Free Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility by Hollis Gillespie Page B

tried to see the evil he insisted
was inside, but Doug didn't seem any more evil to me than he did the
day I met him over a decade earlier. In fact, if you were to ask me, I
would say Doug was one of the most demon-free people I know.
    Our demons are for us to decide, as all demons are personal; that
I know. Doug has since moved to New York to make a difference in
the world by teaching inner-city high-school kids. I was a little worried when I heard he decided to do this. I thought that inner-city New
York high-school kids would tear him up and crap him out their collective assholes if given the chance, but I also felt that Doug was doing
the right thing, because often the best way to wrestle with demons
is to stop looking inward and start looking outward, which is what
Doug decided to do.
    "Every day is crazier than the last," he reports. "I had the cops in
my classroom yesterday because one of the seventh-graders started a
fire. This is like a trip to Mars!"
    He sounded happy, though, or at least less dejected about the
presence of his demon than he did before.
    We all have our demons to deal with, and believe me, I'd be grateful for my personal demon's presence if I were Doug, because it would mean I wouldn't have to face those kids alone. For example, one kid
often, repeatedly, and very loudly tells Doug to suck his dick. I would
find that, at the very least, an unsettling element to have to face in my
daily life, but these are words that for Doug lost their shock value a
long time ago. If he responds at all, it's simply to gasp in mock horror
and say, "Such language!" then continue with the daily ministrations
of dealing with the demons around him rather than in him. I have to
say I admire him for that, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of his
students do, too.

    Lord knows I could have used a teacher like Doug when I was
in high school. If I did, maybe someone would have noticed when
I dropped out. I remember we had just moved and were set to face
yet another new school, when the administrators had bewilderingly
trusted me with my own school file to hand to my first-period teacher
to announce my arrival and commence my registration. But instead
of going to the classroom and thereby commencing another period of
painful adjustment, I simply walked straight to the parking lot, got in
my '69 VW Bug, and drove to the beach. After that I was happily lost
in a crack, since my teachers, who didn't know to expect me, could
not apprise the administrators and subsequently my mother of my
absences. It was an ideal situation, I thought, and one that lasted three
months. I would probably still be on that beach to this day if not for
Kim turning me in.
    At the time I thought it was because she was jealous, as every day
when I dropped her off at school she had to go to class while I could
U-turn my way to the beach and wallow another day away. But Kim didn't hate school like me; in fact, she was almost the opposite of me
in every way. Where I was brusque, she was sweet, and while I had
the soul of a sea urchin, she had the soul of a saint. She would join
chess clubs while I befriended pyros behind the library and made fun
of chess-club joiners. In fact, I often made the difficult transition to
new schools even worse for her than they had to be, as sometimes my
spikey-souledness would direct itself at her in the hallways.

    I bet I know the real reason Kim might have turned me in. High
school is hell enough when you know everyone, let alone when you
don't. When I think of those months I left my little sister to make
her way through another new school by herself-as soft-hearted
and therefore ill-equipped as she was to withstand the cruelty of her
peers-while I lived like a sand hobo, it's about all I can do to keep
from calling her to beg her forgiveness. We all have our demons to
deal with, and for all of my negative, misanthropic crustiness, I was
Kim's own personal demon. And she was