operandi is sitting around together, drinking and eating and throwing bullshit around. We never actually do anything”
“And there are probably, like, a thousand other little groups like us all over the Western world,” Hippie Avenger ponders. “We’ve never had a Vietnam to bring us together. Or a Kent State. Or a Woodstock.”
“Or a World War One,” SuperKen adds. “Or a World War Two.”
“Nor a depression, nor an inquisition,” says The Statistician, in that professorial tone of voice, “nor a Renaissance, nor a revolution.”
“And fucking amen to that!” Psycho Superstar says. “Who needs any of that shit?”
“And fucking amen to that!” Miss Demeanor seconds, grandly raising her bottle in the air. “To Indifference!”
“To the Not-So-Super Friends!” Mr. Nice Guy cries, also raising his bottle.
Not wanting to look like the sucky-baby his brother often accuses him of being, The Drifter reluctantly lifts his bottle, too. “To the Indifference League,” he says.
“Good one!” says Hippie Avenger.
“Nice,” says Miss Demeanor
Mr. Nice Guy shrugs, and mutters, “What about the Not-So-Super Friends?”
“It’s good, too, buddy,” Hippie Avenger says in that soothing, dovelike voice.
“To the Indifference League!” The Drifter cheers again.
Hippie Avenger, Psycho Superstar, Miss Demeanor, and The Statistician hoist their drinks and repeat the toast in unison. As the co-chairs of Teens Need Truth, the Perfect Pair are still clucking to each other over the blasphemous use of the term “fucking amen,” but in the spirit of the moment they join the toast anyway, waving their antifreeze-coloured athletic beverages at the airplanes and stars twinkling overhead.
Bold declarations are made.
“Collectively, from this point forward,” Hippie Avenger says, “we will be known formally as The Indifference League, and informally as the Not-So-Super Friends. All those in agreement, say ‘Aye’!”
“Aye!” the others cry.
“My cottage,” Mr. Nice Guy declares, “will be henceforth known as The Hall of Indifference. We will all pledge to meet here at least once a year for the rest of our lives. All those in agreement, say ‘Yeah’!”
They all cry “Yeah,” even The Statistician, who is pretty sure that he will soon be moving on to Bigger and Better Things.
“Signed, the Breakfast Club,” says Miss Demeanor.
“Another good one,” the Drifter affirms. “You rock, Molly Ringwald.”
“I’m more like the fucked-up Ally Sheedy character, I think,” says Miss Demeanor, as she reaches stroke the crotch of Psycho Superstar’s shredded jeans. “But I do rock.”
“Oh, baby, you knowwwwww what ah like!” Psycho Superstar croons, Big Bopper style, placing his hands behind his head and performing several spastic pelvic thrusts.
The Perfect Pair look away in disgust, even though SuperBarbie has been casually grinding SuperKen’s erection between her gym-toned butt cheeks all evening.
Her wine-cooler-fuelled euphoria unrestrained, Hippie Avenger cheers, “Now, like, all we need are superhero names!”
Since they are aware that everyone calls them Ken and Barbie behind their backs, anyway, The Perfect Pair are good sports about it. They simply add the prefix “Super” to their nicknames, and then they run off giggling into the cottage, where they will kiss and fondle and suck and stroke and finger each other, but they will not have actual intercourse, since they have promised God (via the Teens Need Truth club) that they will wait until their wedding night to consummate their bond.
Mr. Nice Guy and Hippie Avenger invent one another’s Indifference League names. They have been dating for the past couple of months, and they’re going to the senior prom together; they have not yet stumbled upon Just the Right Moment to have sex with each other, though.
As far as the rest of the gang can tell, Miss Demeanor is not so much dating Psycho Superstar as simply exchanging bodily fluids with him. Nevertheless, she is so moved when Psycho Superstar names her after his second-favourite rock song (a track from the Kim Mitchell EP), that she jumps up and hugs him, kissing him on both cheeks. Miss Demeanor’s lips have spent much time on other parts of Psycho Superstar’s body, but she’s never kissed him there before. Her lips normally hit him like punches, like challenges, but these ones are more like whispers. He has to holler “Fuckin’ RIGHT!” at the top of his lungs just to keep things in balance.
Without girlfriends or sex buddies to assist them in selecting their own alter-ego titles, The Statistician and The Drifter pick their own. The other Not-So-Super Friends agree that their new aliases suit them.
The Indifference League spends the rest of the night becoming superheroically intoxicated.
“Hey, Statistician!” The Drifter calls out, now full of cheap, sweet beer and renewed brotherly love, “Cook me up another bratwurst, wouldja?”
“Indeed,” The Statistician replies, “but first you’ve got to activate the Brat Signal.”
It’s a pretty good joke for The Statistician.
Mr. Nice Guy smiles drunkenly at the stars; even if the other members of The Indifference League don’t realize it yet, he knows that the day that has just passed by will be a defining moment for all of them, that they have just formed the sort of esoteric bond that keeps friends together for the rest of their lives.
And it happened here, at his cottage, because of him.
I am happy, he tells himself. All is well. Yeah.
Mr. Nice Guy glances at his watch, his most prized possession: The Super G Digital Athletic Chronometer. It has a built-in calculator and everything; it’s as if he’s got the instrument cluster from a fighter jet strapped to his wrist.
The Super G reads 12:11 a.m. Eleven minutes past midnight. It’s tomorrow already.
The day that has just passed also happened to be his eighteenth birthday. None of them remembered, not even Hippie Avenger.
It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. It’s okay. It was a good day anyway.
When Psycho Superstar turned eighteen last month, they all chipped in for a bottle of rye whiskey for him, and he got to grope both Miss Demeanor’s and Hippie Avenger’s bodies when they complied with his request for “a birthday babe sandwich.”
For Mr. Nice Guy’s birthday, nobody even passed a card around for everyone to sign.
But it’s okay. Mr. Nice Guy doesn’t mind.
He is happy. All is well.
*
There is a pensive smile on Mr. Nice Guy’s face as he floats up from this old memory and resurfaces
