Eyes of Wood

Broken Fever

Introduction

Excerpts:

"Eyes of Wood"

"Tender"

"Initiate"

From "Eyes of Wood"
from Broken Fever

By James Morrison

Melvin Airbets was one of four special-ed students in the school. He was a tall boy with a narrow face and curly hair short enough to show big lobeless ears that were pointed at the top. Although there was little in his appearance to certify his special-ed status, he was fully subject to the relentless mockery such status guaranteed. He was one of the tallest boys in the school, and the noticeable elongation of his torso and the concomitant foreshortening of his sturdy legs gave him the look of a centaur. This, together with the ears, and an equine aspect of his face, earned him the nickname, applied without affection, of "Mister Ed." Our gym teacher, Mr. Grimm, spoke of boys as specimens: a "good specimen" was an athlete; someone who was bad in gym was a "poor specimen"; and those who fell between the poles were "so-so specimens." Every system of classification must be judged by how it deals with its anomalies, and although ostensibly rooted in achievement, the grounding of this system in immutable essence was still dimly perceptible. For instance, Eric Lang was the best quarterback in the school, but he was also universally recognized (though never publicly identified) as a fat slob, so he was considered only a so-so specimen. I, on the other hand, couldn't throw or kick a ball more than a few feet, yet I had naturally developed biceps (the year before I'd been arm wrestling champ in the lunchroom), so by a slim but thankful margin I too achieved some moderate upward mobility into the so-so category. Melvin Airbets, no athlete, was still a very good specimen, and perhaps because of this, Mr. Grimm cut him slack that was not forthcoming for others of his stripe.

Author James Morrison

In the Darwinian atmosphere of gym class, survival may depend on resource and tactic, and so reside in action, but superiority demands only its own proofs, and so resides in being. It was not until seventh grade that we were segregated into locker rooms, boys' and girls', but the first time I entered one, I thought it was the most terrible place I had ever seen. With its cold concrete floors; dim light; hissing showerheads; mazy, dank-walled hallways; and suffocating, sweat-suffused air, the locker room in every deal answered my conception of what a concentration camp might be like. The locker room was a site that mimicked privacy -- in the little padlocked cubicles we were assigned -- and mocked it at the same time, demanding public, collective nakedness that was to be unhampered by any idiosyncratic displays of untoward anxiety or sissy bashfulness. It was the collective nature of the enterprise that was meant to render the question of modesty irrelevant. "What are you scared of?" Mr. Grimm would demand of anyone even vaguely hesitant to undress. "You ain't got nothing we ain't seen before!" That element of collectivity was also, however, what introduced relativity, since the collective so often gives up its celebrated political efficacy in becoming akin to the comparative, or the competitive. Massed together as so many naked bodies, ordered to overcome shame not because nakedness was not shameful (it decidedly was) but because such troubling inner urgings had to be defeated for the greater good, we were nothing but specimens, good or bad.

It could escape no one's attention that, as a specimen, and even in the limited terms the system embraced, Melvin Airbets was more than admirable -- not boyish, but manly, proportional, a Ken doll made flesh, and finely curved, even beautiful. Although I might not have thought of it that way at the time, I was certainly aware of the paradox that a boy whom we all knew to be a "retard," shorn of the concealment we had all secretly learned to covet, denied the privacy for which a retard could have no use anyway, proved to be, in body, so far superior to the rest of us. Indeed, the collective awareness of this paradox, shared as our nakedness, was what made Melvin Airbets's body so remarked upon a spectacle of open ridicule. These remarks took the crudest possible turns, including the amplification of Melvin Airbets's nickname into "Mister Horse Dick Ed." A gentle boy, with big, moist, puzzled eyes, and unaligned lips that often suggested a crooked smile, Melvin would only turn away from such taunts. Once, though, Eric Lang would not let him turn away. Eric Lang cajoled, and prodded, and punched, and we all watched the fat, cruel body move with ever greater aggression upon the lean, gentle, withdrawing body. Eventually, Eric Lang, reverting to Melvin's real name as a sign of surpassing contempt, "You know what, Airbets? You're such a fucking retard, I bet you don't even know what to do with that big schlong you got." With that, Eric Lang snatched Melvin's jockstrap, rubbed his own face in it, and then with a primitive, lusty yell, threw it to another boy, who threw it to another. It came to me, and I knew I could have ended the game, but grateful to be a meter rather than a bearer of scorn, I threw it, a bundle of dirty cloth forged to protect, to yet another boy. If allowed, Melvin Airbets might have felt gratitude too, but its cost would have been the wrath of the others. Finally Melvin cried, "Give it back," and the cry was a wail, helpless, broken, tearful, and desperate. Any human creature, hearing it, would have to have been moved, but we only laughed. Melvin Airbets's voice gave him away as a retard, in a manner that his body -- which for that reason could never be forgiven -- failed to reveal. That was why, perhaps, he spoke so seldom.