I’m grieved to report that my co-author has not given up on our joint project, and continues to contribute to what might have been a spine tingling psychological mystery were it only the work of my own brain. We’ve recently passed a sort of a landmark in our collaborative history, the two of us – we’ve now worked together on a piece for longer than one month. Not only have we never even previously achieved three weeks of continuous collaboration, we’ve never even achieved three weeks of speaking to each other. I ascribe this sad achievement to the natural erosion of my personal standards over time. As a young man, at full strength and vitality, I would have no natural reason to accept substandard work under my name. During humanity’s hunter gatherer epoch, a young man’s ability to contribute his strength to the tribe’s hunting effort assured his value to the tribe, and meant he required less patience with the ignorance of others. But as the older man’s weakness and slowed step reduced his value, he had to ingratiate himself to others, smiling at idiotic jokes, nodding thoughtfully at poorly expressed notions, cheerfully submitting to the regular desecration of his cave paintings at the hands of his ignorant co-artists. This natural progression is now stamped in my DNA, and finds expression in:
The Quest for the Orange Dragon Episode III
Case File: 102761083 (continued)
Before we leap forward through the first few weeks of Values and Principles Camp to the meeting with Candace and Tree, I should describe the main unifying factor in Kyle and I’s friendship. I’m talking about the main unifying factor at the camp – before the alien microorganisms and before Emmitt’s reign of terror. I’ve mentioned the deer pictures, but our friendship truly blossomed over hatred of Jiggles and Minestrone, our roommates in the basement of Stansbury Lodge. Vincent “Minestrone” Maltisanti and Jason “Jiggles” Gregerson occupied the other bunk bed in our dungeon room, at first. This arrangement lasted about 5 minutes after Jiggles claimed the top bunk on their side, when Minestrone came in with his backpack and began cursing at Jiggles for taking the top. Kyle and I occupied the other bunks. I had given Kyle the top bunk because I didn’t like top bunks. I believe that at some point on that first day I unwisely told Jiggles or Minestrone or the room in general that I preferred to be on the bottom, and elicited guffaws from Jiggles and Minestrone. “You like being a bottom?” Minestrone asked me. Hilarity.
For the first few minutes after entering the room, Minestrone sat impatiently on the bunk below Jiggles for a half second, berating Jiggles, rather tiresomely, for farting. Then he suddenly lunged over and grabbed Kyle’s garbage bag of sad belongings and began pulling out Kyle’s clothes, slapping Kyle’s hands away and ignoring his unfortunately shrill protests. I remember being a little irritated at Kyle for the pathetic tone of his voice, all the while I lay quietly on my bunk, studiously drawing invisible circles in the wooden sideboard with my finger.
At some point Minestrone hit bully gold, a pair of briefs that Kyle indicated to me, months later, had been washed with another pair, a red pair of spider man briefs, once kyle’s favorite, that he’d worn a little too much, that had on more than one occasion stained the other undies in the wash pink. The stained pink undies had been left for Kyle to wear as punishment, and despite his struggles to do away with them over the years, his loving stepmother had managed to sneak a few pair into the garbage bag she’d thoughtfully provided for his camp. Which Minestrone found, and displayed. Kyle jumped down to retrieve them, providing what for the hazing profession is the creme de la creme of humor, a small person attempting to retrieve their belongings from a taller person who can easily hold the item out of reach. This went on for a few precious moments, ending when Minestrone slung the undies out the door for the amusement of the lads milling aimlessly in the hallway. After Kyle dashed out to get them, Minestrone climbed into the bunk above me with his bag. I was able to hide the unhappiness this turn of events caused me by continuing to carefully trace the invisible circles in the wood grain.
I know that most non-sandbox kids will struggle, after reading the passage above, to understand how Kyle and I could become friends after I completely failed to help him with the bullying by Minestrone, especially after understanding that I never really did help him, with more than a few feeble comments now and again, in the tiresome weeks of harassment that he would go on to endure at Values and Principles Camp, at the hands of Jiggles and Minestrone and others, and on very rare occasions from the Gad boys, to whom I imagine we two were barely noticeable members of the wussy Dan kids. I endured a milder version of the same treatment as Kyle, and was secretly glad that Jiggles and Minestrone bothered Kyle more. At times, when the two of us were alone, we would savage our roommates with satiric wit, and complain about the lodge’s deer imagery. So we bonded enough that he introduced me to Candace and Tree at the Camp’s first coed social, and I became entangled with their club.
This was the Dinosaur Club, begun by Candace and Tree when they were little kids. The original members of the club were Tree, Candace, Billy, and an imaginary Rabbit named Clive, inspired by Harvey, Tree’s all time favorite movie. They made Kyle a member of the club in the fifth grade. Members of the club had to have a dinosaur name. Kyle was Kiplodocus Quintoplex. Tree assigned all the names. She gave me a name too; Diggory Dellosauros Sexplex. I think you may have gathered at this point that a certain level of Childishness prevailed in the club, and you would be correct. Tree had a fetish for Infantilism that passed for adolescent irony and wit amongst other teenagers. I found it charming at first; playing with plastic dinosaurs at the club meetings, eating stolen candy; listening to Candace and Tree’s incessant baby-talk. They were girls, after all. So joining them for an absurd slumber partyish meeting in Sunbeam lodge, where the occasional pre-school kids visiting camp with parents stayed, was an ecstatic experience. Everyone wore dinosaur t-shirts and gym clothes and we moved our toy dinosaurs around and pretended they were talking to each other. It’s hard to believe, looking back years later, after everything, that this nonsense eventually led to our becoming a temporary superhero team. And my first and second marriage. And an abortive career in pharmaceuticals
Sperberspeak 