Whitey Sings The Blues

Starting my new job means new routines, and as the king of rituals, I follow them with swiss-precision. I leave the house at 7:20 every morning now, which kind of blows, although I like being done at 4:00 PM and having the rest of my day open. I only live about 6 blocks from the Shop as the crow flies, so the commute is quick. Unfortunately, I'm not a crow so I don’t fly there, meaning it’s a choice of main-drag arteries that are already clogging up with morning traffic, or a shortcut back through the industrial badlands. I think the shortcut is actually geographically farther, but still quicker because I’ve pretty much got the road to myself. I have a tendency to prefer motion to efficiency.

The shop sits on the far side of a blockade of industrial complexes and factories that feed the local bars and strip clubs at quitting time. This warren takes up a considerable chunk of midtown between Main St. and the Freeway, forcing everyone to circumvent. There are these huge cooling ponds for some function of the monstrous pulp mill, outgassing in great plumes so that it kind of stinks over there when the wind blows wrong, which it always does.This back route is a convenient way to jump past the occasionally ill-timed railroad cars that jam up traffic both coming and going to work, but you have to watch out for the pettibones, crummies, and log trucks that have pretty much pulverized the macadam into cracked desert hardpan. One nice thing is that the school bus never runs back there, so once I make it past the first three residential blocks I’m in the clear.

I always make sure to do the speed limit through those blocks, since I live in constant fear of killing a kid with my giant Sprinter Van ever since my Niece Kailee was killed by a drunk driver. All these kids have morning rituals of their own to keep, just loitering about waiting for the bus as they form alliances based on random geography, screaming challenges and insults at each other. It seems wise to spare the horses through that impoverished isthmus of dilapidated duplexes and rentals, with all those cars up on blocks, dogs running wild, and yardsale junk piled up on the sides of their houses. This kind of blight isn’t unusual in a blue collar burg, especially since it abuts such an unsavory tract of the city where there is round the clock toiling and a constant, insectile hum to accompany the sulfurous malodor. The only people who would choose to live adjacent to that are people who don’t have choices.

Once I’ve run the gauntlet of kids, feral cats, and zombified carpoolers honking their invitations to start the morning, I reach one of only two stop signs that separate me from work, at the intersection of 40th and Industrial Avenue (Yeah, it’s actually called that. How imaginative). From thence, I punch it up to Warp velocities,  trying not to spill too much coffee in my lap as I sprint for the shop, because if I’m even a minute late there’s nowhere to park. Before that though, I still have to clear that last residential corner without pegging one of the warring factions of tweens waiting at the end of the line for their ride. At Industrial, I have to make either a left or a right to detour around this impassable demilitarized-industrial complex. Left is the shortest route, so I look that way first every morning, which is when I see him. Whitey.

Whitey is a stocky kid, at least 10 but probably not 12. Fair skinned, blondish hair, with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. Every single day he wears a sports jersey as his shirt for school. Hockey, basketball, football, he doesn’t seem to discriminate, always a different name and number stenciled across his back. I’ve never seen the same jersey twice, and sometimes he wears just the jersey when he really ought to be wearing a jacket or hoodie because it's cold out. Which tells me that he’s glommed onto sports as the identity he’s going to wear as his armor. He’s almost always standing alone on that industrial dead end corner with his big, over-the-ears style headphones, and appears to be mumbling the lyrics as he shuffles his feet and bobs along to the music only he can hear. Some days it calls to mind clear, sweet memories of my own days at the bus stop, listening to Huey Lewis and caterwauling about how I wanted a new drug.

Day after day I see Whitey standing under the inexplicably still-illuminated street light, check out what team he’s rooting for, then make my left and we’re Northwest bound and down. It’s gotten to be such a habit now that I kind of think of him as a little buddy—a landmark of sorts—but I resist the urge to wave since guys who drive giant, windowless vans should make no attempt to connect with a child in any way. It’s just not done. My very existence is a cause for withering stares from every mother, regardless of my harmless intentions. Nothing to be done about it.

Whitey is right on the cusp of either being a stout, athletic type of kid, or a husky one on his way to type-two diabetes and a school career of mockery. You just can’t tell by looking at someone which way they’ll go. His bobbing and singing to the music could be the iconic trait of a leader who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, or it could be the eccentricity of a kid who’s got a long road in front of him. It’s hard to tell from the three second drive-by I get each day. 

The kids along rental row all seem to be at war with each other, shouting things across the streets at their neighboring tribes as they wait for the yellow mayhem machine to take them to the Darwinian Thunderdome of Middle School. A couple of times I’ve seen a tall, skinny kid yelling at Whitey, and for some bizarre reason felt the urge to stop, hop out and throttle the little bastard. But Whitey just seems to ignore him and continually bobs along to whatever secret anthem is coming through his knock-off headphones. I remember with painful clarity the days of placating bullies, and knowing when they were just blustering for their own amusement and could safely be ignored, or when they were sincerely out for blood. That’s a social dynamic that no kid should ever have to master. But it’s a black world, what are you gonna do?

It’s probably obvious that I have no actual idea what Whitey’s real name is. I just call him that because it was the name emblazoned on the back of his jersey the first time I ever saw him, when I was making my way with trepidation to a new job, so it stands out in my memory as a single, vivid moment in time. Since I’m so enamored of routines and every landmark that defines the border of my life, I tend to assign nicknames and identities to total strangers as a way of normalizing the world and making it feel like a place I can understand. So Whitey he is.

So as to not make Whitey feel that the old geezer in the windowless van is some weirdo, I make sure to not have eye contact with him for even a whole second. Some days he looks right at me, other days he pays no attention to me or the tall skinny kid who sometimes comes over to his side of the street to torment him. Off in his own world. Something about Whitey reminds me of a certain variety of kid that I knew in Middle School, which is when we’re pretty much deciding (or having decided for us) the variety of person we’re going to be. Shunted into one category or another; jocks, dorks, nerds, emo, metalhead, popular, unpopular, or maybe just middle management. It took me a few days of three second drive-by’s to figure out who Whitey reminded me of. 

Once I saw it, I wished I hadn’t.

The 1982 version of Whitey was a kid named Darren Matotte. They have the same build, the same kind of absent-minded demeanor, as though they were paying little attention to their surroundings. A vagueness about their eyes that might make you think they were kind of dim. It didn’t even matter if it was true; at that age if it seems true, it is true. You need a label, and you’re going to get one, come hell or high water. God knows, I got mine. Pretty nerdy, maybe a little cuteness, but way too much dork quotient to be allowed out of the friend zone. A lot of nicknames stuck to me back then, none of them especially endearing. Got stuffed into a few lockers, whipcracked with some towels in the locker room, etc. The comic books, the Star Wars quotes, the occasional sound effect of blasters and lightsabers to punctuate whatever I was doing. No good could come of any of that in this world. Oh, the humanity.

Darren Matotte

But before we get to feeling too sorry for me, I should introduce you to Darren Matotte. Darren was in my 6th grade class, and was one of three kids in school that were actually nerdier than me. Darren, James Weber, and Howie Griffith were somehow in a social caste beneath mine; no one was more surprised than me to discover this. One day I was randomly walking  by Darren, and he was mumbling the lyrics to a song by Sha-Na-Na, “Blue Moon," specifically the scat-intro: “Ba-b-ba-ba-da-dang-a-dang-dang…” Which is a great 50’s greaser doo-wop song, one of my favorites. But the absent way he was doing it, like some autistic incantation repeated as a soothing, habituated tick, struck me as strange and in need of mocking. 

I laughed and repeated it back to him in a desperate, mean-spirited way that seemed to surprise him. Partly because he’d been unaware that he was doing it aloud and because, for some reason, the dork in the highwater, bellbottom Toughskins had seen fit to belittle him out of the clear blue. Someone Darren had imagined to be in his same social strata of nerdliness had decided he was above Darren and turned on him like an aberrant pit bull. And like those things always do at that age, it stuck. That little Bowser-Sha-Na-Na scat became the teasing catcall that followed him for a year or more, all around the playground and down the halls of school. Because of me.

James Webber

So even though I spent my Junior High and High School career known as the nice, kind of cute, nerdy guy, and being absently menaced by jocks, copied from in class by dim bullies, and friend-zoned by every secret crush, I knew there were still people below me in the pecking order. And sometimes I let them know it, too. When I think back on those days my sense is that I was an eager-to-please little know-it-all, always ready to show how clever I could be. Words like pencil-necked dork, geek, dweeb etc. come to mind. And they should, they’re true. But that’s not how Darren Matotte would think of me. Or Howie Griffith, or later down the road, Tim Smith. To them, other words would come to mind. Jerk? Asshole? Even, tormentor? Jeez, I hope not. True or not, I hope that last one doesn’t come to mind. Because I remember my tormentors all too well. Andy Velasquez, Boomer Rehfield, Mike Connelly. People who made life miserable and places in school unapproachable, even impassable. I don’t think Darren or Tim would say that about me, but there would be nothing flattering to be heard either.

Howard Griffith

When that world is finally in your rearview, hopefully you begin to get a perspective on it, and to outgrow the dramas that once defined you. Instead of believing that the microcosmic fishbowl and those times could dictate who you are, there's a chance you realize they were just roles assigned to you, parts you were forced to play. Maybe you even began to revise history a little bit. Read it selectively, and cast yourself in the most favorable light, as the hero of the story. Perhaps as a slightly tragic, misunderstood figure, with a perfectly good explanation for everything you did. Distancing yourself from every insult or teasing remark you hurled, every selfish choice, every hypocritical decision made. Reinterpreting things until you aren’t so bad.

Or maybe that was just me.

Tim Smith

The problem with revisionist history is the witnesses. The Darren Matottes of this world. The people who know what you did. I’ve often wondered what became of Darren. He had the kind of build that would have made for a great left tackle, or champion wrestler. I'd like to think he got away from the people that teased him and corroded his confidence, and found a way to see that he was alright. That some people just need there to be someone below them so that they don’t feel so bad about themselves, so that the shit that rolls downhill doesn’t stop with them. Whatever you do, don't be the guy left holding the bag, you pass that shit on. Maybe he figured out that none of it had anything to do with him at all. God, I hope so.

Because the day came when I looked back over my résumé and really read it, as though for the first time. Eyes open. And even though, at 40, it didn’t read like Pol Pot’s, it wasn’t exactly Gandhi’s either. It read like a guy who was trying to be a decent shit, unless it was too hard or inconvenient. Unless he got his little feelings hurt, or felt insecure or left out. Then it read like a guy who would drop a friend in a minute, cut in on his best friend’s girl, who would string a girl along to preserve his fragile ego, and betray even his callow affectations of morality. And for every person out there who would say that I gave them the shirt off my back, there would be one that said, “I trusted him, until one day…”

It was disheartening at first, coming face to face with myself. Finding that I wasn’t who I thought I was. Not the hero of the story after all. None of those awful things were done out of malice, or with evil intent. They came from places of insecurity, or simply from considering myself first, at the expense of anyone else. But in the end, the result is the same. So once the truth was accepted, it was actually kind of a relief. To not have to maintain the empire of my self-esteem? To stop telling the bullshit story of how I’m really not that bad of a guy? Yeah, an unparalleled relief, actually. It created a kind of equity in life, where I’m not any better or any worse than the next person, and I can just come out and say it, only to find freedom in the very admission of it.

I was talking to a friend on the phone the other day, bouncing ideas off of each other for a script he’s working on, and he said he thought I was better at understanding people and their motivations than anyone else he knows. I told him it was because I’d stopped needing to believe I was one of the good guys. That I could afford to just look at myself and others, see the strengths and flaws we live with, and feel compassion for us all. I said that 40 was the best thing that ever happened to me because—without condemning or condoning anything—I can simply accept us, just as we are. At last. 

I said, “If only I'd known...I’d have been doing this from the beginning."

I wish I could tell Whitey any part of this and have it make sense to him. But it took me four decades to even find the edges of it, so… Instead I blather on about it to those who might get it. I write these rambling, oblique apologies for the way that I was; these huge love letters to friendship and days gone by; thank you notes to the Grace that has planted itself at the corners of my life as a bulwark against my own stupidity. And I hope that somehow he’ll figure it out. I can’t tell by looking at him for three seconds a day whether Whitey will be the jock or the outcast, the bully or the bullied. The truth is, he’ll probably be a bit of both, no matter which way he goes.

Try not to be too big of a dick, Whitey. It’s a helluva vig when it comes due.