Drama Kids
Vodka looks like water. So, every day he would bring a water bottle into his office. Just one part vodka, he told me, the rest is all water. I don’t think he would have ever told me if I hadn’t showed up early one day. Early by just minutes but he was unwilling to sacrifice his treat for my innocence. He filled the bottle up in front of me. He put in less that day, I’m sure. I was glad he didn’t hide it from me or justify it with some witty comment, as he could have easily done. He just filled the bottle and told me it was one part vodka. He trusted me. He had to. No one had heard about the fights that he and his wife would have in his backyard just bellow my bedroom window. Or the silence since her departure early last year. I knew more about the vice principal of my high school than I knew about any of my friends. Probably because there was more to know.
For three years, Mr. Davis would give me a ride to school on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. For a good part of the last two years he always had the water bottle. I understood that different days led to different variations of the contents. As I was initiated into the world of alcohol I began to understand the potency of the variations.
Summer really worried me. There was no need for him to hide the stench of his bottle, so I had a feeling that there would be no moderation of his intake. Last summer, a few days a week I would stop in around three to make sure he was up. He understood and appreciated why I visited. Eventually he gave me a job taking care of his dog. When his dog died (not my fault), I became the pool sweeper.
Summer ended and school started again. He seemed to have evened into a constant dismay. Sometimes he even tried to seem normal. But when senior year began to wind down, I noticed that his water bottle intake was up. One day before lunch, I stopped in to tell him that I didn’t need a ride and he was visibly drunk. He was usually completely sober by noon.
On the last Friday in May of my Senior year, Mr. Davis summonsed me into his office. I had no idea what state he would be in. My worst fears were realized when I walked into the office and he began yelling at me. I closed the door quickly, my eyes locked on the secretary’s fixed eyes until the door was shut. I was in trouble.
“Goddam it. I’m never going to give you a ride again. Where the hell where you? I waited a half hour.”
“Mr. Davis, today is Friday.”
“Oh. I know. I know,” a pause then he was laughing feverishly. I didn’t see his water bottle, so I stood and l looked behind his desk. To the right of his foot turned over with nothing spilling out was a real vodka bottle.
“Pete. Pete, you’re going to have to sit down.”
I apologized and sat. He began to tell me how proud he was that I was going to a University, how he was going to miss me. I started to stand, “I’m sorry, Mr. Davis. I can’t bond right now. I am supposed to be in my English class.”
He stood and in a very un-vice-principaled manner he made a very drunken association, “Go ahead and leave me like everyone else.”
I sat again, of course. Mr. Davis sat too and began to let some tears out. It was all too emotional for a Friday morning at my high school. The school band was playing in the distance and all around the school smatterings of students were dressed in “1950’s clothing” for a “Spirit Day.” He rubbed out his face with his hands and told me that his daughter was getting married and he hadn’t been invited to the wedding.
There was a long pause. I just looked at him trying to smile. When it seemed like he was going to speak again, I told him that I ever got married he would be my best man. That was too much.
He laughed. “No more. No more; I cannot believe that I have summonsed you in here for a pathetic-male-bonding session. I should just expel you.”
I giggled because he threatened to expel me all the time, mostly for wearing baggy blue jeans. I giggled my way into standing.
“No you can’t go yet. I still have to talk to you about something.”
I nodded.
“I want to talk to you about the drama kids.”
Laughing, I turned to walk out. “No, stop! Listen. They really irritate me.” For twenty years, fifteen as a teacher and five as an administrator, he hated every minute he spent with those damn drama kids. Not as individuals but the group of them, he told me. “They never change. Never. I don’t know what gives them the same pompous, self-righteous attitude every year, but it does not die. Not with firing the teacher – it’s been done- and not with the changing of decades. The first time a guy started to care more about his stage presence than a baseball game, his father should have slapped him and put him on hormone replacement pills.
“They come in here and ask me if they can do ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’ I told them that I didn’t think it was a good idea. So they say, ‘Why? Is it too controversial?’ I told them that it was just another cheesy Andrew Lloyd Weber formula play. Besides you guys don’t have the voices.”
He continued on.
Occasionally he had muttered, “Goddam drama kids,” but this venom was all very new and specific to me. He told me how he finally on this day taken out all of the hostility he had toward the lame sub-culture of high school drama on the two representatives that had been sent to his office. “So I yelled, ‘Can’t you guys play any sports? Aren’t your fathers around? Every year the same untalented lot of you sit around that damn oak tree fantasizing that you are smarter, deeper, somehow more artistic than anyone else here.’ So I told them about you, Pete. I told them how you write.”
“Thanks.”
“So the girl starts crying and the guy starts yelling back like Eugene O’Neil had scripted him some defense. And so I tell them: ‘That’s you little fairies’ problem; you cannot deal with constructive criticism.’ Then I start telling the guy how I saw him in the re-imagining they had done of The Metamorphosis. ‘I don’t think he is very talented at all. All hand motions and exaggeration.’ I said, just cause you dress up like an English factory worker does not make you an actor.’ Then I told them to get out. The girl’s dad just called. He’ll be here in half an hour. What the hell does he think I’m going to do? I’m the vice Principal.” Under his breath, “He’s probably a pussy anyway.”
The pious anger in Mr. Davis’ eye reminded me of the glory years of his marriage. He was restored.
“Mr. Davis, I thought the vice Principal had to like everyone.”
“Yeah. But not the drama kids, nobody likes the drama kids.”