The Loser

“You wanna do something fun?”

I knew what fun meant to Dougie, but I still went along with it. Our shift was over and we would not have to clean up the garage floor until the weekend started. And I was bored.

“What do you wanna do?”

“You’ll see.”

I had just finished my last coffee of the day (no more than three per; my girlfriend was proud of me when I dropped down from five) and we were technically allowed to leave. Most of the other staff was out and we had to close up and check for anyone trying to hang out and maybe even spend the night. Occasionally, we would find a homeless person in there (couldn’t blame them with all that space and the heating working all night); one man was so apologetic that we felt bad about reporting him (he was on camera, though; no choice). Then you had animals like foxes, squirrels and those damn raccoons (garbage pandas by name; they truly earn it). We often chased them out and made sure the cars were not scratched up and then left). But like I said, I had my last coffee and had a whole bunch of energy with nowhere to go.

“Well, what’re you up to.”

“Barry…”

I stared for a moment. He did not say a thing, so I had to try and get him to tell me something.

“Dougie, if you really wanna listen to Barry Manilow…”

“No, Barry. Our Barry. Barry Curtis.”

Again, I was a little confused.

“Barry Curtis…”

“Yep.” He smiled and his toothpick stood up straight between his teeth.

“From high school?”

“Now working, from what I hear. I saw him the other day and could not believe it. Just waiting at a bus stop like nothing ever happened.”

Like nothing happened… Well, everything happened to Barry. All the worst things that you think of when you think of high school happened to him. He got bullied, of course (we were not good boys); beaten up (even though he was bigger than us); humiliated at school dances (a well-timed plastic cup of punch can do wonders); and even embarrassed at the prom (how did he even get a girl? And why was she the one to abandon him when the shit went down?) Everything that could have happened did happen to him.

So, why was Dougie smiling?

“What you up to with that thought?”

“We go see him.”

I looked out on the floor. From the office window, there were no stragglers or animals about. Most of the equipment was turned off and you could hear how pin-quiet it was in there. And there was very little to clean up until the weekend started.

“Fuck it. Let’s see the old fatty.”

*

The old fatty… I knew Barry in grade school before his social life turned into shit on a stick. We were almost friends. He was one of us when we played foot hockey at school (no sticks allowed; Principal Eggert was a dick) and road hockey anywhere else (very dirty with a weapon in our hands). He was always ready to fight for a goal and then stay on defense to keep things lopsided (a lot of bulk is always good in net).

And you might be thinking, what happened to change all that?

Puberty happened.

Right before we all entered high school, we started to get hit by cracking voices, body hair and growth spurts. No one minded that much – seeing the girls got through their own growth spurts made us all happy – but there was also something else.

Acne.

Now, most teenagers have to go through this. You get a few pimples, you learn to wash your face every day, and you hope that you have the will not to scratch and pick at them (never really did too well at the latter). So, all the players had to go through this. 

And so did Barry.

I remember how we did not see each other during the whole summer (his family moved and we stayed in the old place; no chance of meeting with that all going on). But we were attending the same high school. I knew that from all of our talks about what we wanted to do.

It was during that big meeting in the gym that Dougie started to dig into my shoulder with a pen.

“Look! Mikey, look!”

It was a loud whisper that I could not ignore. At least the teachers hadn’t heard it.

“Dougie…”

“No, seriously, look over there.” He jabbed his pen in the air to the right.

“What are you…?”

And then I saw him.

It was Barry. He was heavier than before (not something I made fun of when I looked at what Dougie and me were turning into), but that was not the worst of it.

His face was just gone.

No, wait. That just sounds weird.

His acne had completely transformed him.

It was a true constellation of pimples, red and white and set to burst, all up the side of his face, like a half-mask (a real Phantom-of-the-Opera thing).

I still don’t know if he recognized us that day. He was still the same guy, I thought, but that face…

As you can guess, the student body was unmerciful.

I really don’t know how he managed to get to a class with all of the abuse that was thrown at him that first year. He got notes shoved into his locker; girls would scream and run away from him, claiming, “The beast is coming to take us away!” I even heard a few teachers make comments about him (Mr. Eggert said something to a teacher about “solving the world’s oil crisis” with Barry’s “crater face” – very original, sir). It got no better as we moved through junior to senior students. His weight dropped, but the acne stayed. The same taunts went on and on; the hockey games stopped.

I still feel bad about what happened next.

It was prom, and he was looking better. One interesting thing about him is that he never seemed to scratch at his face. He just treated it the same way someone else would treat their hair if it misbehaved or had an overbite they could not control. It was just the way things were. Maybe he did not even hear the abuse anymore.

Maybe he did not know what we were up to.

The girl knew all about it. She had made a bet with some friends to let the freak ask her out (not even a popular girl, honestly), take her to the prom, and then dump his ass.

We all knew about it.

We all saw it go down.

Stranger than that was the fact that he never came back to school. Prom was in the middle of a session and Barry just disappeared after that night. No one heard a thing from him and no one wanted to really run after him after the laughter and the tears (I really wish he hadn’t cried; they would have let him get away with things without that).

We could not forget about it, at least Dougie couldn’t.

And I wanted to know what happened next.

*

“Are you sure this is it?”

“Where I saw him.” Dougie wasn’t laughing or smiling, so I believed him. But I really did not want to be there.

It was a nice neighbourhood; too nice. You felt like you could be arrested on the street for wearing the wrong clothes (a nice thought in our dirty uniforms and boots). We had gone there in Dougie’s truck, but I still felt like the person who would get into the most trouble for being there was his guest.

I looked at the watch.

“You sure? It’s pretty early.”

Dougie yawned and pointed. “I passed by here when we had that shift change, remember? He was right at that bus stop and got on around the same time we have.”

It was pretty calm with the traffic, so I knew that we would just have to wait.

And we did. 

It took about fifteen minutes before the first bus-riders ended up waiting at the stop. The moon was still low in the sky but the brilliance of the daylight was growing behind us. We were silhouettes in our car.

That was a very fortunate thing, because Barry might have seen us otherwise.

“There!” Another jab in my arm, this time waking me up and letting me feel like a teenager again.

“Where…?” I saw some people at the light and heard some cars pass behind us.

“Right there.”

I looked over.

Now, when you see someone from a distant moment in your life, you feel like you were then, especially when the recognition is absolute and you know that time does different things to different bodies.

Barry was walking to the stop, but he did not look like he was walking. From the angle of our vehicle, he was walking up a hill and seemed to be floating.

It was him.

Like I said, time does different things to different people, and Barry was one of the lucky ones.

All the weight that had gathered at his hips, chest and face were gone. They must have taken all of the acne with them, too, because he was smooth as anything. Very handsome, too. And if I could go that far, I would also say beautiful. Never thought I would say that about another man, but you had to say it about the one that walked across the street in front of our truck and waited for the bus.

It was also clear that he had been there before. Some amount of small talk was taking place between him and a few of the other soon-to-be passengers. They looked like they babysat for the idle wealthy in this neighbourhood and had finally finished their shifts. Barry looked like the host of a very successful talk show.

It was a bit hypnotic.

“So, that’s Barry.”

“That’s him. Strange, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s here taking the bus with these people and it’s like he doesn’t really have to. Must be rich with those clothes.”

“Maybe. Let’s just go.”

“Yeah, I’m tired.”

Now, just as we were about to leave, something happened that made me reconsider everything about what was happening at that stop.

The bus arrived and we could see that the patrons were boarding. It was not easy to negotiate space on that road, even if it was made for traffic running in both directions, so we waited for the bus to leave before moving out. And then we saw it.

Barry was still on the sidewalk.

I could not figure it out at first, but then I saw him turn and walk back down that hill.

He did not have a bag, suitcase or anything to show that he was going to work that day.

So why did he…?

“That’s weird.”

Dougie was confused as well. “Did he just say goodbye to…his workers?”

We both sat in the car for a long moment before we spoke.

Actually, before I spoke.

“Let’s go.”

Dougie shifted in his seat. “Maybe we should just follow…”

“I said, ‘Let’s go.”

I don’t remember anything about the ride back. I know that I got in my car as soon as we reached the garage and drove home. From the time it took me to get home, it was almost the afternoon, so I did not do the usual route. Dougie did not call me on the weekend, but I wondered if he would. My girlfriend wondered why I did not want to talk about work that week.

What was it that Dougie said?

I really don't remember it now.

And I wondered if I would have to keep being that teenager.