I had heard this guy was a hard-ass. We met eyes a few times in the hallway but did not know each other and never talked until this morning.
“What do you think you’re doing walking this hall after the bell has rung?”
“I’m sorry. I had to return my books to my locker and had to run over to the other side and—”
“Excuses. You can’t make excuses your whole life.”
“Who the hell are you? Mr. Perfect?” I snapped.
“Pardon me, mister?”
“You heard me, asshole. Why don’t you go pick on someone actually doing something wrong? I’m not hurting anyone.”
“You’re hurting me with your blatant disrespect.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Poor you. Didn’t you start it?”
“Come with me.” He lunged for me and yanked my arm. I shook him off and continued walking away.
“Mr. Tortis. Is there a problem?” It was Mr. Bundy calling from behind me.
“Yeah, this creep is bothering me on my way to class. My mother always told me not to talk to strangers.”
“Mr. Bundy, this kid needs an attitude adjustment. His language is disgusting.”
The assistant principal called me over and waved the teacher off.
“You’re suspended. Two days.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Insubordination.”
“What is that supposed to teach me?”
“Mr. Tortis!”
“What about my side of the story?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I sat there in his fancy office and watched his fat hands fill out the paperwork with a heavy looking silver pen. Then he called my house and left a message about the suspension. Upon finishing the forms and being dismissed from his office, I stormed out of the doors and left school for the day. This got me an extra day in the in-school suspension room, but it didn’t matter. The day was shot, and no one was going to cool me down.
I walked it off as usual, alone until I bumped into some other punks. We smoked cigarettes and small talked for a while until I got tired of them. A friend came by in a car, and I jumped in. My friend lit a pipe and then passed it to me. That first sizzle was such an escape. I knew I was going somewhere else. It wasn’t always a great place, but it was always different. Sometimes it was a frenzied world of paranoia and speed. My experience on pot was different than everyone else’s. It was a rush, an internal one I couldn’t show because everyone else was in a relaxed lazy mood. They always say pot calms you down, but not everyone reacts to it the same way, and some pot is also sprayed with funky chemicals that alter your experience. My friends got mellow and I would be wired like I wanted to run the track. I actually dreamed about hitting the race track again, but I knew the more I smoked and the longer my life remained in turmoil, the further I got away from that other Jack.
$$$$$$
I had embarked on the writing project immediately. By lunch, several sheets were full. I gave them to Mr. Kelly, and the man looked surprised. He told me to keep going.
“Tell me more. Show me more of this school.”
3
THE ROWS were tight in the classroom. Almost thirty of us were packed into a room. Sometimes we ran out of chairs. With more than a few bad kids in a class, even the best kids could, and would, turn on the teachers. Unless a teacher had callousness in their voice, kids wouldn’t back down. Some kids didn’t care about anything, but they would eventually drop out or be expelled. Physical confrontations weren’t that uncommon either. Frequent fights would break out in the school and teachers had to restrain students and duck punches. Some kids didn’t like it when teachers put their hands on them, even if it was a simple hand on the back to calm them. A wrestling match would ensue and if teachers weren’t careful they could be humiliated right there in the hallway in front of everyone. One teacher even got his arm broken. Teachers in this school had to be both smart and strong.
I grew up around a few strong women with tough city voices. The fem-strong environment of my grandmother and her sisters gave me both an appreciation and fear of women. Sometimes through the years, female teachers pissed me off, but some like Mrs. Sullivan brought me back down to Earth. Her seventh-grade social studies class was strict and rigid. You put your ass in that seat and learning happened.
I would see Mrs. Sullivan again for lunch period. My friend Dennis and I shared several classes that year including both periods with Mrs. Sullivan. We were always in trouble at lunch with the other teacher on duty, but we perked up as soon as Mrs. Sullivan stepped over to our area of the cafeteria. She had a way. She was a small woman but there was something serious in her voice. And I can’t say I ever said to myself that I hated her like I did for some of the other teachers, especially most of the men.
I had more problems with male teachers. They all acted like police officers and prison guards, not teachers, not nurturers. I didn’t have the macho bullshit to deal with at home because Don didn’t really say much and most of his hissy fits happened while I was out. Why did I have to deal with it here? I couldn’t stand the way they walked down the hall like they owned the place, how they chased after you if you didn’t have a hall pass, how they hollered at you if they saw you running away down the hall.
I remember one day in Mrs. Sullivan’s class we learned how slaves who had secretly learned how to read and write would forge passes to visit friends or lovers on other nearby plantations. Some would write passes to the north, all the way to freedom. If white folks saw them on the road with a pass, they assumed nothing because it was impossible for a creature that was only three-fifths human to read or write. When I asked why we had to have passes like slaves, Mrs. Sullivan retorted with a very good answer. She understood my concern, but explained that we still had freedom outside of the structured workplace. Adults have rules too, she said. Slaves didn’t have any freedom at all, until after the Civil War. She explained how there was no comparison, but it didn’t make me feel any better at the time. Late passes, bathroom passes, and nurse passes all seemed like an attack on my adolescent freedom. I just wanted to run free.
My biggest problem was not getting into fights, cursing out teachers, goofing around, or any of the standard suspensions, though I had experimented with all of them. My trouble was getting caught escaping or coming back from escapes. I just didn’t want to be there. Popular kids in their turtle necks, jocks in their jerseys, metal heads dressed in black dirty jeans and band t-shirts like it was still the 80s, pretty boy guidos in their Z-Cavaricci pants with gold chains around their necks— I hated it all. I had tried to be all of them, but the turtlenecks choked me, the jerseys bored me, the black clothes depressed me, and I didn’t have enough money for the guido costumes. None of us knew who we were. Five hundred living breathing souls with the same identity crisis.
The concrete walls of the school halls were lined with brown metal lockers. It was stuffy like a prison and I felt like I had a perpetual fever. Like the bathroom I accidentally locked myself in when I was four. All I wanted was out. I had screamed for an hour until the fire department came and broke open the lock. I didn’t want to be confined ever again. I needed to move around, breathe fresh air, and get away from those florescent lights. So I cut out when I felt the urge. There was nothing like the feeling of the metal bar on the steel door moving in and then the light that hit your face as you exited the dark building.
Sometimes friends came with me. Sometimes we ran through yards and hopped fences to get away. Most of the time, we just avoided being spotted by the security van in the first place. It was a game. For some kids it was good practice. They would spend the rest of their lives on the run. Steven and Gene came with me a lot, but because of their silent dislike for one another it was one or the other. One time Paul and I left only to be rounded up with a few others by security