Jackson Warfield
"it's easy to be a bad writer, but it's hard to wake up each day and devote a chunk of your life to bad writing."
All work copyright Jackson Warfield 2009
JOE SEELY'S BATTLE
by JACKSON WARFIELD
Joe would turn 33 years old next week and for his whole life, as far back as he could remember, beyond middle school and even elementary, he wore his hair short and with a part over the center of his left brow. But on Thursday he decided to change things up. He woke up early for his job as a teacher of public school tenth graders. He showered and scrubbed his ears and after drying off he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, trying out new ways to wear his hear.
You might think that Joe was doing this maybe for a woman, or as some sort of dare from his two buddies, Matt and Dylan Banning, who he drank beers with on Friday nights at the local Applebee's. But neither of those things were true. Joe was simply sick and tired of seeing the same person in the mirror every morning of his life. Maybe not the same person, but the same head of hair. Let's not make any assumptions as to how Joe values his self worth.
After trying various styles and parts, Joe applied a generous handful of pomade to his hair and slicked it back as best he could.
"that'll do," he muttered to his cat, Jones, who after eating a can of tuna had come into the bathroom to groom himself on the washing machine while Joe futzed around with his hair.
Feeling like a new man, Joe snatched his briefcase and coat and walked out of his front door with a skip in his step. But no sooner had he left his house did he receive a comment from his neighbor Marty Schueller, who was fetching the paper, about how silly Joe looked with his hair all slicked back.
"fuck him," Joe thought, scowling as he got into an old, blue Chrysler sedan that his parents had bought him new for his college graduation, 11 years before.
As he drove to work he thought he noticed, out of the corner of his eyes, that other drivers on the road seemed to stare at him from behind their windows and suddenly look away when he turned towards them. And they appeared to be smirking and stifling giggles.
At an intersection near the middle school which he passed on the way to the high school, Joe stopped at a red light. A kid of maybe 13 or 14 pedaled up the intersection on his bike, looked over at Joe and let out a marvelous laugh.
"hey mister! You look like a jackass with your hair all slicked back like that!"
It took Joe all his practice with being patient with kids for him not to sink down to the boy's level and yell back some insult about how the kid was just a fatty or how he couldn't even drive a car or how he had probably never had sex with a girl in his whole life.
The light turned green and Joe sped off towards the high school where he hoped maybe the students there would respect his style or at least his confidence in regards to doing something different and against the grain of his normal routine. But this hope diminished as soon as he pulled into the parking lot where kids passing by began to stop in groups and point and laugh and say things like,
"look at Mr. Seely! Ah ha ha ha!" or "his hair is ridiculous!" or "what a tool!"
Joe glared at the kids and then rushed off to his classroom thinking he'd find a little sanctuary with his own students who surely wouldn't be so brutal to him. But as he stood at the front of the room and watched the students enter he noticed them doing double takes and chuckling and one Matthew Henniker even had the guts to laugh and say, "oh my gosh, Mr. Seely! What the heck did you do to your head?"
Joe was a professional, though, and he ignored their snide glances and hushed them when he heard them whispering when his back was turned to write on the board.
At lunch in the teacher's lounge his fellow educators sniggered and one Juan Gomez even spit out a mouthful of the burrito he'd been eating and fell into a fit of high pitched cackling before staggering off to the bathroom.
One teacher with whom he was friendly with and usually swapped stories with over lunch, Gail Richardson, whom he also planned on asking out come the summer vacation, came into the lounge and completely ignored him, keeping her eyes to the floor and heading straight for the refrigerator.
"Gail! Hey, Gail?" he said, but without looking up she snatched her lunch bag from the top shelf of the fridge and turned to rush back out the door.
Joe sat down at a table and ate alone. The only person who spoke to him during the entire lunch hour was Principal Hunter Tate, who stopped in his tracks while crossing the lounge, stared for a full minute and then approached Joe and said, "well, well, well. What have you gone and done now?"
The second half of the day went by no better than the first and as he walked down the hallway he could hear students and teachers alike hissing and jeering, some kids even stopping and pointing and banging their open hands on the wall as though Joe Seely was the butt of the funniest joke in the world.
In the middle of his last class, furious with all the whispering and sniggering, and breathing very heavily as though he was going into some sort of rage, he excused himself to the bathroom. He didn't look into the mirror but went right into a stall and saw written in big, block letters with permanent marker, "MR. + SEELY = DUMBASS²" and below that in pen, "world's biggest douche bag!"
He punched the divider wall twice and snarled, "what the hell is wrong with everybody? What do they care how I wear my hair? How can it be such a big deal to them?"
He stood there fuming for many minutes and before he could compose himself he heard the bell signaling the end of the school day ring out throughout the school. He listened as the mob of students and teachers shuffled in the halls, hooting and hollering because that's what's to be done at the end of a school day. But even in the madness and excitement he could pick his name out of conversations which always ended in gasping giggles or slander.
"what was Mr. Seely thinking today?"
"I don't know, but he must have gone off the deep end, huh?"
"ha ha, maybe he was totally drunk!"
"what an idiot, to think he could just do that. Oh!"
Joe remained in the bathroom until the whole school had become quiet, then he slinked down the hall to his classroom where he grabbed his jacket and briefcase and went quickly out to his car. He avoided eye contact with everybody else on the road the whole ride home, despite beeping horns, insults yelled from car windows and other such provocations.
When he drove into his driveway Marty Scheuller was outside watering his front lawn. Joe put it into park and sat in his car watching Marty's arm go back and forth, arcing the water across the grass. Although Marty hadn't looked over at Joe, there was a smirk on his face and Joe knew what he was thinking about.
At that moment everything seemed futile to Joe Seely. Everything seemed ugly and miserable and worthless. The world was a whore, fucked a million times. He wished he could make it all disappear. Make it so that nothing had ever been, nor would anything ever be. All the kids who mocked him, the strangers in their cars. Principal Tate with his tone of pure condescension. His friends Matt and Dylan who were never there when he needed them. And Gail, that bitch.
Everything was wrong in the world. Everything was awful. And as he sat there in his car, with his hair all slicked back, he decided that it was all because of Marty Schueller. It had to be. The way he smiled while he stood there, arcing the water back and forth across his green lawn. The way he had a gorgeous wife and a nicer car and kids that would grow up to be doctors or lawyers. The way he always had a thousand people come over for holidays and how everything for him always worked out. Marty Scheuller, a ruiner of lives, a demon sent from hell to destroy any happiness or pleasure that might ever come to poor Joe Seely.
With a sudden ferocity Joe opened the door and leapt out across the lawn. The hose fell from Marty's hand as he watched Joe come at him, a wicked grin on his face. In a single motion Joe grabbed Marty's shoulders and pulled them down towards him and with all his strength he raised his knee and smashed Marty's face.
Marty's body crumbled to the ground, into the wet grass, and blood poured from his nose. Joe stood over him for two minutes, smiling and breathing hard. When he finally walked away he whispered to himself, "this world may be a cesspool, filled with misery and doom and peopled with lunatics and racists and fools, but that's okay."
He turned and took one last look at Marty Schueller and laughed out loud.
"that's A-okay! At least I'll live to fight it another day."
JOE SEELY'S BATTLE
by JACKSON WARFIELD
Joe would turn 33 years old next week and for his whole life, as far back as he could remember, beyond middle school and even elementary, he wore his hair short and with a part over the center of his left brow. But on Thursday he decided to change things up. He woke up early for his job as a teacher of public school tenth graders. He showered and scrubbed his ears and after drying off he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, trying out new ways to wear his hear.
You might think that Joe was doing this maybe for a woman, or as some sort of dare from his two buddies, Matt and Dylan Banning, who he drank beers with on Friday nights at the local Applebee's. But neither of those things were true. Joe was simply sick and tired of seeing the same person in the mirror every morning of his life. Maybe not the same person, but the same head of hair. Let's not make any assumptions as to how Joe values his self worth.
After trying various styles and parts, Joe applied a generous handful of pomade to his hair and slicked it back as best he could.
"that'll do," he muttered to his cat, Jones, who after eating a can of tuna had come into the bathroom to groom himself on the washing machine while Joe futzed around with his hair.
Feeling like a new man, Joe snatched his briefcase and coat and walked out of his front door with a skip in his step. But no sooner had he left his house did he receive a comment from his neighbor Marty Schueller, who was fetching the paper, about how silly Joe looked with his hair all slicked back.
"fuck him," Joe thought, scowling as he got into an old, blue Chrysler sedan that his parents had bought him new for his college graduation, 11 years before.
As he drove to work he thought he noticed, out of the corner of his eyes, that other drivers on the road seemed to stare at him from behind their windows and suddenly look away when he turned towards them. And they appeared to be smirking and stifling giggles.
At an intersection near the middle school which he passed on the way to the high school, Joe stopped at a red light. A kid of maybe 13 or 14 pedaled up the intersection on his bike, looked over at Joe and let out a marvelous laugh.
"hey mister! You look like a jackass with your hair all slicked back like that!"
It took Joe all his practice with being patient with kids for him not to sink down to the boy's level and yell back some insult about how the kid was just a fatty or how he couldn't even drive a car or how he had probably never had sex with a girl in his whole life.
The light turned green and Joe sped off towards the high school where he hoped maybe the students there would respect his style or at least his confidence in regards to doing something different and against the grain of his normal routine. But this hope diminished as soon as he pulled into the parking lot where kids passing by began to stop in groups and point and laugh and say things like,
"look at Mr. Seely! Ah ha ha ha!" or "his hair is ridiculous!" or "what a tool!"
Joe glared at the kids and then rushed off to his classroom thinking he'd find a little sanctuary with his own students who surely wouldn't be so brutal to him. But as he stood at the front of the room and watched the students enter he noticed them doing double takes and chuckling and one Matthew Henniker even had the guts to laugh and say, "oh my gosh, Mr. Seely! What the heck did you do to your head?"
Joe was a professional, though, and he ignored their snide glances and hushed them when he heard them whispering when his back was turned to write on the board.
At lunch in the teacher's lounge his fellow educators sniggered and one Juan Gomez even spit out a mouthful of the burrito he'd been eating and fell into a fit of high pitched cackling before staggering off to the bathroom.
One teacher with whom he was friendly with and usually swapped stories with over lunch, Gail Richardson, whom he also planned on asking out come the summer vacation, came into the lounge and completely ignored him, keeping her eyes to the floor and heading straight for the refrigerator.
"Gail! Hey, Gail?" he said, but without looking up she snatched her lunch bag from the top shelf of the fridge and turned to rush back out the door.
Joe sat down at a table and ate alone. The only person who spoke to him during the entire lunch hour was Principal Hunter Tate, who stopped in his tracks while crossing the lounge, stared for a full minute and then approached Joe and said, "well, well, well. What have you gone and done now?"
The second half of the day went by no better than the first and as he walked down the hallway he could hear students and teachers alike hissing and jeering, some kids even stopping and pointing and banging their open hands on the wall as though Joe Seely was the butt of the funniest joke in the world.
In the middle of his last class, furious with all the whispering and sniggering, and breathing very heavily as though he was going into some sort of rage, he excused himself to the bathroom. He didn't look into the mirror but went right into a stall and saw written in big, block letters with permanent marker, "MR. + SEELY = DUMBASS²" and below that in pen, "world's biggest douche bag!"
He punched the divider wall twice and snarled, "what the hell is wrong with everybody? What do they care how I wear my hair? How can it be such a big deal to them?"
He stood there fuming for many minutes and before he could compose himself he heard the bell signaling the end of the school day ring out throughout the school. He listened as the mob of students and teachers shuffled in the halls, hooting and hollering because that's what's to be done at the end of a school day. But even in the madness and excitement he could pick his name out of conversations which always ended in gasping giggles or slander.
"what was Mr. Seely thinking today?"
"I don't know, but he must have gone off the deep end, huh?"
"ha ha, maybe he was totally drunk!"
"what an idiot, to think he could just do that. Oh!"
Joe remained in the bathroom until the whole school had become quiet, then he slinked down the hall to his classroom where he grabbed his jacket and briefcase and went quickly out to his car. He avoided eye contact with everybody else on the road the whole ride home, despite beeping horns, insults yelled from car windows and other such provocations.
When he drove into his driveway Marty Scheuller was outside watering his front lawn. Joe put it into park and sat in his car watching Marty's arm go back and forth, arcing the water across the grass. Although Marty hadn't looked over at Joe, there was a smirk on his face and Joe knew what he was thinking about.
At that moment everything seemed futile to Joe Seely. Everything seemed ugly and miserable and worthless. The world was a whore, fucked a million times. He wished he could make it all disappear. Make it so that nothing had ever been, nor would anything ever be. All the kids who mocked him, the strangers in their cars. Principal Tate with his tone of pure condescension. His friends Matt and Dylan who were never there when he needed them. And Gail, that bitch.
Everything was wrong in the world. Everything was awful. And as he sat there in his car, with his hair all slicked back, he decided that it was all because of Marty Schueller. It had to be. The way he smiled while he stood there, arcing the water back and forth across his green lawn. The way he had a gorgeous wife and a nicer car and kids that would grow up to be doctors or lawyers. The way he always had a thousand people come over for holidays and how everything for him always worked out. Marty Scheuller, a ruiner of lives, a demon sent from hell to destroy any happiness or pleasure that might ever come to poor Joe Seely.
With a sudden ferocity Joe opened the door and leapt out across the lawn. The hose fell from Marty's hand as he watched Joe come at him, a wicked grin on his face. In a single motion Joe grabbed Marty's shoulders and pulled them down towards him and with all his strength he raised his knee and smashed Marty's face.
Marty's body crumbled to the ground, into the wet grass, and blood poured from his nose. Joe stood over him for two minutes, smiling and breathing hard. When he finally walked away he whispered to himself, "this world may be a cesspool, filled with misery and doom and peopled with lunatics and racists and fools, but that's okay."
He turned and took one last look at Marty Schueller and laughed out loud.
"that's A-okay! At least I'll live to fight it another day."
"the world was a whore, fucked a million times."