PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Why ask the Class Nerd to be the keynote speaker at the

twenty-fifth anniversary of our class's graduation?

Why not?---are you too stupid to see the irony of the

selection, and the arrogance residual in him if he
accepted, and prepared and delivered a speech?

We had hated him since the very first year of

our academic careers---kindergarten---and in each

grade, we refined the degree of the torments we

imflicted upon him:  snickers and giggles became
shoves and shunning; sometimes the theft of his

lunch money, and sometimes a charge or toll

inposed upon his use of the salt shaker at lunch.

His clumsiness and diffident tone of voice;

his lack of ability on the field of gymnastic endeavor;

his scholarly interests that designated him a "brain"; and

from the end of that prepubescence that preceded

his adolescence---during which he sometimes looked
(to our diminishing amusement and rising disgust)

upon the most athletically agile of us with obvious desire---the

terms "queer," "fairy," and "faggot" were not sufficient.  The

occasional thorough beating, after school, sometimes released

our boiling over hatred of him; and his parents never

pressed charges---fearing what they would have been

required to admit (about themselves or about the "son"

they had raised among their friends and neighbors).

Perhaps even more damaging to him than the effects of

physical assault was the relentless mockery and

taunting of his most precious ambition---a scientific

anomaly of which he had often dreamed and upon which

he obsessed; even after he went to college where, they

told me, he fared no better socially and was far too

timid to seek, or ever to enjoy, the presence of

some boy friend . . . .

*

He showed up for the reunion, and that alone surprised us,

even though he had accepted the invitation and the offer to

speak quite early, his reply (in writing) having sounded a
bit---just a bit---too enthusiastic (and I wondered how

much, and for what reason, he had forgotten our mutal past).

He had spent some time overseas and his attendance at our

gathering had required the curtailment of some research plans;

but, as his words explained, he was most grateful for the

opportunity to reconnect with us and to, as he put it,

"catch up . . . ."

*

Seeing him for the first time in a quarter century, I found him to be,

like us, a more decrepit, and aging, version of himself.  I could

imagine the many bruises on that face and body, and the many

slurs that had assailed his ears, and the twisted, homosexual mind that

cowered and plotted within that skull.  His speech was not

mere reminiscence, or the usual echoes of encouragement to

"keep pressing on" to great and even greater accomplishments; not at

all---this was merely a lecture in Physics, from the theoretical to its

practical application.  I pride myself in being far more educated, and

much better informed, than I was during high school; and, although I

could not follow all of his sentences, all of his terms, I understood

enough to know that he was boasting, the braggart, that he, alone and

entirely through his own effort, had discovered the only known means to

effect the fission of non-radioactive materials; and that such a fission,

which avoided or superceded the known physical laws, would, once

commenced, spread from atom to atom, like a pandemic, around the

earth in an orderly but rapid process; then having incinerated the

earth, would escape into space where, with exponential efficiency, it

would begin to dissolve the very cosmos.  Someone, from the audience

(I think it was Roddy, stinking of bait and pot and b.o.), shouted

"You ought to write science fiction," and a huge and derisive laughter

resonated through the room, as it had in our classroom so often when,

called upon by some teacher or another, he had tried to answer a

question or offer an opinion.  The last words of his that I heard,

before the shouded ridicule commenced, was "easily forget the climber,"

which made no sense; but my hearing has been deteriorating for

sometime.  I am too vain to wear a device.  The Class Nerd

although silenced, stared at us, not with fear---as he had so often in

our past, our classroom and corridors---but with a distinct, even a

distinguished, disdain . . . .

*

You would not have had to listen to my longwinded story just

because I bought you a drink.  The boring part of the reunion is

over---tonight is the dance, and I would be most pleased to

escort you to it; although we graduated three years before your

birth, and we must seem like dinosaurs to you.  I do not know if the

Nerd will show up; he disappeared after we interrupted his

speech with a shouting down such as even he had never experienced.

He disappeared, running away as had been his habit in school.

Perhaps he is on his way, even now, to that distant research

laboratory halfway across the world, which, he said, he had

reluctantly left to speak to us this afternoon.  Maybe some

pretty local boy might be awaiting his return.  I like the

chicks, and I like exclusive beauty, as you yourself can

certainly attest.  Does your watch say half past eight, like

mine?  Right; the sky should be dark by now, but that

shimmering glow---yes, look out that eastern window---and that

low, vibrant rumble; neither has been caused, I assure you, by the

stars or the moon.  "Forget the climber," I thought he said, but

now I think---as I try to remember the context and all---he said 

"easily preset timer . . ."

Starwars