“Everything is political,” Miss Demeanor says.
“Whatever,” SuperKen says, “Jan and Zayna still sucked.”
“And, no offense, ladies, but as much as I hate to agree with Sergeant Rock,” Psycho Superstar adds, “the rest of those add-on, politically correct Super Friends were bullshit, too. I mean, Apache Chief? Samurai? Rima the fucking Jungle Girl? Gimme a break.”
Hippie Avenger sighs. “But, like, the creators were just trying to instill some cultural sensitivity into their young viewers, at a time when, like …”
“Then they should have created culturally sensitive characters that didn’t suck ass!” Psycho Superstar says. “The real superheroes are the five originals: Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman.”
“Aquaman is useless,” The Statistician says, with unexpected emotion. He adapts a Saturday-morning-cartoon-superhero voice. “Superman and Wonder Woman, you two go fly around the world at supersonic speed to prevent the disaster that’s been set in motion by the Legion of Doom! Batman and Robin, you guys get your asses into the Batmobile and stop the villains from escaping their lair! And Aquaman … uhhhhhh, yeah … Aquaman. Um, what are your superpowers again? Oh. Right. Um, then you go for a swim, okay? And while you’re in there, you should have a talk with your friends the fishies. Yes, you go do that. That’ll really help.”
Everyone laughs, except for The Drifter. He takes a slurp from his beer and mutters, “I like Aquaman.”
The Drifter is the closest thing to a real-live Aquaman in the group. He was on the Tom Thomson High School junior swim team in grade nine, but he wasn’t allowed back in grade ten because of his lacklustre grades. From the beach here at Mr. Nice Guy’s parents’ cottage, The Drifter can swim all the way out to the island and back.
“Aquaman,” The Statistician pronounces, “is useless.”
“Fuckin’ right,” Psycho Superstar agrees. “Robin could beat him in a fight. The friggin’ Boy Wonder. Hell, Batman’s butler would kick Aquaman’s ass.”
“Not in the water,” The Drifter says, his eyes narrowing. “The neutered, Saturday-morning-cartoon version of Aquaman we all saw on Super Friends wasn’t a fair representation of the King of Atlantis! I mean, in Superman vs. Aquaman, Aquaman took down Superman by flooding his lungs with water, then …”
He stops, and his face flushes red. He’s crossed the Dork Line yet again.
The Statistician laughs. “You’d better put away the comic books and start hitting the textbooks, little brother.”
“Stop calling me ‘little brother.’”
“It’s what you are.”
“Fuck off. I’m just as big as you are.”
“What? Are you gonna go tell the fishies on me?”
Hippie Avenger, who can’t swim at all, has already consumed a six-pack of strawberry-flavoured vodka coolers, and she always gets sentimental or amorous (or both) when she’s drunk. She throws her arms around The Drifter (who is momentarily distracted from his funk by the feel of her braless breasts against him), and she says, “All of you guys are, like, my Super Friends!”
“More like the Super Dorks,” The Statistician says, rolling his eyes, hoping to deflect yet another maudlin, tearful, it’s-our-last-summer-together moment. “Perhaps we should call ourselves the Not-So-Super Friends.”
“You’re such a dick,” The Drifter mutters.
Without unlocking his gaze from the second bratwurst sausage he’s scorching, The Statistician says, “Perhaps you should shut up and go study for your remedial summer-school courses, little brother.”
The Drifter jumps up, fists clenched.
“Hey now, boys,” says SuperKen, in that fighter-pilot voice of his, “calm down, now. I don’t want to have to intervene.”
The Statistician turns and glares at SuperKen. “What are you, the United Nations Security Council? Perhaps you should mind your own business.”
“Yeah,” The Drifter says. “This is between us. Go back to fondling the Female Athlete of the Year.”
“Hey,” SuperKen says, easing his grip on one of SuperBarbie’s breasts. “Watch it.”
Mr. Nice Guy feels obligated to ease the tension by saying something funny, so in his best Ted Knight voice (who did the narration for the Super Friends cartoon on Saturday morning TV), he cries out the motto: “To fight Injustice. To right that which is wrong. And to serve all mankind! ”
Again The Statistician rolls his eyes. “Perhaps our motto should be: To talk about how somebody else should do something about Injustice! To get drunk while discussing right and wrong! And to eat bratwurst while doing it!”
He thrusts the scorched sausage in the air, brandishing the crooked coat-hanger wire like a general leading a cavalry.
“You’re such a superior being,” The Drifter snipes. “The rest of us have so much to learn from you.”
“Actually,” Miss Demeanor says, “he’s right. Our modus operandi is sitting around together, drinking and eating and throwing bullshit around. We never actually do anything”
“And there are probably, like, a thousand other little groups like us all over the Western world,” Hippie Avenger ponders. “We’ve never had a Vietnam to bring us together. Or a Kent State. Or a Woodstock.”
“Or a World War One,” SuperKen adds. “Or a World War Two.”
“Nor a depression, nor an inquisition,” says The Statistician, in that professorial tone of voice, “nor a Renaissance, nor a revolution.”
“And fucking amen to that!” Psycho Superstar says. “Who needs any of that shit?”
“And fucking amen to that!” Miss Demeanor seconds, grandly raising her bottle in the air. “To Indifference!”
“To the Not-So-Super Friends!” Mr. Nice Guy cries, also raising his bottle.
Not wanting to look like the sucky-baby his brother often accuses him of being, The Drifter reluctantly lifts his bottle, too. “To the Indifference League,” he says.
“Good one!” says Hippie Avenger.
“Nice,” says Miss Demeanor
Mr. Nice Guy shrugs, and mutters, “What about the Not-So-Super Friends?”
“It’s good, too, buddy,” Hippie Avenger says in that soothing, dovelike voice.
“To the Indifference League!” The Drifter cheers again.
Hippie Avenger, Psycho Superstar, Miss Demeanor, and The Statistician hoist their drinks and repeat the toast in unison. As the co-chairs of Teens Need Truth, the Perfect Pair are still clucking to each other over the blasphemous use of the term “fucking amen,” but in the spirit of the moment they join the toast anyway, waving their antifreeze-coloured athletic beverages at the airplanes and stars twinkling overhead.
Bold declarations are made.
“Collectively, from this point forward,” Hippie Avenger says, “we will be known formally as The Indifference League, and informally as the Not-So-Super Friends. All those in agreement, say ‘Aye’!”
“Aye!” the others cry.
“My cottage,” Mr. Nice Guy declares, “will be henceforth known as The Hall of Indifference. We will all pledge to meet here at least once a year for the rest of our lives. All those in agreement, say ‘Yeah’!”
They all cry “Yeah,” even The Statistician, who is pretty sure that he will soon be moving on to Bigger