The following stories were scattered or lost for some time.
I wrote them in 1998 for my first Web site, "Songs to Learn
and Sing." I haven't rewritten them, updated any opinions
or recast any relationships. I checked the spelling, capitalized
a few words and that is all. I wanted to leave them nice and raw.
Preamble
Very few people are lucky enough to have friends like Pete and Kirk. We have been through a lot together. Like men in combat, our experiences have created a bond which cannot be easily broken. Over time and distance there is a link which is almost tangible. Months can go by without contact (I'm talking about Pete here mostly) and when it is resumed, it is like no time has passed. Whatever changes occur in our lives, we will always have more in common than not. And now, here is an homage to my two favorite bitches.
Origins of the Principle Players
Mike Kinney
It would be impossible for anyone not directly mentioned in the following stories to understand their humor or relevance without my first speaking briefly about who or what Mike Kinney is. This is a very difficult subject for me to address because so much of it has left me permanently, psychologically scarred. When I refer to Mike Kinney as The Evil One or The Dark One or The Devil, I in no way mean to cast aspersions on the REAL Devil.
Mike Kinney was really just a pud-knocker with severe emotional problems who made everyone around him miserable. The closest analogy for Mike would be if you were living with one of those annoying little dogs that clamor constantly for your attention with a high-pitched bark and then bite you every chance they get while crapping on the carpet and leaving their dirty laundry everywhere. He was the source of all neuroses. An emotionally needy porcupine that was always spouting off like an expert on all topics he knew nothing about and then throwing things at people who corrected his glaring errors. An anchor-assed mongoloid with an attitude problem. A little boy without the ability to wish people into the cornfield. A nuclear physicist wannabe with a thick brow ridge. A rude goat-sniffing, one-liner spouting, no girlfriend-having, dirty-dish making, chair-throwing, cussing-in-his-sleep, towel-stealing, ten-times-a-month-fried-chicken-making, leave-the-paper-on-the-pepperoni-pizza baking, pop-eyed, wire-haired jerk off.
I have nothing more to say about Mike Kinney.
Greg Jerrett
This is me, your humble narrator. I am from Council Bluffs, a small city in Pottawattamie County in southwestern Iowa across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska. I went to Kirn Junior High School and then Abraham Lincoln High School with these guys. Absolutely everything is told from my perspective. Most of these things are true to at least some extent but some of them are complete bullshit. The lies have a way of being more accurate somehow, and they also serve to protect us from the truth as well as entertain. If you can't tell which is which, we can all maintain plausible deniability with regards to the really stupid things we did.
The truth is in here.
Peter Church
I first heard his name in grade school though we would not meet for many years. He was like a legend in some ways. Steve Brewer was the "smart kid" in my grade school class and he always competed in the Council Bluffs School District Spelling Bee. Because Steve was a little neurotic prick most days, it was my great pleasure to see him lose every year to some mystery boy named Peter Church. He was like Steve's arch-nemesis. So I was pretty disappointed by the time I actually met him.
I first met Peter Church in seventh grade. He looked like Charlie Brown with a big, round head topped with thin, wispy, blonde hair. People called him Fruit, but that was only to his face. Even at the age of twelve, I could tell he was someone that I really didn't want to have a lot to do with. He was one of those people who make you suspicious. There was something about him you just couldn't trust, but you couldn't quite put your finger on either. He was the kind of person you would not be entirely surprised to find out that he was a cannibal or a sock fetishist or something really out there. Yet at the same time he was so overwhelmingly normal that you just didn't notice him most of the time. Pete and I were in several classes together: reading, gym, math.
Once in gym class, he popped a boner in the shower. Pete's always been the kind of friend who would stand by you come what may. DON'T let him!
I once saw Pete get into a fight with a girl, I swear to God, he kicked her ass, it was pathetic!
In reading class, he made a bookmark which read: Stop overpopulation, masturbate!
He showed it proudly to anyone who would look at it, including the teacher, Mr. White, who was Pete's first sexual partner. Having never heard the word "masturbate" before, I decided to ask my mother what it meant when I got home.
"Mom, what does masturbate mean?" I gently inquired.
"Look it up in the dictionary, that's why we have one! I don't know why I bother having a dictionary if you don't use it! I oughta throw the damn thing out!" she demurred.
So I set out in earnest to find the word I had only seen for a few seconds and heard maybe three times. After much searching I read aloud, "to chew or make a chewing motion." My consternation was obvious and upon seeing my confusion, my mother, in an act of maternal altruism, sat me down on the couch and prepared to lovingly point to the appropriate term.
"There dammit!"
Of course, when I read the correct definition I was so embarrassed that I nearly ran from the room, "a bony prominence behind the ear or an infection of this area."
Needless to say, I have never developed a normal attitude towards sex and I didn't have anything to say to Pete for nearly six years.
Kirk Cryer
I first met Kirk Cryer through the auspices of The Dark One, Mike Kinney (may God preserve us). We were brought together to play Dungeons and Dragons, a game which is interesting on it's own but when combined with certain, less than stable personality types, it becomes a free-for-all destined to end poorly by any standards.
Hoping to play the "big man" and knowing that his father would never notice if only five cans went missing, The Destroyer handed out beer to all of the pubescents in his basement. I think it was Kirk's first whole can of beer (I know it was mine) up until then he had only done weed, crack, crank, smack, peyote and oven cleaner.
The game progressed well for a time, we enjoyed the cool quiet of the basement and listened to Z-92, the Home of Rock and Roll, while outside the temperature topped 100 degrees that bright summer day. Suddenly and without warning, Kirk attacked me with an aluminum tent pole shouting, "Keep your fucking hands off my erector set! You fucker! I will kill you and put your head in a box! You wanna die, maricon? Viva Zapata!"
As Kirk's hands tightened around my throat, my vision began to go black and I could hear Erik Johansen singing Karma Kameleon in the background .
When I came to, Mike and Kirk were laughing. Needless to say, I didn't get the joke. I had rarely hung out with upper-classmen and I found their wry and sophisticated humor was beyond me. After Mike pulled Kirk off of me, we ALL had a good laugh, I was still pretty sure I had missed something though.
The boys were nice enough to take me to the emergency room that day and after my release, I tried to keep a wide berth of Kirk Cryer. But for the next several months I would find threatening notes in my locker, written in what appeared to be human blood or red ink which said "red rum", "I am a chicken hawk", or "stay the same, have a great summer." I have NEVER known such fear.
Once in the eighth grade, Kirk handed Mike his ass, literally! Mike was going out with a young, possibly Amish, girl who always wore bonnets to school. Every one of the five hundred other students at Kirn Junior High School made fun of Mike routinely because this whole thing reeked of desperation. Kirk never made fun of Mike but he was, like everyone else, extremely curious about the bonnet situation. One day at lunch, trying to muster as much tact as he could, Kirk asked Mike, "What exactly is the deal with the bonnets anyway?"
Like the dumb animal he is Mike decked Kirk straight off, no explanation or "by your leave" just BOOM, quick as you please. Needless to say, this did not sit well with Kirk.
Kirk Cryer was the kid in school that you never really noticed at all until he opened fire. In fact, I am sure that if Kirk were growing up today, he would have taken out a school bus by now, but those were gentler times, they really were. We didn't solve our problems like that back in the day. We were clever. Killing a man leaves him no time to suffer or be humiliated.
And with that in mind, Kirk went to the drugstore.
In those days there were two very similar products on the market. One was called Chiclets; small, candy-coated pieces of square gum. The other product was a popular form of highly potent laxative which came in small, candy-coated square pieces. The next day, Kirk offered Mike as much gum as he could chew. Being a glutton, Mike took no less than six pieces and starting chewing just as happy as you please. Chewing and chewing. "Can I have another piece?" asked Mike.
"Sure!" said Kirk enthusiastically.
The next day, Mike was not to be seen. He was absent for a entire week. Apparently, he nearly died from a combination of dehydration and sleep deprivation because he could not leave the toilet for more than five minutes at a time. Oh what a different world it ALMOST was.
If there is a moral to this story, I think it would have to be this: if you are going to go out with a girl who wears bonnets, don't be so sensitive about it.
Iowa State: The Gathering
There is almost nothing to tell of the intervening years. I had no dealings with Pete and Kirk, and unlike me, they continued to be friends with The Evil One. However, it was The Son of Wayne who once again acted to bring us all together at Iowa State in the less than fashionable section of Ames, Iowa known as Schilletter Village.
Mike, Pete and Kirk needed a fourth person for their apartment to help soak up the bills and take turns cooking. I was only eighteen and as excited as Gary Oldman after a double espresso and realizing he still has one smoke left. But it wasn't before long that things began to go awry, horribly, terribly awry!
As I have explained, Mike was a bundle of emotional concerns which is like saying Jack the Ripper had issues with women. It was in his nature to make everyone as miserable as possible through his secret machinations. He could be described as Machiavellian if Machiavellian meant obnoxious, spiteful retard.
Going away to college is a difficult time for anybody and I was no exception. However, to ease the transition, Mike suggested that we spend our first night in Ames in The Foxy Lady Night Club. When I say Night Club I mean dark hole in the wall with strippers. Having been brought up in a modest, Christian home I agreed to go, but only after the strictest assurances from Mike that the cops in Ames never went in there.
Thirty minutes after leaving the apartment, Pete and I were spread-eagled up against an Ames prowler for being minors on premises. My first day at college, things could only get better...right?
Two weeks into our first semester, Mike decided that it would be a good idea to ask out an old girlfriend of mine, Chris. Now I have never had a problem admitting that I have been dumped, but in this instance I was not. I stopped calling Chris because she wouldn't have sex with me, so there. Mike went out with her several months after I did and apparently told her he loved her because that was the one prerequisite she had for sex that I could not comply with. So I'm a pig with a good excuse. Mike popped her cherry (he must have done a shitty job of it because she dumped him). Mike used to love rubbing that in my face, like if only I had been as worthy as he, I could have deflowered this girl under false pretenses. Believe me, it would have been no challenge for me to lie to the girl but I had romantic ideals at the time, too, and I didn't think it would be fair to either one of us. But Mike used to insist that she dumped me because that's what Chris told him, and of course women never lie about these things. I am pretty much riddled with neuroses, but it actually feeds my martyr complex to be dumped, so I would never deny it. Man, I hate being called a liar, especially by some pathetic piece of shit like Mike Kinney.
So Mike must have thought it would be pretty funny to go out with this girl again, maybe bring her to the apartment and make me eat it. Maybe have really loud sex and make me listen to it. That would really feed his ego. So one night after showing off my cooking skills by baking a chicken and serving it with biscuits, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, Mike decides to call this girl while I am still doing all of the dishes within earshot of the phone! I am scrubbing all of these fucking pans and plates and glasses while Mike, belly full from my work, tries to humiliate me. My cheeks burnt red with frustration.
How many times had I told him I didn't care about this girl? How many times would he disagree with my rational explanation of events because it contradicted his own over-compensated sense of self-worth? I didn't like this girl but I sure didn't want to see her in my apartment every day either. But Chris proved she really did like me better anyway by turning Mike down flat. Man, what a rush! Mike hangs up the phone and says to me, "You were right, she is a bitch."
Now, I never said she was a bitch. She really wasn't, even though she lied when she told people she dumped me, I figure that is just standard, no one likes to be dumped. But here Mike was trying to elicit sympathy from me. Me! Of all people, he JUST got done trying to humiliate me in the most pathetic fashion and now he wants me to take part in some fantasy like we are both on the same side because she "rejected" both of us. No sir, I didn't like it!
So I said the words that set events into motion for the year: "That's okay Mike, I know your just desperate."
If there is one thing Mike Kinney was, it was desperate. Remember the girl with the bonnet? Desperate. But the one, sure-fire way to start a fight with Mike every time (besides asking him about the bonnet) was to challenge his esteem in any way. His parents fucked him up so bad, he would do anything to feel loved, to replace his real-life nightmare with a pleasant fantasy world made up of his friends. But so deeply rooted was his personality in his traumas that he couldn't allow himself to enjoy his own fantasy, the new "family" he had created. The demon in control of Mike was his father. He ruled Mike's every action from walking in the door, waiting for us to greet him expectantly to his inability to make a woman love him. He HAD to lash out at me at that moment to complete the vicious circle of abuse he grew up with.
The blood drained from Mike's face for one second. He was shocked at what he perceived to be a terrible insult delivered at his weakest moment. I was right of course, just a little too right. Then rushing to fill the vacuum it had left behind, the blood rushed back to Mike's face as his ire intensified with alarming rapidity. Something Mike must have seen a hundred times with his father, a thousand moments of humiliation crystallizing into one second when the brain misfires, believing that it can avenge everything in an instant, anger rising to the surface, preparing to lash out at the wrong person because the world treated him like shit. So Mike picked up a kitchen chair and threw it at me, striking me hard in the shin.
I was too surprised to get mad about it. I had not seen it coming. In all the years I knew Mike, he was a prick, but he never lashed out like that. All I could think to say was, "Jeez Mike, don't get mad," like some pathetic little kid. I wonder how many times he said something similar to his father?
"Fuck you, don't tell me what to do, I'll get mad if I fucking want to!" he said stomping out of the room, to my relief.
I couldn't feel the pain in my leg yet because I was still too shocked by everything, but it settled in nicely later. What I remember above all else was how alone I felt standing in that kitchen doing the dishes, my leg starting to throb. I felt like I didn't have friend in the world. I've always been a depressive, prone to strange mood swings and I started to get angry; it was frustrating being humiliated like that. This is the cycle of abuse. That is what makes it so vicious. People trying to hurt and humiliate others because they have been hurt and humiliated. Over the course of the year I would come out on top.
