Tanner's and Jenn's Pieces from Inner Monologues: Haters (Dec 3rd 2008)

THREE DAYS IN THE SEVENTH GRADE
by Tanner Dahlin


Part One: Fight Day
The second day of seventh grade I fell in love with a girl named Sissy Larson. I could tell I was in love with her because I couldn’t stop staring at her. She had beautiful hair and her laugh was the most wonderful thing ever invented.
One day, that first week of school, I was walking down the crowded hallway when she just popped out of the girl’s locker room making her hair swoosh by my face and I couldn’t help but stare as she walked away. I stared hard. I kept on walking, but I also kept on staring. This is probably why I ran smack dab into Herb Olafson. Herb Olafson was six feet three inches tall and weighed 230 pounds the day he barely graduated the sixth grade. And he grew all summer.
I ran into his giant ‘man-chest’ and bounced off hard. My books went flying. I got up and tried to evaluate the situation when out of nowhere, little Susie Storts yells, “Kick his ass Herb!” First of all, Little Susie Storts was, and probably still is, 3 feet tall. I never got to sit at their table at lunch and never said three words to her in my life, yet for some reason, she was calling for my ass to be kicked.
I had never been in a fight in my life before, so I just stared at him, frozen in horror. Then I heard, “Yeah kick his ass Herb!” and people were like, “yeah!” I was like, “Oh my God!” Then my best friend, Dan Wey, shouts, “Tanner would kick your ass Herb. Kick his ass Tanner!” I was like, “shut the fuck up, dude!”
At this point, thirty people are gathered around, including Sissy Larson, and they all are just waiting for me to get pounded, when out of nowhere, Sissy shouted, “Kick his ass Herb!” I was like, Holy Shit! My dream girl just yelled for me to get my ass kicked!
And something flipped in me and I looked at Herb and said, ‘bring it on fat ass!’
It was arranged that it would all go down the next day after eighth period, behind Laffeens Gas Station. That is where all the fights went down. I remember standing behind Lafeen’s once where I saw Herb Olafson throw a guy through a garbage can then pick him up and throw him through another one, then take another garbage can and bash him on the back with it.
As soon as I got home, I told my dad about the impending fight. Now, my Dad retired from bull riding at the age of 19 and then went on to fight half of northeastern Wyoming in these crazy street fights. I guess Wyoming in the seventies was a crazy place. So my dad grabbed two beers, and gave me one. My first beer with the old man, which is kind of like a big coming of age moment for Rednecks, then he got out his old boxing gloves and took me to the basement and began teaching.
“A crowd of people is going to gather around, Tanner, trust me, it always happens. Next thing that’s going to happen is he’s going to call you faggot. Trust me. Always happens that way” My dad role played, “So imagine there’s a circle of people, here let me put down my beer, there is a circle of people and this Herb nerd comes strutting in and yells You gonna die pussy! Now, Tanner, what do you do?”
“I would say … no, you’re the pussy, Herb!” My dad hung his head. “No, Tanner, you do not call him a pussy. You do not call him anything. You run up to him and punch him in the nose as hard as you can, boy.”
At some point, my mother came down stairs and said, “For god sake’s Bill, it’s 2:00am” and my dad and I made an agreement that he would be parked at Laffeens, and if the cops came, I could jump in the back of his pickup and he would drive away.
The next morning in second period, I was called to the office. Herb was already there. The principal told us that he found out about our fight, and would expel us if we went through with it. He wouldn’t just suspend us, but actually expel us, forever. Herb and I actually talked for the first time ever in the office and realized that not only did neither of us want to get expelled, but neither of us knew why we were even going to fight in the first place. We actually talked about baseball for ten minutes, and we are still friends today.
As I went back to my seat in class, I exchanged glances with the young pretty witch who stole my heart and yelled for my ass to be kicked. She was as beautiful as ever and she looked up and she gave me the biggest smile you could ever imagine.
Part Two: Running Day
I never mustered the courage to ask her why she yelled for me to get my ass kicked, because, well, I hadn’t mustered up the courage to even say hello to her in the hallway. The only time she ever said anything to me was once in gym class.
On ‘running day’ we would go outside and run around the parking lot, clockwise, for 55 minutes. I had decided to actually talk to her, so I tried very hard to catch up to her. She was fast. When I finally got right beside her, I was running at top speed, and was kind of wondering if she wasn’t trying to get away from me. That’s when she turned to me and said: “You smell bad. You should wear deodorant.” Then she just took off faster.
Part Three: Chainsaw Joke Day
Mrs. Jones seated me next to Sissy Larson for the whole last month of seventh grade English. I was working on a new strategy for winning her heart that was sure to succeed. I would wait until the last day of class and then write my feelings for her in her yearbook, as well as my phone number. Couldn’t fail.
My plan changed on Chainsaw Joke day, however. Mrs. Jones was showing us a little film about a man who was lost in a vast wintry forest somewhere and was freezing to death. During the film, I started getting a really grumbly tummy. There are two kinds of Grumbly Tummy’s. One means you are hungry and it is felt in the upper stomach and lower esophagus. The other Grumbly Tummy is felt in the lower stomach, and large intestine. The first means you have to eat, the second means something else totally different from eating. As the arctic man froze to death in the film it became clear to me that my Grumbly Tummy was the second, lower one. I winced and flinched in my chair, and shifted endlessly. When the film was over and the lights were flipped back on, just about the time I was planning to ask for a hall pass, Mrs. Jones asked a simple question.
“What could have saved this man’s life?”
“Matches.” Sissy said. So perfect.
“Good answer, what else.”
Then a doofy kid in the back shouted, “A chainsaw! A chainsaw!”
This was the funniest thing I had ever heard, but apparently, no one else thought so, because it was dead silent. I was trying to stifle my laugh cause it would be embarrassing to be the only one to laugh at a stupid joke. But as this bad joke hung in the air like a cloud, the absurdity of yelling “Chainsaw” became too hilarious, and out of my mouth came “Ha!” immediately followed by what can only be described as an earthquake fart. It was my ill timed, goofy laugh that brought the class’ attention to me, but it was the subsequent, frightening, desk-rattling, stink bomb that caused Mrs. Jones’s hand to involuntarily shoot up to her mouth as she gasped in horror.
It wasn’t like a little squeaker, where you can play it off and pretend like it was someone behind you. She was staring right at me and said, “Tanner Dahlin, that was not funny in the least bit.” The class was silent. Then Mark Carlson said, “oh my god, dude”. My face was bright red and I was so embarrassed I really honestly thought I was going to puke and go down as the only guy in Agazzi Middle School history to laugh, fart, and then puke, in 30 seconds, in class, next to the woman he loved.
Mrs. Jones screamed, “Out into the hallway funny man!” But no punishment she could inflict could have been worse than the look I got from Sissy Larson, as I scootched past her with my head hung low on my way out to the hall. She crinkled her forehead, held her nose and fanned her face and said, “Gross.”
After class was over, I went back in to collect my things, and there on my desk was a little note. It said, “To Tanner” on the front. It read:
Tanner,
“Your fart was the grossest thing ever. It smelled forever in here after you left.” – From Anonymous.
Sissy Larson had no way to know I could recognize not only her handwriting, but also the purple glitter pen she always wrote with and chewed on with her perfect teeth. She had such great handwriting.


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MATING RITUALS IN THE RED STATES
by Jennifer Coates


Okay. I’m just going to say it. And you’re all going to think I’m a frigid bitch, or really in need of a Midol. But you know what I kind of hate? Dudes.
I’m not a lesbian—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Actually, I don’t get that whole lesbian/man-hater stereotype. I mean, if I was a lesbian, why would I hate men? I’d hate women. I’d be like, fuck women, the goddamn bitches. They break your heart, they’re always crying for no reason—they never let you hang with your buddies; they start hinting at marriage when they’ve known you a month—and whenever you’re in the mood, they’re all like, “Honey, I’m PMSing.” If I was a dyke, I’d freaking hate chicks. But I’m straight … so I hate on men.
See, in New York City, guys can be divided into three categories: Douchebags, Dull … and taken. And that’s not including the elusive fourth category that sometimes encompasses all of the above: Gay.
Yeah, all right. Maybe I’m a little bitter. Maybe there’s a reason for this y-chromosome-directed vitriol. This burnt-out cynicism with which I cast my withering gaze on every Tom, Dick, and Harry—or at least, every Dick—I come in contact with. Is it because I recently got dumped by a man who said things like, “I have 435 friends on Facebook; people like me”? Or perhaps it was the guy who wanted me to host live sex shows for money in his co-op? Or does my hating go back even further than the Sex and the City bullshit of dating in New York? Maybe so.
Study Hall. 1991. Me: a shy freshman in the back of the room with acid-washed granny-waisted jeans. Permed hair. Because everywhere else in the country, kids were dressing grunge. But in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, it was still the 80s. Still is, last time I was there.
You: Derek Bennett. A cute sophomore with a Tom Cruise smile. One day, you turned around and crinkled those blue eyes at me. And then, you did the unimaginable. You took a page from your notebook, as if to write me a letter, tore off a few sections, crumpled them up and—grinning—began to throw paper-wads at me. I gathered in later years that you were sweet on me, and that you probably had an enormous erection. But at the time, I sat in panic, cursing my own lack of social skills, because I didn’t know how to flirt back with a boy throwing paper at my head.
This, my friends, was high school. Mating rituals in the Red States. This was where the hating began. Luckily with Derek Bennett, I dodged more than a speeding college-ruled missile of love. Turns out, he became a born-again Christian pastor with a Sarah Palin fan page on Facebook. But I spent most of high school wondering what was wrong with me that I didn’t have replies to such pick-up lines as “Hey bitch, get in the car” and “I love the way you do algebra.”
By junior year, I’d just about given up. I refused to date any of my classmates, and only flirted with hot teachers and people’s hot dads. I was a very popular fixture at sleepovers. I wore baggy pants and flannel—unbeknownst to me, like the rest the world—and spoke to boys like they were human, not expecting a reply. And then, one day, I got asked on a date—by the eligible, intelligent, popular, talented, total hottie Weston Moore. And no, that wasn’t his real name. It was Jim Moore. He’d made it up. See, his name was Jim Wesley Moore, and he’d always gone by Wes, but in high school he’d asked us to call him Weston because it sounded more “artistic.”
The night of my first date, I wore a Wonderbra and my tightest T-shirt. My mother burst in and took pictures, crying, “I’m so proud!” I don’t know if she meant of my cleavage or the date. But I sat on my bed, sweet-sixteen and nervous as hell. When the bell rang, I dashed for the door.
“Um … Weston?” Was that him?
His skater-length blond hair had been arranged in multiple braids, complete with beads on the end. He looked like Bo Derek, and the look was not a “10.”
I turned to see my parents and my little siblings standing on the stairs behind us. My mother slowly lowered the Polaroid she’d raised to capture my first encounter with the male sex—now that she was no longer certain which sex this thing with the pigtails was.
“Guys—meet Weston.” I shoved him out the door and into his car, which he fired up with a screech.
“Oops.” He grinned at me. “Was that too loud?”
You asshole, I thought. My parents are going to think you’re an irresponsible maniac.
“No way, I love your car!”
“Yeah?” Weston asked, pleased with himself. “It’s brand new. Got it for my birthday. Watch how fast it goes.”
I’d really rather not, I said silently. Are you compensating for something? This is not a good sign. He’s compensating for something. He has a small dick. Oh my God, I totally just looked at his dick!
“Weston—watch out—!”
My face hit the dashboard, as I felt a very trippy moment of vertigo, followed by a second impact. It took me a while to realize what had happened. I’d never been in a car wreck before. And what better timing than on my first date! When I finally sat up, I saw we were the pastrami in a three-car-collision sandwich. Luckily, Weston exited the car as if he’d done this a million times before. After the cops came, I felt better. Wes apologized all the way to Kansas City. By the time we made it to the symphony concert, I was ready to start fresh.
We spread out our picnic blanket in the park, its bandshell a softly-lit silhouette in the April dusk. Soon, I was lost in “Eine Kleine Nachtmusic”—which would have been the perfect date. Except, when Weston put his arm around me, all I could think of was how ridiculous he looked in those stupid “dreds”—like my grandmother in the 70s when she would braid her hair wet to make it curl.
After the orchestra’s last, rousing chorus of the 1812 Overture, Weston Moore awkwardly released his grip and we followed the crowds to his car. I carried the rolled-up blanket in uncomfortable silence. Suddenly, a man about our parents’ age jumped out and knocked Wes to the ground, pointing a long umbrella at his throat.
“Hey, is that thing loaded?” I joked.
You see, I assumed this was someone Weston knew—because I was a logical girl who had never been to New York City. I was wrong. The dude turned on me and growled: “It’s been 25 years since I killed a man, and tonight was the closest I’ve come.”
As Weston stumbled to his feet, his assailant’s suburban wife joined us.
“He was in the war. He doesn’t like hippies,” she explained; as if attacking people with pointed objects at the symphony was perfectly normal behavior.
We drove home in silence. I was sure Wes would never ask me out again—and it wasn’t even my fault. I felt like a failure for my own bad date—I was hating on my luck, and hating on myself. As I sadly said goodbye, I forgot to check for the last, crucial element: whether or not Weston Moore had an enormous erection. Apparently, he did. I felt his mouth on mine, and was so taken aback by the entire night that I hesitated a second too long before realizing: this is the part where he kisses me. Because, after all, that’s what would happen on a normal date, not one with car wrecks and police reports, Bo Derek impersonators, and umbrella avengers from Nam whose wives look like they robbed the LL Bean catalog.
Misconstruing my delayed reaction as either rejection or ignorance, Weston backed away.
“I’ll call you,” he said, in that voice that means the opposite.
On Monday, it was all over the school that I was a “terrible kisser.” I was so mortified that I didn’t date again until college—and then I spent my freshman year kissing everyone I met just to prove it wasn’t true. And not just people I was on a date with, either.
And that, if my armchair psychology does not deceive me, is how I became a dater-hater. Oh, and as for Jim “Weston” Moore? He dropped out of Boston University, knocked up some teenager, and the last I heard was cooking at the cracker barrel off Missouri Highway 291. My verdict? Douchebag, Dull, and—thankfully—Taken.