Enemies of The Pain

Personal

  1. Mrs. Derbyshire, Eighth grade Algebra teacher. Gave me an E plus on a notebook because of all the drawings in it; returned tests in the order of their scores. (Think for a moment about how little time public school teachers have, and how she must have taken a few extra minutes to do this for no reason other than to publicly embarass children.) UPDATE: I recently ran into a girl at a party who teaches at the same middle school I attended, and she told me she has lunch with Mrs. Derbyshire every day. I told her, "Please tell her that Tim Kreider still hates her guts."
  2. Jean Sack, neighbor. All but accused me of being a canoe thief; spied on my 4th of July party and made priggish little under-her-breath remarks about the amount of alcohol consumed there.
  3. Dick Cheney, U.S. Vice-President. Gave me a smug "fuck you" wave and a tight little smirk of triumph when his motorcade passed the protest at his inaugural parade. Also, invaded Iraq.
  4. Lady on Eager Street, Baltimore. Came out of the City Café, where she had been watching me parallel park, to yell and waggle her finger at me for having bumped the car behind me, which was not only undamaged but turned out not even to be hers. Now, whenever I hear about someone murdered in a seemingly senseless road rage incident, I figure, they were probably asking for it.
  5. Richard Eoin Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press. Made Megan Kelso cry.

  6. Eric Shoemacher, high school classmate. Tore up my drawing of an orc and smiled.
    Taylor Brazen, high school classmate. Mocked my virginity and socks.
  7. Older boy who tormented me, name unknown, Green Spring development, ca. 1975. Picked on me, knocked me down, pulled my hair, and called me "Mister Temper" when I got mad. If I could track him down and murder him without being caught I would do it.
  8. The dime lady. On the same day we came up with Onan the Barbarian I made this new enemy. As my friends and I were waiting for the passengers on the water taxi to disembark so we could get on, I said, "Hi," to a lady who was walking up the gangplank past me, in a casual, friendly tone, just like you'd say "hi" to another person in the world, and she stopped and stared at me like I must be crazy or even dangerous. Then she stopped and picked up a dime I had dropped on the ground a minute earlier, and pocketed it and walked away. As if this weren't enough, though, later on that afternoon, when we were all drinking ciders at an outdoor cafe in Fell's Point, we saw her again. "It's the dime lady!" said Webmaster Dave. I leapt up. I walked quickly across the plaza so that my path would intersect hers and her husband's, and, just as I passed in front of them, I flipped another dime in the air so it would land on the ground right in front of them. There was no mistaking my action; I had clearly not accidentally dropped the dime but cast it deliberately at their feet. And, again, she stopped and picked it up and pocketed it! Unbelievable. I wanted to stalk her all day throwing dimes at her but Dave wouldn't allow it. I am convinced that she would never have been so humiliated that she would not have stooped down and picked up one more dime. Her thinking was: a dime! I would only have spent all my money and she would've gone home thinking, what a great day. So many dimes.

    Institutional

  9. The Cops. At the Republican National Convention they illegally spied on activsts, used undercover agents to incite confrontations, corralled peaceful protesters, arrested them without charges, and held them in filthy conditions for days; after Hurricane Katrina, they shot unarmed civilians, prevented refugees from leaving the city, harassed relief workers, ran protection rackets, and looted. Always remember: these are people who can can beat you up, kidnap you, or murder you and get away with it.
  10. Phred Westfall of the restaurant Elemental, in Seattle. Listed a number of cocktail specials with complicated fancy names I had never heard of. He asked me what I normally liked to drink. I said that, in summer, I liked martinis, or gin and tonics. He said, "And after you graduate high school, what will you drink?" I stopped speaking to him. He brought me a pale orange cocktail that tasted like Pez.
  11. Kinko’s Copies, Charles Street, Baltimore. "Lost" or "discarded" my original artwork for the label to my homemade dandelion wine, which had been signed by Ray Bradbury.
  12. Mighty Muffler, on Pulaski Highway in Aberdeen. Having my car repaired at Mighty Muffler seemed like a stroke of organizational genius. I don't know anyone nearby who can pick me up and give me a ride home if I leave my car at the garage, but Mighty Muffler is easy walking distance to the local Amtrak station, so the plan was to leave the car to be repaired, take the train to New York, visit friends for a few days, then come home and pick up the car, good as new. Elegant, yes? The only flaw in the plan, its Achilles' heel, turned out to be that the men of Mighty Muffler are incompetent. I was having trouble with my power steering, and the first time I took it in they replaced the power steering fluid pump, which they said was burned out, to the tune of $308. In replacing the pump they accidentally broke a vacuum tube, which was brittle with dry rot, which they replaced for $18. Then my power steering went out again. Turned out a pressure hose was leaking, which they replaced--$145. That's three trips to the garage over a period of two weeks to get one problem fixed, for a total of $465, no break on the bill, and no apology.
  13. Petit Louis Bistro, Baltimore. My second restaurant enemy. Hired me to copy an image of a cherubic Bacchus from a menu they’d stolen from a café in France. I drew several variations on the basic design, but in the end they hired someone else and refused to pay me anything for my work. The character they finally used, a cartoon of an impish French chef, now mocks me from billboards and print ads.