Knock Knock

Man, I don’t know what the hell to say. Is it the quarter-Osage in me? The Croatian? The Irish? Or more likely the other half that’s just chewed-up bits of America, drip-filtered down through generations of drunken sprawls, wild tumbles in barroom bathrooms, and occasional turns into military service balanced ever so delicately by some monkey who thought to taking a shot at “normal society”? Sure, there’s a doctor or a lawyer or a politician that sprouts here and there and struggles to twist free from this family tree, but good luck, pal. You may look pretty up top, but we share the same roots: bootleggers, outlaws, wildcatters, you know the drill: The ghosts always come knocking when you least expect it.
Least ways, that’s how I rationalize kicking my boss in the ass. Did I kick his ass? No, but I could have. Pudgy thing probably comes from a long line of grocery clerks stretching back to some pink, piggy-looking fellow who sold tickets to the Globe Theater. At least, that was the image I had in my head as he handed me my pink slip, and earnestly told me, “If there’s anything I can do, a recommendation, make a call for you, anything, seriously, just stop, breathe deep, pick up the phone and then calmly but firmly shove it up your ass.”
Shove it up my ass? I thought. And here’s where the image popped: My boss is slogging his way around Merry Olde England, stepping in horseshit and wearing some brown felt skirt-looking thing as he stares down upon me sternly and curses me for mis-counting by three farthings the take for that evening’s performance. So in reply, I say to him, “Methinks I’m going to kick you in the arse.” And he says, “Arse?”
“Yeah, arse,” I answer.
“Arse?” he asks again.
“Yes!” I say. “Methinks I’m going to kick you in the - ahh forget it.”
And just like that, like my foot was the one that was doing the thinking and I was just hanging there watching, my leg flies out and sure enough, it kicks him in the ass. Well, I’ll be I’m thinking as the security guards drag me all the way to the elevator. “I swear,” I say. “I swear, my leg did it, not me. My leg did it, not me.”
A couple months down the line, right about t
he time my unemployment’s about to run out, I’m starting to take a long cold hard look at just who it is this bright young feller wants to be, about mistakes I’ve made, and ways I’m gonna change. And to reward myself, I called the waitress over and said, “Papa’s been good today, why don’t you scoot yourself over and let me talk dirty?”
Boy was I surprised when a deep booming resonant voice hollered back at me, “Dude! It’s me! Bill! Shut the fuck up and give me some money.”
“Bill?” I think to myself, when did he get here? So I ask him, “Bill, when did you get here?”
He says, “Dude, we been drinking here since noon. I went to make last call, and came back to find you mumbling again about starting your life over and all that crap.”
I stared at him. I couldn’t believe it.
He stared back. I could tell he was uncomfortable. “What?” he asked, nervously.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
Things got real quiet. Neither of us spoke. Finally, I asked him.
“Dude?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“When you were standing there, just then...”
“Yeah?”
“Well...like I totally thought you were hot or something.”
“Shut the hell up,” he says.
“No, I’m serious, I totally thought you were like some Hooters girl or something.”
“Shut up,” he says.
“No, seriously, I always thought you were kind of girly. Didn’t you like wear a beret or something in ninth grade?”
“Dude,” he says, real slow, real quiet. “I’m serious.”
And with that, I could tell, he was serious. You could kid Bill about a lot of shit, but not about him being girly. He got hit on by a lot of fellas, while me, never. And it wasn’t like he was one of the fellows where you could say, “Oh yeah, he doesn’t know yet himself, but he is, believe me, one day, it’s all gonna hit the fan.” Huh uh. He was just sensitive, real in tune with shit. And it worked, big time. I remember one time, eleventh grade; he was dating this phenomenally hot chick from the arts school (they were often, but not always, from the arts school). And suddenly, it was like a lightning bolt went off in my head: “I should be sensitive. Bill’s sensitive and look at the fine tail he scores. If I get sensitive, I too will score fine tail.”
And you know what, I went all out; bought a turtleneck, read a book, everything. For like a week.
The best proposition I got was from our math teacher, who was locally renown for wearing see-through white pants, just sheer enough that you could make out the various mathematical symbols she’d had stenciled across her panties, which alternately read, “less than or equal to” “greater than,” or perhaps most intriguing was her selection of the symbol meaning “approximately.”
She wasn’t what you’d call good looking and you wouldn’t want your buddies to find out, but hell, she was a teacher and that had to be worth something. I’d made up my mind -- I’d go for it, but only on a day she was wearing one
s that were emblazoned with that lovely sideways figure-eight: “infinity.”
Still, being sensitive like I was, I thought I oughta get her something nice, and I had what I thought was the perfect present.
She had a little “flat” -- no shit, she called it a flat -- down by the river, and the plan was I’d go there after my shift at Petty’s. I was supposed to bring her some Rocky Road, but instead I had a little surprise. I’d stopped off earlier in the week at the local lingerie atelier, and picked up something to add to her collection. I stuffed it in a cleaned-out container of Rocky Road, and showed up, prompt-like, 1:30 a.m. on the nose.
She was kind of wasted, which I thought was gross, but whatever, I had to maintain focus, remember what I was here for -- I was here to be sensitive, and bang my math teacher. So we’re making out and stuff, and maybe I was about to feel her up, I don’t remember, when she notices the package I have in my hand.
“Mmmm,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Mm.”
She takes the sack from my hand, reaches down inside and pulls out the ice cream container. Already she knows something’s up. She holds it up beside her head, listens, shakes it, and looks at me, puzzled. “Go ahead,” I say. “Open it.”
Slowly, realizing this is a planned surprise, she smiles, then twists the top, and peeks inside. By now, I have to admit I’m pretty excited, and she’s pretty excited, and I’m starting to think, I am some kind of sensitive motherfucker. But just as she begins to take in what it is I have offered, the corners of her mouth turn slowly to the floor and she looks like someone who’s just been told she lost her job -- not someone like me, of course, who kicks his boss in the ass -- but a normal person, a sensitive person, someone with character.

Still, I think I’ve scored with this present, and I say, “Take it out. You’ll like it.”
She stands frozen. So I say, “here, let me do it for you.”
I take the ice cream container from her hand, reach in and pull out a fine pair of white panties. Already tears are forming in the corners of her eyes. Confused and flustered, I realize I’ve failed to show her the best part. I turn the panties around so that she can see the message, which I’ve so meticulously chosen, printed on the back. At this, she bursts into tears. Real, gut-heaving-type tears.
“What?” I ask, pleading. “Don’t you get it? It’s pi. The symbol pi. You know, pi = r-squared, and all that crap you try to teach us.”
She collapses to the floor, then looks up once again at the panties, then at me, then back at the panties.
I try to explain further: “You see, it’s pi, like in math class, but it’s not just that, it’s also pie, p-i-e, get it?” And here, I let her fill in the blank. And slowly, as if her world had not already darkened completely, you can see her mind slowly wrapping itself around this second reference, the double entendre if you will, and just like that, boom, curtains, she hits the floor.
I felt terrible, ugly. Far as I can figure, the thing was, she might have known she was wearing see-though pants emblazoned with suggestive algebraic equations, and she might have even wanted everyone to notice, to pay attention, to ogle even, but the one thing she did not want to know, not ever, not no how, was that it was true -- it was all true: She was indeed a high-school teacher approaching 40 shaking her thing in a most lascivious way to a roomful of teen-age boys. It was like the lead actor in your favorite movie (in my case, “Hud”) had suddenly stepped off the screen, reached down and said, “Stop
calling your penis, Senor Ha-Ha! It’s weird.” For my math teacher, I’d crossed the inviolable 4th wall. And for her, there was no turning back. She never taught again. I never saw her again.
Only thing that ever happened was one time I got a call at work, real late, after everyone knows we’re closed. All the caller asked was, “Do you still carry Rocky Road?” At first, I was stunned but then as I started to say I’m sorry I heard the click of the receiver and then the flat dial tone -- a dead drone.
From that point forward I decided, no more sensitive guy for me.
Knock, knock.

Jeff Van Hanken received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from Duke University in May, 1988, with a concentration in French and German. During the following years, he was employed as the Assistant Editorial Page Editor of The Shreveport Journal in Shreveport, Louisiana. He and his colleagues were nominated by the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1991, he circumnavigated the world by plane, boat, bus, train, car and foot. In August, 1992, he entered the Graduate School at The University of Texas. He wrote, produced and directed the award-winning short film, “Bella! Bella! Bella!” in 1999. In 2000, he produced a series of award-winning short films with young Hispanic, Korean and African-American men from the Rampart district near downtown Los Angeles. From 2001-2005, he has worked as a full-time Instructor in the Film and Video Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma. In 2003, his feature script, “Billy Fail,” was named a semi-finalist at the Chesterfield Writer’s Film Project. In 2005, he co-produced the feature film based upon his script. Currently, he is at work on several screenplays, a collection of short stories and a documentary project entitled "God's Leading Men."

Email: Jeff Van Hanken

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