Zero Pride

by Sam Calvin

Maybe I deserved better...but who knew what queer shit was growing in the rotting corpse of the American Dream in those dark days after Columbine?

"After all, it pays to be careful," I can hear the state advisor instruct the school president, "We’ve got a good thing going here--we can’t afford to let some weird little fuck screw it up for us. Think of the potential exposure if you fail to control the situation, not to mention your personal liability. Go in with maximum firepower and make no apologies. Now hang up the phone and call the police."

Ninety-nine was an ugly year in America all around. Our workers came 2 for the price of one and our home lives strained under a new-found poverty. Our military was bombing Yugoslavia for reasons unmentionable in public. "The Death of American Malehood" followed "Who Are Our Children?" across the covers of Time and Newsweek. America ate its plate of shit without a whimper and awoke bare-faced for work. We built: vast personal fortunes, underground estates, self-instruction empires, child-conditioning schemes, gothic medical bureaucracies, and every kind of prison. Any plausible escape vector for luminous human potentiality was denied with sycophantic odes to the glory of finance, coos for bipartisanship, and ever-harsher prescriptives for self-care. The world in total disarray: work is scorned, lies are exulted, and bad voodoo abounds.

And then again, there was Columbine, a flash-forward to death for a generation that can’t imagine a future, a kamikaze flareout from a generation crushed between the impossibly high stakes of freedom and the unrelenting grimness of social discipline. And nobody wanted to talk about it. It was too real, discussion was too dangerous. Because Littleton was "just like our town." Because Littleton encircled and choked the possibilities of meaningful life, voided sense and volition, wrought an anti-human reign of terror. When independence is defined out of existence, the programming of the American psyche is bound to run wild.

Nobody could say what we all knew: that Klebold and Harris were innocent, poor dupes who took "Give me Liberty or give me Death" to its necessary conclusion, a self-destruct gene in the American DNA. Innocence is no excuse, but they were real, really existed, really had no truth left but death, really had no strength left to continue. No amount of snitching or psychiatry could have detected or disarmed them. America is dying, avoidance will not save us, we have no idea what to do, and the clock is running down. This is the ugly truth of Columbine, the truth no-one wanted to touch...

...and neither did I. But those poor bastards were out of their misery, and I had to go on, eat and sleep and shit and fuck all the time. How could I keep from feeling and talking? Oh! I know that there’s too much risk in idle communication, too many possibilities for horrible slips, but our sun did not go out, demand a stop, demand a collective passion, demand a pause to fix the American Dream machine.

What could I do? April finished with terrible inertia and May began. And I went on. Worse, I had to leave the house, drag myself to school, suffer our humiliation and absurdity. Now I can see how clumsily I used my voice, but something had to be said. And something had to happen.

On Wednesday, May 26, approaching 10:30, the four other students in my work-group were ushered out of the room by the Principal. I worked on alone, with no explanation for my solitude, and a dark feeling stirred my entrails. I tried to quash the growing paranoia-- cruel manipulations from afar are a fact of life in this dire age, but that was no excuse to indulge dark fantasy. I was, after all, innocent.

And if anything was wrong, I told myself, I could be talked to. I wasn’t beast of unbending will, an unresponsive brute, a monster that could only be taken down by force, wailing and convulsing in paroxysms of uncomprehending fear. I was civilized, I knew the virtues of peace and self-effacement. I never imposed myself. Hell, I respected my classmates, purified my hopes for them, didn’t resist.

I wasn’t blind -- I saw the cliques, the pecking order, the systematic cruelty, but I held steady to myself. Making waves seemed a futile and arrogant provocation, and surely their viciousness would mean nothing in the end.

I took my deepest pride from my stoic refusal to insist on anything, and it was my austere resolve to give up anything of myself that the group would not accept. I would change any way they asked me to. It was my way of being useful to the world, and I spited and damned every piece of me that would not be amended. The depth of the irony was lost on me: I took pride in having no pride. I gave over my substance and asked for nothing in return, made neutral emissions, pulsed pure energy. I thought I would be protected.

Yet at that very moment, the final gestures of a most bloody and ungenerous rite were being performed over my affects...

"We’re here to talk about Sam."

The words uttered then have perniciously dogged me to this day.

"Nothing said here leaves this office."

Their disembodied schemes have wormed their way into my flesh, contaminated my sunlight, filled my apartment with dust. They have labored to undo me, to shut me down with doubt and fear; they have dug their way towards my heart. This is the diabolical power of the sorcery worked against me -- secrecy, insinuation, remote control. It has been my painstaking labor of these two years to infer fragments, grasp at straws, tease the enervated fibers of my nervous system out of their grim tapestry. I hope that I can re-assemble something of myself that is clean and free and worth protecting. I have worried myself to nosebleeds in trying.

"...he goes on and on about things..."

Nothing said at school meant anything. No benefit was expected from our shared experience, and there was no understanding. My classmates didn’t question our isolation, but surely it was a mistake or they didn’t know how...what could be gained by coming together to remain separate, jealously guarding ourselves from each other? Surely they had nothing to lose by my attempts at communication...

"...and he sings."

It is true that I sang. Was it an offense? I had hands, too, and feet, and a throat, and a mouth, and a stomach. How could my brain grapple with shadowy Possibilities when it felt so clear and fine, when a bright jolt of morning clung to my head, and fragrant air lingered in my throat?

"...and he smells..."

Even in my delirium I adhered to my protocol. I told myself I would respond to their demands, but I would not jump at shadows or be ashamed of honest mistakes. I wouldn’t hold myself apart, hem my thoughts in, let them hack at me as a separate flesh. Surely I was too proud for such a sad and defensive life. A note dropped in my locker suggested I use deodorant -- so I bought deodorant and returned to class.

"He’s just really unprofessional."

The voice of the princess of the group rings particularly clearly in my head. She was thoroughly professional, of course -- from her clothes to her flirting. When she wanted my support she stood closer, touched my hands, touched her breasts lightly against my back. But I didn’t have the right kind of responses, I had no offerings to make to her, I could not deploy my libido as currency. I wanted a shared effort from our group, and I could neither supplicate to her or make myself attractive as something withheld.

"...he meditates, and it’s like he’s in his own world..."

As they advanced on me, I retreated into my own depths, eliminated my characteristics, unmade my encampments, broke down my equipment, silenced my stories. It was the only way I could protect my sense of pride without breaking the peace. I was in their world as much as I was in my own! I was meek! I didn’t cross any line they laid down!

But the rude implications mounted, unanswered, and I was running out of conversation...

"...there’s just something weird about him..."

Coldly walled in and starved for contact, words struggle for meaning, and even the most studied calm will break. Another classmate, a paranoiac agitator sent into a titter by my open expressions of horror at the bombing of Belgrade and the Columbine shootings, point blank accused me of being "obsessed with bombs and guns." My impossible pride had come to its end, and I could no longer exist without a reversal, without demanding pride and presence from my accusers. Either resist or die.

"...and that’s when he said he had bombs and guns..."

So I blurted that I had "a stockpile at home," a broken joke, an accidental beginning. My classmates played dumb and held on to their precious shard of evidence, planning my disappearance imagining the smell of my blood.

"You are aware, certainly, that these are very serious charges. Please go on..."

"...and he said ‘wait ‘til Friday and see what happens’ and..."

A blatant lie, told to the principal, the president, the police, the lawyers. Anything to stop me. It chills me to think of how bloodlessly my classmates cast their words into air, and of the damage they have done. Those fucking cowards fail my test! They didn’t have the heart to say one true word to me, but would glibly roll off reams of lies behind my back. And for their craven treachery they were coddled and protected by the Authorities. A double curse on school and government, administrators and police! Traitors and betrayers of traitors, profiteers, monopolizers of violence, enemies of growth. It is impossible to finish what they began without a bloodbath. They are lucky I chose to work on my own new beginning...if I was really any kind of killer they would all be dead.

As my four classmates returned to the room, smiling nervously and advancing on me, I still hoped for the best. I let the crude lie the princess of the group croaked out stand unchallenged, and dully assented to join the principal in his office.

Then...the horses and hounds -- police, removal, suspension, psychiatric evaluation. No explanation, no chance to confront my accusers, no meaning but SWALLOW IT DOWN! The affair had ended and what was left: torture, shame, pain of death...admit responsibility for the rotten seed and stinking carrion. Strip away the skin and continue, raw.