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“A Club with No Name”
by Steven Legler
It was a mammoth puddle. It was a shimmering, golden lake that spread over the asphalt with no dam to hinder its glory. We could do nothing but stare in awe at the wonder of its splendor. The night was peaceful under the soft glow of the stars and the yellow lamps above us, and it was wonderful just to rest at the edge of our achievement. When I say “we,” I mean my five closest friends and I, and when I say “our achievement,” I really mean “theirachievement,” for I was always too timid to contribute to the enormous pond of urine in the High School parking lot. By Monday it would disappear, but we never cared. Our work was done. It seems sort of a waste of a Friday or Saturday night, but we enjoyed ourselves. We were our own small community of single high school seniors that liked to hang out on the weekends. We were not an exclusive group with no other friends, for most of us had other crowds we liked to tango with, but they never mixed with this one. We were a club with no name, always goofing off, talking, teasing, and playing pool.
Formation
I had lived in Prescott Valley, Arizona for pretty much my entire life. In first grade I met Kyle, and he became one of my first best friends. It took me a few years to realize that he was the one who had knocked me down my first soccer game and stood over me laughing, but by then I had forgiven him. Skipping all the way to seventh grade we come to Kevin Larson. Larson was the new kid from Wyoming in my science class, and I became his first friend in Arizona. Back then he was my size, but now he is 6’4”. Brenden Flygare moved to our town junior year (his sophomore year) and met me the first day of school, in seminary class, the biggest sophomore I had ever seen at 270 pounds of muscle. I was relieved when the first words out of his mouth did not betray a desire to eat me. Terrell moved around the same time from Kevin’s home town, and through Kevin I came to know Terrell. Through both of them I also met Seth Heinbaugh. However, we all only became a regular group during our senior year (Brendan’s junior). We were quite an odd group, an ensemble really. All of us were Mormon except Seth (some more dedicated than others).
Seth, Larson, Brenden, and Terrell were football and basketball stars and extremely popular. Kyle was the kid who was always working hard at various jobs but not at school, and I was the brainy, scrawny drama kid who was well known and liked but never popular. We were pieces from different puzzles that should not fit together but miraculously do. This was the pack that joined together on the weekend to share in male camaraderie and alleviate boredom. We weren’t always successful.
A Typical Night
I would usually get a call at around 7:00 p.m. from Kyle or Brendan, and I would head over to Kyle’s house. Kyle’s place was the main gathering area for our little flock. He had food, a lot of room, a sweet TV, and a pool table. I would get there, and we would sit around watching television for maybe half an hour, and then decide we were hungry, head to Taco Bell, and call the others. Then we would try to come up with something fun to do, but usually ended up standing in the parking lot for a few hours talking. I never minded that. Sometimes we would see a movie, or go to the park and wrestle or force each other into the sprinklers, etc. Most of the time we’d just go back to Kyle’s house and shoot pool until curfew. Occasionally we would go paintballing, or go to a Diamondbacks game and malls to check out the ladies, but those all day events were few and far between.
I am fully aware that it sounds kind of dull. My parents never understood why I should want to go every Friday and Saturday night to sit around. Personally, I had nothing else to do. On nights when I stayed in I would simply read a book, which irked the other guys tremendously (I still don’t know if they are literate or not). To do it justice, however, every night we ended up laughing so hard that we cried. This was often late at night, when we all suffered from the “stupid tired” virus, or what I call being punch drunk. Our loopiness needed no aid from alcohol. For instance, none of us were loaded when I crushed my fingers in the window and giggled with everybody else for twenty minutes straight. As such we never had to deal with puking all the time, unless of course we were discovering who could chug the most cream soda in an hour, lowest limit of two liters. Then we would obviously whip out the video camera. There was no “drama” in our bunch, meaning no one was ever angry at this person for breaking up with this person, etc., which was frequent in other high school congregations. We were never extremely angry at each other or not speaking with one another. It was our safe haven of friendship. Although we all had other groups we could go to, none of them presented the opportunity for clean fun, puddles of waste aside. All of my drama friends were hooked on pot. The “popular’ crowd would simply drink on the weekends, which Brenden, Larson, Kyle, and I didn’t approve of. Seth and Terrell, on the other hand, were morelax. They didn’t always show up to hang with the other four of us. They liked to party with the bigger crowds, and do things the rest of us would not participate in, which was really the only cause of any strife we experienced.
Values and Rules
Our biggest and probably only “rule” was to not do something stupid that you are going to regret later. As Mormons, most of us follow what can be seen as a strict moral code. We don’t drink or smoke and don’t go too far with girls. This is quite the opposite of the partying code of conduct, so we didn’t attend many. One nightwe were dragged to one. It was the most uncomfortable I have ever felt in my life. Larson, Kyle, and I basically stood by the door watching all these people we know get wasted. Brenden, Terrell, and Seth joined in the revelry and became quite intoxicated. I bore time and time again the puzzled looks and the question “Kyle, Steven, what are you guys doing here?” I quite agreed. This wasn’t our style, if we even had one. In the end, Kyle and I left the others with Larson as their driver and went home. Terrell ended up doing things with a girl who didn’t want to, as did Seth, and when the police broke the party up Brenden got the rap from his parents. It was the biggest disruption of our group order that we ever had. Not that we pointed fingers and kicked them out of the herd or anything. We simply called them idiots and went on our way, though Seth and Terrell never completely solidified themselves in our community like us other four.
In and Out
The core of our group never really changed. There were temps and fluctuations and leaves of absence but the core remained the same. For instance, every night without exception we voiced the need for fewer Y chromosomes and more X’s, so every once in a while we would get a couple girls to hang out with us. No girls ever stuck though, because we were too much like “guys” when we were together, or not enough, maybe. I don’t know. Like I mentioned earlier, Seth and Terrell didn’t always choose to grace us with their presence, so they were in and out all the time. If one of us got a girlfriend, he would be scarce for a while until they broke up. Brenden actually started a cross regional relationship where the girl came to visit a lot, so we came to know her pretty well. As I said, however, none of them were constants, and it stayed that way until graduation, when all of us broke away.
The Dissolve
After graduation, Larson moved away for a summer job, which was strange because he had graduated and had no need to quit after summer ended. Terrell moved back to Wyoming. Brenden spent his time with his girlfriend and playing football in preparation for his senior year. Kyle became a workaholic. Seth went to Colorado, and I went away to college at ASU. Now we barely keep in contact through the internet. In a couple of months Kyle and Larson will turn 19 years old and go on a two year Mormon mission. I’ll go a couple months later. This didn’t happen in a big bang, or a falling out due to a five way cheating pentagon. It was just a falling away, or a moving on. It’s absolutely true what they say about losing contact with high school friends. Do I miss it? You bet I do. That last year with them meant a lot to me, even if it wasn’t always positive for me.
My Take
The way we interacted was just like a group of guys. We hit each other, physically hurt each other, verbally abused each other, etc. I, for instance, am probably incapable of having children now. After all of the high velocity impacts to my groin, I just know that those guys rendered me infertile. That is not to say that I was helpless. There aren’t many people who can deliver a concussion in a pillow war. Honestly, it was all only in jest. Still, if you could not take friendly badgering, you would not have done well in our group. We had all grown up with the ability to happily withstand extreme teasing and be able to dish it back. Even so, sometimes it went too far, usually at my expense. I was particularly peeved when my sweet mother and a pig were mentioned in the same sentence. As I previously mentioned, I was the smart and scrawny one. To a group of guys who hate school and for whom physical supremacy is everything, I was somewhat of a quandary. They weren’t dumb; they just had no book-smarts, and more importantly, they didn’t want them. Therefore I was pretty much on the bottom of the food chain when it came to power. Don’t get me wrong, they liked me and I was a definite member of this small society. I was the comic relief, the slapstick of the group. However, I wasn’t exactly an equal in their eyes. They didn’t see book knowledge as important, and it didn’t help that I was in drama, a selection of freaks, weirdoes, and homosexuals. When it came to a debate, I usually lost by default. It never made me angry enough to leave however, and we never fought over it. I was hopelessly naïve, with no real world experience of any kind, which they sought to tutor me on. I became a lot less of the innocent church boy, without necessarily losing my values. That is what I liked about it. I could break out and still reside in the boundaries I had chosen. I was always labeled as “the good one” but not in any bad way. They respected me, and when we actually had a serious discussion they were always helpful and insightful. We were a modern group of post adolescents who come together for a mutual feeling of happiness and belonging. In words they would understand: we were friends.