Mama's Boy, page 2
All my friends had left the classroom for lunch. I was hanging back, arranging my porn sketches neatly in my desk. I was amazed to realize that Pierre-Louis, the teacher, had forgotten me. He’d left with the students and now I was in charge.
I started rifling through backpacks and pencil cases. I stole a few superhero erasers, a granola bar, and a comic book. I wandered aimlessly, intoxicated by possibilities I could barely even grasp. I stuck boogers on the blackboard as well as on Ariane’s stuff. I soon ran out of organic resources. I was kicking my heels when a slight creak roused me from my torpor. At the back of the classroom, Bushy, the guinea pig, was moving. We were only allowed to pet him when Mr. Pierre-Louis was there; that was a strict rule. He was very fat and pretty—the guinea pig, not Pierre-Louis. Burnt toffee and white in colour, if I remember correctly. We were absolutely forbidden to let him out of his cage for any reason.
I suffocated him very carefully, out of curiosity. My hand barely went all the way round his body; his head and his butt stuck out at each end of my fist. I felt him wriggling and struggling uselessly. His little claws, moving frantically, tickled the palm of my hand. I gripped more tightly. I heard a crack. Blood trickled from his mouth. His eyes were popping wildly out of his head. I exerted light pressure and some of his intestines slipped out of his anus. I jumped and let him drop back into the cage, in total agony.
Pierre-Louis, searching for me, came into the classroom and found me standing next to the cage, rather pale. He raced over to it without even looking at me. When he saw Bushy dying in his wood shavings, he swore, then swore again as he turned to me. I automatically thought of reporting him to the principal for his unacceptable language, but the seriousness of my own somewhat compromising circumstances persuaded me against it. Out of fear or some kind of self-protective instinct, I started bawling hot tears, but they didn’t help. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the principal’s office, where the decision to permanently expel me was a great relief to the vast majority of the teachers.
And so I was moved to a different foster family, and I went to finish elementary school in a special class in yet another school. In this class there were no rodents. But there was Mrs. Dubois. Her first name was France, but we weren’t allowed to use it. I doubt if anybody in the world called her by her first name. It was too personal. It was obvious that nobody loved this cold, strict bitch. The only reason she’d ended up in teaching was because they didn’t want her in the army. With her broad shoulders and moustache, she was certainly a virile woman.
Everything had its place, and Mrs. Dubois kept records of every single lapse in order. In her utterly logical mind, full of grids, our names appeared with checkmarks for each of our bad deeds. She could tell me precisely the number of times I’d failed to put the board eraser back in the right place. Everything had to be clean and ready for use. She was always droning on about how if everyone did things as perfectly as she did, people would be a lot better off. Sure they would—better off dead.
Mrs. Dubois managed to create good class solidarity, based entirely on the hatred we felt for her. How many recesses did we spend dreaming up schemes for our revenge? How many clenched fists fantasized about smashing her face? Her dictatorial style was hated but effective. I finished my elementary schooling that same year, and left that little hell for special classes at high school.
2
Resourcefulness
My arrival at high school was brightened by a realization: the most important thing in hostile spaces is not to be the strongest but the craziest. This is well documented.
I wasn’t particularly strong, but I soon learned to fight. You have to aim for the testicles, the solar plexus, or the eyes. Hit them where it hurts. But boxing is nothing, as Cassius Ali said. And he ought to know, having personally broken a ton of jaws. So boxing isn’t the important part; it’s everything else you bring to it. I always carried a weapon on me, and I kept a stone gripped in my fist to increase its power and impact.
In spite of these precautions, I still lost fights. Too many for my liking. It’s not so bad though, apart from the after-effects; whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. And there’s no doubt about it, I’m a strong man.
Knowledge is power, said Eazy-E, that famous singer from Compton. I knew I had to tend the secret garden of my brain. I kept up with my habits and my reading. I stole everything that looked interesting from the public library. I also tried shoplifting from bookstores, but the alarm went off more often there—so I also had plenty of chances to go for a run.
* * *
The first time I killed a cat, I was as surprised as he was. In fact, as surprised as she was, since it was a little molly cat called Mimine. Mimine was a pretty product of back-alley mating, her bastard coat cleverly mixing brown, black, and ginger. She was a full-fledged member of my foster family at the time, the Doucets. I would have been fifteen then; Mimine was three.
For several months, I’d been in the habit of torturing animals whenever I was frustrated. I must have been very frustrated on that particular day. The animal didn’t survive the combination of centrifugal force and my bedroom door frame. It made an odd noise, soft and dry at the same time. I was sitting on the bed, still holding Mimine by the tail, when there was a creak on the stairs.
Robert was coming down. I panicked. I slid the cat under the duvet and stretched out on top of it. What noise? No, it wasn’t me that had made that noise. No, I hadn’t nailed anything to the wall. Yes, I was coming up for dinner. Robert, the debonair patriarch of this reasonably functional family, had his eye on me, the eye of the tiger. He couldn’t manage without the cash that social services gave him for looking after me, but never stopped telling me he’d had it up to here with my crap and I was this close to being shown the door. I didn’t particularly like his dump of a house, or the people who lived in it, but I was fed up with moving. I liked having my own room in the basement, away from everyone else. And above all, this was the first foster home that had the Super Écran channel. After midnight on Fridays, Super Écran was fantastic.
I had to get rid of the body.
As per usual at this house, I wasn’t allowed to go out that Sunday. I rolled the corpse up in a towel and stashed it between the mattress and the box spring for the day, waiting for Monday morning. Part of the evening was taken up with searching for the missing cat. I was particularly energetic in my efforts. The family lingered in my room but without any luck.
Fortunately for me, I was already seriously into hip hop, and wore it proudly. My oversized pants meant I could attach Mimine, with the help of some duct tape, to my inner left thigh as I was leaving the house. The corpse’s stiffness restricted my movement a fair bit, but I managed to walk more or less normally. Enough to eat, then leave the house, without being noticed. With my schoolbooks under my arm, I went down the street, cursing myself for having traded my backpack for a tab of LSD. My thigh had started itching and was getting worse by the minute. I’d pulled the tape too tight. My leg was completely numb. Although maybe it was better that way, since the fur tickled less. The bus ride went on forever, there were three of us in one seat and I couldn’t discreetly scratch my crotch.
Once I’d made my careful way to school, I smoked my morning cigarette and then headed for the toilets. Sitting on the throne, Mimine’s body across my knees, I waited for the bell to ring and the washrooms to empty out, then I concealed the proof of my crime in the garbage under a pile of dirty paper towels. I had to run to class. I needn’t have bothered—the teacher was already writing me a detention slip.
It was an ordinary school day. Brainwashing, surging hormones, and putting up with a bit of intimidation that was immediately passed on to anyone smaller. I liked the bustling atmosphere, and I really liked the girls. In return, they didn’t particularly like me. I had a bad reputation and was too mature for my age. I never managed to screw any of them. My sole forays into teenage sex took place hidden behind a rusty merry-go-round at the fair. But that girl was ugly and weird, so it doesn’t really count. Sometimes I regret that I didn’t know how to meet those nymphettes’ expectations back then. I caught up later though.
Although Operation Camouflage was successful, Mimine’s disappearance was still blamed on me. They argued that the cat had never run away before, that Robert had heard a door slamming the previous day, that I smoked in secret, and that I must have let her out when I came through the garage. They were accusing me without proof. This felt like a grave injustice. I kicked a hole in the wall to show my indignation. I was quickly moved to another foster family. This one had a dog.
* * *
They were an obese bunch, this family. I have nothing against obese people, but you have to be pretty pathetic to let your body get into such a state. Glands, my ass! As well as Daddy Fat and Mommy Fat, there was their daughter Jenny, who didn’t want to be left behind. And she certainly never left anything behind on her plate. As for me, I made sure to always leave something, playing with my food, lifting forkfuls to my mouth only to put them back down on the plate. It drove those fatties crazy. I used to chuckle to myself under my downy moustache.
* * *
They all sweated copiously. But the weirdest part was that they all sweated from their cracks when they exerted themselves. Their distended skin gave them long cracks. I was constantly wiping the toilet seat down. Little pearls of sweat glistened all around the white plastic ring. Sometimes I forgot and sat down in their toxins. That shut down my will to live, never mind my urgent need to go.
Three other kids were placed with this moist family. All ballsy kids full of testosterone like me. We lived in the basement and kept ourselves busy altering our minds by any means possible. Obviously we could get hold of plenty of stuff at school and in the neighbourhood, but we were also pretty ingenious. For example, rather than just inhaling gas, we poured it into a metal can that we heated so it would give off fumes. We also mixed liquid paper with ground-up pills and snorted it. We watched the effects of these mixtures on each other’s faces. The bulk of our free time was dedicated to research, buying psychotropic substances, and developing ways to use them. The foster family had frying, we had initiative.
When we weren’t stealing from each other, we basement musketeers got along well. Even with Benjamin, our whipping boy. A whipping boy is good for group dynamics. He was the gang’s outlet. I lived there with something like stability for a while.
We slept two to a room. I shared my privacy with Steve, a Haitian two years older than me. He had a huge cock, a truly massive penis. I’m not saying that to be racist, black people are very well hung. It’s a genetic thing.
Steve and I burned with the same passion for hip hop and we wrote a few rap songs together. We had the chemistry, the talent, and the attitude too. All we needed was a musician to set it to a beat and a manager to launch the product. We already had a name: Sons of the Street. It was good. Our concept was all ready to go; we’d always wear white and black, and shoot videos in black and white. Him in white, me in black. A real mix of genres. We were even going to be famous in France, but a few months later social services took Steve to a secure unit.
Steve and I were the black sheep in this foster family. People came down hard on us every chance they got. Especially when we beat up Benjamin, the mentally ill kid. They banged on about how it was unacceptable, but they all refused to understand that we beat him up because he was an asshole, not because he was mentally ill. They aren’t mutually exclusive. We didn’t give a fuck if he was bipolar, the problem was that he was intrusive, he ratted on us, and stole from us. You can be mentally ill and still be an asshole.
They’d had us in their sights ever since Benjamin’s last thrashing. Steve was sent back to the centre not long after that. He’d casually threatened the head of the family with a butter knife. A butter knife just isn’t that dangerous. The mother panicked and jumped out the first-floor window, tearing her meniscus. In Steve’s defence, I should point out that he did call an ambulance. I never saw him again, it was a shame. At least I had the room to myself and could masturbate whenever I felt like it. Every cloud has a silver lining.
Speaking of which, the size of my pants had several advantages. As well as being able to carry dead cats and steal objects of considerable size, I discovered that I could fondle myself without attracting too much attention. I’d gone to the trouble of poking holes in the bottoms of my pockets, having developed an ambidextrous technique. Success depended on fine motor skills and dexterity. In practical terms, you just had to repeatedly pinch the glans, without any back and forth that might arouse suspicion. I particularly enjoyed doing it during my appointments with the school psychologist.
Claudia’s professionalism turned on all the guys, as-yet-undecideds, and burgeoning lesbians in the school. She owned a collection of suits, each one more fitted than the last. Very classy and top of the line. I liked the beige suit best. It outlined the curve of her breasts beautifully, and the skirt revealed enough thigh to fuel my developing pubescent imagination.
My personalized intervention plan dictated that I had to meet with her every two weeks. I discovered I could increase the frequency of these meetings by inventing existential worries or by revealing the pithy details of my life. Like the story about Mimine the cat, for example. Her dramatic intensity when I fed her unhealthy curiosity for all the details was exciting. It made her feel important, and maybe she imagined that she was something of a help to me.
I never ejaculated in her office. Back then I wasn’t very good at controlling my facial spasms. Having an orgasm always made my face twist up. I practised in front of a mirror but I never managed to stay completely stoic. It was a philosophical matter. I didn’t want anything whatsoever to interrupt our appointments, and I didn’t want to end up forced to keep my hands on my knees. So I stopped by the washrooms before going to art lessons, my body and spirit light.
Claudia inhabited my imagination for several years—seven, to be precise. She provided the inspiration for my solitary caresses until the day I bumped into her under the cruel neon lights of a grocery store. Time had assaulted her face. Her migratory breasts were heading south. And not even the same south as each other. One of them seemed to be stretching her blouse in a southeasterly direction. She was suffering from a mammary strabismus. It’s pretty common in women who don’t have the money to get implants. I pretended I didn’t recognize her. She did the same thing. I left the store without even buying my Cap’n Crunch, abandoning my destroyed fantasy in the cereal aisle.
* * *
After two years with the chubster family—a record—I had to move again. My sense of initiative and my interest in science were not appreciated. Along with the other foster kids in the house, I’d started testing psychoactive substances on Rocket, the family beagle. It wasn’t a big deal or even that dangerous. We didn’t have the means to give him the amounts we took ourselves, but we often chipped in so that he could join us. One PCP-fuelled Saturday night, we chipped in a bit too much. Rocket got way too stoned.
Before we took it ourselves, we’d all put some of our precious powder in his water. We soon realized that for once the drug hadn’t been cut with anything. The evening was unfolding well and we were sharing a nice little high. Especially Benjamin, who stared fascinated at Rocket, as he gnawed his paws passionately. Unfortunately for us, the family returned earlier than expected from their trip to the movies. We were still in the basement living room, standing round the dog and tormenting him. When he saw his owners, he tried to get up to go over to them, but he could only manage to crawl on his side, dragging the living room rug under his flank. Rocket seemed to have an issue with the concept of gravity that evening.
Daddy Double-Fat judged the situation to be extremely serious, correctly diagnosed that we were totally wasted, and called an emergency social worker. I magnanimously took the fall. As the oldest, and the most experienced in sudden relocations, I assured the social jerker they’d called to the rescue that since I’d organized the little party, I understood I’d have to be the one to hit the road. As I left, I shot one last look at Rocket, who was squinting in my direction.
* * *
At sixteen, I’d already burned through all the foster families in the region and they wanted to get me out of the group homes as quickly as possible. I harmed the progress of the other kids in a closed unit. If those little shits hadn’t disturbed my serenity, I wouldn’t have wrecked their facial symmetry. Everything’s always a question of viewpoint. Or of fists in the gob. They beat us round the head with ideas of respect and listening but it was pointless; there are few arguments as effective as a knuckle sandwich for getting a message across. The problem was that this opinion was shared by several other youths in my unit. We dealt out these arguments to each other for anything and nothing. Things were tense. I think we were fond of each other even if we did often hurt each other. Punching is human contact, after all.
I’ve heard that counsellors were assigned to our unit as punishment. This led to a bad atmosphere: they sent us the worst people, who rolled up full of prejudices toward us. You should never judge a man until you’ve limped along in his prosthetics.
* * *
I remember one worker in particular, Aïcha. She humiliated me in front of everybody one evening during cleanup. It was her way of punishing me. She suspected me—correctly—of having hidden her car keys for several hours one Monday morning when I was feeling playful. But that’s no excuse. She let the other guys in the unit hear that she’d caught me crying. I don’t do crying. Although I’m normally quick-witted, I didn’t reply to her right then.
