Tales From Kentuckytown: Taylor's First Day of School

By Jake

Kentuckytown high school was a one-level building that housed slightly over 1,000 students during its hours of operation. Among the otherwise entirely white student population were one black and two Hispanic teens.

Winter break had just ended and Taylor had moved to Kentuckytown. He had been there for two weeks, but had barely left his house. Taylor was six feet tall and wore dark rimmed glasses, not unlike those of Weezer frontman, Rivers Cuomo.


Taylor had spent those weeks holed-up in his bedroom listening to Straight Outta Compton by NWA, Eazy-Duz-It by Eazy-E, The Chronic by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle and Ice Cube's Amerikkka's Most Wanted. He had grown up in a predominantly black neighborhood and had never had a white friend, although he was white. He was very nervous about his first day of school.

“Taylor, you have to leave now,” his mother yells up the steps.

“Suck my dick, ma,” Taylor shouts back as he ties his shoe laces.

Taylor's mother was aggravated, but remembered her days in the early 80s as a punk. She even had he Crimson Ghost (the logo that was appropriated by the band the Misfits as their logo) tattooed on her upper right arm. She let Taylor slide. Maybe she did too often.

Taylor made his way down stairs. On his way out the door his mom handed him a $5 bill and gave him a kiss on his cheek. He gave her a look of love disguised as disgust and thanked her.

“Taylor, pull up your pants. You look like a fuckin' idiot,” she barked at him on his way out the door. He just laughed.

As he sat in his car picking out an album to listen to he thought about how his big pants were going to make him popular. The bigger the pants the better the chance of getting friends, he thought. That's the way it was back at his old school. He put in Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die and sped off toward school with butterflies fluttering in his stomach.

He opens the mud brown door in the east wing, and heads to his locker. He rummages through his enormous pockets, but can't find what he's looking for.

“Fuck I can't remember my combo,” he says to himself before heading down to the office to get a reminder.

The woman in the office, a secretary, glares at him as he enters the door. Her scowl is the kind that creeps across older people's faces as they wonder what's the matter with kids these days. His giant pants, his white A-shirt (what the kids call a “wife beater,” named so because of the use of the t-shirt in the 1950s by men who commonly practiced spousal abuse), his swagger. Everything about him rubbed this woman the wrong way. She gave him his locker combination and was glad to see him exit. She immediately told anybody around her what she thought of him-- none of it nice.

Taylor goes back to his locker and puts in the combination. He fills the barren locker with pictures of his heroes: Biggie, Dre, Snoop, Tupac and Ice Cube. His pants are hanging very low and you can see the upper half of his black and red flannel colored boxers. Some people walk by snickering.

Brittany Murphy, one of the most desirable girls in school, comes up behind him and pulls his pants down. She runs off to her group of friends, who are bursting into loud, boisterous laughter.

Taylor embarrassingly pulls up his pants as fast as possible. He tightens his belt around his waist. No boxers showing now. “Fucking stupid ass ho...” Taylor mutters to himself, the words slowing drifting off into the near emptiness of his locker.

Mike Flores shoulder bumps Taylor as he is walking to class, spilling his books on the floor. Taylor bends over to pick his books up. This day is going awful so far and he hasn't even had a class.

“Watch were yer fuckin' going you dumb faggot,” Mike chortles at him.

“I'm no fag, asshole,” Taylor exclaims.

“You look like a fucking nigger wearing those big nigger pants,” Mike retorts.

“Fuck you, motherfucker,” Taylor says getting right in Mike's face. Mike's breath is a mixture of sour milk and cigarettes.

“Let's take this outside and settle this like men, dipshit.”

“Yeah, why fucking don't we, you chumpass bitch,” Taylor's heart is pounding ferociously, adrenaline is pumping through him at an alarming rate. His fist is tight and his knuckles are turning white.

The bell rings and everybody runs to class. Taylor and Mike go their separate ways.

Classes come and go. Nothing of note happens to Taylor in any of these classes. The teachers make him introduce himself in a couple of the classes and he gets bits of paper and erasers thrown at him. Otherwise the classes go pretty well.

Lunch is a disaster for Taylor; he sits by himself and eats a corndog and some fries. He is becoming depressed so he puts on his headphones and listens to some Tupac. As “Hail Mary” rings through his head he begins to get pumped up. He's got a fight on his first day of school. His mom is going to be disappointed, but he can't let Tupac down. He's listening to the realest shit Pac's ever written, he's got to be real, too.

Before the end of lunch Taylor pockets a fork. He walks back to his locker. Rick Rutherford passes him by and spits on him. The spit lands on the right lens of his glasses. Taylor cleans it off using his shirt. He just swallows his anger and walks away.

“Nice one Rick,” says Tom Jones, one of Rick's farmer friends.

“You're fucking right that was nice. I can spit a piece of shit out of an owl's asshole,” Rick brags.

Taylor gets to his locker and grabs his books before heading to his final three classes. The bell rings and he's back to his locker to put his books away. He's heading home. He walks outside and a small crowd has gathered.

“Nice of you to show up, wannabe nigger,” Mike says while laughing to himself.

“Shit! Fuck you man,” Taylor says as he holds the fork in his pocket tightly.

Mike walks up and takes a swing at Taylor, landing one right in his ribs. Taylor pulls the fork out of his pocket and drives it deeply into Mike's ribcage.

“You queer piece of shit.”

Mike has a blood stain forming on the section of his shirt where he was stabbed. He's clutching his wound at first, but soon his adrenaline is kicked into overdrive. He grabs Taylor by the throat and punches him in the face, knocking him to the concrete. He jumps onto Taylor, pinning him to the ground. He grabs Taylor by the sides of his head and begins slamming the back of his head into the concrete.

“How's that feel, cocksucker? You're big fucking nigger pants can't save you now,” Mike is making the crowd feel a little uncomfortable at the level of his aggressiveness. Some of the people are now starting to leave.

“You fucking like this you nigger-loving stroke?”

Finally, a teacher comes and breaks the fight up. They are both taken to the principal's office. The principal suspends both of them for three days. Taylor is dazed. He has no idea what is going on and his mother has to come pick him up.

“Taylor, what the fuck happened?” she asks him.

“Fuck ma, I have no clue. I just think from now on I'm going to wear some regular pants, if that's okay.”

“I'd love that. Let's go to Wal-Mart and get you some.” And they did.

After that Taylor just blended into the crowd and secretly listened to Biggie and 'Pac. Whenever asked what kind of music he listened to he'd always say something like Coldplay or Radiohead. Kids just shrugged and carried on about their business.