Mr. Nice Guy reiterates.
“Feminists are just man-haters,” SuperBarbie says, rolling her eyes, and then tightening her arms around SuperKen’s neck.
“I’m a feminist,” Hippie Avenger protests, “but I’m definitely not a ‘man-hater.’”
“Or women who can’t get a man,” SuperBarbie adds.
“Hey,” Mr. Nice Guy says. “She’s got me!”
“Exactly,” SuperKen says, flexing the muscles in his arms as he gropes SuperBarbie. “She couldn’t attract a man.”
“Troglodyte!” Mr. Nice Guy wants to say (but doesn’t).
“I’m a feminist,” Miss Demeanor says, raising an eyebrow at SuperBarbie. “Wanna insult me, chickie?”
“And she’s into me,” Psycho Superstar adds.
“Well, I’m into your body,” Miss Demeanor says, pinching his ass.
“I’m okay with that,” he says. Then he turns and glares at SuperKen. “So, my lady here is a feminist, Seargent Rock … wanna tell me that I’m not a man?”
SuperKen and SuperBarbie glance at each other, and seem to telepathically agree to ignore them; the Male and Female Athletes of the Year may be fitter, but Miss Demeanor and Psycho Superstar have the potential to be a lot meaner in a fight.
“Come on, guys, let’s not get personal,” The Drifter says.
(Mr. Nice Guy was going to say something like this, but The Drifter beat him to it.)
The Drifter figures that his comic-book knowledge will not make him look like a geek in this particular instance, so he says, “This discussion is about Zan and Jayna on Super Friends, remember? Zan always turned into things made of water, and Jayna always turned into an animal. It’s just the way their superpowers worked. There was nothing political about it.”
“Everything is political,” Miss Demeanor says.
“Whatever,” SuperKen says, “Jan and Zayna still sucked.”
“And, no offense, ladies, but as much as I hate to agree with Sergeant Rock,” Psycho Superstar adds, “the rest of those add-on, politically correct Super Friends were bullshit, too. I mean, Apache Chief? Samurai? Rima the fucking Jungle Girl? Gimme a break.”
Hippie Avenger sighs. “But, like, the creators were just trying to instill some cultural sensitivity into their young viewers, at a time when, like …”
“Then they should have created culturally sensitive characters that didn’t suck ass!” Psycho Superstar says. “The real superheroes are the five originals: Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman.”
“Aquaman is useless,” The Statistician says, with unexpected emotion. He adapts a Saturday-morning-cartoon-superhero voice. “Superman and Wonder Woman, you two go fly around the world at supersonic speed to prevent the disaster that’s been set in motion by the Legion of Doom! Batman and Robin, you guys get your asses into the Batmobile and stop the villains from escaping their lair! And Aquaman … uhhhhhh, yeah … Aquaman. Um, what are your superpowers again? Oh. Right. Um, then you go for a swim, okay? And while you’re in there, you should have a talk with your friends the fishies. Yes, you go do that. That’ll really help.”
Everyone laughs, except for The Drifter. He takes a slurp from his beer and mutters, “I like Aquaman.”
The Drifter is the closest thing to a real-live Aquaman in the group. He was on the Tom Thomson High School junior swim team in grade nine, but he wasn’t allowed back in grade ten because of his lacklustre grades. From the beach here at Mr. Nice Guy’s parents’ cottage, The Drifter can swim all the way out to the island and back.
“Aquaman,” The Statistician pronounces, “is useless.”
“Fuckin’ right,” Psycho Superstar agrees. “Robin could beat him in a fight. The friggin’ Boy Wonder. Hell, Batman’s butler would kick Aquaman’s ass.”
“Not in the water,” The Drifter says, his eyes narrowing. “The neutered, Saturday-morning-cartoon version of Aquaman we all saw on Super Friends wasn’t a fair representation of the King of Atlantis! I mean, in Superman vs. Aquaman, Aquaman took down Superman by flooding his lungs with water, then …”
He stops, and his face flushes red. He’s crossed the Dork Line yet again.
The Statistician laughs. “You’d better put away the comic books and start hitting the textbooks, little brother.”
“Stop calling me ‘little brother.’”
“It’s what you are.”
“Fuck off. I’m just as big as you are.”
“What? Are you gonna go tell the fishies on me?”
Hippie Avenger, who can’t swim at all, has already consumed a six-pack of strawberry-flavoured vodka coolers, and she always gets sentimental or amorous (or both) when she’s drunk. She throws her arms around The Drifter (who is momentarily distracted from his funk by the feel of her braless breasts against him), and she says, “All of you guys are, like, my Super Friends!”
“More like the Super Dorks,” The Statistician says, rolling his eyes, hoping to deflect yet another maudlin, tearful, it’s-our-last-summer-together moment. “Perhaps we should call ourselves the Not-So-Super Friends.”
“You’re such a dick,” The Drifter mutters.
Without unlocking his gaze from the second bratwurst sausage he’s scorching, The Statistician says, “Perhaps you should shut up and go study for your remedial summer-school courses, little brother.”
The Drifter jumps up, fists clenched.
“Hey now, boys,” says SuperKen, in that fighter-pilot voice of his, “calm down, now. I don’t want to have to intervene.”
The Statistician turns and glares at SuperKen. “What are you, the United Nations Security Council? Perhaps you should mind your own business.”
“Yeah,” The Drifter says. “This is between us. Go back to fondling the Female Athlete of the Year.”
“Hey,” SuperKen says, easing his grip on one of SuperBarbie’s breasts. “Watch it.”
Mr. Nice Guy feels obligated to ease the tension by saying something funny, so in his best Ted Knight voice (who did the narration for the Super Friends cartoon on Saturday morning TV), he cries out the motto: “To fight Injustice. To right that which is wrong. And to serve all mankind! ”
Again The Statistician rolls his eyes. “Perhaps our motto should be: To talk about how somebody else should do something about Injustice! To get drunk while discussing right and wrong! And to eat bratwurst while doing it!”
He thrusts the scorched sausage in the air, brandishing the crooked coat-hanger wire like a general leading a cavalry.
“You’re such
