I feel like I’ve probably mid-judged my beloved readers, underestimated their taste and aesthetic standards, possibly insulted the years of loyalty they’ve shown Sperberspeak by introducing a coarser element into my fantasy sci fi novel; “The Quest for the Orange Dragon”, in the person of my former friend and ex-employer John Hagen, a decidedly low-brow sort of writer with no aesthetic morals but a sad and warped desire for money and fame. I would feel like I owed these readers something special in this next installment, more of a wise but worldly tone, a call for social justice, some pithy words about the president, characters they can admire and care about, lushly worded descriptions that could be dropped unceremoniously into the very center of an NPR podcast without the merest ripple of discord. But since these loyal readers do not exist I will forgo this guilt induced effort, and settle calmly, numbingly, into the passive, effortless editing of Mr Hagen’s awkward, cringingly indulgent script, without the vexation of an audience. To use a tennis term, we will continue to pursue that blissful zen state of mind only possible when one is serving to the wall, secure in the predictability of the return.
The Quest for the Orange Dragon Episode II
Case File: 102761083 (continued)
I should admit right now, before leading you into a false assumption, that I myself was in a vulnerable state, socially speaking, at the time that Brother Baynard foisted Kyle’s friendship upon me. It’s embarrassing to describe this, even now, in my current state, but I began to spin a narrative with Kyle’s female friends, Candace and Tree, later that month, at the first camp stomp, of myself as a popular boy, the well-liked class clown, who heroically extended his protective friendship over Kyle, and saved him from horrible bullying from the rough Gad boys who sort of terrorized the camp. I was eager to ingratiate myself with Candace especially, in order to overcome a fairly negative impression I had made the previous school year when I had on a few occasions joined in with other boys in a certain group which I always called the “Bjorn” group, after a kid named Bjorn that everyone in the group and the outer Oort Cloud of the group had complex feelings for. I would describe myself as being in an elliptical orbit around the inner Bjorn group, not quite in the Oort Cloud of the group like some others but not huddled around in cozy orbit around Bjorn. Anyway, the boys in the more inner positions of the Bjorn system had on a few occasions made some merry comments on the subject of the size of Candace’s physical being. She was a taller than average girl from a family of physically massive people, with dirty blonde hair that she had chosen to cut boy short, in a weird helmet hair looking style. Her shirts were all sport jersey tees that were handed down from older brothers, and which effectively camouflaged her breasts, and her pants were all sweats, because she could not fit into women’s jeans, not I must emphasize because she was fat in the traditional way but because her legs and arms and hips were meaty. I describe her appearance to explain the five month turnaround in my own treatment and estimation for my first girlfriend. But eight months before, whatever my own inner estimation of her BMI, the flotsam and jetsam of the Bjorn system called her fatty. I am afflicted with a compulsion to be funny in any social setting, and this compulsion achieves an irresistible strength in the presence of a group with which I desire to ingratiate myself, and if I desire to ingratiate myself with a group I do not seem to possess the self respect necessary to rise above whatever moral limitations the members of the group may struggle with. So on those occasions, when I might have behaved admirably, like a true hero in the books I avidly read, I instead joined in the cruel fun with particularly pointed jibes that on the later occasion, when I had changed the focus of ingratiation to Candace and her group, caused me a great deal of regret and shame. In order to overcome this previous bad impression, I found it necessary to give in to my other compulsion, also irresistibly strengthened by the urge for approval, which is to lie.
So I lied by giving the impression of myself as a popular boy who befriended a loser, when in fact it appeared that Kyle had exactly two more friends than I – Candace, who’s family had apparently lived next door to the Loganberries for her and Kyles’ entire lives, and Tree, who was Kyle’s friend by being Candace’s friend.
I didn’t actually believe Kyle when he described his friendship with Tree to me, because while I found it believable that he would be friends with a heavy awkward sweaty girl like Candace, Tree had always looked fairly normal looks wise to me, definitely attractive enough that I would considered her as a valid “score” in the odious way of teenage boys. She had normal shoulder length black hair, she was slim enough to wear girl jeans and even dresses, her body was just barely hourglassy enough, and no elements of her face were noticeably larger than the others. Her glasses weren’t too large or overdone. So I didn’t believe him, and made constant disparaging remarks about Candace to him that make me cringe with shame whenever I remember them, and asked him if he’d “scored” with Tree, and yes I cringe with shame over those memories too. Worse, I remember that in my additional efforts to ingratiate myself with the Bjorn group at the camp, I disclosed to them some of the lame things about Kyle that I had learned while befriending him. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of cinematics with such betrayals in them. But we had no fights over it. I wasn’t brave or classy enough to ignore the other boys, and Kyle was probably too starved for friendship to make a big deal about it.
Sperberspeak 