The Instructions by Adam Levin
“You said you wanted to be a lot of things,” she said.
I said, I used to think I wanted to be a scholar, then a soldier—but now, whenever I’m near you, I start to think I’ve been confusing means with ends. I think I wanted to be the messiah all along and I didn’t know it. I mean, I knew I wished the messiah would come, and a lot of times I wished I was the messiah, but the wishing—it wasn’t wanting; there’s a difference, I think. Like how everyone wishes they could fly, or walk through walls, or be invisible… There’s no pain, you know? To wishing like that, I mean. Because there’s no possibility. With wanting, though—there’s some pain, I think… This is hard to explain… What I’m saying is I want to be the messiah, now. Or at least I want to bring him. Whenever I’m near you, I do. And I think that all along I thought that being a scholar or a soldier would help me become the messiah, or bring him, but—
June said, “How can you want something and not know it? I don’t think you can. I got sent to a social worker for a while and he kept telling me I wanted something and I didn’t know it, but what he said wasn’t true and I stopped going.”
What did he say you wanted? I said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Why did you get sent to him?
“Stop asking questions,” she said. “You’re always asking questions when you’re supposed to be answering them.”
I said, Since yesterday—since right after you kissed me on where my sideburns will be—I’ve been thinking that all my life I wanted us to be in love, but I didn’t know it, because I didn’t know you.
“Oh,” June said. Her left eye-socket was cupping my left cheekbone and she squeezed it.
But, I said, that doesn’t make it so. Because you’re right, I think. It is true that all my life I wanted to be in love—I have always known what in love is—but how could I have wanted to be in love with you, if I didn’t know who you were? I couldn’t have. You’re definitely right that I couldn’t have. But still, it has seemed that way to me since yesterday—that I’ve wanted to be in love with you, with June, all along—and that has to mean something. Now that I’m saying it, though, I think that want is the confusing part. It is need I mean by want, I think. Because you can need something without knowing it. I know that is true. Sometimes when I’m at my desk, I forget to eat and don’t know I’ve forgotten, and my A gets D’d and I get angry and explosive and I don’t think to myself, ‘Gurion, you have forgotten to eat,’ and I don’t think to myself, ‘You are hungry.’ All I think is, ‘You are fucking up. You are going too slow. In the time it took you to word the previous sentence, which isn’t even a perfect sentence, Israelites have died.’ Eventually my mom will call me downstairs for dinner and I’ll go have dinner, and my A won’t be D’d anymore and my anger and explosiveness subside a little. It is only after eating the dinner that I tell myself, ‘You needed to eat and you didn’t know it.’ So I’m thinking the truth must be that all along, though I’ve wanted to be in love, what I needed was to be in love with you and didn’t know it; and now, because on top of needing it I want it so bad, because I want it to keep happening, because I want to keep being in love with you, the wanting hides the needing and seems to replace it, even though the wanting actually has nothing to do with it. I’m glad I’m in love with you, I love that I’m in love with you, but it doesn’t matter. Whether or not I want to be in love with you, I need to be in love with you. And yesterday, after you kissed me on where my sideburns will be, I started thinking that all my life I hadn’t wished, but wanted to be the messiah, or to bring the messiah, and didn’t know it, but it can’t be true for the same reason that it can’t be true that all along I’ve wanted you. I cannot have wanted something I didn’t know I wanted, even if I wished for it sometimes. So it may be that all my life I’ve needed to become the messiah, or bring the messiah, regardless of what I thought I wanted, or knew I wished for. It may be that all the things I’ve done that I thought I’d done to become a better scholar or a better soldier were things I was doing to become the messiah, or to bring the messiah. It’s like I’ve been a crying just-born baby who doesn’t know he’s hungry, let alone that he’s hungry for his mother’s milk. The newborn doesn’t know who his mother is, or even what mother is. He doesn’t even know what crying is, right? I don’t think he knows he is crying, June. He’s just doing what he’s doing and it is only after his mother has begun to feed him that he begins to understand what he was doing, why he was doing it. It is only after he’s been fed that he can know what hunger is. And so it is only then that he can choose to cry when he is hungry. Before he can go after what he wants, he needs to know what he wants, but before he can know what he wants, he needs to get what he needs. The world must come to him first. I’ve been as dumb as a just-born baby. Do you understand me, June? When I’m near you, I need to become the messiah no matter what I might want. Or at least I need to bring him no matter what I might want. But I want to become the messiah—or bring him—because I need you to always be near me. I need you to never die. Do you understand what I’m saying or not? Because I want you to understand. This isn’t just me wishing.
She squeezed my body with all of hers until the buses gave off one-minute-warning honks for stragglers. Then we ran at the circle, June yelling a song that went:
I am sorry I was mean to you,
Gurion Maccabee!
I kicked and I tripped you
And said go away!
I am sorry I was mean to you,
Gurion Maccabee!
I am so sorry!
I was mean!
Kids piled up at the buswindows and stuck their heads out and looked at us. The ones who were shmendricks made faces, smooched air. Still running, I looked into the eyes of three of them, none of whom I recognized. Each of the three fell back from his window and ducked below the frame.
At the door of June’s bus, she said, “I’m forgiven.”
I said, Yes.
“I wasn’t asking,” she said, then gave me a fast but painful tittytwist. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m forgiven.”
I didn’t say anything.
June said, “Good.” She pulled her hoods on and climbed the steps. I watched her make her way down the aisle til she got to the wheel-well seat and sat.
When I spun, I almost broke my nose on Bam Slokum’s elbow, but he moved it just in time.
“June Watermark,” he said to me, “is crazy.”
Take it back, I said.
Bam said, “There’s no such thing, kid. And no one’s listening but you and I and I’m not even fucking with you, just giving you a friendly warning because she’s crazy and crazy girls—they’re dangerous, especially when they’re beautiful. So lighten up.”
I said, You’re not my friend.
“I’m no one’s friend,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t have friends, nor does it mean I can’t act friendly, and it doesn’t change the fact that you need a friendly warning.” He said it in the same yawny whisper he’d used on the bus the day before. He said, “You’re ten years old and I’ve got at least ninety pounds on you and the way you’re talking to me—it’s like a Pomeranian or a Shih Tzu or some long-haired fucken Chihuahua in a blonde girl’s purse baring his teeth at a Chow. You know what a Chow is? He’s the most loyal guard-dog in the world, but only to one master. Pretty, too. A mane like a lion’s. Comes from China. We got a Chow at my mom’s house. He’s hers. You want to pet him when you see him, his melting black eyes, the mane—he looks almost fake, like a stuffed animal, something to cuddle, but what he wants most is to tear the face off your head. And no warning, either. Chow’s boundaries—not clearly defined. Maybe he lets you pet his mane, maybe his nose even, but then all of a sudden you touch him on the haunch, the knee, someplace you wouldn’t expect was so personal—Chow bites all your fingers off, goes at your vitals when you hit the ground if he’s in the mood, and if you’re reckless enough to backtalk me, you’re reckless enough to think you underst
June isn’t crazy, I said.
“Just warning you,” said Bam.
Busdrivers honked and I turned a little, saw Nakamook looking at me through his buswindow. I thought: You have failed your friend, listening willfully to this kingly basketballer’s monologue.
“Bus can’t leave without you,” Bam said. “Not as long as you’re standing here.”
I said, I know.
He said, “Ah, right. Nakamook. I see him. He sees me seeing him. He saw you seeing him. Everyone’s seeing everyone see everyone and it’s twisting you up in the face because you think you’ve gotta do something to slight me to show him you’re loyal. It’s always loyalty with that kid, right? Loyalty this and loyalty that. Thing is though, Gurion, your buddy Nakamook knows me, studies me, is on the edge of his seat in terms of when he’s gonna try to end me, and it’s because he thinks I’m his enemy, and maybe I am, but why should you be worried about what he’s thinking right now? Why is it your loyalty getting tested and not his? He hates me so much? He thinks I’m so dangerous, so untrustworthy and dangerous—why isn’t he rushing out here to protect you from me, understand? There’s two possible answers. One, is that he is testing your loyalty—and that ain’t a very loyal thing to do to a friend, ain’t a very friendly thing to do to someone to whom you claim loyalty; and the other possibility is he’s scared. But if he’s so scared then what does he expect of you here? Bravery? These questions are rhetorical. What I’m getting at is that’s no dumb guy, Nakamook. He’s sharp, right? Knows himself. Knows it’s either he’s testing you or he’s scared, knows the implications of each, so how can he fault you for having a conversation with me? He can’t. Not if he’s your friend. And so how can you fault yourself? You can’t help it that you like me. People like me. Even people I’ve hurt. Not while I’ve hurt them, but after, see. And I’m not hurting you right now. So what are you supposed to do?”
Someone honked a car-horn then. It felt like a rimshot. I revolved. The car was a Jeep. A Cherokee in Aptakisic’s parking lot. Another rimshot. Behind the wheel: a high-school blonde guy, snowboarder sunglasses. He reached a bulgey arm out the window and smacked the fender. “Bam!” he shouted.
“That’s Claymore,” said Slokum.
Geoff Claymore? I said.
“Bam Slokum!” shouted Claymore from his Jeep.
“You want to meet him? We’ll give you a ride. Tell you some stories about your pyro friend over there.” He pointed at Nakamook. Nakamook looked puzzled and off-guard. His eyes looked glassy, but it might have been the bus window. “Look!” Bam shouted to Claymore. “It’s Benji Nakamook.”
“I thought that smell I smelled was pussy, not gasoline!” Claymore shouted back.
“Turned out it was both!” Slokum yelled. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said as he walked away from me. “Don’t look at me all stunned. I’m exactly what’s called for, kid, at all times, and wide open as your mouth may be, you’re not calling for anything. You’re just standing there, a little boy. Have fun on the bus.”
11
TEACHERS
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Intramural Bus–Bedtime
MIDTERM ESSAY (TAKE-HOME)
7TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES (CAGE)
MR. BEAGLE
ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION IN 1–2 PAGES. BE SURE TO HAVE A CLEAR THESIS STATEMENT, CLEAR TOPIC SENTENCES THAT SUPPORT THE THESIS STATEMENT, AND SUPPORTING EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXTBOOK TO SUPPORT YOUR TOPIC SENTENCES.
THIS ESSAY IS DUE ON OCTOBER 31.
QUESTION
HOW DID THE EVENTS OF 9/11 CHANGE
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AMERICAN?
9-1-1 Is a Joke
or
How We Did It at the
Solomon Schechter School of Chicago
Gurion Maccabee
10/31/06
Ancient/Prehistoric
Slapslap is older than giving the swearfinger. It is probably the oldest game human beings still play. The slappee holds his hands out, knuckles-up, above the held-out, knuckles-down hands of the slapper; the slapper tries to slap the tops of the hands of the slappee, and the slappee tries not to get slapped. Some slapslappers play a flirty, unscored form of which the object is only to play the game, but most play to win. You win when you score a previously agreed-on number of points—usually 13 or 21.
Scoring
It is always the case in scored slapslap that if the slapper attempts to slap one of the slappee’s hands and connects, the slapper gets a point. Apart from that, however, the way the game is scored can vary. Whether the slapper gets one or two points if he slaps both hands, or no points if he only slaps one while trying to slap both; whether when he serves but fails to slap he loses a point, the slappee gains a point, or the failed serve is point-neutral (though never turn-neutral); whether flinching at a fake loses the slappee a point or gains the slapper a point, or balking on a serve loses the slapper a point or gains the slappee a point—all of these rules depend on what has been negotiated by the players prior to the game. And the same goes for when the players switch roles. It is most common for the slapper to become the slappee as soon as he misses. In some games, though, players switch roles after every point scored regardless of who scored it, and in other games a player plays his role for a fixed number of turns (usually 3 or 5), as in ping-pong.
Agreement and Disagreement
It is not uncommon for a slapper to slap so fast that a slappee doesn’t see the slapper’s hand make contact with his own, but the slap will always leave a tactile trace—usually the kind that stings. Therefore, when the honorable slapper correctly declares that he has scored, the honorable slappee won’t doubt or deny it, for even if he failed to see it, he’ll have felt it. Yet even between two honorable slapslappers who have agreed beforehand on a given set of rules, disagreements are bound to come up. The disagreements will not be concerned with slapping itself, but with flinching vs. twitching, and balking vs. faking, which, because they involve no physical contact, can only be perceived (or mispercieved) visually. Though never quite resolved, these disagreements are dealt with practically via one of two means: do-overs or rotating gimmes. Both options are problematic for the same reason: it is in the slappee’s best scoring interests to claim that all flinches are twitches and all fakes balks; it is in the slapper’s best scoring interests to claim the opposite (that balks are fakes, and twitches flinches). And even among the honorable, who, by definition, do not make claims they believe to be false, self-doubt arises. How couldn’t it? How couldn’t an honorable slapslapper allow for the possibility that he saw what he wanted to see rather than what he should have seen (i.e. what truly happened)? And how could an honorable slapslapper with any bent toward rigor whatsoever fail to question whether his opponent’s ability to see what truly happened isn’t complicated by motives similar to those of which he suspects himself?
One Solution
Most great and honorable slapslappers eventually end up playing a form of slapslap in which the only way to score is by slapping, and the only time a turn is counted is when a serve has been attempted. In other words: balking and flinching are considered both turn- and point-neutral actions, thereby making it irrelevant to distinguish a flinch from a twitch or a balk from a fake.
This newer form of slapslap, which everyone initially referred to as simple slapslap, has become so dominant in the past few years that a great number of its adherents have seen fit to forsake the modifier; these days they refer to the form, simply, as slapslap. And the name they give to the original slapslap is olden slapslap.
Robotness vs. Roboticness
Though I can understand the motivation to play it, simple slapslap gets me worried and mournful. You cannot simplify what is complicated without subtracting subtlety, and thereby richness; and the willful subtraction of subtlety, no matter how practical it may be (or seem to be), strikes me as a non-scholarly—even anti-scholarly—endeavor. It is not true that a person’s urge to erase or prevent controversy via simplification necessarily indicates that he aspires to become a robot; that urge existed before anyone even dreamed of robots. Nonetheless, by giving in to the urge to render simple what could defensibly remain complicated, a person becomes more robotic.
Furthermore, real slapslap is just more fun than simple slapslap. The scholar Emmanuel Liebman once told me that the latter was checkers to the former’s chess. I think that’s an understatement.
Imagine the rules of boxing were such that boxers weren’t allowed any footwork, were forced to stand in one spot in the middle of the ring and trade blows, one for one, the block their only legal defensive move. The champions would always be the soundest-bodied heavy-hitters. Muhammed Ali would never have lasted a round with Joe Frazier, let alone ever rope-a-doped Foreman. Eventually, as scientific techniques of measurement grew more advanced, boxers wouldn’t even need to enter the ring, much less hit each other, to determine the winner of a given match; the same kind of violence-allergic people on the state boxing commissions who invented the TKO and made it illegal to fight for more than twelve rounds would employ hack physicists to measure the PSI of the boxers’ punches, the rigidity and pressure-aborption capacities of their upper bodies, their pain-tolerance levels, and the physical integrity of their blocks, then plug all these variables into an algorithm and declare the winner. To box, at that point, would be as barbaric as the haters say: two men clobbering each other to prove nothing that isn’t already known.