so flocking funny about it, Deenz?" I sense Butchy is starting to turn surly. Probably because he's been talked down to in Dummy Study Buddies so many times before. So he doesn't take kindly to "smarties" making fun of "dummies". Most especially when the big dummy in question is him? I pause for a heartbeat to think through how to translate R+J into Butchering English.
"You've heard the expression before, don't hate the player...hate the game?" I inquire casually, so as to set him at ease.
"Yeah ...and?" Butch side-eyes me suspiciously.
"Well, this shit is where that shit comes from." I tap the dented dogeared cover, that has probably been thrown across at least one room in clear frustration.
"Huh?" Butchy grunts. "How's that then?"
"Okay first off, always keep in mind that both Romeo and Juliette are complete flocking idiots." I start slowly, explaining the comedy of errors. "That they will always find the stupidest way to do exactly the wrong thing, at precisely the worst moment possible."
"Cause this whole flocking thing is basically about a random hook up at Juliet's quinceañera that goes horribly wrong. Then by the end, everyone important dies, for no apparent reason. Other than they are too stupid to just leave these two idiots alone? And just let them play their stupid girlie games, on their own damn time."
"I don't get it. I thought that all the chicks dig this stupid shit?" He rocks his massive blockhead back in confusion.
"Yeah, probably because Romeo is a player. So maybe they can all relate to Juliet getting played on some level?" I shrug him off. "Or maybe because she fell for all his singsong foreign Euro bullshit and sacrificing her virginity so easy? Or that Juliet has to figure out a way to get her parents off her back before they find out she got knocked up with Romeo's rape baby."
"Romeo's rape baby?" Butchy scowls, clearly not liking this concept.
"Oh, and check this shit out, Juliette isn't even Romeo's first conquest on the ol' House Copulate. She's actually a rebound from her own older cousin Rosaline, who just dumped Romeo's dumb ass before the party. So Romeo is just some random dude that overstayed his welcome at her quinceañera."
"Who was just straight up peeping her from her backyard through the window." I explain the Creep factor of Medieval morality. "But instead of calling the cops, like anyone else with an IQ over an ice cube would do? Juliet is like coo'cool some creepy peepy pedo guy who used to get with my cousin is totally peeping me! Oh hell yeah, let's totally get married and shit! Cause like that will piss off my rich parents flocking big time."
"So the idiots get fake married for some reason no one ever understands. Then they hook up for one nightstand. But then after Romeo is done having his way with her, shit goes super sideways, for no other reason than because. After which everyone starts killing each other cause they can." I shake my head sadly at the fate of Romeo's dead buddy Mercutio, who didn't do nothing to no one.
"So then these two flocking idiots come up with an even better master plan. They decide to run away together, but only after they fake kill themselves. But these idiots are so flocking bad at fake killing themselves, that they end up really killing themselves instead. After that everyone who is still left alive after all this stupid shit, feels super sorry for about a second and then moves to Venice. The end."
"Oh, and everyone calls them 'The Star-Crossed Lovers'? Because that sounds way cooler than, the two village idiots from Verona fake suicide attempt goes horribly wrong." I add one final piece of propaganda to Butchy's big blinking eyes of utter disbelief.
"Wait, so let me get this straight?" The gerbil that runs Butchy's head has now latched on to something it doesn't like ...the Math. "So this chick Julie is like barely thirteen when all this shit goes down? That's like junior high statutory rape shit right there." Butch glowers angrily down at the Medieval matrimonial mores of ancient Verona. "Yeah you're right, I really did miss the movie."
"Naw Butchy, don't feel bad bro. That because they intentionally hid the truth from you." Primarily because I really don't feel like teaching him any more Spanish mathematics, like quinceañera actually means fifteen, not thirteen. "They slapped a nice artsy romantic cover on this piece of craptastic, to make it look boring to badasses."
"See regardless of what the cover looks like, all glowy and wistful blissful and shit? The real hero of this tragic tale is Julie's gay cousin, Tybalt. Cause that dude died looking out for his little cousin when Romeo 'accidentally' kills him."
"Oh, and of course Paris the Prince. Who narrowly escapes getting married to crazy-ass Juliet, after Romeo cockblocks him out of the running." I snort. "I mean seriously if you think about it, that dude dodged a major bullet? Cause you gotta know any chicklet who pulls a fake suicide attempt, to try to run away with her older boyfriend is just getting started out on that crazy train."
"No flocking shit." Butch is now giggling slightly psychotically and we are starting to draw looks and attention I don't need.
Even May and Guy's Mike have stopped the nothing they were doing to look over at Butchy laughing his ass off in the Other Library. And if I was a slightly smarter clown, I would have picked up on the fact, that I'm not as funny as I think I am. That there is something seriously wrong with this dude's sick sense of humor.
"Easy there big guy, or we're gonna get kicked out of study buddies by my new Fuzzy buddy."
"You know you're a weird dude, right?" Butchy sighs, wiping away the funny tears out of his eyes.
"So I've been told." I nod along.
"Weird maybe." Butchy shrugs somberly. "But I think I learned more in five minutes talking words to you, then in the last three a weeks of that midget squawking his shat at me." Butchy sighs on a greater truth. "Flock me, maybe I'm weird too?"
This thought strikes an odd expression a self-revelation on the monster's fearsome visage. Which if you knew Butchy like I know Butchy? Yeah, that sudden strangeness can be a very painful revelation indeed.
Now I have a choice to make at this moment. I can accept his self-deprecating statement as a wyrd moment to bond. Maybe help out another fellow monster in Hell to find a little easier life? All I have to do is laugh off the whole suicide is a painless thing? Just refocus him on the testable material, the "Literati' stuff, and just teach him the bare minimum to pass this test. So I should teach the man to fish, right? Wrong.
"Is there a problem over here?" Fuzzy swings by our table, like he's somehow the clown in charge of this circus.
"Yeah, Romeo is a flocking pedophile date rapist who deserved to die." Butchy snaps back on instantly attack. And holy moly, the monster actually did learn something useful after all?
"And why you looking wrong at me like that, flocking Fuzzy Study Buddy guy?" Butchy snarls malevolently. "What? You like feel flocking sorry for dead child molesters or something?"
"Ah...no?" Fuzzyhead looks momentarily confused at me, and I eye bone him right back.
Welcome to the Butcher Shop bitch-boy, so no flocks to give here bro! So you are all on your lonesome with the Butcher from here on out chum.
"Good talk." Butchy snorts. "Now go away Fuzzy Flocker, cause I'm busy learning some bullshit."
Fuzzy surrenders what little is left of his masculinity, and drifts back to helping his study buddy. Who I note for the first time is the large breastboned girl that distracted Butchy earlier.
"Yeah, that's what I'm talking about." Butch grins his tombstone smile at Big Boobs. Who merely rolls her eyes back at him and readjusts her cleavage somewhat suggestively. Suddenly all the missing pieces of the puzzle start clicking together in my head.
Boney and Butchy are Study Buddies. But Fuzzy wanted to buddy up with Boney, so he had to get rid of Butchy? But The Butcher would never take being buddied up with gay Guys Mike without a fight. So he had to partner up Butchy with someone that The Butcher wouldn't bitch too much about being buddies with ...aka me. So that Fuzzy could stare at Boney's big boobs for an hour, while she struggled with whatever subject brought her here ...hopefully Sex Ed?
So now I am even more pissed off at this clown, then I was when I just thought someone had decided that Butchy's need to pass a test. So that he can play God's Game for the amusement of all the school spirits or whatever. And when I get pissed off like this, I don't get mad ...I get madness.
Welcome to Insanistan.