Ezzy's Education (Part 2): Machos and Mistresses, by Garrett Murch
MACHOS AND MISTRESSES
While Ezzy and her father fished Friday night, football fans filled the pothole-ridden parking lot outsideSchmaltzy Stadium—”Home of the Ebbing Sentinels.” The lot sat on an insecure hill overlooking the field, and the sun, slipping through thin clouds covering time-worn Appalachian mountain tops, gave off a magenta haze. Music from the new sound system flooded the air with lyrics about bitches and hoes while Canada Geese that could not be heard flew over the fifty-yard line.
“Boys, I’ll show you toxic,” said Blitzer Langston. He dropped his cigarette and pulled a lighter from his pocket. Five men in their mid-forties stood with Blitzer on the edge of the parking lot. Each wore an old Ebbing High School football jersey or school jacket that read “Ebbing Marauders.” (“Marauders” had been the school mascot until threeyears prior, when the school board decided it was too violent and Eurocentric.) The men’s faces sported anticipatoryglee while their eyes betrayed resentment, anger, and maybe even despair.
The Marauders had become the Sentinels the same year the last large factory within fifty miles of Ebbingeliminated half its jobs, including Blitzer’s. Nearby Agenda College, where Ezzy Bello’s mother was anadmissions officer, added over one hundred jobs that same year. The jobs added for workers without college degrees at Agenda paid less than half what the factory jobs had paid.
Blitzer, best known at the time for having alcohol on his breath, held up one of the black “Ban ToxicMasculinity” pamphlets Lucinda Barron’s campaign supporters were handing out at the parking lot entrance. Hecrumpled the pamphlet and tossed it onto the cracked pavement. His friends crumpled and tossed their pamphlets,too.
Officer Marcus Holmes, who worked to keep Ebbing High School safe on weekdays, watched the men from a distance while saying hello to arriving fans. He worked Friday home games at Schmaltzy Stadium, where twenty-fouryears earlier he played football—with Blitzer Langston.
Schmaltzy Stadium stood behind Officer Holmes, encircled by a warped and rusted chain link fence. Many of the bleacher railings were bent or broken, while navy blue and gray paint peeled off the press box and concession stand.Shiny speakers mounted on the box and the stand played a song about winning no matter what.
“Screw that bitch,” Blitzer said in a growl. He wiped sweat from his shiny forehead into his dirty blond hair. He puffed his chest.
“You know you would,” said one of Blitzer’s friends.
“I would, too,” said the former Marauder with the biggest belly. His butt crack showed as he bent over and simulated his sexual prowess. “Is Trunk gonna screw her after the game?” He thrusted his hips some more.
A small group of students dressed in Ebbing blue and gray laughed at the former Marauder’s hip moves. Adults who saw Blitzer’s gang kept walking, many shaking their heads and looking away from them.
“Nope,” Blitzer said, his body teetering. “My boy’s gonna beat that bitch for school president. Her name’sLucinda Barron. Justice bitch. Eleven days till election. Huddle up, fellas.” He took a swig from his stainless flaskand the men closed into a huddle like old times. Blitzer grabbed a crumpled pamphlet off the ground, sparked his lighter, lit the pamphlet, and threw it on the ground with the others. He pushed all the crumpled pamphlets togetherwith his foot, a move that nearly tipped him over.
The men now had a tiny ball of fire to be excited about. Officer Holmes, his face emotionless, continued watching. “To toxic masculinity!” Blitzer yelled.
“To toxic masculinity!” his Marauders yelled.
When their little fire went out, Blitzer said, “Boys, let’s go watch my boy kick some ass. Best Ebbing quarterback since me.”
“Marcus Holmes over there saved your ass more than once,” said Blitzer’s friend who could fornicate with air. The Marauders laughed.
“Screw you guys,” Blitzer said, half laughing. He walked to his truck, re-filled his flask and tucked it inside the pocket of his shirt. He closed the truck door and walked unsteadily toward the field—and toward Officer Holmes.
“How about leaving that behind, Blitzer,” Officer Holmes said.
“Marcus! Hey man, look how nice it fits in my pocket. Can’t even see it.”
“You can make it to halftime, Blitzer.”
Blitzer looked down, looked at the stadium lights, and looked back at Officer Holmes. He returned to his truck and walked back to Officer Holmes, without the flask. “There ya go, Marcus. Happy?”
“Trunk had quite a game last Friday,” Officer Holmes said. “Think he’ll match it tonight?” “
He’ll face me if he doesn’t.”
Marcus laughed the way people do when they don’t know how to respond. “See you at halftime, Blitzer.”
Walking to the stadium, Blitzer yelled back at Officer Holmes. “Who’d have thought back in our football days you’d become a mighty police officer? Man, you could run. You knew all the plays by heart.”
“Who’d have thought it, huh? I guess those were the days.”
“I been wondering, Marcus, what’s it like, uh, to be a Black police officer with all this hating on cops happening.You ain’t out there targeting your own, are ya?” Blitzer’s laugh turned into a cough.
“My own?”
“You know, Bl—”
Marcus cut him off. “Go watch your son. He’s good. Like you were.”
“Yeah,” Blitzer said, looking down. “I was. I mean, he is.”
Marcus walked away, shaking his head.
Twenty yards to the side of the men, unnoticed in their exuberance, Verica Navratil smiled, having recorded Blitzer’s crew on her phone. She laughed as she skipped into the stadium behind Blitzer and his crew, winking at a small group of girls who smiled at her. “Ban Toxic Masculinity” pamphlets stuck out from the back pocket of her jeans.
* * *
A little past 10 p.m., Verica gave a light knock on the front door of Lucinda’s house. Embarrassed by her braces, sheraised herself onto her toes a couple times to see the toothless smile she was practicing in the door window.
The door opened. “Come in, Günstling,” Lucinda whispered.
Not fond of being called “Günstling,” Verica took comfort in the word meaning “favorite” in German. Plus, she hadrecently won a major victory over her Patriot parents when they allowed her to remove the sexist “ova” from theend of her last name.
“Let’s slip downstairs to my studio,” Lucinda said.
Verica was finally going to witness, in person, the space where leading Justice warrior of Ebbing High School,Lucinda Barron, worked her online Justice magic. She made her toothless smile and wondered if Lucinda’s brown and black, Scotch plaid pajamas carried any symbolic political meaning. And is her hair a mess for a reason?
They reached the basement and entered a room about ten feet wide and twice as long. Off- white, sound-absorbing pads covered most of the walls and ceiling. Cameras hung from the ceiling and others sat on tripods, pointing at a large, black backdrop with bright white lights pointed at it. In front of the backdrop was a rosewater metal chair and a dark-mustard side table. On the table sat a black coffee mug with the words “Ban Toxic Masculinity” in red paint that bledbelow each letter. Behind the coffee mug was a pink neon sign, lit up and supported by a small, black plastic stand.The neon sign spelled “Lucinda for Justice” in Pretorian font.
Verica had her hand over her mouth when she said, “This is mind-blowing!”
“We can change the world from a basement,” Lucinda said. “It just takes a little—” she paused, “creativity. By a few of us.”
Verica felt a chill of excitement, a sense of belonging, a feeling of finally being special. She felt afraid, too.
“My mother says this studio is the best investment she ever made in me. Let’s create a video for InstaTok.”
InstaTok, “IT” for short, was a new social media platform. On IT, the more reactions someone’s postreceived, the higher it appeared on other people’s feeds. This simple system
made shock value the key to an IntstaTok user’s success and to an InstaTok shareholder’s profit.
Given social media businesses had long made money with the shock value model, InstaTok suggested the oldmodels had been just the beginning. IT was a virtual wild west with almost no self-imposed or government rules, although occasionally a political post made by a Patriot would be removed, often but not always because it claimedsomething false.
InstaTok was the main arena in which Trunk Langston and Lucinda Barron fought to become Ebbing student body president.
“So what have you got for me?” Lucinda asked Verica while pushing aside some strands of her shiny darkbrown hair that had fallen in front of her mahogany eyes.
“I got some interesting footage, but—”
“Don’t tell me you failed me.”
“I did capture Trunk’s father before the game. He and some other men set your ‘ban toxic masculinity’ pamphlets on fire.”
Lucinda’s eyes lit up like her pamphlets before the football game. “Tell me you got that on video.”
“I did. Do you want to watch it?”
“Yes! I mean, of course I would like to.”
Seeing her pamphlets in flames, Lucinda burst into haughty laughter. “This is marvelous. Those toxic males took the bait and acted like the idiots they are. Do you know what this means?”
Verica glowed. “You think it is good? What does this mean?”
“It means we have real, bona fide toxic masculinity on video! Now we must manipulate it with the miracle of videography.”
“Manipulate?”
“You know, make it look like people are cheering the toxic men on. Then toxic masculinity will look like an evenbigger problem than it is. And since I promise to solve the problem, I will get more votes. Günstling, this ishuge. Oh my—”
“What’s the matter?”
“I just said ‘huge.’ That’s a Trunk Langston word. Ick, I feel gross now.” Lucinda laughed, harder and louder than Verica laughed.
“Anyway,” Lucinda said, “My mother taught me the art of manipulation. It only works when people don’t know they’re being manipulated.”
“Clever!”
“People will think toxic masculinity is everywhere! And we’ll connect it to football. That way, there will be lessresistance to our goal.”
“Our goal?”
“Why to end the Ebbing football program, of course. My father was a football coach, probably still is. He abandoned me when I was seven. Football breeds toxic males—trust me.” Lucinda aimed her bony cheeks toward herorange and white slip-on sneakers.
Whoa. I didn’t know her father abandoned her. “That is genius,” Verica said.
“Thank ya.” Lucinda smiled for the first time since Verica arrived. “It’s like we’re tenderizing a steak beforecooking it. Although we want to ban steak, too. Ha!”
They watched Verica’s additional footage: parents holding signs with their son’s names and jersey numbers, the crowd yelling and clapping, students watching the game or standing in small groups not watching at all. There was an old-timer yelling at a referee, “Stupid pansy rule!”
Seeing the old-timer, scruffy and gray and dressed in a beat-up sweat suit, Lucinda touched Verica’s hand and said, “We can use that. We’ll juxtapose it. Do you know what ‘juxtapose’ means?”
“Uh, I mean, vaguely, yes.”
“It just means putting things next to each other for effect. It’s so easy, yet so powerful. Just clip the video to where he says ‘pansy.’ I know what to do with it. Also clip a few shots of the crowd cheering. We’ll make it look like Trunk’sfather has a rabid following.”
“So we are being misleading?”
“Of course we are, but that’s not the point, Verica. The point is advancing Justice. All those rules about fairness andtreating people the same, they don’t apply when your cause is Justice
—so forget about them.”
Ezzy's Education, the first novel by recovering Washington, D.C. political professional Garrett C. Murch, can be purchased here as a paperback or an eBook.