Monte

Yes, I know. It’s been awhile. I’m sorry. I watched the stats on my Web site climb from twelve visitors in one day, and then as time progressed, it fell to four visitors per day. And I have to apologize because I realize that it’s been my own fault for not writing in two months. But I bet I can make it up to all of you. I’ve sat down and am prepared to write the longest journal entry ever. Yes, this is history in the making, folks!

So what’s my excuse for not writing in such a long time? Nothing. I just didn’t feel like it. You have to understand that I only write journal entries when I’m in that ’special’ mood. The mood where everything I write sounds like Shakespeare. If I was to just spit out journal entries every day, it would be very boring. My entries would consist of a rundown of everything I did that day. It would go something like this: 9:00am - Brushed teeth; 9:07am - Scratched left testicle; 9:08am - Picked a hair from my tongue… So as you can see, by not writing every day, I’m doing the world a great favor.

What have I been up to since my last entry? Well, mostly physical injury. This last week we started working on our new sport for the grading period in PE. Every six weeks we practice learning the rules of a sport and then we play it. Last week we began playing soccer. And do you want to know something? I was actually not that bad at it! I mean, usually if it’s something like football or basketball, I’ll just run around and pretend like I know what I’m doing. I’ve actually gotten quite good at pretending to participate. I’ll hold my arms up as if I’m jogging or I’ll spread them out like I’m blocking some unseen force. Then I’ll put on that determined look like the guys in the Gatorade commercials. Then I hop back and fourth from side to side and after some intense sweating, I begin to look like I actually know what I’m doing! It’s amazing.

Anyway, the last time we played soccer we had to play indoors because of the rain. The gym is very small compared to the field so there isn’t much room to move around. The coaches picked ‘team captains’ and then the rest of the class was split amongst the team captains like livestock. I was picked last of course and my teammates said that they had noticed that unlike in the previous sports we’ve played, I actually had some talent at soccer! Wow! I felt so wanted!

So with me and my ‘talent,’ my team gave me the job of guarding the goalie. It sounded simple. I just stand there in the middle of the field and kick the ball if it comes my way. Well, there is one thing wrong with this. I’m guarding the goalie. That means that the balls are going to be coming straight to me. I quickly learned that playing this position wasn’t as easy as I had anticipated. Five minutes into the game, a guy came dribbling the ball down the field, kicking the ball back and fourth between his legs. He was coming straight towards me and then it happened. All I remember was seeing his determined face and then the blur of his foot as it smashed into the ball… right before smashing into my nuts. Yep, I got hit in the nuts. Actually, if you wanted to be more precise, it was my right nut. I felt this tremendous pain grip my entire lower body. I could feel the pain dig deep into my thigh. And then they started clapping. All of my enemies in the stand broke into a round of applause as I keeled over in the middle of the gym with my head in-between my legs. And you know what the funny thing was? They kept playing! It’s like I wasn’t even there. Nobody came up to me and asked if I was okay. I could have fucking punctured my scrotum and they would have never known! God forbid anybody should even ask if I was hurt or bleeding or something! The last time a guy was hit in the nuts with the soccer ball, it was this hotshot asshole. I swear, when it happened to him, the entire fucking gym was practically bandaging the guys testicles for him! Anyways, I hobbled over to the wall and sat in a chair for a few minutes recovering from the shock. The pain had just begun to fade when the coach got on to me for not participating. That fucking prick actually had the nerve to threaten me with taking away from my daily grade for sitting out! Well, actually, I’m pathetic. I really am, because I’m probably the only kid in the whole class who cares about getting points taken away. So like the pathetic fool that I am, I went back into the game. My team made me take the same damn place only this time when they weren’t paying attention, I’d slowly scoot to the left side of the gym, as far from the center as I could. But now that I think about, I probably would have been better off standing in the middle of the gym because as soon as I took four fucking steps to my left, another asshole mistook my scrotum for the net. Yes, I got hit again. This time, it was my left nut that sustained most of the injury, and by this time, the tip of my penis was stinging like an open sore. Oh, and this time, the skinheads in the bleachers didn’t just give an applause, they practically did the fucking wave! They were cheering and selling souvenir T-shirts with my balls printed on the front of them. So again I keeled over and literally screamed “fuck” and held up two fingers like a score board. The coach just looked at me and laughed. His face was practically red with laughter! So again, I hobbled over to the wall and sat out for a couple of minutes. This time, I was ever so generously allowed to sit out!

Also, in an attempt to kick the ball, my leg shot out at a very odd angle and I injured it somehow. So with two injuries to my balls and one to my leg, you can imagine that by the end of the class, I was walking extremely funny.

But even after the actual ‘gym class,’ I still had to go through the hell of the locker room. I know I’ve mentioned this before but I just have to bring it up again. It’s still one of those things that seems to amaze me: Two guys fighting. I don’t understand it. Maybe Sarah Brightman sums it up when she sings “If you win or you loose, it’s a question of honor… I know when two men collide, it’s a question of honor.” In other words, men are assholes. I can understand fighting when it’s in self defense, but when the fighting takes place in a teenage boys’ locker room that smells of a mix between ass-sweat and cheap cologne, and is over soccer… is that really a question of honor? After the soccer game, there was a fight in the locker room between two guys who were arguing because one of the guys had kicked the other in the chin. The fight went something like this:

Skinhead: “Let me tell you something! You know, when you …[soccer babble]… you’re gonna’ get kicked! You can’t help it! Oh my, God! You are so stupid!”

Blonde kid: “What’s you’re problem? I didn’t say anything about you. God! … What’s your problem?”

Skinhead: “You’re my problem! You and your fucking little comments behind my back!”

Blonde kid: “What the hell are you talking about, I…”

Skinhead: “Hey! No! I’m not finished talking to you yet! Did I say you could talk? When I talk, you shutup and listen to what I have to say! I’m getting tired of you…”

So anyways, the whole thing was ridiculous. And it looked even more asinine when the skinhead pushed the blonde kid into a corner and both of them had their noses and foreheads together. I was beginning to think that an orgy was about to take place instead of a fight… and the idea of it was really beginning to turn me on… but that’s besides the point. The point is, it was stupid. I mean, there’s nothing else you can say about it. If you’ve ever seen two guys fight, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s just pointless. Maybe it is a “question of honor?” Everytime I think of that song, I imagine two humongous bulls fighting over some female. I can just see the bull snot flying everywhere; dirt, mud, blood, and it’s all a question of honor.

Anyways, getting off the subject of bull snot, soccer, and injured testicles… I recently did a project for my English class where I had to write vignettes (short stories) about my life… And boy, did I have a lot to talk about! Here was the vignette that I wrote about my name:

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My name is Monte. Monte as in “The Full Monty” or Monte as in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” or Monte as in “Dell Monte, canned, crushed pineapples in natural syrup.”

I think maybe the only thing that I like about my name would be that I can always tell if somebody is a telemarketer or not. I pick up the phone and stare into space trying to imagine the voice on the other line. I hear a long silence and then a faraway voice asks for Mr. Melu… Mr. Melug… Mr. Maleg… Mr. Muligan? Is there a Mr. Meliguin there?

No, there is no Mr. Meliguin here. Would you like to sell him something?

My dad’s name is also Monte, but I’m not a junior. My middle name is Albert. My dad’s middle name is Lee. I’m very thankful for not being a junior. Wouldn’t that be the perfect addition to my name as if it wasn’t already bad enough?

It seems like everybody has a better name than me. Always something popular and hip. People name their children after burnt wood, emotions, and stripers. At least they can say that that their name belongs to them. My name belongs to me, my dad, and his aunt. I wonder why my grandparents decided to name my father after an aunt named Monte. Did they run out of creative flare? And what about my parents? Did my dad not learn anything by growing up with the name Monte? Was it some evil joke that he played on me? Did he want to drag me down with him?

Why couldn’t I have been named something cool? Like Ty, Ash, or Greg? I wonder sometimes if the name makes the person. Would I have turned out like this if my name was Scott? I imagine if I was named something like Brad, I would have grown up to be the captain of the football team. I’d have a thick neck; I might even be a little stocky, but that wouldn’t matter much, because with a thick neck and a name like Brad, I’d still be cool. I’d have a deep tan like perfect toast. And that perfect tan would be the perfect contrast to my perfect eyes which would be icy gray. They’d glow like intricate marbles. Yes. If my name was Brad, I’d have all of the girls too. They’d be putty in my hands. I could be cocky with them and steal their kisses. I could get laid and talk about it in the locker room at school. My nick name around ‘the guys’ would be Long Dong Brad. I could buy one of those cell phones with interchangeable covers and mix and match them according to my American Eagle attire… if only my name was Brad.
If only my name was Brad, maybe I’d be normal.

But my name is Monte. And I am anything but normal.

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Along with a vignette about my name, I wrote about the neighborhood I live in:

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My neighborhood. It’s three streets of small houses clustered together into small lots that are surrounded by trailer parks on both sides. And when people ask where we live, my parents always conveniently leave out any mention of the trailer parks.

Everybody would like to think that they are compassionate people who judge people based on the goodness of their character. But at the mention of a trailer park, people’s minds begin to wonder. They begin to paint mental pictures in their minds. They imagine what my trailer park family looks like on a typical Sunday.

They imagine my four brothers and seven sisters all running around naked in a weeded out lot. They imagine my father, shirtless, his belly protruding out over thin mesh shorts like a roasting hog over charcoal with patches of hair that have yet been scorched. They imagine him maybe sweating like a hog behind a grill crammed with greasy hamburgers; him mopping his wet face and slapping mosquitoes off of his mammoth back. They imagine my mother as the sunbathing 40 year old in a leopard thong with a passion for Diane Steele novels.

Yes. It is a horrible picture. But as much as we’d like to deny it, we’ve all thought about the same exact mental image when somebody has mentioned ‘trailer park.’ I think this is why we dress up the names to make them sound better. It would be wrong to call it a trailer park… it’s a ‘Mobile Home Community.’ And it’s not a trailer… it’s a ‘Manufactured Home.’ They think they can jazz up the name and it will change these mental pictures that people get. But if I told people I lived next to a Mobile Home Community, would people think of a family dining on fillet mignon and sipping on Merlot in their double wide? No.

So as long as the mental picture exists, my family will always leave out the exact location of our neighborhood.

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So what do you think my grade might be for this project? I wrote other vignettes about my life, but I’ve already talked about them in past journal entries.
I’m tired of writing now. The creative juices are beginning to diminish and I still have to actually publish this thing on the Web which takes a while… which is yet another reason why I don’t write often.

So until next time, bye bye.