© Sauce*Box, Summer 1996.
All rights revert to author.
Exploits of Youth
by Sander A.
M. de Jong
When Rulif was a boy he got to know this girl
that was two years older than him, which is a hell of a lot when you're
a kid. She had this bold brattish beauty and was much the wiser in certain
subdomains of human behaviour that Rulif had only heard tell of fairly recently,
so he always stood slightly in awe when she was around. In the grand world
of passion and warfare, that lonely planet of stealth and deceit, where
bitches and bastards meet when in heat, he still felt mighty unsure as he
was still suffering from that schizophrenia which is so common in twelve
year olds, of on the one hand knowing, and on the other hand not knowing
jackshit, of having discovered the distance between body and mind, while
as of yet still remaining quite terminally unable to leave the past behind,
this moment when people become seeing blind, looking for something but very
much unsure as to what they might want to find. She, however, did not seem
to mind.
She'd been around ever since the third grade, though she wasn't in our
school, not nearly. Dereck introduced me to her, Dereck who had the dumb
luck to be born into one of the few urban lowlife families that somehow
made a living in our predominantly forensic and agricultural community,
Dereck who was the only one in my class that offered me a more than generous
opportunity to broaden my social horizons. Pine Valley was mostly joyously
overflowing with good intentions and wishful thinking, a buzzing centre
of provincial feudal display, but was luckily also just large enough to
harbour its own little skidrow, and Sister lived a good five houses down
the road from Dereck in one of the more decrepit labour lodgings. It was
only one block that was really bad, but at the center of those houses was
where we first met, where bikers assembled, little kids wrestled mud, and
we generally rode countless circles around the miniature racetrack we had
jointly constructed, six or seven of us, when the mood was still all playful,
and her old man's dogs still in demand.
Recently things have changed a little though. Suddenly we were no longer
interested in blowing up beetroots with strikers, or crawling through the
forest in pursuit of some heineous villain as guardians of the people, investigators
at large, building secret hideouts to stake out the thugs. No, we were in
for the real game now. The relation between the sexes would never be the
same again once we were through with it, as it would henceforth be dominated
by the only difference between the two kinds that makes any sense at all
to a twelve year old, and that is, their sex. For short, a man shares more
genes with a male baboon than with a woman is what I thought up till this
decisive moment, and now the game was about to change drastically, with
no known rules that might apply. We were up to no good, that much was clear,
and the righteous may rightfully curse our good looks, 'cause the devil's
watching over our every move, slipping the temptation into our sinful little
brains, as might be deduced from their anxious eyes and sly purposeful moves.
We took off for the scrubland across the street from the protestant school
they built a few years back, when we came across these three dogs, fighting.
Two mutts and a bitch trying to get on top, snapping at each others heels,
so I shoot my ball to break up the lot, barking, and there they went into
the playground round the back of the school. Remember, how we paddled our
way through the catacombs when it was being erected, the three stooges playing
hard at becoming heroes, with all the shit that was floating down there,
the sewage pipes not having been connected to the sewers yet, which had,
however, not prevented the workers from using the facilities anyway, remember
that, yeah, and it was the same lot two, with Dereck who always came up
with the dirty magazines, and then this girl that we called Sister though
we were not in the least bit related to her, or was it Harry after all,
third one out on the ship of fools, heading straight for the terrors of
the netherworld we rafted the foundations and took care that it would not
last. We desecrated the shit out of that place, literally, kinda, nevermind,
when we took off for the scrubland across the street from the protestant
school, we had only one purpose in mind, 'cause Dereck and Sister had someting
in store for me, and I wasn't gonna let go.
It was heyday for the religious bastards in those days, and them born again
brats had to be educated, had to be aligned well, to comfortably grow up
to be decent propper people, straight in the ways of fate, no less. Unless,
and, if you help them out a little this is not all too improbable, they
somehow learn to hate their faith and run wild on wicked rebel roads, writing
crummy books about how they got rid of all those outdated dogmas and then,
of course, about how they got all these splendid up to date ones to make
it all worth suffering for after all.
George was my foreign friend, the one that took me seriously all the time,
someone I could turn to, someone to talk to, someone to listen to me love
me ceaselessly, but he was only the start. He was still quite a common alter
ego anyway. From there on in they became rarer and rarer untill they succeeded
to parallel the complexity of the problems I encountered on the road, silent
and in darkness, confronted by the insolence of the skies and the pain behind
my mother's eyes, that sort of all too mediocre shit. The caravan stood
in the back of the scrubland, old and deserted, never to be young again,
that was what we were after. The sufferer had already surfaced, and so had
the good mother that is fear, but George was in command. Oh please, you'll
kill me with laughter.
Dereck went in first, taking Sister's hand,
sliding in, tugging her gently along, as she held on to the doorknob, swinging
it shut. Now they're closing the curtains, locking me out in silent bewilderment,
leaving me all alone to my thought, this was wicked. No, this was ridiculous,
I already knew what to expect. Still for that little bit of time I must
have been temporarily disconnected 'cause somehow I could still feel innocence
stirring up the fire to fake a final frenzy of unselfish and holy desire.
I wanted to get up, get up and higher, like my brother that was me, higher
than where my heart could be at ease. What did I know at that point in time
about the cold heaven of deceit, and that it would take me fourteen years
to get back on my feet. But for as yet the seconds had never been this sweet,
in love or dead meat in heat?
The seconds took hours to pass, and my thoughts ram wild on what they might
be doing in there. They had closed the curtains conspicuously cautious,
and although I listened real hard I could hear nothing but my own heart
beating, and a faint constructive thumping in the distance, but that was
all too obvious. An old rubber construction bucket almost entirely covered
up with mud, handle sticking out, lead glistening on the surface oily blue,
bricks piled at hazard, concrete slabs, wired fences dangling. Then suddenly
after a seemingly infinite amount of time the door of the caravan swings
open, and out jumps Dereck, fumbling his zipper, his shirt tucked in sloppily,
and a red blush across his cheeks. So this was what a man looked like. Now
how about me, will I do? will I wondering, but my heart crumbles when Sister
appears in the doorway gesturing seductively folding me into her arms with
wicked charms luring me with her eyes, wonder where she picked that up,
but the door had already closed behind us.
A dim motley shone from the curtains as she pulled me closer, stroking
my face firm and perhaps just a litlle too listless down beside. And almost
right away she says, you don't have to go all the way if you don't wan't
to, and I thought there's another victim you bet, someone else still wet
when they got their ears waxed, but nevertheless I didn't know what to do
with my this compassionate fate, wasn't it getting a bit late, I said nervously
clutching my coat, but we were no longer on speaking terms so she unbuckled
my belt and opened the button. I reclined on the bunk, she sat down beside
me, and we touched hands. Want to touch me down there, down there where
it comes, she sighs willfully, all too willfully at that, and I knew that
place anyway, silly magazines you found in rubbish piles, ripped but readable
after the fair was over. So we played around for a while in this place where
the sun don't shine, and agreed to keep it a secret that we didn't do it,
didn't go all the way after all, so we would both have something to work
on, a past to present the future a chance to flourish. She said, I don't
know nothing, nothing at all, but that sometimes I feel so damn small, and
hard to get at. Now how about you, can you ever be sure about something?
I didn't know what to say, 'cause my past had already set in at a much rougher
pace some few years before, and so had hers if I was to tell, yet neither
of us said a word, though both of us knew, or at least suspected, perhaps
were to know, were to realise distinctly some day.
When we came back outside we tried to smile as if we had acomplished something,
and the sun glistened in a bucket full of mud. One quick look at Dereck
was sufficient to settle those doubts.
This is as faithfull a reconstruction I can
make of how I thought at the time. Too many books had passed my mind already,
and I would have been utterly wasted to the real world of senses if I hadn't
always lived out in the country, in small communities where the pressure
on the senses never rises to such a level that it forces you to turn inward
completely. I would have drowned in the richness of my thoughts or the murky
depths of my perverted mind, but as it was I had split up already anyway.
I moved out soon after, and it would take seven or eight years before I
saw her again, and she still didn't spill it, saying she loves me because
of my sins, but she can't be with me because that wouldn't solve anybody's
problems for very long, as if I would want that, going out into the world
as I am.
She had grown slightly more civilized, and definitely more beautiful and
selfassured. I was with my sister, going to a movie that I can't remember
much of, some story of the great war full of passion and deceit shot from
yet another enlightningly new angle, and then in the break, there she was,
glowing with newly found security, 'cause she was sure of something now,
that was plain to see. When our eyes met she cheered a seemingly wellprepared
surprise. So we kissed and we talked about the common things, both of us
having escaped from the wastelands of our youth, both of us on the run from
too readily having fun, both of us carrying this loaded gun, and both of
us having to live this fear, shunning the light of the sun, but I have since
found my moon and vanquished it, now how about you, Sister?
* * * * *
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