Kevin Allison's True Stories: Life During Wartime
A comedy article
by Kevin Allison  809  5
09/10/2009 10:29 PM 1843 views
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During my junior high school years, sex and booze were finally at hand, everyone I liked was reading Ken Kesey and The Exorcist, and, male or female, we all seemed hormonally imbalanced. Like we were having P.M.S. 24/7.
My journals start after things got weird with my best friend Ben in August of 1982. Although the friendship was unraveling fast, it wasn't until September, when 7th grade began, that we entered the period called The Darkness. Technically, it was more of a Muteness. Ben and I, best friends since first grade, stopped speaking. And everyone knew it.
Cue my entrance.
The problem wasn't just that I'd half-admitted to him I had a crush on the character of Elliot in E.T. back in August. There was also the day some of the guys in my neighborhood got into a water fight-balloons, buckets, and hoses. My mom ordered us all to the basement to change clothes. Bare in mind that when I was still in diapers, the lady next-door discovered me trying to get her son out of his. By junior high, I was practically hypnotizing guys out of their pants. So the water fight was a perfect storm. There were five of us, all worked up, wet and undressing. I nonchalantly suggested Truth or Dare. To everything there is a season. A time for butts, balls and weenies.
Male and female pelvises. (Pelvii?)
For Ben, the same summer day I half-made the E.T. confession, I half-said how much fun Truth or Dare had been. He was seriously weirded out. In the next few weeks, Ben was trying to prove -- about any little thing that came up -- that I was wrong. One day we were at recess outside. The word "pelvis" popped into conversation, as it is wont to do. I was convinced that pelvises are a male thing. Ben claimed the fairer sex has them too. I should have stepped off because, well, I'd never really looked into this female anatomy business. I shot back, "You think you're perfect!" and our blood was pumping. Finally, filing back into school, Ben snapped something at me and I lashed out with one last word to him. It just happened to be the most flaming of fighting words. "Bitch!" I shouted.
The Darkness had begun.
He was in The Darkness. We should check if he's still in there.
My first journal consists of two hour-long Radio Shack cassettes. Side A of the first cassette is all about my family and my first 12 years. Side B is about Ben. Funny how your enemies can seem more important than your friends. "He whipped up an enemyship so fast and so big, I was just ... staggered," I say on the tape. "It wasn't realistic for him to be acting the way he was."
I'm awkward as hell in the journals about the homo stuff. I didn't want to admit it there. But the issue kept coming up. "I love Kevin Allison," this girl Barb wrote on her desk. Ben saw it and told her, "If you like him, you must be a bisexual like he is!" It got worse. Friends we had in common chose sides. Then when student council elections came up in 8th grade, Ben and I were surprised to learn we were both running for president. A few little stickers showed up in nooks and crannies around school reading "Kevin Allison is a bisexual." I was swiftboated. Or Atlantis All-Male Cruiseboated. Ben's convention speech was politics as usual, while I led the student body in a chant I made up that went, "When I say Cool, you say Beans!" Pretty gay, but I won. Within a few months, Ben had dozens of names on a petition to impeach me.
Eerily similar to my own campaign shirt.
As graduation neared, the acrimony faded. Here the most glaring feature of the journals is how like pining lovers Ben and I became. We'd float the most indirect of messages to one another between friends. We'd make one another laugh while safely hidden among mixed company. "You must think I think of him a lot," I write, "but I'm just as likely to be thinking of ham on rye." Right. The books show Ben and I spending half of The Darkness looking to start speaking again. In my final gesture as Student Council President, I wrote up and distributed a long list of awards -- one for every 8th grader. Ben's was, "Best generally good person who would probably not want an award from me." We were like a sitcom romance taking too many seasons to ignite. But that's the nature of so many close friendships in those early teen years. We were a straight guy and a gay guy very gradually coming to grips with the fact that we could still be friends.
One day, I scripted a phone call to Ben. I felt like I had a fever, I was so nervous. He answered. I was having people over to make a recording on the cassette deck, the same one I'd used for all that journaling about him. We were finishing a half-hour radio comedy, I Was a Teenage Doorknob. "If you want to come over, I guess you can," I said. He did. We spent the next few hours making comedy, laughing together.
After 21 months, The Darkness had passed. We haven't been there since.
Do you have a "Life During Wartime" story? A battle of your own to share? Submit it as a ZUG Article and title it "Life During Wartime: _____________." You might be invited to contribute to my upcoming podcast of dangerous stories, daringly told called RISK! For more info, visit risk-show.com. The first season of RISK! will include Marc Maron, Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, David Wain, Janeane Garofalo, Keith Powell, Rachel Dratch, Andy Borowitz and more. Click here to submit your story!
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Like This? Rate It!
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Funny
10 votes
3.4
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Funny
3 votes
3.0
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Bill the Squirrel 53,270  54
09/10/2009 11:08 PM
Nice article.
I need to ask something though.
What happened to the singing piano? Is Henry still around? Does he have friends like Ben? Do you even still think about him? He was there for you during some hard times in your life and you dumped him for some guy. Whore!
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0 votes
0.0
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Alarm Clock the Chubby Robot 6,348 4
09/11/2009 12:13 AM
You totally redeemed yourself for making me cry feel bad get something in my eye get angry about the Henry story.
Bill's got a good point though. If you just dropped the singing piano forever because of Henry, that was pretty Shakespearety of you. Do you still keep in contact? You should call him up sometime. Tell him about the site, and maybe he can post his version of what happened or regale us with some pre-Henry stories. I'd like to hear his side of it, and possibly some audio of him singing, if he'd grace us with it. I'm only assuming he's a dude because, well you know... you like 'em that way.
Did the piano have big pedals? You know what they say about a piano with big pedals.
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Funny
2 votes
3.0
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Bill the Squirrel 53,270 54
09/11/2009 08:40 AM
The singing piano WAS Henry. Didn't you read the E.T. article, Alarm Clock?
Here is an excerpt:
We were at recess in a room with dinosaurs on the walls. If you do interiors, take it from me, dinosaurs are awesome. Anyway, Ben seemed friendly and funny. He looked like a little Paul McCartney. He asked about this fantasy friend of mine. I told him Henry was a singing piano. We both thought this was hilarious. And then we were the best of friends. By the end of recess, we ditched the piano. We started calling each other Henry. And back then, the name wasn't even trendy.
Now apologise to Kevin for tarding up his article.
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0 votes
0.0
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Alarm Clock the Chubby Robot 6,348 4
09/11/2009 08:50 AM
By the end of recess, we ditched the piano. We started calling each other Henry.
Two separate entities. Everyone knows a singing piano can't morph into two already existing people, phhft, that would be ridiculous. They just insulted it more by giving it's name to the new persona. It's like giving your new girlfriend your old girlfriend's pet name (this also helps with saying the wrong name sometimes). If I tarded it up, you just re-tarded it.
Kevin, I apologize for Bill.
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0 votes
0.0
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mandellia 45 4
09/14/2009 04:56 AM
I've never been to college
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Hilarious
2 votes
4.0
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Whistler P. McManus 186,130 44
09/14/2009 05:19 AM
I've never been to college
Really? Because the brilliant way you went through all of the recent articles and made a random, inane, meaningless and ill-punctuated post, bumping all of them to the top of the Live page made me think "Yale undergrad, Stanford Ph.D."
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Side-splitting
1 votes
5.0
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Alarm Clock the Chubby Robot 6,348 4
09/14/2009 12:21 PM
I've never been to college
Well don't let that stop you from being gay. Haven't you learned anything from Mr. Allison's articles? You can do it whenever you want! We'd all love to be your support circle if you want to tell us about your first few attempts at banging a dude... or anything for that matter.
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