Allister by Barnaby Hazen

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Allister


    I shot him in the thigh with a wrist-rocket—a fancy sling-shot from the army surplus store. I can’t think of having done such a thing to anyone else. I don’t remember how I came to attack him, other than that he could on occasion annoy me terribly, and I suppose that morning, on the school bus, had been one of those occasions, crossed with the ownership of a new weapon I was eager to employ.
    Allister was socially cursed in many ways—his voice was nasal, his face outlandishly craterous, his dark hair curly with oil, pants climbing up his shins—but most importantly, he had no fighting skills, yet presented incorrigible defiance at the face of tormentors.
    As a K-9th-grade performing arts magnet school, kids were bussed across Los Angeles from various districts. I couldn’t begin to tell you where Allister was from, or how it was that my bus would pick him up along the way from my neighborhood, to Silver Lake, to South Central Los Angeles but as soon as he was on the bus and throughout the day, he was a target.
    It was the early 1980s, and surf culture—modeled after Sean Penn in Ridgemont High--had been the heart of the school’s infrastructure since before I enrolled. A central group of white kids from Venice Beach ran all social aspects of the institution, as had those students with real gang or drug affiliations in my previous schools.
    I came from a very tough neighborhood in East L.A, and I guess I thought that might carry some weight for me at 33rd St. Performing Arts. One morning, soon after enrolling I found myself surrounded by a relatively harmless batch of older kids wanting only to throw me in the dumpster by the cafeteria as a manner of welcoming me to the school. I was a small kid in eighth grade, but athletic. I played all sports available to me, with older, streetwise youth. During one football game, someone considerably larger than I surrounded my waist for a tackle, and I proceeded to drag him two or three yards, then, when he hadn’t let go, I quickly pivoted my body to slam him against the fence, and he fell off. This won some cheers, laughter and respect from older Latino kids who might on other days have beaten and humiliated me.
    Similarly did I evade the 33rd Street hazing. There was no chasing, nor fighting back per se—I recall simply dropping my body weight with every attempt to lift me, then squirming with all my will. Eventually I outlasted my attackers, earning an initial free pass against abuse.
    On another occasion, I was taken too far off guard to protect myself. I don’t know what possesses a kid to think he might start a new trend, or bring upon himself admiration by wearing something out of the ordinary at the middle-grade levels, but I had the idea to combine fashion concepts very much out of place at 33rd: kids from my neighborhood often wore bandanas, and Kim, a Vietnamese friend from the same neighborhood, had been obsessed with the movie Apocalypse Now, since watching it with an older sibling. This meant we took frequent bike trips to army surplus stores so he could gear up with all kinds of military paraphernalia. From these two influences—young gang affiliates who had been terrorizing me most of my life, and a Vietnamese boy fetishizing the Vietnam war—I landed on what seemed a cool hybrid expression: a camouflage bandana, wrapped loosely just over my eyebrows.
    Within minutes of the item’s debut on campus, a tall, lanky, erratic kid from the Venice crew named Justin approached me with crinkled eyebrows and a quick hand: “What’s up, Jeremy? You think you’re all bad with your stupid bandana!” and he grabbed it, jerking my head back and forth.
    It was not particularly painful, just a little traumatic to my neck, but this was the type of bullying prevalent at the 33rd street school—domination in passing. I didn’t respond, kept walking, though I was choked up about it, as much disappointed that the bandana had brought shame to me as I was ashamed of having been throttled. It was unpleasant, and I don’t remember if I continued to wear the bandana in defiance of Justin for the rest of the day, but nothing more came of it, and I certainly did not try wearing it again on any other day.
    This isolated incident for me was what Allister had come to expect from his life at school generally. I don’t know how many times I saw someone grabbing at his backpack to swing him in circles after making fun of some aspect of him, such as his acne, the way he spoke, or an item of clothing. Maybe sometimes kids would go as far as to kick him in the butt or keep something away from him without any instigation to speak of. Had he done as I had—walked on, ignored it, maybe cloaked himself after the first time, with some small adjustment in garb or behavior—he might have seen a little less abuse.
    Instead he provoked his attackers with protests, such as “Leave me alone!” or “Let go of my backpack!” He would even call them names sometimes, pushing members of the Venice crew into more violent tactics, such as punching him in the stomach or face. These were mild beatings compared to my previous school, but troubling when one witnessed the process of escalation, hoping he’d take an easier way out.
    I feel I ought to remember something more about him, apart from his being bullied, but I do not. Was he clever in class? Had he played an important role in the Dungeons and Dragons games hosted by the drama teacher at lunch? Might he have even outscored me romantically, with an awkward date at one of the dances? These all seem plausible, likely even, as I consider his great interest in academics, the likelihood of his involvement with role-playing games, and his unyielding optimism, despite all that was working against him, for living a normal social life from day to day. That he could have taken this optimism to the point of asking one of very few likely candidates out and securing a date, I wouldn’t doubt—I’m even calling up memories of seeing him dancing with someone, though I know my mind is capable of filling in blanks with images when the actual memory lacks substance.  
    Yet the pictures I have of Allister are all during acts of violence and ridicule against him, including the day I hit him with a projectile. I want to say I did so out of outrage, following an argument. I hated New Wave, or pop keyboard music of the 80s—had he been singing the praises of Duran Duran, and disrespecting bands I was fond of, like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath? I don’t recall, but I think it’s just as likely a neighbor dared me into it, since I had just bought the wrist-rocket at the same store where I purchased the camouflage bandana, and I was itching to try it out.
    No picture of male-perpetrated middle school abuse would be complete without the mention of homophobic accusation. It’s strange that the higher up one went on the chain, the more he could jokingly insinuate in himself elements of homosexuality without fear of losing status. The Venice Beach crowd proved this by mockingly provoking one another with pantomime and promises of favor, yet they could turn around in the same breath with derogatory language against people outside the circle to imply the greatest insult employable.
    The most extreme act along these lines I can’t confirm, but wouldn’t doubt. One winter, before Christmas break, Justin and a few others had reportedly created a batch of cookies to give out by taking turns ejaculating into the batter the night before. They were sure to give one to the History teacher, a rather flamboyant man assumed by the student population to be gay. “How did you like it?” they bragged of asking him, afterward imitating his enthusiastic response and smile. Allister also had to have been at the top of their list for giving these out, and this is where their cruelty seemed most severe—when playing off his optimism and acting kindly toward him, which he seemed to never stop believing might be sincere.
    For myself, having only participated in his abuse the one time, I feel no less ashamed. Though I had never caused him any suffering before, the day I shot him he said nothing about it, nor acted any differently toward me for the rest of the school year; as if it had come to be expected that everyone would hurt him at one time or another and if he let that change his worldview, his fiber would crack and there would be nothing but injury left of his being.  
    As vague as my recollections of Allister may be, I will never forget the last I saw of him. It was his graduation ceremony—meaning he must have been a year ahead of me, as I did not graduate that day. Outside the huge auditorium at a neighboring university with which we were affiliated, I came to hear his name from a growing number of circulating students, passing on the urgent message that everyone in the school ought to cheer loudest for Allister when it came time for him to accept his certificate.
    I hadn’t put together entirely what to make of this, nor thought much about it. I had become increasingly introverted following a party at my own house; there I got into a fight, with boxing gloves, taken insult one too many times by a Venice kid named Eric, who was closer to my size than his friends from the beach and attending without the rest of his crew.
    I ended up beating him until he broke into tears; then I turned away and started crying as well, feeling I had gone too far. A girl from the neighborhood named Silvia took me aside and angelically assured me that I had every right to have done so; he had been, “asking for it,” she said. “You even had gloves on—it was all…civilized and shit!”
   Still I found no pleasure in what should have been a moment of vindication, and from this, my detachment from the social order and pecking tactics of the world fell into such a state that the plan to cheer sarcastically for Allister had no impact on me until I heard them all, in thunderous applause and over the top cheers and whistles. Then I saw the look on Allister’s face—pure surprise, genuine delight. With sickness in my stomach, I applauded languidly as I had for all but my few close friends, not wanting to consider what might happen if Allister were to find out nearly everyone at the school had been convinced to insult him with inauthentic enthusiasm.
    Later, outside the ceremony, where many were signing yearbooks and clinging to each other with promises of lifelong friendship, others of us watching, waiting for parents, I saw Eric and Allister bickering in a familiar line of argument. Eric was imitating Allister’s voice, “Shut up, Eric!” then with deadly seriousness, claiming freedom from future relations between them: “I am so glad I won’t ever have to see you again after this. Do you know how glad I am I won’t be seeing you, like ever again?”
    Allister, having spotted his ride, answered just before dashing away: “Well at least I got a bigger round of applause than you did, Eric!”


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Barnaby Hazen is an author, musician and aspiring anarchist. His work has appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician and won for fiction categories in The Independent Press and Beverly Hills Book Awards. Originally from Los Angeles, he now lives with his wife, Sarah, in Taos, New Mexico.

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