I Need An Enemy

Twenty-Nine years have gone by since that fateful, earth-shattering moment I was born and I'll admit things have gone a little down hill. Initial expectations were high and with good cause. When I popped out, I came out swinging. I had a hunger, an appetite, and real glint in my eye, the kind that twinkled with all the possibilities of the world. When I had a problem, I made it known. When I was hungry, you're damn right every one knew it. When I was pissed, when I had a problem, you'd know it. That's the kind of person I was at that age. I thought I knew it all. I was immortal, on top of the world, and I thought it would never end.

Well, it ended. It took a long time but it ended. The curve went something like this:

At age one 1, I was on high alert. Everything was a threat. I could be knocked over by a large house cat and I lived with one. The seductive mystery of the electrical socket, though thoroughly explored by age 2, could have left me a charred, fizzy-haired toddler. Shiny, heavy things on high counter-tops could have, at any moment, slipped from my prying finger tips and caved in my delicate skull. The world was a coiled deathtrap and it kept me on my toes. The danger was invigorating and it kept me young.

At age 5, I had explored the house to exhaustion. There was nary a bread crumb left uncatalogued in all the greasy corners. I knew every drawer, every cabinet, every lift-able flap of the carpet, every inedible crumb beneath the fridge. The mystery had been removed and I, at the peak of my abilities but with no imaginable goals ahead of me, fell victim to depression. I spent countless nights lying awake, drinking alone, recounting past glories and hoping somehow, someday, some one would seek me out for adventure once again.

And then it happened . . .

Age 6, school began. Where once I was master of my domain, I found myself thrust into the frigid and violent waters of the Albuquerque Public School System. Other children, fat and docile from years of child-proofed homes, found themselves suddenly struggling in an dangerous ecosystem of predators and prey. Me, I knew danger. It was my religion, and I bravely waded into that scholarly kiddie pool we came to call hell.

Age 7-12, the Age of Bullies. Mentally a juggernaut but left by the Fates a small and physically diminutive child, I found myself plagued by bullies. While class time passed as a quiet refuge, the recess bell would ring in my mind like the start of a boxing round. The knell signaled it was time to put down the salve and Vaseline, put on the gloves, and get back on the mat. So I would head out into the playground each day with a warriors heart. There was one enemy in those days of note: Greg. I shall not make reference here to his last name so as to preserve his dignity.

Greg was the typical bully. The short, spiky hair was of faded straw, like his hate of the world had burned the very color out of each follicle. His eyes were steel coins, icy blue and they shone like vile lanterns on the shores of the Styx. Everyday, he scanned the school yard with those eyes, reading every face, piercing into our souls for some weakness therein. Often he'd find me and come pacing down from the top hill, zeroing in on me and my friends. We theorized he had vicious blood left over from some previous life, maybe a betrayed centurion abandoned by his legion to the Gauls, raging for all eternity inside of Greg's fevered mind. For an 10 year-old, he was an awfully tortured soul.

"Hey Mucus," he'd call. This clever derision he'd derived from my uncontrollable nasal problems. Unlike other children my age, I was born with a unique condition wherein my nose generated up to 10 times more snot than an ordinary human. In time, I grew to accept myself for who I was, but at the time in 3rd grade it was my cross to bare. "Talkin' to you Mucus," he say again and shoved me face first into the tire patch, or the sandbox, or whatever I happened to be engrossed with at the time.

But this, only if he caught me. By the 4th and 5th grades, I had been living under constant mortal threat for so long my senses had become as keen as any soldier. I knew the sound his Scooby Doo pump sneakers made on gravel, the way his weight and the expanded air bladder drove his heels down. I knew the sound of the door slamming on the side of his mother's 1983 Dodge Caravan as she dropped him off for school; the smack of his slap on bracelet. I knew the smell of his Fruity Pebble breath as it wafted on the air conditioner exhaust of the John Baker Elementary compound. Like a gazelle, I sensed these things in the still air over the playground, my ears ever-perked, my nose ever-atwitter, and could find quick refuge behind a tree or vanish inside a turbulent game of freeze-tag.

Greg, as a villainous foil, had made me stronger than I had ever been. Running from him kept me in top physical form. I was lean and wiry. My mind was clear and cunning. To top it all, in a triumph of natural selection, I learned my mutation of excess mucus production often made me difficult to grapple and often undesirable as prey. Though, I had yet to pass this gene, I knew mates of all varieties actively sought me out in hopes of securing this ability for their own bloodline. With it, some day I shall be king of my tribe. Or so, at the impressionable age of 8, I thought.

Age 10. Years spent in chase and exile from the civilized hub of the playground eventually drew its toll on me. I was exhausted. Snacks and supplies became difficult to come by. I could maneuver away from his taunting only so much more and I knew it was only a matter of time before I slipped up. I was ready at last to make some concession to Greg. Perhaps with the right words, we could make truce. Or perhaps surrender would be necessary. I welcomed anything but more of my life on the lam.

I was in a difficult position, you see. In the 5th grade of Mr. McGutkin's class, we would periodically shift seating positions based upon her capricious whim. At the end of the school year, she had decided on some sort of perverse experimentation and had positioned me at the end of a row sitting next to none other than Greg and his dull-witted buddy Frank. Together, they turned my sanctuary of class time into a nightmare of constant mental assault. They taunted me, called me names, made fun of my clothes, and all the while, from across the room I could see the stiff grin on Mrs. McGutkin's face. Looking back on those times, I think she may have been some form of wraith feeding on the suffering of our young psyches. I only hope the holy water I poured the water cooler did some good, for the sake of humanity.

Months passed next to Greg and Frank. The pain made time blur but just as I had begun to give up on life, the fates smiled on me. As another cruel fit of experimentation, I had been assigned by the Wraith to vacuum the floor during recess. What I had done to merit such mistreatment, I can't recall. Perhaps it was the string of garlic cloves left in her rain coat, or maybe the tiny crucifixes I etched in her arthritis pills. I could not say, but nevertheless there I was, while all the other children were playing, sweeping pellets of gerbil food off the carpet.

I had begun to sing a rhythmic song in my head, like a chain gang laborer trying to find solace in the melancholy music, when suddenly I found myself alone in the room. Mrs. McGutkin had stepped out. I took sift advantage and hurried to her desk. She had left her assignment plan open and I quickly formed a plan. I thumbed through it and memorized the next 2 months of torturous homework assignments her inhuman mind hand devised for us. By the time she returned, I was already whistling a song of freedom to the harmony of the vacuum pump.

Thus began my liberation. Each day, near the end of the day and within view of Greg and Frank, I would slump into a trance-like state. When I knew they were watching, I would begin to mutter cryptic ramblings about our homework: pages to be read, problems to be solved. Slowly they caught on and began writing it down for verification. Before long, they took to asking me out right. What's the homework tomorrow, Mucus? they'd ask.

I worked an elaborate story and they gobbled it up: for the past 3 months I had been experiencing strange dreams in the night. Visions of homework and projects would come to me in riddles and by morning I would solve them. If they wished, I could harness my psychic powers and reveal to the both of them Mrs. McGutkin's devious plan to destroy our childhood. Armed with this foreknowledge, Greg and Frank could torment other children well ahead of time into a doing their homework for them.

In time, I came to be revered as a seer. I ventured predictions into all sorts of things. "Next week . . . I see George Jetson . . . Mr. Spacely . . . they fight . . . Spacely fires George . . . He and Elroy must devise a plan to get his job back!" I predicted sporting events (with no knowledge of sports), I predicted the news, I predicted what teachers did outside of school. I even predicted which girls liked Greg and Frank. They consumed those particular prophesies with great attention.

I went from a school yard victim to the school yard High Priest, Speaker to the Gods, Most Beloved of the Bullies. From then on, I was free.

Age 11-13. I had conquered the playground. None touched me. I walked the grounds a made man. I soon grew bored, flabby. My senses dulled. I expected to be lavished with protection and all the riches of middle school: tootsie rolls, scratch and sniff stickers, libations of chocolate milk to be poured in my honor.

Age 13-18. High School. The dread years. I had grown weak again. I was complacent in a long expired victory and now I was unfit to face the new social rigors of the Teens. My olfactory passages, I soon discovered, were no longer of benefit but instead a hindrance! I realized the game of High School was not evasion, but social interaction and I had no adaptations to aid me along. I became a scourge. I was avoided, looked down upon, outcast. And worse still, I came to accept it.

Age 18-22. College. The tables turned again. College was a utopia of acceptance. I found peers and like-minded people whom I befriended. I learned to control my mucus powers and wield them only for good. No one bothered or challenged me. I was happy.

Age 22-Present. Years have passed since I faced a bully. I have no competitors. My friends regard each other as equals and rarely quarrel. Its terrible! In the bygone years, I have become a shadow of my former self. I'm laden down with excess fat tissue. My eyesight is in atrophy. My instincts have forgotten the thrill of the run, the pleasure in a pumping heart, the rush of adrenaline. I am, I fear to say, unfit for combat. My wits are dull, my intellect as nimble as a plank of wood. I should, by all accounts, have been defeated by now, eaten by the vicious world.

But here lies the problem! The world is not vicious. It is not cruel. There is no ever-present danger afoot. I have no enemies to challenge me, no tormentors to best, no competitors to vie for natural resources with. There are no villains, no madmen, no brutes. No swords men to out-skill, no giants to fell, no devious minds to outwit.

So I find myself a shadow, peaked at age 11, and with no where to go from here. I need an arch-enemy. Some one to rival my world view and champion all that I detest so that, by combat with this person, I might become greater than myself.

I need a Greg.

So if you see him out there, perhaps leaving threatening comments on myspace or trolling wall-to-wall sections on facebook, please do send him my way. Tell him I miss him rather dearly. Also tell him I said he was an ass-face. That should get things going.