INTERSECTION
By Adam Lovingood
Copyright 2001

I remember Mikey being brought to me by one of the other teachers. He was a skinny kid, tall for his age. Real smart, but very shy. You could see fear in his eyes when you could see his eyes. When they weren't cast to the floor avoiding any chance of looking at something that might look back. He had just come to our school. Middle of the year.

I taught his gym class, and the other teacher thought I might be a good person for him to talk to since it was, apparently, because of my class that he had been pretending to be sick. I knew he hadn't interacted with the other boys very much. I didn't think much of it since he was new and everything, but his teacher said that he had been complaining of stomach aches several days in a row and his parents didn't know what to do since, according to their doctor, there wasn't anything physically wrong with him. Finally, they had dragged out of him that he didn't want to go to my gym class no more.

I'm a gym teacher, but I ain't stupid. I have a masters in child psychology. I don't like to brag about stuff like that, but, just so you know, I ain't stupid. I talked to Mikey a bit in my office. He was real quiet and closed up, so I told him to come back the next day and meet me in the gym. I thought that maybe if he had a good experience in there, just the two of us hanging out and talking like regular guys, that he wouldn't fear the class no more. Ease him into it.

The easiest way to get someone to talk and open up is to get there mind off what they're saying. Tossing a ball back and forth is perfect. They loosen up. It becomes a friendly atmosphere in the context of a shared activity, and they talk. Most of the time they talk a lot. That's not what happened with Mikey though.

I always hated the first day. The day when I would walk into a room full of strangers with everyone's eyes all over me stripping me, probing me. I never looked up. I could feel my Mom's hand on my back, comforting and ephemeral. Waiting for her to remove her hand was like waiting for the executioner to drop the guillotine. But I knew it hurt her too. It wasn't her fault that there were so many schools, so many new rooms with more strangers with assailing eyes.

Arriving in mid-November before the Thanksgiving holiday, this was my second school this year. I had never experienced a separate class for gym before. Gym class was on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 to 11:45, and on my first Tuesday the teacher announced that we should prepare for gym class. She told us to change into our sneakers if we had brought them, and, if we hadn't brought them, she reminded everyone that we would have to remove our shoes and socks before entering the gym and would have to play in our bare feet. It's alarming how naked you can feel in bare feet.

Mikey was there on time. I'm sure he always was, on time that is. I saw him back in the far right corner of the gym beside the large vat of volleyballs. He looked so small and insignificant like a lone piece of sports equipment someone had forgotten to store. He started when the steel door slammed shut behind me. I called out to him and he awkwardly ambled towards center court as if traversing an alien terrain from which one might expect the unexpected. I had the urge to just toss him the basketball I was holding but thought better of it. I got the impression that any sudden movements might frighten him off.

I dribbled the ball a bit listening as the hall rang out with the sound of rubber and Formica and emptiness. I said I was glad he could meet me today. I asked about classes and which subjects he liked. I asked him about anything I could think of.

I didn't like being alone with new people because I never knew what to say, and new people always want you to say something. Most conversations are such a waste of time that I wonder why anyone bothers. Few people are capable of fully expressing themselves in any meaningful sense. But it's the rest who talk and talk and talk. Maybe knowing what to say comes with the added benefit of not having to say anything. It's like discovering a treasure and understanding that it's yours and yours alone and no one else can take it away. You can share it if you want but only a little at a time and at your discretion.

The gym teacher was one of the talkers. He seemed to have an endless supply of pre-packaged commentaries and inane observances about the most trite and trifling of minutiae. Occasionally, he would pause and look down stupidly at me in a moment of pregnant anticipation as if waiting for me to untie the Gordian knot of words he had created. Getting no response, he continued talking. Conversation as filler, as dross for the giant timefill that lay before and between us. I felt compelled to flee before I smothered in the infinite, rising level of disposable patter.

The kid didn't have much to say. He really was way too shy. No wonder the other kids got the better of him. No question he was a target. Why didn't he say something? Anything would've been fine. Sports is always a good, safe subject for men to talk about, and a boy needs to learn to talk to other boys. I remember kids like him when I was in school, and I did my share of teasing. I ain't proud of that fact, but at some point you just get sick of them not saying nothing. You know, it's like they think they're better than you or something. You start thinking that maybe they deserve the abuse. That somehow all the jeers will make them wake up and act human and join the rest of the human race.

I wanted to say something to Mikey like that. I wanted to tell him that he might not get picked on so much if he'd just stop acting like he was above it all. Maybe then he'd like gym class and stop acting like such an ass. I didn't say that yet, but I wanted to.

After half an hour of seemingly endless chatter, the gym teacher was quiet for a few placid moments. Although I wouldn't look up to acknowledge him, I could tell he was looking at me. I knew he was waiting for some sort of validation. He wanted me to recognize how helpful he was trying to be. What a sacrifice he was making by spending time alone with the tragic kid. What a good guy he was for trying to reach out to the loner.

I held the basketball in both hands in front of me and watched Mikey for a few moments. I didn't know what else to do. So I decided to change the subject and asked him to tell me about his family. I know it sounds clichéd like all that tell-me-about-your-mother crap, but I was actually curious about the type of home life that creates kids like this. Is he ever allowed out of the house? Does he have any kids to play with in his neighborhood? What's he like at home? Is he an only child?

He asked me about my family. Since I don't mind sharing factual information with strangers, I told him that I live with both parents. My Dad travels a lot when we aren't moving with him. I have older siblings, but they are all married and gone from home. They managed to escape the road show that we call a family. I read a lot because I like the other worlds that books provide. Sometimes I think books are all that sustain me.

I recalled the time when we were evicted from one of the many houses where we had lived over the years and how devastated I was when the landlord confiscated all our personal property, including my books. I cried for weeks. My books were my friends, but no one understood. And still no one understands.

I reluctantly looked up at the gym teacher and met his gaze and could instantly see that he didn't understand either.

No doubt the kid had had some tough times for someone so young, but I ain't had it so easy either. A lot of kids ain't, but they don't act like Mikey. You've got to be tough to live. Just to live you've got to be tough. I thought to myself that I've got to wake this kid up. He's too weak. And as he was telling me about losing his books and how his books were his friends, I'm thinking that I'm getting real sick of hearing this kid whine about simple shit like that. He ain't been shot or beat up or starved or neglected. He ain't living on the streets.

Go to the fucking library, I wanted to say, and get some more goddamn books. Jesus! I wish all I had to worry about is somebody taking my fucking books. Wouldn't that be the life?

I stopped talking. There was so much more I could have said but knew that the gym teacher was not really listening to me. I could see behind his eyes that his mind had moved beyond what I was saying to him, which made me sad because I really did want to tell someone everything. I needed to talk. But my life isn't like an action movie, and I'm not going to begin with a chase scene just to entice the audience to continue watching. Why couldn't he listen to me? That's all I really wanted was for someone to listen.

I had had about all I was going to take. Now the kid was giving me the silent treatment again. I suggested we play some b'ball, but he just stands there shaking his head like he's going to cry or something. What a little girl. What a fucking little queer! That's when I started in on him. I told him to stop acting like he was so goddamn much better than everybody else and maybe somebody would like him. I said that no wonder the other kids made fun of him and that maybe I'd start making fun of him too, now that I had seen what a fucking pansy he was. How would he like that? I told him that he needed to stop acting like such a little faggot and that if he couldn't then maybe he was better off dead. The only good faggot is a dead one.

I had never before had an adult talk to me the way the gym teacher did. He told me the things that I had always suspected that grown-ups said about me but had never actually heard. I felt the tears welling in my eyes, and then I became angry. I would not let anyone else or anything make me cry ever again. I listened to him yelling the things that I had heard so many times from other kids. And then he said the thing that I had thought so often myself, and I knew it was time.

I don't know why I allowed myself to lose control like that and get so enraged. I shouldn't have said all that stuff to the kid. I saw him snap right in front of my eyes, and you never forget a thing like that. I was yelling all those horrible things at him, and all of a sudden he started running towards the bleachers. A blur of flailing legs and arms, he ran to the top level of the bleachers and then continued to climb like a spider monkey on the crisscrossed exposed girders that lined the walls of the gym. I silently watched him not knowing what he was doing until he reached the top of the wall forty feet up and jumped into the wires that supported the lights on the ceiling.

I ran. I ran across the gym and up the bleachers and scaled the wall. I had never felt so alive. I knew I had to do it and not think about it. I couldn't risk changing my mind. I didn't want fear to take over. Never again would I be afraid. When I couldn't climb any further, I threw myself out into the electrical wiring. Flying, at last I would be free.