The Ballad of a Playground Bully
A short story chronicling an encounter at the roller rink from a playground bully's perspective. And the influence of hair gel and "Quiet Riot".
The sound of bike spokes when fitted with a small piece of cardboard can serve to cheaply replicate the sound of a motor. The faster you pedal, the more powerful sounding your engine. If you didn’t already know this, then you probably were not a kid growing up in the 80’s.
Roaming the neighbourhoods on his bicycle, Nick often used this trick to define his presence. It was not enough that one could see Nick making his rounds, but he often enjoyed knowing that people could hear him too. He knew it would not last, this temporary solution, this means of being a nuisance. He remained relatively confident that in a few years, he would not need a cheap piece of cardboard placed between his spokes to make him a man. He would have the real thing: a Kawasaki motorbike, the same as his older brother Travis. With this piece of machinery, he could terrorise the neighbourhood for real. Until then he was biding time. Kids like Nick knew that childhood was nothing but a compromise and the faster you could get it over with, the better.
There were two things Nick hated about his lot in life at nine years old. First and foremost was the vein that stuck out prominently from his forehead that he could do nothing about. The vein signalled to people that he was not to be messed with but it also functioned as a deformity and a weakness. His brother Travis mocked it constantly. One time Travis had even tried to hold Nick’s face to a grill in an effort to make it bleed. He swayed away the pain by concentrating on the song that was playing on the radio at the time: “Electric Avenue” by Eddie Grant.
This did not work but he had been forced to go to the emergency room with wretched burns. Months later the burns had healed nicely but he still had the vein. Later Nick realised that on the playground some people felt sorry for Frankenstein. But most feared him and his vein. Respect the vein. Respect the monster. That was what he could hope for.
The second thing that consumed his eight year old brain was that weirdo of a show-off named Johnny Kasinsky on the playground. Lately he was going up to all the girls and offering to marry them. To be clear, Johnny was not proposing to these girls. Nick could have at least understood this gesture. The problem according to Nick was that this guy was officiating. There was a litany of things wrong with this. From what little Nick understood about religion, he had never seen a kid marry anybody. And from what life had taught him: you had to be an adult and a little bit miserable to make it official. No kids could marry other kids. But there Johnny was, in the middle of the playground next to the sand box acting like he was some kind of big shot marrying any old boy and girl that happened to want to be hitched that day. Johnny even had the girls make some temporary arch way with construction paper flowers to make the whole thing fancy. This was unacceptable. Recess was his, not Johnny’s.
Johnny’s look was Duran Duran pins on a white jean jacket. He wore hair gel.
Nick’s was pure Member’s only jacket, “Quiet Riot” t shirts and ripped jeans. There was a lot of difference here.
Johnny’s hair cut was a straight down the line “Supercuts” type deal. Johnny’s mom had obviously coughed up some cash for his stylings but all Nick received was a DIY cut from his Ma. His family was too poor for Supercuts. His mother Sandy insisted that she cut his hair while he sat backwards on a chair in the middle of the kitchen. Nick would always end up with a mullet and a straight fringe across his forehead. He would complain but it did no good. His Ma had enough problems without him going on about his hair. Travis would insist that his hair was the least of his problems.
“When you get older, you’ll see, you’ll get it from all sides and then you won’t even be thinking about your hair anymore.” Nick was pretty sure he knew what this meant but he wasn’t sure. “What are you worried about your hair for? You got a nasty green vein dividing your forehead in two.”
And so it would go. He would suck it up and go to school. It was at school that he could over react to all the things at home that didn’t make sense or provided cold comfort. He’d pick fights about any subject under the sun on the playground. Outwardly it was someone who had laid a hand on his precious Member’s only jacket. But really, all he was thinking of was his brother’s fat face, or the time his father had hauled him out of the car on the shoulder of a busy freeway to spank him in front of all the other cars going by.
Then he started seeing pretty boy Johnny marrying off all the girls in fourth grade and it got personal. This time when he imagined what a skull would sound like when he cracked with his fist, it was John’s smug face he was thinking about.
Many girls liked Johnny boy’s look. It put them at ease. This was probably one reason most young ladies were willing to let him marry them. It was the way he applied that glop of pink gel to his scalp in the mornings that made the difference. He may have a piggy face but blonde girls like Tanya Hastings said it made him look like a member of an English new wave band. Nick was mad that girls took Johnny seriously like this. He was also furious he had not got there first. First you’re officiating marriages and then you’re the guy all the girls want to talk to. It gave this little piggy all his power.
Nick liked “Quiet Riot” and used to sing their anthem “Come On Feel The Noise”: their reworking of the Slade song on the swing set at playtime.
Quiet Riot "Come on feel the Noise"
He also watched the show “The A Team” and there was not an hour in the day that didn’t go by when he did not think about Mister T and his gold chains. Nick wanted some of these gold chains. These were real things to think about. These were adult things. Righteous things. These were the pre-occupations of a leader, not some overgrown sissy boy who insisted on marrying girls on the playground.
The last straw was that weekend seeing Johnny at the roller rink skating in circles to the strains of his “Quiet Riot” song. Nick had been taken there on Saturday afternoon after AYSO soccer. Nick was still in his uniform. His mother had dropped him off and split. He was lef tto fend for himself for a few hours with five dollars and a prayer.
Look at that Johnny. Skating around in circles without a care in the world. His soccer team had not even won but there they all were, his team mates, ordering pitchers of punch and skating in circles like dufuses.
Nick skated past Suzy Summers. Nothing. No love. He skated past Sandra and Courtney. Nothing. He even skated past Tanya Hastings. Not even a look up in his direction as he passed her in the strobed light. The rink owners had the big screen playing the music video for Denise Wiliam's’ “Let’s Hear It For the Boys” and then they played “Men without Hats” and the place exploded. Everyone liked the Safety Dance and it filled him with mixed emotions. It wasn’t stupid with European running around in middle earth costumes with dwarves, it was cool and manly.
Safety Dance by Men without Hatts
Nick wore his Quiet Riot pins on the straps of his soccer uniform in anticipation that they might play quiet Riot and then they did. And then he caught a glance of Johnny boy skating around playing air guitar like he was in the band himself. And then, like a school of fish, the girls accepted Johnny into their rolling cluster. He had their attention. Tanya Hastings included. Meanwhile Nick could only think about his vein: an ugly symbol he would have to troll around the rest of his life. And then Johnny began to air drum to the chorus. This was the part in the song when everything broke down and all you could hear were the strains of an angry man shouting out the song’s title. But this was his move. His signature. How dare Johnny Kasinksy? This was what he did to rock out. His brother Travis had taught him that jamming along with your favourite song in this way was absolutely an acceptable way of showing your emotion and of proving that you knew what was righteous in the world. And now here was that jerk Johnny doing it with his perfect hair and his Duran Duran pins? A traitor from another tribe? This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Nick rolledup to Johnny in a roller fury and brought his knuckles to his face like the t.v. had taught him. It felt good to connect with flesh. Nick rolled on and did not look back. He made a full rotation of the rink before he was stopped by a concerned band.
Nick felt the violent tug of someone grabbing the back of his sweatshirt and dragging him on to the carpet. Here, among the arcade and soda machines, Johnny’s mother, Rhonda Kasinsky now had his son’s torturer right where she wanted him. She had seen the whole thing and now wanted answers, justifications, apublic apology. At this point, Tanya Hastings had now rolled up court side with some of her friends to watch the trial from the safety of the rink.
Nick looked Rhonda Kasinsky in the face and answered her accusations.
Why did you punch my son? It was hard to hear her with the sound of the video game Pole Position in the background announcing for cars to head to the starting line.
And then there was enough of a break for Nick to get in a word edgewise: “You’ve got t stop marrying people,” he said to both mother and son in his defence. Suddenly the berating stopped. John’s mother who, had just a few moments prior, felt so confident before suddenly turned her jet stream of doubt and venom towards her own son.
“What’s this about marrying people?” Johnny had no good answer for her.
“I am going to say it again Johnny Kasinsky. What is this about marrying people?”
Tanya now gave her testimony from the rink.
“He married Sheila and Tom the other day. I was there. He stands there with a bible and pretends to marry people.
“With who’s bible?”
“I don’t know. Then we throw confetti which is actually just cut up construction paper and the janitor’s been complaining about how he needs to clean it up.”
“I think that’s our bible,” Johnny’s mother added, retracing things that now made sense.
“Why would you do that? Why would you think you would need to do that? That’s a holy act!”
She turned to her son in the dark and pulled him up to take his place in the light. Here she could finally get a good clean look at his lying eyes. Nick felt good. Nick felt worthy and justified. He was glad an adult had finally put some perspective on this whole marrying kids in the playground thing. They all heard a voice from the rink, some adolescent boy had heard enough about the conversation on his rotations round the rink to call us them all “gay” and keep rolling on.
“You.” Johnny’s mom meant Nick. I want you to apologise to my son. “I don”t care what he has been doing, you do not hit my son, you hear me? Or else you gonna’ get your own dose of whooping. We clear?”
This was language Nick understood. Finally someone was addressing his core.
“Also Johnny: you got to promise to knock this marrying stuff off. It’s creepy and it’s weird and it stops now. We clear?” Rhonda’s son quickly acquiesced.
Nick and Johnny both nodded their head in unison and immediately resented each other for doing so. Rhonda now retrieved a make up swab from her bag and began wiping away the blood on her son’s face.
“Now why don’t you all eat some pizza. I didn’t go and get all those pies for nothing. Rhonda now went off to find some sort of adult supervision. She couldn’t help wondering where the coach was in all of this. Probably round the back smoking with the other teen employees.
Nick felt more than relieved. He felt heard. Finally someone had bore witness to the weirdness of playtime marriages. It was his first sense of real justice. Of someone listening to his plight and it had been from the mother of his worst enemy. It was good for thought. He slowly got up and headed to the wooden tables that now were laden with steaming hot pizza boxes. He took a slice of cheese and found himself wishing they would play Quiet Riot’s “Come On Feel The Noise” again as he sulked in the corner. He took off his skates and sat Indian style on the carpet. He looked to see if he could see Rhonda Kasinsky again and he was relieved to see her now joining the kid crowd again. She had a kind face, slender and attractive but brimming with common sense. Now this was someone he could spend more time with. “If only Johnny weren’t part of the package,” he muttered to himself.