#83 - Rumble

Rumble

3/7/06 (#83)

Joe Roberts had the kind of parties that changed people's reputations---whether they wanted it changed or not. Nicknames were earned, infamy achieved, physics routinely ignored. His were the high school parties about which bad teen movies are made, not because he was a good host, but because he was purely the host, never the Sargent at arms, never making any effort to squelch the revelry of his guests. I had personally witnessed ridiculousness that would never be properly cleaned up in the morning: sink faucet screens removed to line pipe bowls; the perennial favorite (and always heinous) urine-in-a-beer-bottle trick (and it's accompanying Danny-Thomas-esque spit-take sending a plume of liquified exhalation across the room); any visible porcelain receptacle doomed to ashtray status. Mild-mannered nobodies would arrive with as much beer as they could carry (usually a 12-pack) with every intent of putting themselves on the Bangor High School social map---and before long would be showering the lupines in the front yard with an unexpected release of disappointment and vomit. I am so thankful that I never had to help clean up that house the next morning. Why his parents ever consented to vacate the premises again remains a mystery to me.

At one of these gatherings, I was standing in the front hall with a few friends, trying without success to capture the fancy of one of the junior-class starlets, when two acquaintances burst through the front door screaming, "Brewer McDonald's! It's a Bangor-Brewer fight! Come on!" Simultaneous explosions of testosterone quaked the room as a herd of boys reached for jackets and car keys and last chugs of beer. For many, this was an opportunity to shine, a chance for a free pass into high school lore. Others seemed to go because they had friends who would be there, and they wanted to make sure they weren't outnumbered. And there were probably a few who were just like me: genuinely uncomfortable.

Brewer was the city across the river. Bangor was larger, cleaner, cooler, and better than Brewer----just ask anyone from Bangor. Brewer was the blue collar to Bangor's white (though both were blue collar towns.) The representative high schools had a long rivalry, though the gene pool available to the larger Bangor made them a favorite in every game. That imbalance on the playing field often led to animosity off the field, even as far off as the parking lot of the Brewer McDonald's.

I had no enthusiasm for this errand, but my friends all moved for the door, so I went with them. (I couldn't imagine staying at the house with the women---a reputation as a coward among boys would be terrible, but among the girls? The lust that coursed though my 16-year old veins refused to allow me to stay for such embarrassment.) Crammed with two other partygoers into the back seat of the Dunnett family's Buick Regal, I did the simple calculation in my head---if this is about to go down at the Brewer McDonald's, on a Friday night, then it was our side who were the interlopers, and it was certainly intentional. We were the cavalry rushing to defend the offender. Hardly the kind of fight in which God would be on your side.

There was little talk as we drove over. While Rob Halford assured us that we had another thing coming, I imagined what a "rumble" would be like---in the movies, they're all so choreographed, an even dispersement of crips versus bloods or Italians versus Irish; How would I know which guy to go after? Is the goal humiliation, and thus bragging rights, or actually hurting them? What is etiquette for a fight of this nature---no weapons, I'm sure. That's just standard fight courtesy. (Unless you're in a duel.)

As that internal monologue likely hints, the adjective 'fighter' was not one to which I aspired. I'd fight if I had to---once in junior high, I was provoked into a brief skirmish that ended with my opponent seeking a premature truce (which I granted)---but I preferred to avoid physical conflict. Be that cowardice or wisdom, I do not care---it's a methodology that had heretofore served me well. In that car, I was filling my head with images of broken noses and bloodied lips, police cruisers and calls to Mom. I ached for camaraderie in my concern, for someone to join me in saying, "What the hell are we doing?" Was this feeling unique to me, or was it everyone's big unspoken, a primitive community ritual that we dared not defy? I turned to my friend Jim sitting next to me and quietly said, "I'm nervous." My eyes made the words italicized.

Jim gave a small shake of his head and replied quietly, "Let's see what happens." Good advice, as I had been constructing my scenarios with an army of fictions, a West Side Story redux, a reenactment of the knife-fight seen in Michael Jackson's then current "Beat it" video (of course, the appropriate law enforcement for that video battle would come from the fashion police.) But these WERE fictions---and since any scenario I imagined would almost certainly be inaccurate, it was foolish to be preemptively responding to the violence of my imagination. *

When we arrived at the Brewer McDonalds, there were no signs of a battle. In fact, the scene more closely resembled a junior high school dance than any imagined rumble: Bangor guys standing around their cars on the left side of the parking lot, Brewer guys on the right, no initiatives to cross the no man's land between. Occasionally, a voice might toss a loud remark across the pavement, but no one ever claimed ownership, so the only retribution was a reciprocated epithet volleyed back, often delayed while the thrower waited for families in Chevy Malibus and Dodge Aries Ks to pass between the supposedly warring factions. Eventually the police came, more likely for food than for crowd control, and they easily encouraged everyone to head home. We went back to Joe's, where I heard a dozen voices brag about what they WOULD have done if the cops hadn't shown up. (How different the world would be if everything that might have happened when folks recount an event actually had happened---this night and every night.)

Ironically, as nervous as I was in the car, I still earned minor props for simply making the journey, for being ready to answer the call, even though that call never came. I was greeted as one of the conquering heroes returning home after the battle---though sadly, one of too many to leverage this status for gain with the junior class starlets. They were busy being regaled by the boisterous fools who somehow equated not losing a fight as being the same thing as winning a fight. I just sipped on my flat, watery drink, nodded along to the enthusiastic celebrants intent on injecting drama into their memory of the non-event, and wondered how many among us silently shared a sensation of relief.

©2006 wpreagan

* "Let's see what happens"---Among the most essential bits of advice I have retained. Apply it generously to everything for a happier life.