Adam Levin - The Instructions

Bam dragged deeply at the cigarette and squinted at the cherry, exhaling slowly as he spoke.

“Anyway,” he said, “what I was saying before we so fascinatingly digressed together was that when you say stuff like ‘ just to please a crowd,’ you’re missing the point of what I’m trying to tell you, which is this: Except for self-preservation there’s no higher motive than crowd-pleasing, and my situation here at Aptakisic and in the world at large greatly minimizes the chances that acts which are needed to please crowds would ever come into conflict with acts needed to preserve myself. It’s an elegant system. I’m very elegant. There’s no room for hypocrisy in an elegant system such as the Way of Barnum because the point is I wouldn’t like you if they wanted me to hurt you, and so I’d hurt you, no qualms.

“Today, you know, it looked like you and those other little guys were attacking that B-team Shlomo kid who because he plays basketball everyone expects me to protect him from outsized beatdowns. Truly I couldn’t care less about that kid, but if I stood by and let seven guys hurt him, see, I would be failing to live up to expectations. Same time, there was no call to damage you — just to protect B-team. So there was nothing to be gained by damaging you. So I pulled you out of the fight and let you be. Even after you jumped at me I let you be. And I’m letting you be right now. I’m a simple animal. Consistent, elegant. The proof’s in the pudding. Yet you’re still confounded by my inaction just now when you were making Maholtz your bitch, let’s have another.”

He lit a second cigarette off the first, which he then dropped between us. I stepped on it.

“You’re confounded because, once again, you’re not paying attention to what I’m saying. Everyone hates Maholtz, and so I hate Maholtz. The only reason I don’t fuck him up is because he supplies me with a couple things that no one else in this school can get their hands on, and what he supplies is good for the cause of my self-preservation. The fact that he’s on the basketball team excuses me from having to fuck him up — in the eyes of the crowd, see. See, if I did fuck him up, they would be happy about it, but that I don’t fuck him up is readily excusable because of how we’re teammates and teammates aren’t expected to harm each other. Nonetheless, I am in no way obligated to step in to protect him from you — or anyone else, except maybe Nakamook — in any kinda one-on-one deal. Or, in any case, the crowd didn’t want that. What they wanted was for you to make Maholtz your bitch. At least until you did so — and with great aplomb, I commend you — at which time they felt like pussies but that’s a spooky train of thought we don’t need to pursue because the only thing I’m getting at is if I’d stepped in against you, they would have been displeased with me. And in the end, it turns out you did me a solid. Listen to them tommorrow and hear it yourself. Listen to what they’ll say. See, since I let Maholtz take his lumps within such close temporal proximity to the incident with B-team, the crowd assumes that I’m a righteous human being. They assume I’m not blindly loyal to basketball players just because they’re basketball players but that I’m filled with some clumsy complicated system of archaic scruples that their parents taught them was good and that these scruples I’m filled with dictate that I protect the B-team kid and let Maholtz suffer a little.”

And really you’re just filled with shit, I said.

It came out of my throat halfhearted, less an accusation than a challenge. “And why halfhearted?” scholars ask. Half-hearted partly because I said it with the future scrutiny of scholars in mind — if I didn’t call bullshit, what would you think of me? Mostly, though, because I was trying to caulk back the snat that trickled from my face at the idea of being dominated by a monologue while I held a deadly weapon in my hand. I wanted to hear more of what Bam had to say, and I didn’t want to want that, so I pretended I didn’t want it.

He said, “Now see, I got no real issue with us having a conversation wherein you make ineffective — not to mention irrelevant — attempts to save face by telling me I’m full of shit, but for future reference if you say stuff like that to me when people can hear? I’m gonna have to hurt you pretty bad, cause it’s no good for the cause of my self-preservation to get spoken to that way in public. It happens that no one’s close enough to have heard, so good for you, you’ve made your meaningless little gesture and you continue to survive. In the meantime I’m gonna contest what you said because I’m not full of shit, because what I’m full of is nothing. Behind this face that you keep staring at so weirdly, like it’s gonna speak to you on its own without me knowing, like it’s gonna let you in on some secret, I’ve got but zen and zen and endless zen. I’m a colorless canvas flag atop a mile-high pole and I don’t move a single fucken fiber but for when the wind flaps me see.”

I put out my hand. He gave me the cigarette. I was done caulking. I’d resigned myself to trickling, to acquiescing in the form of open curiosity, telling myself this was no different an approach than most any kid standing before a freakshow cage would take. What, if not a freak, was a superhero-shaped eighth-grader who wanted to flatter and generally act friendly toward a kid who’d just tried to kill him? Even if I wasn’t blameless, I was the next best thing — I was empathetic. Though someone in my place could have conceivably taken action — could have swung the sap at Bam, told him to get bent and meant it, or even just walked away — it was hard to imagine who.

I said, The other day you said you didn’t like Nakamook, though. You said you didn’t like him, and that you respected him.

“The respect line was a flourish I picked up from the movies — there was an audience see, a bus full of everykid no-ones,” Bam said. “An occasional flourish is pleasing to an audience. You know that as well as anyone. As for liking or not liking Nakamook, I don’t like him. And I don’t like him because no one likes him. He’s a fucken bully. You and Portite and Leevon Ray and then Scott Mookus — you’re the only ones around who like him, and one of you is mentally retarded, another fakes muteness, the third one’s a less effective bully himself, and then there’s you with all your weird notions about snat and face and hypocrisy, and you’re standing here, a deadly weapon in your hand, having a relatively civilized conversation with your best friend’s — what’s his favorite term now?”

Now I was laughing. Something about Bam’s rhythm. I hated that I was laughing, and how I wanted to get him to laugh in return. And though Nakamook wasn’t my friend anymore, I hated even worse that I was laughing at his expense.

Arch-enemy, I said.

“Like Lex Luthor,” said Bam. “The Joker. Fucken Magneto. It used to be ‘nemesis.’ So dramatic, that guy.”

And after that bit of collusion I could no longer think of myself as a kid at a freakshow. I was pathetic without any prefix, feeding Bam cues to punchlines like a pagan offering tribute, a Phoenecian peasant before a dog-headed oracle.

I said, Still, though, you’re wrong about who likes him. I said, Girls go crazy for Benji.

Bam heard in my voice what I couldn’t quite hide with my words, despite how oblique to the request I’d arranged them: I was asking to be set straight.

He said, “Girls go crazy for what’s dangerous, kid, at least most of them do, so girls are irrelevant here because as long as I’m more dangerous they prefer me, the girls. And apart from them, no one likes him. And why they don’t like him ain’t just cause he’s a bully, but cause he’s a psychopath. He comes to school and just fucks with anyone who’s near him. You’ve seen it happen. Everyone’s seen it happen. You heard the stories about my cousin Geoff and his house burning down, I’m sure — Geoff was also a bully. The difference between Geoff and Nakamook is Geoff was never a psychopath. He’s always been predictable. You knew what you had to do to stay on his good side. You just had to treat him like he was the dominant force in the room. If you didn’t treat him that way, then he’d hurt you. But otherwise you’d be just fine. I’m not saying everyone liked him either — a lot of people didn’t, but enough did. Nakamook alienates himself more than Geoff ever did because ever since he came back from juvie, being acknowledged as dominant and reaping the benefits of that acknowledgment — that ain’t been enough for him. He wants to actually dominate. Like in the moment. And at all moments. You can’t like a guy like that. You can like a guy like me, though. I’ve never acted like either of those two. People fear me, but I just keep the peace, so they like me, too. I don’t ask anyone to kiss my ass — just so long as they don’t fuck with me, see. So Bam walks quiet with his big stick, they think. He only fights kids we don’t like, they think. Anyone he fights must be unlikable, they think. And so to remain on Nakamook’s bad side makes me likable. He does me a favor, writing that SLOKUM DIES FRIDAY shit everywhere. Everyone knows it’s him, and it throws us into mutual relief. Look how likable is Bam when contrasted with that bully. Look how decent. That’s what they think. An elegant system, mine. I do what I want, everyone thinks I’m right, and I’m ascribed the best of intentions, the most noble motivations. You should adopt this system. You’re a very sharp kid and you’re rapidly becoming beloved. That damage nonsense everyone’s writing now. The bitch-making of my less amicable teammates. I’ve been hearing about you all day. You and Boystar. You should take a lesson from him. Primpy little poodle that he is, he knows what he’s got and who he’s got and where he stands, and he uses it all to maximum effect. And you’re smarter than that kid. It’s a shame to waste a brain like yours on scruples. I hope you’ll stop. It’s only confusing for you. I ask you to ask yourself: ‘Why like Bam despite my screwball loyalties when I can so easily ditch my screwball loyalties and just plain like Bam?’”