Chapter Seven– Enjoy

Today I Learned What Became of my Long Lost Rival

Looked up the guy I referred to as “William Duboise” in my book, and he actually has quite an internet presence. Google his occupation and hobby, and he floats to the top of results among the living. He has a YouTube presence and I saw him. He’s been interviewed on radio and I heard him via MP3. Still, I’ve had some trouble actually recognizing him; perhaps his eyes have changed an iota since October of third grade, which was not the case when we reunited in seventh. He has gone by two different names and I looked them both up, and one page in particular referenced the name that he has now discarded. Yep, it’s him alright…same town…and outrageous intelligence, which I don’t mean as a pat on the back even though I beat the pants off him at the multiplication tables. He was ridiculously accomplished even in junior high, and that has carried over nicely as he’s lived his adult life.

What gets me more than anything is how similar we appear even in our emotional make-up. The rivalry was based on our being one-two in almost everything both academic and athletic when we first knew each other. Emotionally, all I could have said at the time was that I liked him. I don’t know that we talked about anything, least not substantive. But lo, fast forward to the present day and he’s a writer just like myself, a speaker if the radio show was any indication, and I got a glimpse of his inner life I’ve never had before, save for briefly secondhand through “Todd Stickley”. He might be just the sort who’d dig Monstrous.

Yesterday’s Imaginary Friends Expanded Upon

‘Maximilian’: homeless guy
Rex: dinosaur ‘lizard king’

Big Ben (Benjamin Durrend): dinosaur challenge to Rex who later morphs into a 9’6″ basketball playing human– one for the Monstrousphiles!

Ronnie Croy Barrel: beloved anti-christ
Texxie McWhizz: one-time world’s fastest man
Chick McQueen: All-Sports Pioneer
Bassman Jodi: incarnation of mom
Vern Valentine Sr.: leader of the clan
Vern Valentine Jr.: eldest son

Victor Valentine: brain in a family of athletes wore glasses– Monstrousphiles!

Vander Valentine: coolest of the cool
Vincent Valentine: barnstorming baseball team member
Veal Valentine: barnstorming baseball team member

Jackie Valentine: best baseballer in history had over a hundred HRs one year– M!

Bobbie Valentine– baby of the family

Omar Belitnakoff: ran absolutely wild; basketballer was 7’9″, brilliant on ‘D’ and missed about half of his dunks– M!

Ollie Johnson: The Living Master
General Bernard Sanford: Top cop in the country
Brad: plain Joe proprietor

Stottlemeyer: Philly Flag basketball sharpshooter– M!
Warski: Philly Flag bruiser fouled out a lot– M!
D’Angelo: Flag bricked most of his lay-ins– M!
Jose Brown: very Rod Carew-ish
(Customs Booth Agent): a nation unto himself

Roll Call of Imaginary Friends

From half-blown to full-blown, and including those ‘friends’ I was not on especially good terms with, limited to characters who made my book and who I can name off the top of my head. The Monstrousphiles can look forward to a future post in which I reel off the names of characters who were never mentioned.

I maintained an elaborate network of imaginary heroes and friends into the age of thirteen, and quarter-blown derivatives of imaginary friends would survive many years later. Twice I’ve had readers from my miniscule pool liken my network to multiple personalities, and one of them was herself a multiple. Not the way I had thought of myself in relation to my gang when I was first getting it down on paper, but over time this idea has become more attractive.

‘Maximilian’
Rex
Big Ben (Benjamin Durrend)
Ronnie Croy Barrel
Texxie McWhizz
Chick McQueen
Bassman Jodi
Vern Valentine Sr.
Vern Valentine Jr.
Victor Valentine
Vander Valentine
Vincent Valentine
Veal Valentine
Jackie Valentine
Bobbie Valentine
Omar Belitnakoff
Ollie Johnson
General Bernard Sanford
Brad
Stottlemeyer
Warski
D’Angelo
Jose Brown
(Customs Booth Agent)

Transcendent Woman

Or maybe not quite. But a stride in that direction. Give it another generation, and an addict more serious about keeping their addiction a secret. If we can evolve pigeons to clean the garbage off city streets, we can evolve a person who doesn’t keel from guzzling gasoline.

I fail to see the long-term upside, however, given that gasoline is a fuel that is supposedly on its way out. But a person becoming more like a machine does sound like the wave of the future. The newest crop of chess grandmasters resemble computers more in their play, due to their exposure to them, and the ratings keep stretching upward.

Transcendent Man

Bo Jackson had a few things going for him as a kid toward potentially becoming a serial killer someday. A stutter and kids making fun of him, and his feeling weird for being the only kid in the neighborhood who didn’t have a father.

Oh, and he got into trouble.

I’m made to wonder, if he were growing up today, if his fatherlessness would have been mitigated by the fact it can now be the norm in black neighborhoods. It’s better to have both parents around, but at least not having both isn’t weird.

Bo Jackson in his prime was oft-described as a superman, and Nietszche had quite a bit to say on the superman subject. Could Jackson’s circumstances growing up have informed his physical body? Was growing faster and stronger his way to evolve and break free of his bad situation?

Is anyone out there besides me capable of thinking along these lines?

Dahmer a Bad Guy?

As in a guy who was bad? Yeah, I guess he was…but that’s really not the way I’m accustomed to thinking of him. I have seen photos that have told me Dahmer made it to some place other than human, and I have felt happy for him.

I have also seen– locked eyes with– a cannibal in real life, with direct knowledge of his cannibalism, and the experience was incredibly unnerving. More so than that of watching the one kittycat eat another. Because you know if he had the chance he’d eat me.

Might Have to Budge Your Timeline from 0:00 to 0:01

No idea why this should be, but twice now this video has just spun its wheels when trying to load, until I have given this shove.

Chapter Six covers the future would-be serial killer’s experience in the third grade. Reading quality down a notch on account of a budding sore throat which didn’t seem much a deal at the time. New kind of error committed, and darned if I didn’t do it twice– replacing the sacred text with a supposedly interchangeable word.

M

Some Things Better Left Unsaid

But I am nothing in this space if not compulsive. The best line in my book is attributed to another person, but I’m the one who made it so great. What ‘Dwight’ actually said was “Bo Does Ursula”, in the same sense that Debbie Does Dallas.

Remember telling Dwight [a bisexual] I was in love with both Ursula the porn queen and Bo Jackson of the Kansas City Royals, that I couldn’t make up my mind. Dwight could relate to that. He suggested as the ultimate fuck flick, “Bo Knows Ursula”.

[page 366]

I’ve never heard anyone else mention my ultimate Bo Jackson moment. Remember the time Bo Jackson hit into that double play? He hit the ball so hard I thought my god, a sure triple play! Never in my life had I seen a sure triple play ground ball. And he freakin’ beat it out!

This One’s More Perfect Than I Asked It To Be

— which is typical.

Thinking back on the subject of sex, it seems almost a given that my first remembrance would be of witnessing a perversion. Simply by virtue of my witnessing since sex is generally kept from public view. The first I recall was an instance of bestiality.

I was in a group of kids on the periphery of which a Doberman was walking around, and Dodd Wilhelm, the oldest at seven, was showing off his brother, the youngest at probably three. Dodd was saying of his brother, “He’ll try anything.”

We said no he won’t.

Dodd told his brother, “Go suck the dog’s dick.” The kid walked up to the Doberman and did as he was told.

This first exposure to sex in some form could well be the likeliest story to trip up my anonymity, because I memorably had a telling of this story read aloud in my senior Child Development class. Everyone else’s first had been so innocuous, and my teacher had been blushing and flustered in advance of uttering my punchline. She finally got another student to read it in her place.

Had I kept this telling in mind, I would have had no business normalizing first-time perversions as a “given”, for clearly my first experience was atypical. But it certainly was suggestive of my attitude at the time, and notwithstanding, why should it have been otherwise, when the following is the memory that followed it:

My second was of playing Doctor, me and Dodd examining a little girl. Must’ve been at my folks’ because at one point Melissa opened the door and started shrieking, “Get away from that girl!” while advancing like a house afire.

Sucking a dog’s dick brought no wrath. To the contrary it impressed a whole group of kids. Looking at a girl was traumatic.