COACH DEATH (only imagined) 

I could beat him up, I swear. We all could. Every one of us tougher than Coach Towel-Turban will ever be, so maybe he should be careful about the way he keeps yelling at us to keep smiling. We aren’t your average team of synchronized swimmers, after all. We will not be disrespected. 

Maybe they were waiting for me to be the first to do something about it. Kept looking at me as if I could help. Knew I didn’t come from around here and noticed the special unwashed quality of my fists. How dirty fingernails made them look dangerous. A boy from the wrong side of the tracks who would hopefully know all the best places to hit him, and hopefully in the exact spot that would knock that towel he’d wrapped around his wet hair clean off his head. Pop it straight up in the air like some weird bird heavy with pool water, before the rest of his body crashed off the diving board. Slid into the deep end for the rest of them to finish off. 

But I was too clever for such violence. Knew he’d kick us out of the pool, and it was too hot to not keep swimming. So we just continued smiling and spinning in the water. Aware of the kind of danger he was putting us in if we were seen by anyone else. Knowing the mean kids from the townhouses were always circling, peeking over fences, looking for unused pools to sneak into. Hoping not to find anyone splashing around in here when they looked at his, but falling over onto their sides laughing when they saw who was. 

So until then, all we could do is keep swimming. Do our best to synchronize. Getting yelled at for not knowing what that word even meant as the sun set behind the head of our coach. His towel turban still snugly clinging to it. Invincible.  

GANG DEMOCRACY (The Brotherhood of Even Sadder Wrestlers) 

The least we could do was let him be our President. Huddled around the sewer grate at the far end of the schoolyard, we voted for him unanimously that winter. All our mittens raised in unison when his name was suggested. Had campaigned on his promise of not hanging out with us anymore if we didn’t pick him. Told us to take a good look at ourselves if we dared ask why he was the only one we should even consider. Did we not know what a sad lot we were, standing around doing nothing every single recess. How he had better places to be than stick around a bunch of kids who couldn’t even decide what games they should be playing. Let us know how he had all sorts of good ideas and that he was the only man for the job. 

“Once I'm President, you'll see, I know what’s fun” 

And so just as promised, once he became President, he told us exactly what we should be doing. Was quick to get us down on our hands and knees in our snowpants. Making us take turns pulling him on the toboggan we would sign out before every recess with the promise of returning it undamaged. Nylon rope lashed around our shoulders as we dug our galoshes in good and took him from one end of the schoolyard to the other as he kept crying: “Mush, mush”. Training us Rocky-style to keep ourselves strong during these winter months he worried might have otherwise made us weak. Making sure we were prepared for whatever he knew was to come once all the snow thawed and there were new games waiting to be played in the newly green grass of the schoolyard. 

“Just look at yourselves”, he kept telling us whenever we dared to wonder if there would ever be another election. If maybe someone else could choose what we could play. “Look. Just look” 

And so we did as we were told. Looked at each other, from one snot-runny face to another and began to understand what he was saying. Yes, he might be President. But it was President of not very much.  

President of Mark, more birthmark than boy. 

President of Feroze, always staring up at the sky so that we were always looking straight up his nose. 

President of Iain, who couldn’t sit still and was always screaming and running wherever he went. 

President of Mohit, whose tongue was so short he couldn’t even stick it out of his mouth, and whose voice was so loud he’d hurt your ear when telling a secret. 

Sometimes even President of Peter, who seemed only to appear when talk of Garrett’s swimming pool started up as the snow came down hard upon us. Suddenly standing there next to us to assure us how he definitely knew how to swim, just not in water, something he felt we should know in case he was ever invited once the summer came. 

And it seemed I also had a President, even as I kept grumbling about revolution. How something had to change. That maybe I deserved a shot to lead too, but constantly reminded how I didn’t even have proper parents and how you can’t be President when that is the kind of kid you are. 

“Grandparents don’t count”, he was quick to remind me. “Quit dreaming and mush, mush” 

Eventually it would be accepted by all that Garrett was our President for life and all we could do is wait for the spring and hope things got better. Wait for when our bodies, which had been conditioned and turned muscular in the snow, were suddenly given something exciting to do. Wait to be given our new flashy names and be forced to wrestle each other in a ring that had been marked out on the grass in masking tape. Pile driving each other into the ground. Body slamming each other until we drove Garrett into a frenzy, screaming around the perimeter of the ring and telling us to keep fighting.  

“Fight, fight, fight” 

No longer just our President, but our manager. Making sure we were the best wrestlers we could be, no matter how useless we otherwise might have been. Sometimes running into the ring to smash the ref over the head with his bookbag, then immediately running back out to profess his innocence. 

Exactly as you’d hope a President would do. 

The only one qualified for the job. 

WE ARE THE TOWNHOUSE! RUN! 

Maybe all the parents stayed in their basements. You didn’t see them. Not ever. Only the kids, coming out into the center courtyard with their bad faces. Armed with the legs of chairs they’d snapped off their neighbours patio furniture. Their hands covered in little scars they’d carved in each other with their fingernails. Little red markings on their skin they all shared and that they gave to each other as an initiation for living here. Markings that made sure you would know when they surrounded you where they came from: The Townhouse.  

These were kids who played War. These were kids who took prisoners. Tied them with skipping rope and locked them in toolsheds. And if you weren’t invited here, there were bad omens to be found up in the trees that stood outside, the ones standing guard around the front parking lot. Only had to look up into them to see all the shoes of trespassers dangling from branches. How there were always more being thrown up into them every day of that summer. Warnings to those who didn’t want to be chased home barefoot. Or be held ransom for French fry money. 

The kids here were protective of what was theirs. Didn’t want it known what great things they had. Wanted everyone on the outside to keep thinking they had nothing at all. No monkey bars to be found through the secret, urine smelling tunnel. Or any teeter-totters hidden, nearly buried, in shrubbery that was plump with poison berries. And especially not swings where the older kids plotted robberies. Where if you swung high enough, you could see over the fence to the gas station. 

But most importantly, they didn’t want anyone to know what was sat right in the heart of their courtyard. What was only rumoured to exist to those who had never been invited here. A tiny little playhouse with two rooms on the ground floor, and then wooden stairs that led up to an attic littered with chip bags and cigarette butts and smoke burns and drawings on the wall of what some girl named Maryanne’s tits looked like. 

“This is where she showed them”, it read. 

They were big. 

No one could be allowed in. Their secret must be kept. The war would continue. 

Jinnistan wrote:

Reminds me of when we accidentally set fire to a townhose patio fence with a homemade flame-thrower - a gasoline-filled Windex bottle with a lit cardboard paper towel tube taped over the nozzle.

No animals were hurt.
 

This place was very quickly burned to the ground and I can only hope by a home made flamethrower. But these kids were dolts, so probably not. They used to set fire to their own hair by mistake. Fun times though.

THE CRITTIEST 

He was Critty when he was outside throwing shoes up into the trees. That’s what the Townhouse kids chanted when they wanted him to run around on all fours, making elephant noises and scaring away the trespassers.
 
“Critty! Critty! Critty! Critty!” 

Always the best one at keeping outsiders out. Strong and mean and strange and somehow still able to get everyone there to keep loving him. Even after he turned on them too. Started farting on the legs of anyone who dared not notice him raising his ass, pointing those deadly summer shorts in their direction. 

“Critty! Critty! Critty! Critty!” 

It was what they called him out in the courtyard. But mostly, upstairs in the little wooden house that was theirs to hang out in. Some of them up there much older and already smoking cigarettes. Maybe trying to get Marianne to show her tits.  

But Critty sticking around anyways. No one telling him he was too young to be there. Just waiting for his moment when they would start chanting his name again. Like he knew they eventually would. And when they dared not to, always quick to jump out the window, crash down onto all the metal teeter totters below. Make a great clang. Bleed from his head. Give them something to talk about. He’d done it before, he’d do it again. 

“Critty! Critty! Critty! Critty!” 

But sometimes another name began to be called out. As soon as he was late for dinner, not Critty anymore as his father stomped across the grass, yelling for a different kid. This large Caribbean sumo-wrestler of a man with a leather belt pulled taught between his giant fists. 

“Chris-to-fah! Chris-to-fah! Chris-to-fah!” 

Snapping that belt between his thick fingers. Making a sound the boy was more likely to recognize than his own name. Getting him to rise to his feet and stop farting on friends and bleeding from his head and start walking upright on his two legs towards this man who looked nothing like him. Who kept calling out for a person he sometimes forgot about when he was outside. The one throwing shoes up into the trees quickly becoming the one whose supper was cold. 

“Chris-to-fah! Chris-to-fah! Chris-to-fah!” 

At least two of him: Critty and Christopher. Two boys in one and eventually, after summer vacation, another to be put in there with them. Someone else for him to be when he changed schools and the teachers got his name wrong during roll call. No one sure who they were asking for as they read his newest name, over and over. 

“Mike K? Mike K? Mike K?” 

Over and over until someone claimed it. 

“Mike K? Mike K? Mike K?” 

No one else saying anything until eventually he realized who it was. Process of elimination. Put his hand up.

“Here”, he said, because why not. 

No corrections. Just someone else again. Maybe for the best. Whoever he was. 

GIRLBIKE V BOYBIKE 

Before telling this story, I must ask my girlfriend a question. I need clarification. 

“Hey, what’s the difference between a girlbike and a boybike?” 

I think she says the word “crossbar”, but I don’t know what that is and have no idea what she’s talking about. Whatever it is, apparently girl legs can’t get over them. Or they can’t reach the pedals when they’ve got one in the way. 

Something. 

But back to the story. 

Critty rode a girlbike and I crashed into it at the bottom of my driveway.  

I had a boybike, and I think he was impressed by this as we lay there on the sidewalk wondering if we should be friends. 

I recognized him as the kid who threw my sandals up into a tree earlier that summer, but I didn’t say anything. He acted like this was the first he’d ever seen of me. Then we found a quarter, on the ground near where we’d fallen.  

It had rolled out of my pocket. 

I had stolen it from my grandfather. 

Got popsicles.  

RENOVICTION VAMPIRE BLUES 

Your cat-piss beret has yet to be unpacked. Must be in one of these boxes. So many boxes. Towering around his little shape sunk into his little sofa as he stares into his new fireplace he has only just noticed. Eyes not moving behind the sunglasses he never takes off. Surrounded by these boxes he might never open. 

He knows it’s just more of your stuff inside and there's enough of that around already. You might not have been here long, but long enough for your toothbrush to be in the bathroom. Your glasses to be sitting on the table in the hall. Long enough for you to drink one final cup of tea that you’d never get around to washing. Something he would see sitting next to the kitchen sink with a spoon still in it, if he ever stopped staring into that fireplace.

“Oh...godammit...Cathy...godammit”, he sometimes says, without ever moving his eyes even a bit. Without once looking at anything. 

Evan might still be a vampire, but he doesn’t talk about immortality so much anymore. Eternity sounds much too long when you can no longer do stairs. When the apartment you are now suddenly expected to live in is up three flights of them. So many boxes to unpack. All by himself and with no one to tell him where any of it goes. Maybe tomorrow he’ll do something about all of this. But probably not. 

His phone rings and he answers it. Says he can't talk long because he’s got a headache from people calling all day. Doesn’t want any more crying people. Says he’s got things to do, one of which is to find what box she packed his gun in. Says he needs to kill someone. Someone and their son.  

“They did this”, he tells whoever is on the other end of the line, and they aren’t sure who he’s talking about. “They’re going to pay. I fucking swear it. They are going to pay” 

He hangs up his phone and for a moment he thinks maybe he’s hungry. That maybe it’s time for a vampire feast. He doesn’t know how to cook, but maybe it’s time he learns after all these years. He's got more than enough time now. Maybe doesn’t need to look for his gun quite yet. Has to eat eventually. Food before revenge. 

Or maybe he’ll just eat a can of sardines. Have a few spoonfuls of peanut butter. Stare into the fireplace a little longer. 

“Oh...Cathy....goddammit” 

Your cat-piss beret might not even be in one of these boxes anyways. Who cares. Has probably already been eaten by moths. 

crumbsroom wrote:

RENOVICTION VAMPIRE BLUES 

I thought maybe this was a call-out ot the recent 50th of Neil Young's On The Beach.

NUMBER 15

he didn’t actually invite me here. I’m only half remembering what number he said his townhouse was. Just sit on my bike on the grass in front of his door, looking into his kitchen. 

This is how you become friends. 

As long as it’s his door. 

I think that's his kitchen. 

As long as he eventually gets up for breakfast. 

It’s early enough in the morning for the grass to be wet, and I can feel it soaking into my shoes, even though it didn’t rain last night. 

It’s very quiet. 

I’ve always liked the sound of birds. 

Eventually, some lights come on and shadows appear in the window. Notice me immediately and open the door. 

They are very friendly, but tell me they think I’m looking for Number 18. Three doors down.

“No need to apologize”, they say. “Not a bother at all”

I go home. 

CATHY BRINGS THE GOOD STUFF 

Your loud boots meant you were here. Your loud boots coming in with his loud boots. Never taking your shoes off. Neither of you. The sound of your boots how everyone else knew you’d arrived. 

But I would have been at the window and would know you were here before all of them. Always there watching when you parked your car in the place you always did. On the street, right in front of the house. A silver car that had dirt and scratches from the city on it.   

I liked the way the two of you looked when you would get out of your car. Stomping up our walkway, and Cathy with shopping bags. Assorted paper bags hung loosely on her fingers. That I would hear crinkling against her leg through the window once she grew close enough.   

This was the sound that let me know for sure you were here. Watching you climb up onto our porch, and listening to your paper bags full of mysterious things bump against your knee. No one else needed to know how you were here, or what was about to happen, and so I just stayed there watching quietly from the window. The only one prepared for all the stomping that was to come. 

Your voices growing louder. 

Already arguing about everything as you kick the door open. 

Ready for the noise and so able to keep a clear head as I moved straight towards where I knew you were going. To the kitchen table. The place you would eventually rest your bags and let me look inside to see what you brought this time.  Already impossibly excited.  How could I not be? Everyone knows Cathy always brings the good stuff.  

Magic tricks to amaze me and bore my friends. 

Practical jokes to explode grandpa’s cigarette 

Comic books with covers so good there was never a reason to open them. 

Then after dinner, things for me to draw. Colored pencils and paint that would get you to put your hand on mine, showing me how to do it right. 

In time, kids from the neighborhood would be at the door asking me what I’d got. Had seen your car out front. Had heard your stomping all the way down the street. Wanted to see what the good stuff looked like this time, before I put it away in the closet with all the other things you’d brought me from the city.  The kind of things that make you a different kind of kid. 

Worldly.  

Sophisticated.  

Debbonaire.  

But maybe most importantly, suddenly kindly enough to bring my grandfather his after-dinner cigarette. Knowing it was the right time as he began fumbling with his shirt pocket and not knowing where he’d put them.  

Would even bring him a lighter. 

Happy to light it for him. 

The good stuff.