One time me and Jason Polan decided to write a 1000 page story that we alternated every ten pages, and we didn't tell each other what the plot was. I wrote 4 single spaced pages, sent it to him in an e-mail and we never talked about it again. Here it is.
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Chapter 1:
Peter, on the bus.
8/24/98
Peter sat at the edge his front porch, it was cement. In the cement porch there was a small crack, when it rained it filled with water. When the water froze for the winter the water turned to ice, it expanded, and the expanding ice broke the front porch even more. For the past seven years he has watched the crack in the steps grow larger and larger. It wasn’t until 3 month earlier that he knew how why the crack grew each year. It wasn’t until 3 months earlier that he didn’t have a dad.
Peter sat on the steps waiting for the bus. He poked the crack with a small twig; ants crawled out the crack on to the twig, he watched the ants fall and get sucked in to the crack. He wondered where they went. As he stared at the crack he wondered it the kids on the bus will think he is poor, because of the crack in is front porch. He thought the steps looked pretty low class, like he was a slum lord or something. His house was pretty nice despite the minor crack; it has a nice garden in front his mom planted. Some flowers were dead though, there was a fungus in the soil. Last year a guy tried to sell their family some fertilizer to kill the fungus. His dad refused the service and instead peed in a cup of bleach and poured in on the flowers, it surprisingly worked well against the fungus. Peter guessed his mom didn’t follow in his father’s path because if she peed in cup she would probably get pee on her hands. Girls pee different he thought.
Peter thought a lot about his dad lately, not many kids start their fifth grade year without a dad. A lot of kids have two dads, but not many only have one. Peter sort of wished he had two dads sometimes, but he likes having a mom to.
Peter dangled the stick as he waited for the bus. He was happy to start school again. The summer was pretty much a bore fest for Peter. He got to play video games, but he didn’t get to go fishing. He got to wear tang-tops, but he didn’t get to walk around pant-less. It was a summer of give and takes. He was happy to be wearing shorts today. It was warm enough to wear fashionable green shorts. There was a gecko surfing on the bottom of the shorts, he assumed surfing geckos are really in this season, the fifth graders would probably beg to differ. Peter didn’t really care what the older kids thought about him though. He knew that they would get older, and get Alzheimer’s way before he would. It is the very nature of being older.
His shorts were bunched near his groin. At the right angle someone power- walking on the street could probably see his underwear from the street. He was too young for boxers, so his penis was not visible; the red power ranger that cupped his dinger was visible though.
After what seemed like an eternity the bus finally arrived. His mom wasn’t awake to kiss him good bye, so he walked to the bus alone. He was a little sad, she would usually kiss him before he left for school, he liked kissing his mom. The sadness lasted only a brief moment because he saw his favorite bus drive, Mrs. Whytoshek. When Peter was in second grade the bus drivers name was Mrs Dibbsey but because Peter’s two front teeth were missing he called her Mrs. Tippsey. He was young, and he couldn’t help it. After two months of calling her Mrs. Tippsey, Mrs. Dibbsey got super pissed and made Peter sit in the front of the bus.
For about a week Peter played it cool and thought nothing of it. But after a week of sitting in the front, Peter got mad, he liked sitting near the back so he could sit over the wheel well, he liked that seat because it made him feel like a ‘big kid,’ also the kids in the back seat talked about Dr. Dre. Peter liked it because it reminded him of Dr. Pepper. It was his favorite cola. He told his dad about how he had to sit the front everyday, and his dad got pretty angry. Peter didn’t understand. He called up the bus garage and demanded to talk to the one in charge. Peter’s dad talked sternly to the garage owner. Peter watched his neck vein bulged as he screamed about age discrimination. Peter knew the neck vein burst out of love. When the bus garage owner finally went to talk to Mrs. Dibbsey she found her in the back seat of her bus making out and getting ‘tipsy’ with a minor. What made it even more embarrassing was that the under aged boy Mrs. Dibbsey was really making out with was actually a girl. Mrs. Dibbsey, not being a lesbo, really was disgusted with her self after that. She quit her job after that and Mrs. Whytoshek took her spot.
The minor she was makin’ it with was Jillian Veinhorn. She goes by Jim in the 4th through 8th grade circles. She doesn’t like her budding breasts and her newly hairy vagina, so she puts socks in her underwear and tapes down her supple pre teen breasts down with electrical tape. She still rides on the bus. She usually sits with her boy-toy Robert, fifth graders suspect he may be a transsexual.
Peter smiled when he saw his friend Jackson riding the bus. Jackson was black and he always thought it was cool to be friends with a rapper. Jackson was adopted and had white parents. He had never rapped in his life. Peter fell into the common misnomer that all black people can rap. He was young; he did not learn this stereotype from his dad. He probably learned it from his racist dentist, Mr. Dempsey.
“Jackson, how was your summer.”
“It was pretty cool; my brother taught me how to skateboard. I can do flips and stuff. What did you do over summer?”
“I didn’t do very much; mostly I sat around a lot. I had a stupid baby sitter, she was really stupid. All she did was watch little house on the prairie and smoke cigarettes…oh! I saw her boob once.”
“What, her boob! EEEWWWW!”
“Yeah, it was pretty gross. She made me play outside, but playing outside it really stupid. I hate it out side. I just wanted to play Super Mario 3 but she wouldn’t let me. I got bored so I went inside and I saw her touching her booby.”
“Why was she doing that?”
“She was putting lotion or something on it.”
The boys laughed about Peter’s old baby sitter, Melanie, and her breasts the rest of the bus ride. They talked about how ‘boobies’ are gross and that boys are better because they can take their shirts off. They also showed each other their nipples and Peter pretended to rub lotion on his nipples by rubbing spit on his nips. For a second their nipples touched.
“Hey put your shirts on back their.” Mrs. Whytoshek yelled at the boys for lifting their shirt up. They put their shirts back on and laughed some more, it was like old times again, it was like fourth grade. Daisy was a little disappointed when Peter and Jackson put their shirts back down. She was sitting across from Peter and Jackson, but they didn’t notice her sexually gazing at their nipples. Daisy didn’t know why she couldn’t stop looking at their nipples, but she knew she liked it. She somehow knew she liked it more that there were two boys doing it at the same time. She put her face back up against the window when Mrs. Whytoshek yelled at the boys. She tried to go back to sleep like she did everyday last year, but she couldn’t fall sleep. She wondered if it was because she wasn’t used to sleeping on the bus again, or if it because she was so sexed up from seeing the boys skinny, shinny, slippery body. Daisy replayed the image of Peter and Jackson’s nipples rubbing and flicking off each other over and over the rest of the bus ride.
The Bus arrived at Screeching Hawk Elementary School at 8:13am, perfect timing for the first day of school. Mrs. Whytoshek is always on time. Peter stared out the window at Screeching Hawk Elementary School, the only school ever built over an Indian burial graveyard. He starred at the school like he had never seen it before. The school seemed so different to him with out a father. Somehow the gray bricks of the school looked different. The windows didn’t seem to be in the same place, the grass wasn’t the right color, the flowers, trees, signs; everything was different, yet entirely familiar. For the first time he felt no comfort in the wall of Screeching Hawk Elementary School.
“Come on man, we have to go to class, you can’t stay on the bus all day.” Jackson friendlily said.
Peter sat in a daze staring at the school. His mouth hung low and his pupils dilated, he wasn’t in the bus anymore. He was in his mind, going through a file cabinet of memories. He thought about the time he peed his pants and his dad brought him a new pair of pants. He remembered the way his dad smiled even though Peter had dried urine on his crotch. He remembers his dads hug in the office, and his whispers of it’s ok, it happens sometimes. He remembered his face was rough and his untrimmed beard scratched his face. Even though Peter thought his face was bleeding he felt happy and loved in his fathers embrace.
“Come on you douche, get off the bus.” Peter awoke from his daze with his face slammed against the bus window. Kyle was another fifth grader. He is a constant trouble. Last year he ate paste so he would puke at lunch. He knew if he ate paste he would puke, so during art class he put some paste in a little baggy he stole from his mom. She had a lot of baggies because she sells cocaine. At lunch he scooped a handful of paste into his burrito, and then he ate his burrito. A few minutes later he was puking in the hair of Ginny White. He loved her and hated her in the same breath. That day he hated her. She had to comb the puke out of her hair because it was mixed with paste and it was simply too thick to just wash out. People could smell the puke in her hair for days. Lately Kyle has loved her.
“Hey man, that wasn’t nice.” Jackson stood up for his friend. “Come on man say you’re sorry, that was not cool.”
Peter sat in his seat with a sad look on his face. He wondered if this is what he gets for not having a dad, beatings.
“Fuck off!” Kyle shouted the obscenity in the face of Jackson. Jackson had never said that word, hard to say if he had ever even heard it, but in his very core, he knew that that was the most powerful word he had ever heard. It seemed to posses a power like he had never heard in a word. It’s as if the word came out of Kyle’s mouth with an invisible razor blade. Jackson stood in awe as Kyle walked away. The bus driver hadn’t seen a thing; she was eating a barbecue chicken ranch sub from Subway. It was new and she liked it.
“Come on Peter, let’s go.” Jackson stuck out his hand to help his friend out of the seat. Jackson noticed Peter’s sudden look of sadness, but he said nothing. He assumed it was because of Kyle.
“Thanks man.” Peter held the hand of his friend and pulled him self up. He felt happy again, like his age again. Jackson and Peter held hands as they walked off the bus.
Daisy was still in the bus seat. She saw the entire interaction between Jackson, Peter, and Kyle. In the same zombified way Peter starred at the school, Daisy stared at the boys. She was in a daze not because she had forgotten memories of her father in her mind; she had unexplained images of boys, naked boys in her head. She couldn’t explain them, but the more she thought of naked wieners, bare chests, and smooth buttholes, the better she felt. This was the first time she had thought of all these foreign images. She walked off the bus to her first day of school as horny as a feral cat. She was only 9 years old.
Peter let go of Jackson’s hand as he walked into the front door of Screeching Hawk Elementary School. It was the first day of school and he had been in this same spot 4 times before; looking at a known school, wondering about the unknown future, the first day of school ahead of him. This time though, he was here with out a father. For the first time, he felt alone.
