I lost track of the number of songs we danced too. I think it was four or perhaps five; or was it six? I suppose it doesn’t matter if it was one or one-hundred because dancing with Stacks was as natural as… well, as surfing.
“I need aqua!” I said to Stacks as the band was starting to play ‘In The End’ by Linkin Park. Actually, I think our band made it sound better than Linkin Park ever did.
“Ok!” She said still dancing.
“Want anything?” I asked her.
“Water would be great!” She said and I slipped away, leaving her still dancing.
“Two waters please!” I shouted to the guy behind the punch table.
He said something back as he handed me the two bottles of water. I just smiled and nodded my head. That seemed to satisfy him because he started helping someone else.
When I looked back into the crowd for Stacks all I saw was a sea of bouncing, bobbing and wobbling bodies, but then I made eye contact with Fish who was standing about ten feet from me and grinning like a goof. He had sweet dripping off him, but then again, so did I.
“Oh hey Fish!” I shouted and I’ve no idea how he heard me; maybe he had read my lips.
He said something back to me, but I couldn’t hear him at all. Even when he came up to me and shouted it right into my ear I still couldn’t hear him.
I also noticed that BB wasn’t with him and I shouted into his ear, “Where’s BB?”
“What?” Fish shouted back.
“B-B?!” I shouted slowly.
He pointed toward the band and I took that to mean that BB must be somewhere close to the origins of the loud music.
Fish held up a finger indicating that I should wait for a minute while he got something to drink too. A moment later he and I were fighting through the crowd to get closer to the stage.
I was following behind Fish and trying to keep an eye out for Stacks as we moved forward. When Fish stopped I looked ahead of us and saw that he was handing one of the cups of punch to BB.
Talking was impossible so I simply gave BB a friendly nod as a greeting, but then I saw it. BB was wearing a bright blue shirt with an equally bright red collar. I must be an open book because without anything being said, BB knew what I was thinking and smiled knowingly.
“You?” I mouthed.
Fish looked back at me; he had a confused expression on his face. When I looked back to BB, he was waving Fish and me to follow him. I looked down and caught a quick glimpse of BB’s shoes. He was wearing blue, laceless Converse and I think my heart began beating ten times its maximum speed.
We made our way to one side of the enormous black speakers and amazingly enough, if you aren’t in front of those things; the noise level is not so bad. Oh, it was still loud, but at least we could hear ourselves think again.
“You’re Baby Bruce?” I asked BB.
He suddenly looked nervous as he put his hand over my mouth. Yeah it hurt, but I was in too much shock to recognize or react to the pain.
BB smirked as he leaned forward to say, “I was so hoping I was right about you!” and then he did something I couldn’t believe. He looked around us, stepped closer to me and pulled open the front of his pants about an inch. That was all the farther he needed to pull them, because I saw exactly what he meant for me to see. BB was wearing an unmistakable, white plastic diaper with Sesame Street characters on the front. I looked at Fish who was looking around the crowd like a jumpy Secret Service Agent who’s trying to protect the president from a room full of would-be assassins.
Fish and I made eye contact again and then I started looking from BB to Fish and back to BB. BB then nudged his chin knowingly toward Fish and smirked again. I looked deeply into Fish’s eyes and saw the answer to my unspoken question. He was PampersBoy from ILD.com.
That is when my heart-rate, which was already off the scale, surpassed the speed of light! I could actually feel my heart beating in my eardrums and eyeballs, not to mention my busted brow and lip. I guess the realization of it all got to be more than my surfer brain could process and I felt my head beginning to feel as though it was filled with sea water. Without saying anything, Fish and BB hook me under each arm and walked me over to the wall where I was able to rest against it. I also drank some of the water I was holding.
With the big speaker no longer obscuring my view of the band, I was able to see the base player clearly and the drummer too, who I now knew to be Larry’s twin brother, although the drummer was a bit more toward the center of the… well, I guess it was sort of a stage like platform that they were on, but it wasn’t very high at all. The rest of the band members all had their backs to me. All of the band members were dressed in black and each individual seemed to have his or her own unique hairstyle. Suffice it to say, that only a rock and roll band could get away with looking as bizarre as they did.
“So you were right!” Fish said to BB.
BB gave Fish a pat on the tummy as he said, “Just stand there and look beautiful would you and let me do the talking.”
Fish’s reply was to cross his arms stubbornly over his chest while rolling his eyes.
“So he is…” I started to ask BB, but before I even finished Fish was nodding his head and mouthing, “PampersBoy”.
I was quickly becoming aware of this tightness in my chest, a throbbing in my ears and my head had gone from swimming to aching like someone had brained me with a baseball bat.
BB grabbed my good hand with both of his hands and was bouncing in place, “This is soo great!”
He looked at Fish who still had his arms crossed and said to him, “We got to tell Sissy!”
I hadn’t realized until right then, but somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I had already made the connections that if BB and Fish were Baby Bruce and PampersBoy, then it seemed only logical that Sissy4U and Diapered4Life would have to be none other than Bertha and Larry.
“I don’t know where she is.” Fish said looking around and shrugging his shoulders.
“You mean Bertha? I left her over by the punch, sucking on Larry’s face.” I said while pointing in that direction and nearly poking some girl right in the boob.
BB and Fish both looked at me with what I took to be confusion, but then BB’s eyes lit up.
“Larry is here?” he asked, nearly jumping out of his shoes with excitement.
“Uh, yeah,” I grunted and nodded while mentally scratching my head.
Fish nudged me with his elbow, “Guess you didn’t whack him after all.” Of course he was joking with me, but my head wasn’t working to well and I totally missed the joke.
“I-I need to sit down.” I mumbled.
“You don’t look so good.” Fish said.
“Are you going to puke?” BB asked.
“I just need to sit.” I mumbled again.
Somehow my two friends heard me and helped me get over to the bleachers, which had been collapsed and pushed back against the wall, but still, there were two rows available to sit on. We found a section that wasn’t occupied where the three of us could sit and talk and I could hopefully get my heart to slow down and my head to stop hurting.
“You okay?” BB asked.
I guzzled about half of my water and then shook my head as I asked BB, “How did you know it was me?”
He shrugged, “Would you believe that it was just a good guess?”
Oddly I nodded even though I meant to shake my head.
“Why did you bring up Bertha and Larry over there?” BB asked leaning in and speaking right into my ear. We should have stayed where we were because now that we were in front of the speakers again the music was blaringly loud.
“What?” I said.
I hadn’t heard what he said, and I have no idea how Fish had heard him, but he had and he repeated it for me.
“Because you said you had to tell Sissy4U.” I answered.
“What?” BB asked.
“OK wait a minute!” Fish said holding both hands out and giving the universal hand gesture of ‘stop’, “I am getting confused!”
“No!” Fish said as he began to laugh; he was laughing so hard he nearly fell of the bleacher. “No, no!” he was laughing and snorting as he slapped my back, “I think maybe you got the wrong idea buddy boy.”
BB finally figured out what Fish was laughing about and started laughing too. “No man, Bertha isn’t Sissy. Heck she doesn’t even know about… well… you know what.”
Ok, I was officially confused.
“What? But I thought…” I began to say and frankly I was getting a bit ticked off at the way they were laughing.
A group of students had moved closer to us, they were so close they were nearly on top of us. It wasn’t as though any of us were looking at the band, but now we couldn’t see them even if we wanted too.
A moment later the band stopped playing and that same young sounding, singing guy, announced that the band was taking a break, but that they would be back soon to, “ROCK ON!”
BB put his mouth right next to my ear and whispered, “Sissy4U is Bertha’s sister.”
The tightness in my chest was now a dull ache like someone was trying to crush my ribcage.
Fish suddenly pointed into the crowd, in the opposite direction of the band and loudly announced, “There she is!”
“Where?” BB asked, “Never mind, I see her!” and he stood up and pointed.
For a fevered moment I thought he was going to call her over, but now that I have my mental abilities back under control, the thought that Stacks, whether she is Sissy4U or not, would have been seen socializing with the likes of BB and Fish was utterly ridiculous.
I stood up and pulled BB back down. He was drawing attention to himself and the last thing I wanted was to have others looking at me!
“Wait, you mean Sissy4U isn’t Bertha?” I said throatily to them both. I could scarcely believe I’d spoke those words.
“No way man!” Fish said, still laughing himself nearly sick, “Are you kidding?”
I looked up and saw that Stacks seemed to be making her way over and god help me I didn’t know what to do. I looked down at the bottle of water I’d got for her and momentarily thought about throwing it away so that Stacks wouldn’t come for it. I know it was a stupid, irrational thought, but stupidity and irrationality was all I had left. All other mental circuits had overloaded and burned out.
“No, no, no!” I said under my breath, “No, this can’t be!” The words, though only feeble attempts to regain control of my thought and emotions, seemed as though they were being screamed.
I looked back into the crowd and saw that Stacks was smiling, but she wasn’t coming toward us. She was talking with this guy who I’d have to classify as a stud. Not that I am into checking out guys; I’m just saying… well you know what I am trying to say here. I’m not even sure she was ever coming over; I think I might have imagined that happening.
“Are you okay?” Fish asked me with a soft elbow to my ribs.
“I-I think I am going to be sick!” I mumbled.
“What?” BB asked and I guess he didn’t understand me and I didn’t bother repeating myself.
I jumped to my feet, leapfrogged over BB and knocked a bunch of others out of my way before hitting the wooden floor running. In the movies, the guy or girl that is running away always looks back, but I didn’t. All I knew was I had to get out of that gymnasium before my head exploded. Fish and BB were probably shouting after me, but I have no idea if they did or not. It’s probably safe to say that I freaked them out and that they were giving chase.
I had no idea where I was going or for that matter why; I was altogether in flight mode and nothing shy of a concrete wall could stop me.
Larry, who was sitting alone near the door, looked right at me as I blew past him. In less than a nanosecond Larry seemed to express a sense of alarm. I’m not 100% sure, but I think he may have hollered, “What’s the matter?”
I ran out of the gym and right into another crowd of students who were all standing around talking; probably because the music had been too loud inside for any normal conversation. It took some doing, but I pushed my way past everyone until I reached the main corridor. Left would lead me to the boys and girls bathrooms, but I could see that that way was blocked by the throngs of those who were fidgeting while waiting to get into the bathroom.
“Surely that isn’t the only bathrooms the school has allowed the use of during this dance?” I thought to myself.
The way to the front doors was swarming with hallway lurkers too. A funny little voice inside my head said, “Now would be a bad time for a fire drill.”
I looked to my right and saw maybe a dozen other students, two of which seemed to be physically connected at the lips. Beyond those few I could see the metal gate that was keeping anyone from getting into that part of the school. Out of curiosity I looked way down to my left and saw that just past the girls bathroom there was a gate that way too.
“Alvin wait up!” someone shouted behind me, but I didn’t care who it was. I just wanted to be alone for five minutes to think and breathe.
I saw some guy with enormously high spiked dark hair, dressed in black elephant cargos and a black sleeveless t-shirt open up a door down the hall to my right and disappear inside. I’m sure you are wondering why I would remember some random guy with such detail. Well in a minute you will understand why that is.
With no deliberation whatsoever I took off running for that door.
“Hey watch it spazoid!”
I had accidentally bumped into some girl.
“What a jerk!” someone else said.
“Sorry—Sorry!” I shouted without looking back.
I reached the door, pulled on the handle and, “YES!” I cheered as it opened and I jumped in.”
