Initiation

Johnny Lipp was a year older than me in grade school and furthermore this kind-of male counterpart to Ms. Piggy. He was loud and influential and porky in aspect. Johnny Lipp, which of course wasn’t his real last name but damn near close, was all that, plus he was the school bully. Nobody tried tackling Johnny Lipp when it was recess and we played Kill the Carrier nor did anyone dare throw the ball at him to tag him out while on his way to second or home in kickball. We always made sure we missed by a mile. Johnny Lipp kicked a lot of homers.

It seems even our beloved principal, Sister Edwina of the Order of the Perpetually Crabby, held Johnny Lipp at a deferential distance if not a fearful regard, a deference she of course split disproportionately between Johnny Lipp and only one other earthly, the pope himself, who of course had a slight edge. The irony I suppose is that Johnny Lipp held her in equally nervous regard. I never saw him look so diminished or orphaned as the times he sat on the stiff wooden bench outside her den, awaiting the next slew of detention duties she exacted in a severe Boston accent. The rest of the time, though, Johnny Lipp was well on his way to grooming himself into some manner of swaggery boss and his own hitman to boot, apparently, and who us grade schoolers couldn’t nor dare reckon with.

Which makes my decision brave or stupid.

It’s not even like there was anything or anyone to gain by deciding it, either. My very one-sided sweetheart was going to school next door. I couldn’t just roll up my sleeve, say, in the hallway or class and show her what the formidable Johnny Lipp had done to me, and that not only did I survive but I dished it back, and now goddamnit will you go to the movies with me?

There was no money in it, either. It’s hard to say if Johnny Lipp even took seriously his own overture. He probably thought no one in their right mind would roger up.

I don’t even know how it all started. Maybe it was right before or after gym and that’s why we were bunched in the bathroom switching into or out of our gym clothes. Johnny Lipp was so white he was pink. He wore an unflattering T. We always made sure he was well out of range of hearing before we ever ragged on his porcine attributes.

Johnny Lipp was, like I said, an accomplished bully, though, and would never squander an opportunity to prove that.

What I can’t quite figure out is what in the hell possessed me to go along with it. I mean other than this notion I currently have but was undisclosed to me back then that if a man’s to initiate, and I mean truly initiate, he has many choices that the almighty universe has imaginatively placed before him in which to do that. Of course he can go to war, obviously survive the son of a bitch.

He could break free of an otherwise impenetrable grip of fear and engage in some good old fashioned fighting. Fists and black and blues.

He could invent

He could rescue something or someone.

He could discover.

Some less demonstrative but no less courageous examples of when a man might initiate and thus add a few inches to his unrealized intestinal fortitude might include sitting alone at a bar on a fancy night, looking the part of an unabashed dandy, walking right up to that phalanx of beauties and brazenly saying excuse me to the one he caught admiration from from a distance and one who he mutually admired from the same distance, only to confirm that she’s as wholesome and prepossessing up close and that it wasn’t just the lighting, and afterwards ask not would she like a drink, but instead, “My lady, what are you drinking?” and “Save me that seat” in front of the whole glowering tribunal.

He could public speak. Better yet, how ’bout a comedy sketch.

He can know how to make money.

Or it can start way earlier, like, seventh-grade earlier. Like in the boys’ room on the morning or afternoon that I said yes to Johnny Lipp when he said, “Who wants to play Chicken?”

It wasn’t like Johnny Lipp was in real bully mode at that moment. Besides, Chicken in those days is what that slapping fiasco is today. It’s controlled and I suppose moderated too if you consider my homies, who were nearby waiting in case I fainted but mostly quaking in their Buster Browns or Pro Keds, “moderating.” Plus it was just like Johnny Lipp said–just a friendly game of Chicken.

“Me,” I said, awarding myself my own man card.

And I’ve pretty much been doing stupid, manly shit like that ever since.

-tmc