Seventh period study hall. The perfect time and place for controlled mischief. The classroom was one of those auditorium-shaped rooms with stadium seating and a movable wall. At the big table sat Mr. Gratz, a math teacher commonly known for shouting obscenities, smashing chalkboards, cracking meter sticks on people’s desks and having six ex-wives, which is understandable if he engaged his wives with the same smartass attitude he used with his students. A catalyst for catastrophe posing as authority.
Just about all the kids sat on one half of the room, where the loudmouthed boys tried to impress the girls by getting pencils stuck in the ceiling, and the girls tried to impress the boys by not giving a shit. On the other half sat Keith, pressed up against the wall with a CD player and a textbook. The classroom wall was a red-brick chameleon, doubling as a pillow, tablet, tissue or, occasionally, a friend for Keith. In his CD player was Operation Ivy, Anti-Flag or some other hardcore radical punk music, and undoubtedly tucked within the pages of the biology book on his lap was a hentai magazine: animated Japanese porn.
Keith was a self-proclaimed idealist who never showered. He felt there was something more cleansing about three-hour long baths in lukewarm water. A ritualistic daily baptism. If it was Friday, he’d still be wearing Tuesday’s clothes — usually black Kmart-quality sweats or tattered jeans covered in a cocktail of stains. He was almost always alone. And that was perfect.
Keith lived in upper-middle-class Peters Township, a ghastly utopian suburb catering to an average family income of $90,000, where high-school sophomores receive BMWs for their 16th birthdays, and the most outrageous thing that ever happens to anyone is finding a used condom in the Pizza Hut parking lot. While Keith may have been the lucky one to find said condom, he lived with none of the town’s luxuries. His house was one of the oldest in town. His mother, according to him, spent her days lying on the couch at home, drinking Faygo with a litter of corn chips on her chest. His father was a mystery; Keith claimed he was a rapist. His sister enjoyed two things in life: needles and finding new places on herself to insert them. Needless to say, everyone saw Keith as a freak, a crazy person, a radical, a slob… and he loved it.
During his high school days, he claimed his decisive goal in life was to become homeless. He was a “revolutionary anarchist,” and becoming voluntarily homeless was the best way he knew to “stick it to the government.” He believed that people, especially those with power, only wanted to contour society so he had to live his life doing things he didn’t care to do. He believed the world was consumed by ridiculous materialism, full of people required to lead miserable lives doing meaningless work just to compete with each other, only happy when they become just like everyone else. An anti-commercial. An anti-flag. Just like his music.
Perhaps being poor in a high-income town gave him these ideas, seeing as how all the students around him were a constant clusterfuck of the exact submission to the useless materialism he loathed. Or maybe his dad really was a rapist, his sister a junkie and his mother a lazy useless Frito-eating bitch who never helped him with anything. Certainly that could take a toll on one’s perspective. Either way, Keith’s favorite performance in his don’t-give-a-shit repertoire was spitting on himself. And he did it well.
“Hey Keith, spit on yourself!” That’d be the common chant every 10 minutes or so, echoing off the jagged red brick walls from some corner of study hall, passing through Mr. Gratz’s looming cloud of authoritative indifference to Keith’s ear. They treated Keith like a freak show; though to him, they were the freaks. Getting off on him spitting on himself means they enjoyed it, and subconsciously wished they had the stones to do it, as it obviously garnered the female attention they were so desperately seeking by firing pencils at the ceiling. At least that was Keith’s logic, and by that logic, a freak became God.
“Spit on your pants!” they’d shout. Keith was always happy to oblige. The previously noisy room full of mindless giggling teenage girls and boys would become as quiet as nuns in an Amsterdam brothel. Keith would start with a sick little smirk, as Hannibal Lecter would do before snacking on your eyes, as if the subsequent behavior produced the ultimate satisfaction. A smile so oddly possessed it would congeal even the blood of Satan. And then, at the crescendo of his perverted performance, Keith would send a long, bubbling saliva noodle flowing down to the thigh of his already-spit-stained-four-sizes-too-big corduroys.
“Ahhhh, you’re fucking sick!” Were they really sickened, or were they amazed? Were they offended, or gracelessly impressed? It didn’t matter to Keith. He was impressed, and returning shamelessly to his brick wall, punk music and cartoon porn, he had just provided the unfortunate, burdened slaves of refinement a moment of freedom. He brought them to his world, and they didn’t even know it. He was a hero. He was Moses. He was both Pavlov and his dogs.
Unappreciative of his flair for erotic self-saturation, Keith never had a girlfriend: It’s uncertain, even if he displayed “typical” behavior, he would have managed one. Keith’s physical appearance could be best described as such: the skin tone of an Amish woman; never-washed hair the color of muddy Pepto Bismol; a back already hunching like an old man; small, sticky hands (which could mean one of a few things); shaved legs (because people don’t expect it); and really, really pretty blue eyes. His voice was shrill and squeaky. A male Fran Drescher with a yellow jacket stabbing his balls. He was a closet racist, though growing up in a town where there are 14,000 white people and three blacks, most people were racist.
Occasionally in an academic class, Keith could be found using his finger to eat Smuckers grape jelly out of a jar hidden in his bookbag because if Keith felt like eating, Keith ate. Perhaps that is where the sticky hands came from. Or perhaps it was because of that other thing he once got caught doing during class.
Keith never did drugs. He never had school pictures taken. He never caused trouble. He just wanted to spit on himself. And be homeless. And be whatever he chose to be. And really, that’s all anyone can hope.
Covering his bed at home with newspapers, he claimed the crunching sound eased his sleep. He brought his lunch to school every day in the same brown paper bag for as long as he possibly could, Scotch taping the wrinkles and holes that would form. He once used his lunch bag’s evolution to describe our crumbling society and, in turn, describe himself: Once upon a time it seemed pretty good, pretty well put together. All the seams were strong, lined up, solid. As people use and abuse it, it starts to wrinkle, to bend, and its flaws come through. Eventually holes form, and instead of fixing the whole bag, or finding real solutions, it just gets patched up time after time. Eventually, he said, “This fucker’s gonna rip for good, and then everyone will be homeless. And everyone will need my dirty ass to help them, because I’m already there.”
— Jeff Saporito
