Grade school was not an experience to remember unless I am eyeing a package of stainless steel razor blades over a horizon of Calgon.  I don’t know if this fad was unique to my experience (let me know if not) or a global happening:  FAST FRIENDS-you never spoke to each other and no one wanted to hang around you respectively until one day one of you let the guard down.  I got an Atari-think you can spend the night?  A sure plot for disaster.  You got on fine in the last fifteen minutes of recess, but spending a night?

They called him BOBBER, a little round kid with white hair desperately trying to be fashioned into an 80’s Spike.  I went to his place.  His dad seemed nice.  They kept talking about bikes.  "I got a Suzuki 50 with a…"  "HEY!"  I thought.  "Just shut the hell up.  I didn’t sign on for bikes.  Got any blank tapes?"

His pop to us to a video store I had never seen being a hillbilly kid and all.  "NO, the VCR tapes are over there."  Bobber and his dad grabbed titles on what looked like an album.  Great, would we put these on the turntable and imagine the video as we go along?  ("Am I to understand there will be no sidedishes?"….Eric Cartman.)

They told me of the wonders of laserdisc.  I asked Bobber if his dad would be cool if I rented Fright Night.  I knew it had a titty shot and I was going to need something to hang onto while Bobber and his dad shared Co-Cola and scrutinized minibike chains.  His dad was alright.  I don’t recall what Bobber rented as I have blocked it all from my mind though it was the first film we viewed.

You know those fast friends?  They watch their movie first-when something happens, they chuckle and look carefully at you expecting you to be cracking up.  To this day it pains me and…Bobber-if you are reading this-if I was laughing at Mark Harmon teaching a group of delinquents; it was only pain.

Bobber’s sister, a senior in high school didn’t walk through the front door; she cruised in like the big haired rock stars on Friday Night Videos took their prefab stage but in tight black short.  I wanted to go home.  Reality had split my fourth grade world into the seventh layer of Hell.

She looked at the movies while Bobber mouthed something off-she didn’t notice him-nor did I.  "Fright Night, cool!"

"We’re watching that one later!"  Bobber snapped.

…and if these walls are real…if I am human, some greater force will take pity on me and I shall find myself viewing a late night feature and chatting up Bobber’s sister…I had just properly healed from a broken arm-that pain was miniscule in comparison….

And so it was.  She sat in a recliner while I watched Fright Night on laserdisc.  Some of the television reflection was bouncing off of her legs with no loss of plot from my view.  We talked.  Bobber stumbled into the hallway.

"Von, dad said it’s time to go to sleep."  He whined.

"I am.  Just after…this one part."

Et tu, Brute-and your daddy-o?  Piss on your early to bed schemes.  I am hurting so bad you may be looking at a midnight hospital visit if you don’t count your sheep right.

The bare chested shot came onto screen.  I looked at the sister.  Did you she what she did?  Can you do that?  I couldn’t keep track of questions I wanted to ask.

I slept at some point in the night, passing out on the couch and trying to stare periodically through half closed eyes to see if she was still around.  No.

Bobber wanted to ride motorcycles the next morning.  Somehow, his bike broke.  I don’t know, maybe he was thinking of a twelve egg omelette and misjudged a hill.  He wrecked, but not badly enough to shut him down for the day.

I didn’t know what was going on for the next few hours and not sure if I knew my name.  Bobber, Sister, some of sister’s friends and myself ended up at a beach type division of the river.  Bobber warned me about water mocassins-yep, he looked like he could swim his way away from an oil slick.

Sister and friend were entertained by the totally 80’s guys.  I remember each of them calling each other ‘DICKLESS.’  For some insane reason I thought these ladies would enjoy lyrics recited against the noisy river current.  She and her friend laid out the towels and Bain de Soleil’d themselves.

"Want to see their titties?"  Bobber asked.

What could I do?  I knew this smegma particle of a fast friend could not make that wish come to pass.  He screamed ten kinds of bloody murder.  Sister and her friend bolted upright.  The landscape blurred on her gorgeous breasts as the men tried to join with their beach blanket lingo.

Sister didn’t know she had hauled emotion within me which could disrput minor physical facts of the universe…while the totally rad dudes called each other DICKLESS and laughed. 

Could she not see I was hurting?  Did she know the evening with one of the rad dudes could likely end in premature climax and a beer belch for supposed comic effect?  I continued to scream in my mind.  I was telling her she deserved a better title than flash in the current river goddess.  "COME CLOSER.  I WILL MASTER YOU WITHOUT TOUCHING.  I WILL KNOW EVERYTHING.  I WILL PUT THE TRADEMARK STAMP ON YOUR ESSENCE.  I WILL RECOGNIZE YOUR MOTHER, A STRANGER TO ME JUST BY SEEING HER BELLY IN A CROWD OF HALF SHIRTS IN THE DOWNTOWN METRO-I WILL HAVE KNOWN YOU GREW THERE."  I should have told her I would have ate a case of melted easter Peeps off her glistening sun bathed arse, but didn’t.  Perhaps I was dickless. 

We left left the water as Bobber marveled at a frog he had caught.

I hope you are doing alright, Bobber.  If you are, go piss off a river bank.