I am twelve years old. I am in seventh grade — the first year of middle school. It is 1986.
How can I explain the last century? I guess it’s not that much different than today. It was easier to be invisible. That’s a big difference. There weren’t as many cameras. Being lonely wasn’t the same, either. There were people desperate to be seen and heard — who screamed and raged — but were never heard or seen. There was one screen, and we worshipped it. The evening news was nothing but terrorism, plague, and nuclear war. People were scared. The rich enjoyed themselves a little too much, and the same with the bible thumpers. Things don’t change as much as we think they do.
The 80s were colorful, though. Neon pinks, bright yellows. Turquoise was popular. My Trapper Keeper — a stylish three-hole binder with a velcro latch — was an intense blue. It was my prized possession.
I am twelve years old, and middle school is chaotic, and loud, a pinball machine with too many pinballs—disorienting. The 8th graders are otherworldly, and I’m afraid I’ll forget my locker combination, so I write it on a scrap of paper. I still do this for my various passwords—computers, phones, and Wi-Fi. I write them down on scraps of paper. This is not an optimal solution.
The only time this method failed me was when that paper suddenly went missing in seventh grade. I looked everywhere for it. My pockets. My Trapper Keeper. Did I drop it? I remember the panic, my fingers turning the lock’s dial back and forth until I finally dragged the digits from the depths of my memory. It was too late.
The contents of my locker had been sprayed with mustard and ketchup, and relish from cafeteria condiment packets. It was a mess, with glop everywhere; my books and homework, and jacket were sticky and sweet, and on the inside of the locker door, the word “fag” had been scrawled in black magic marker. In all caps.
The vandal had to have seen me drop my locker combination. They must have known me and what locker was mine. I wiped off the word as best I could — smeared it — and cleaned off my books, and my mom didn’t ask me why my jacket smelled like a hot dog.
“Oh, mijo,” she said. I only had one light fall jacket. I reminded her not to call me ‘mijo.’ I was white, and she was brown, and that was that. I didn’t want her to speak Spanish around me; it could be infectious. I didn’t want to say something in Spanish accidentally. I didn’t want anyone to know, although whenever my dad overheard me complain about “taquitos again,” he’d chuckle and call me Juan.
“Too bad, Juan.”
I am twelve years old, and I don’t trust my parents. I tell them I’m asthmatic, and they say I’m not. I get winded, though. I can barely finish the obstacle course. The other boys run so fast that their feet don’t touch the ground. I am the shape of a half-filled water balloon. I wear my underwear when showering with the other boys after gym class. They all have pubic hair, and I am hairless, like my older sister’s dolls.
If I focus — like a magician or mentalist with one finger pressing against my temple — on the smell of mildew or the wetness of the narrow wooden benches of my middle-school gym, I can return to that time and place, as it was to twelve-year-old me, I can recall what it was really like — the recklessness of it all, the intensity of the world — I can see those boys, children, not as they were but as I saw them: golden gods. I knew then not to stare at their glowing bodies, and I also knew it was only a matter of time before they bullied me — those boys with their armpit hair hanging down like vines.
For the first week of school, I ate alone in the cafeteria at the table reserved for the friendless, the lazy, and the excitable. The previous year, my sixth-grade teacher said I had diarrhea of the mouth, which immediately shut me up. I was “restless.” “Hyperactive.”
Those were the words I’d hear whispered by adults who didn’t think I was listening. I didn’t understand what “hyperactive” meant, but I knew I was being sorted. That lunch table looked like a shelf of mismatched mugs at a thrift store.
That’s how I met Joey, who was new to the school and the area. He looked Latino, but one of the first things he announced was that his mom was from a faraway island called the Philippines, and his dad was a war hero.
His favorite food was pork chops.
Joey was a human bullhorn, and he asked questions indiscriminately, which is how he united the table; like a medieval tribal chieftain, he’d point at a boy and ask, “Who’s your favorite Transformer?” or he’d point at me and shout “hey do you like cool rocks?”
Yeah, I like cool rocks.
Joey had an actual hairstyle — a mullet. Short on the side, long in the back. It was rude and bold. My mother cut my hair. I had no fashion sense. Joey wore pastel tank tops and floral surfer shorts called “jams” that were popular at the time — I would not receive a pair until they found their way into thrift stores midway through high school when no one was wearing jams. Joey also had a mustache, the early stages of facial hair, a few whiskers above his lip, but it was still impressive.
To sit next to him was to endure a non-stop but benevolent interrogation: “Yo, do you smoke?”
No?
“I did, once — a Kool, at my old house back in Florida.”
“Yo, you ever had sex?”
No?
“My mom and I lived in Denver once, and this older chick was next door. She was nice to me, and I bet she wanted to have sex with me.”
“Yo, does your dad know anything about robots?”
No?
“Too bad. My dad does.”
And when he wasn’t machine-gunning me with queries, he shared his thoughts on… well… everything. Comic books, helicopters, nachos. Everything.
We are both twelve, but Joey had confidence, and it was a great mystery why. He was overweight, like me, but he walked with his chest out like it was bulletproof.
“You lift?”
Lift?
“Weights. You lift weights?”
No?
“Yo, I do.”
His face was greasy with pimples, and he sneered at the glowing boys everyone loved, and I mean everyone: the girls, the teachers, the other boys, especially.
When something was good, Joey would say “legit.” Mike Tyson was legit. Ninja throwing stars were legit. Iron Maiden was legit.
Superheroes were legit. I thought they were cool, too. This was before Superman and Spider-Man made global entertainment corporations tens of billions of dollars; growing up in the 80s, comic book superheroes were disposable, violent soap operas for boys without muscles — the excitable ones. I once dreamed I could shoot red lasers from my eyes like Cyclops from The X-Men, and I remember that dream to this day because I woke up heartbroken that I couldn’t destroy the world.
All kinds of iconic indie comics and genre-bending graphic novels came out that year, but I only cared about Firestorm and Wolverine. His favorites included Ghost Rider, Black Panther, and Iron Man.
“Whose the best Batman villain?”
Scarecrow?
“Good choice.”
I’d sometimes share my comics with him — new ones. Justice League. The New Mutants. He’d read them while we ate lunch. He’d get oily fingerprints on them, but I didn’t mind.
“Yo, you like Iron Man?”
Yes!
“Which is your favorite armor? The Mark 8? Or The Mark 9?
Jeez, uh, 8! The Silver Centurion!
“Legit.”
He introduced me to Swamp Thing. Have you ever read a Swamp Thing comic? Does that character even exist anymore? He’s green from head to root, a living, growing pile of moss, roots, and rot. Cool to the touch, a tree that walks. Swamp Thing does not wear pants. He is naked.
I would stare at Joey’s mustache during lunch, study it, watch it sweep up splatters of pizza sauce, and wonder if he shaved. I used to watch my dad shave from the bathroom door early in the morning, and when he’d leave to catch the train to work, I’d lather my face up and admire my thick white beard. I was too afraid of his blue plastic razors, so I’d wash the foam off, making sure to splash blue aftershave on my face, and I loved the tingly feeling, the burning, and the sharp, sour chemical smell. It hurt.
Joey was a teacher. He had a worldview that he shared, and I listened.
For instance, he taught me to collect condiment packets. I thought middle-school lunches were bland, the crinkle-cut fries soggy, and the burgers tasteless, but Joey was a gourmand—the first one I would meet. He was a foodie before such a thing existed.
Joey was hungry — I was hungry, too. He ate with his mouth full in bold defiance of everything adults had told me. He guzzled chocolate milk with gusto, like a Viking drinking from a horn. When they served fried chicken, he sucked the meat off the bones and gnawed the cartilage. Tater tots were legit. Joey believed in cleaning his tray — he’d run his finger through puddles of gravy.
He would mix ketchup, mayo, and mustard into a giant gloppy tot sauce, which seemed brilliant to me; it had never occurred to me to do that. He taught me to add French fries or potato chips to my burger or sandwich for extra crunch. He would collect taco sauce pockets whenever there were tacos and squirt the salsa into folded-up pizza slices served on Fridays — instant pizza tacos!
Joey was polite. “Yes, sir,” to the vice principal. “Please” and “thank you” to the cafeteria lady, who gave him extra large scoops of mac and cheese on the rare occasions there was mac and cheese. But at the lunch table, he wagged his finger in the air like some philosopher in a toga; he spoke with the authority of an adult.
I would always sit to his right, and two other boys would sit across from him. I had known one of them since kindergarten, and he was always nice to me, which I resented. He looked like a chicken. The other boy hid behind sunglasses that his teachers always told him to take off.
He’d pose quandaries like “Who would win in a fight, Blue Thunder or Airwolf?” Those were the names of high-tech helicopters with machine guns that were the stars of hour-long action shows on TV, and my answer was always wrong, which was ‘Blue Thunder.’
When he wasn’t pondering modern life’s complexities, he was giving me tips—life tips, fashion tips. I should slick back my hair or listen to good music like some band called Danzig. He warned me against writing my locker combination down on a scrap of paper that I kept in my Trapper Keeper.
I never told Joey about my locker. I never told anyone.
Joey treated me like his second-in-command, his trusty sidekick, at least during lunch hour. He was cool to me in the hallways as we passed each other. We had one class together, pre-algebra, that he spent doodling in his notebook — -sprawling action-packed tableaus. Explosions. Fists. Robots.
But during lunch, we stuffed fries into our cheeseburgers and babbled about comic books and TV shows, and during one lunch period, he taught me how to fight. Specifically, he told me his dad had taught him that one karate chop to the “trapezius,” the spot where your neck and shoulder meet, could render your opponent unconscious. You can defeat any enemy with one sharp ‘hi-ya!’ to that area.
He asked me to hang out at his house after school once — his mom worked at a vet clinic until late, so we could do anything, and by “anything,” Joey meant we could eat French bread pizzas and play Atari for hours. But I had plans. Cub scouts? CCD? My mom drove me to the comic book store on Wednesdays to buy new comics. I could pick two.
I felt bad. I wanted to hang out with him. But Joey didn’t flinch when I told him I couldn’t come over, so maybe next time. Yeah. Next time.
The following semester, he was gone. After returning from Christmas break, my homeroom teacher told me Joey wasn’t returning. Did he move away with his mom? Did he get kicked out? I never found out.
If I fall back into memory, I can see Joey and hear him go on about Air Jordans and chicken nuggets dipping sauces. I have memories of him like folded paper tucked away in the corners of my dreams. There is a part of me that wants to sit at that lunch table again because it was one of the first times I felt safe outside of my family. Joey was full of shit, but I didn’t know that; I wanted to trust him — I wanted to trust anyone who wasn’t my mom and dad. Joey knew things, and I wanted to know things.
It’s funny how the brain works or doesn’t. I remember a day—a story. We were eating spaghetti, which was our least favorite meal. That still sticks out in my memory—red splatter, slimy noodles. Disgusting. Even Joey couldn’t improve the mushy pasta.
So, the spaghetti hangs in my memory. But not much else. I can conjure voices, distant echoes. We used to talk about the weekends. Baseball games. Cousin’s birthdays. On Saturdays, my dad would take me to a magic shop in DC where I was going to buy pranks: whoopee cushions, buzzer rings, rubber snakes.
I don’t remember him ever sharing his plans, but this one time, he said, apropos of nothing, that his dad wasn’t around on weekends much because he was working on a top-secret government project that we cannot, under any circumstance, tell anyone about or we’d probably be executed. Swear, he said, promise.
Well, I swore I’d keep the secret, and I leaned in.
Did the other boys do the same? Did they swear? Or did they laugh and pick up their trays and walk away? I don’t know. All I know is that Joey’s dad spent his days and nights in a bunker far underground.
He’s part of a team developing cyborg suits of armor, just like Tony Stark wears as Iron Man in the comic books. A suit of armor that is bulletproof and flies, and you can shoot laser beams out of the palms of your hand. It’s real, he said; Iron Man is real, NASA made it and the CIA. Joey’s dad is part of it, and he wears armor.
“It’s called an exoskeleton.”
No shit!
“Yeah, dude!” No one can find out about this. Especially the Soviet Union.
“Here’s the best part: are you ready?”
I am.
He looked me in the eye and said his dad was also building him a suit of armor. “I’m going to fly.”
His dad is also building a suit of armor for Joey. His dad is away this weekend and probably the next; who knows when he’d see him again, but one thing is 100% for certain: one day, I’ll look up and see Iron Man and his son streaking across the sky like rockets.
“Do you believe me?”
I believe you.
I believed him. Oh, how I believed him. I still do.
Grief. Friendship. Jazz hands. My debut memoir, ‘Theatre Kids,’ is now available for purchase. You can order it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or support your local independent bookstore. Look how happy I am (don’t worry, I’m dead inside.)
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of John DeVore's work on Medium. And order his book, Theater Kids: A True Tale of Off-Off Broadway here.