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alcibiades_mystery

(36,437 posts)
Thu May 10, 2012, 09:54 PM May 2012

Memory, Forgetting, Bullying

I was in college by now, heading to some cheap beer frat party with a few buddies. We get in and it's crowded as hell. We take up position near the keg - time to get our two bucks worth of entrance fee and make tracks. I turn to my right and see two guys I went to high school with sitting on a little stage. I had seen them before in college, so I wasn't that surprised. They see me and hey howyadoin'? I mosey over.

These guys were a year younger than me; I knew them in a hey fellas, play a pick-up basketball game in gym class kinda way, but not friends, not really. So they're sitting there with a few guys I assume are new college friends, and I shake hands with one, then the other. Suddenly, a third guy thrusts his hand out and he's like "Hey, a_m," using my real name and very familiar. Never saw the dude before in my life. "Uh, hey man," I venture quizzically.

He catches on. You don't remember me? Really, dude? "It's James?" he offers. "From Such-and-Such High School?" I'm drawing a complete blank. He looks to the other two for help. They're also gobsmacked that I don't recognize the guy. "Hey James, then," I say, apologetically. "You really don't remember, huh? Wow." He's looking a bit beside himself. Then he asks, "Do you remember when you and JB stepped to me in the bathroom over the cigarette thing?"

Oh boy. Here we go. The adrenaline starts rushing like I'm back in NYC, and not some upstate college town, and here we fucking go, kid. You see James is probably 6'2, maybe 230. I'm 6'0 and maybe 170 at the time. So I get where this is going. But I did some pre-gaming and I'm well drunk, so I offer it up: "So I guess now we gotta fight? Big revenge moment?" I'm going to lose, but I'm ready.

"No, dude!" Even more taken aback. "Naw, man. Hey man, I'm just surprised you don't remember." He actually seems to shrink from me, this big hulking dude. For serious? He describes the scene: I'm a junior and he's a sophomore. JB and I are in the bathroom catching a smoke before school, and he's in there with some other sophomores. He says, "Hey, I'm gonna go get Mr. McD--- for you" to me and JB, Mr. McD--- being the assistant principal and dude who will royally screw me for getting caught smoking, again. I basically snap on him: "What, motherfucker? What the fuck you gonna do?" "Hey, I'm just fucking around man..." JB is laughing, I’m sure. James didn’t say it, but I can almost see it, if I remembered any of it. "I'll fuck around on your fucking face, bitch...you're gonna fucking lay around, motherfucker." And I’m in his face and backing him toward the urinals and from his vantage, I’m ready to hook off on him. He apologizes. He apologizes again, hands out, no trouble, no trouble. It sounds abject in the retelling. You can hear the times he’s relived that moment in the retelling.

I have no memory of it at all. Not to this day.

Now, if you would have told me then, or even now, that the other two guys put this guy up to it, that he never went to my high school, that they had planned this elaborate prank and story when they saw me walk in the party just to see my reaction, there’s a part of me that would believe you. I didn’t remember James. I still don’t remember James. Totally plausible. But I know it’s true.

I know because that’s who I was in high school: poor, angry, hair-trigger. And if some fucking sophomore tested me in front of his friends and mine in that space, that’s exactly what I would do. And worse. Stoned, shit-faced drunk, hanging with guys who I would say were no good, but most are still dear friends, we’d been through a lot, you know? New York was, well, interesting back then. You hooked off or got hooked off on. Two choices. That’s exactly who I was. “I was fucked up back then,” I said to James in that party. It was less than four years earlier. “I’m really sorry about that, man.” He nodded, both accepting and a little sad, I thought. This fucking humiliating event, and I didn’t even remember it. Didn’t even remember him. It wasn’t enough anyway: sorry about that, man? What the fuck kind of response is that?

I don’t know how many times James relives that bathroom scene: maybe a lot, maybe never. Maybe he catches me with a right cross in his daydreams, or maybe he thinks the whole thing was deeply stupid. Maybe he’s forgotten now, too. I don’t think so, though. But here’s what I remember: his crestfallen look when I didn’t even have the goddamn courtesy to remember. And the horror at my own behavior. It’s been almost twenty years since that night. That night, that party, I remember like it was yesterday. The disgust at another version of myself. Maybe that's my penance, the karmic recompense. I get something to relive, too.

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Memory, Forgetting, Bullying (Original Post) alcibiades_mystery May 2012 OP
For a time when I was in Junior High -- probably 8th grade -- I picked on a kid who stuttered. Skinner May 2012 #1
I hate to admit it, but my memory (or lack of) terrifies me. Ruby the Liberal May 2012 #2
"Ginormous blur..." alcibiades_mystery May 2012 #3

Skinner

(63,645 posts)
1. For a time when I was in Junior High -- probably 8th grade -- I picked on a kid who stuttered.
Thu May 10, 2012, 11:16 PM
May 2012

It is without a doubt the single thing in my life that I am most ashamed of. It was cruel, I knew it was wrong, and yet I did it anyway. I will never forget it.

Ruby the Liberal

(26,216 posts)
2. I hate to admit it, but my memory (or lack of) terrifies me.
Thu May 10, 2012, 11:29 PM
May 2012

I was bullied in Jr High and the first 2 years of Sr High - then I fell in with a crowd that just didn't give a rip (about anything) and if it continued, I simply blocked it out or never noticed.

A few years ago, I came across my HS yearbook in a box of stuff at my parent's house. Sat down in the dusty attic and started paging through it. Signatures and comments from people I don't really remember, and pics of me participating in various activities (school paper, track, etc) that I don't even recall doing. It was a surreal feeling.

I think I just blocked it all out. At least I hope thats what it is. Some memories are as vivid as if they happened yesterday, but my final 2 years are one ginormous blur.

 

alcibiades_mystery

(36,437 posts)
3. "Ginormous blur..."
Fri May 11, 2012, 08:37 AM
May 2012

That's also how I would describe it. It literally have no memory of doing a single day's worth of homework my entire senior year. I'm pretty sure I didn't do any.

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