This week’s episodes are guest hosted by Jason Schneiderman.

Transcript

 I’m Jason Schneiderman and this is The Slowdown.

I may have been the worst baseball player in the history of baseball. My batting average had only the digit zero in it. I had terrible asthma triggered by grass allergies, so for most of the practices and games, my eyes were tearing and my nose was running. I was so bad, that other players on my little league team took a vote and elected an athletic young blond boy named Troy to approach me with the request that I quit the team so that, and I quote “we could win a game.” 

Listener, this happened when I was seven. My family had just moved to California from England. I had a strong British accent, I was experiencing extreme culture shock, and in an effort to help me fit in, my parents put me on a sports team where the adults hated me as much as my fellow seven year olds. I never told an adult because I didn’t think they’d take my side. Sometimes, when I’m trying to explain that what we now call bullying is what we used to call socialization, I tell this story.

And as far as I was concerned the joke was on Troy and his compatriots. I would have loved to quit the team, but it just wasn’t an option for me. And I also knew that sports meant a lot to Troy. I really didn’t care whether or not we won, but Troy did. And I also knew that getting rid of me might have made the team slightly better, but in truth, most of us were pretty bad, and the coach wasn’t going to make us any better, whether or not I was there. And some weirdly protective instinct made me aware that I was lucky that I was only being expelled from somewhere I didn’t want to be in the first place. 

In today’s poem, the poet revisits a childhood experience in which the youthful collective exerts its power by ganging up on another boy. Notice how the poem moves from observation, to complicity, and then to how a youthful wound might take a lifetime to heal. 

in the dormitories after dark
by James Fujinami Moore

Understand:

they carried the boy

naked, hogtied to a pole,

down the hallway and I stood by.

It was punishment. He had

been late too many times,

and the older boys stripped

him down for—

amusement—he smiled

at first, too.

I stood there, beside—

or by—hearing them chant

shower, shower

their faces grabby at each

humiliation, shining 

from inside with it & made

brighter & even then

I knew it was holy, a ritual to bind

us, a secret, the words 

that even years later 

lying beside you 

I’d refuse to say. Lying by.

Even now, after your touch

has faded, I still remember this:

the great white mass of him

hung from the pole and swinging.

How after a while he stopped

smiling. How heavy it was

when it was my turn

to carry it.

“in the dormitories after dark” by James Fujinama Moore from INDECENT HOURS © 2022 James Fujinama Moore. Used by permission of Four Way Books.