And I did want to slap them a little, mostly for that reason, but also because each one of them wore a Chicago Cubs batting glove on his right hand, and baseball was suck, and so was cuteness, and here was a combination. Except then I thought how one of their dads probably took them to a baseball game and bought them the gloves so they would always remember, and I felt bad for wanting to slap them at all. They were probably just nice.
When I came through the door, they stopped talking but pretended not to see me.
Hello, I said.
They huddled closer and whispered quieter. Then one of them asked, “Who are you? Are you Ben-Wa Wolf? Are you from the Cage?”
I couldn’t tell which one said it. It could have been any of them.
I said, “Where’s Nurse Clyde?”
Two of them said, “With Shpritzy,” a third one pointed at the Quiet Room door, and the fourth said, “Nurse Clyde said anyone who comes in should knock.” Their voices were identical. The office smelled like mouthwash.
I didn’t know who Shpritzy was, but the four guys, on closer inspection, seemed to be more sad than sleepy, so instead of knocking on the Quiet Room door, I sat down next to them, but with a chair between us, and instead of asking who Shpritzy was, I made a joke.
What’s shpritzy? I said.
“‘What’s Shpritzy’!” one of them said. “This boy just said, ‘What’s Shpritzy’!”
Two of the other ones slapped their knees. One of them clapped his hands together.
“Shpritzy’s not a what! He’s our best buddy,” one of them said. “He’s the best guy in the world besides these other guys here, who are also the best,” said another one of them. Then they all gave each other affirmative nods.
That was not a good enough reason to slap them.
I said, Is Shpritzy sick?
“He’s in pain.” “He got choked.” “And he got headlocked.” “He got thrown on the floor a lot.”
What about you guys? I said.
“We got full-nelsoned.” “And tackled.” “And held by the waist.” “Some of us were half-nelsoned for a little while.” “Some of us got our shoulders banged against the sinks during the half-nelsons.” “And some of us got knocked on the wall between the urinals while attempting to lunge at Shpritzy’s attacker.”
It’s good you tried to protect your friend, I said.
“We’re losers.” “We’re not losers, but we don’t know how to fight so we suck.” “We don’t suck, but we suck at fighting, so we’re sissies.” “We’re not sissies, but we’re small guys right now, and when we try to act brave we get held back and Shpritzy gets hurt.” “Ah, Shpritzy!” “Shpritzy’s such a good guy.” “We’re all good guys.” “We are. There’s nothing wrong with us.” “It’s the messed-up people who always want to fight that make us feel like there’s something wrong with us when really we’re fine and it’s these violent people that aren’t fine.” “Even they’re fine. It’s just that they don’t have great buddies like we do. Because they’re messed up.” “And their parents are alcoholics and divorced and very abusive. They’re messed up because they got messed up.” “It’s true. Those other guys are really okay, except that they think violence is okay, which isn’t okay because violence is wrong. But they only think it’s okay and not wrong because they got messed up.”
I said, You’re wrong. I said, Are you messed up?
“No way.” “We’re good.” “We’re nice to people.” “We don’t do violence.”
I said, But violence did you. I said, Violence did you just now, so you should be messed up.
“We’re different.” “It doesn’t work like that.” “We got messed up, but we’re not all messed up by it.” “Not like those other guys.”
How come, though? I said.
“I see what you mean. Do you guys see what this boy means?” “I think I do see what he means. He means that we just got messed up, but still we’re not all messed up.” “I think what he means is the guys who messed us up didn’t mess us up just because they were messed up by someone else, but because of some other reason.” “I think what he’s saying is that even though the people who mess up other people were probably messed up by different other people, it doesn’t mean they have to mess up the first other people since look at how we just got messed up but we’re not messing anyone else up.” “We’re just sitting here being sad about Shpritzy.” “So if we can get messed up and not be all messed up, then why can’t those other guys who messed us up not be all messed up?” “He means it’s their fault that they messed us up.” “He means we shouldn’t be so easy on them.” “We should mess them up ourselves.” “They messed up Shpritzy.” “We should mess them up back, but we can’t.” “But that’s why we were looking for Gurion Maccabee to begin with.” “No, we were looking for Gurion Maccabee to begin with because we wanted protection from getting messed up, not so he would mess up the guys who messed us up.” “We said to each other that it was protection we wanted, but we wanted him to mess up those other guys a little bit.” “We only wanted him to mess them up a little bit?” “No. We wanted, a little bit, for Gurion to mess them up a lot.” “But we called it protection.” “Right. We called it protection, when really it was mess-up.” “Are you Ronrico Asparagus?”
You’re looking for Asparagus, too? I said.
“Well we know he’s in the Cage.” “And so he knows Gurion.” “Are you from the Cage?” “Do you know Gurion?”
I said, Sure, but what makes you think he’ll mess these guys up for you?
“Gurion is the Lion Hammer!” “He brings justice.” “And he likes to mess people up.” “And we’re Jews.” “Our God is Adonai.” “Our homeland is Israel.” “Saturday’s our day off.” “We’re men at thirteen.” “And Gurion protects the Jews from the Canaanites and the Romans.” “And from the Jews who act against the Jews.” “And the righteous from the tyrants.” “And the kind from the wrongus.” “Except he doesn’t say ‘Jews.’” “He talks about Israelites cause of Hitler.” “Cause Hitler killed Jews.” “And Nebuchadnezzar did too.” “And Abdul Nasser.” “And Yasser Arafat.” “Haman.” “Saddam Hussein.” “Ismail Haniyeh.” “Stalin the Russian, in Russia and Poland.” “And lots of peasants everywhere.” “The Israelites became Jews and people kept killing them.” “Like in Night.” “And The Painted Bird.” “And the Olympics.” “And Tel Aviv and Gilo.” “There’s this Jewish school called Solomon Schecter and Gurion went there til he got kicked out because the principal thought he was the messiah. Then he went to Hebrew Day and got kicked out of there for teaching the Jews they were Israelites. Nathan Feingold told us.” “What he didn’t tell us, though, was that Gurion goes here.” “We only found that out yesterday!” “We think we found it out yesterday, at least.” “Well, we sort of found it out a couple months ago.” “If we found it out yesterday, then we’d already found it out a couple months ago when we heard this rhyme that you probably heard that goes, ‘Next stop Frontier motel, the place where Gurion’s fat black dad who fell dwells.’” “It was this kid Brad Snad who was singing the rhyme.” “And Gurion’s a really uncommon name.” “So we told Nathan Feingold about it.” “That a boy named Gurion went to our school.” “And we told him the rhyme.” “And Nathan Feingold, he told us, ‘Gurion’s dad’s not the black one. It’s his mom who’s black. And no way Gurion lives at a motel.’” “And that seemed very true.” “Because this Gurion’s dad is a famous lawyer.” “What lawyer lives in a motel?” “Except then about a week later, there was Brad Snad again, talking about Gurion.” “He told us about this kid Kyle McElroy getting stomped by Gurion for messing with some retarded kid called Lucas.” “But this time, when Snad told us about Gurion, he also said Gurion’s last name.” “Or at least he tried to.” “We thought he tried to.” “What Snad said was, ‘That Gurion MacIntyre is something.’” “And that made us think about how once he called Jerry Seinfeld Gary Steinfield.” “Snad did.” “This Snad is a kid who says lie-berry for library.” “And William Jeffenface Clim-ton and Gustav Clint.” “A boy who calls animals am-inals.” “Vice President Lon Cheney.” “Last Feb-you-ary, he told me that suntanes he gets real lonely on Valen-time’s day.” “Stevedore Milosovic.” “So we knew he was a dummkopf who was bad at remembering the sounds of words and names.” “Which is probably a serious blessing if your name is Brad Snad!” “You’re so funny, man! Seriously.” “I’m so glad we’re best buddies.” “Me too.” “And me three.” “Me four.” “Do you hear this, guys? ‘Me four,’ he says!” “I’m really cheering up here!”