Week Forty Three

The Bishop of Channelwood

He placed screws along the rubber edge that stuck out of the toe of his Doc Marten boots. They were short enough not to hit the floor, but long and sharp enough to damage the shin of anyone unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of one of his kicks. He was tall and lanky, with arms that hung lower than they should have. His face was marked with acne scabs, and his teeth never seemed to fit correctly inside his mouth. He’d assigned himself a nickname - Bishop - one that, he thought, added a level of mysteriousness to him, and generated a level of fear and or reverence as he walked the halls of his high school.

I’d never said one word to him.

I knew he was troubled. I knew he was angry - afflicted with the same “the world doesn’t understand me” attitude many other white boys in my upper middle class suburb found themselves to suffer through. And I knew to stay out of his way.

My friend Blaine asked my if I wanted to join her in her art class for the last period of the day. As it was quickly approaching the end of the school year, most teachers let their students fuck-off, especially if you were in art class. Faced with the option of staring out the window for 45 minutes in the boredom prison of study hall or hanging out with Blaine while she drew pictures, the choice was easy.

When she sat me down, I was right across the table from Bishop.

“Nice necklace,” he said to me, pointing to the beaded orange, green, and black necklace I’d made the previous summer, “can I have it?”

“What? No,” I responded, more confused than anything.

“I want it,” he insisted, a spray of spit launched out of his mouth as he punctuated the “t” in “it.”

I’m sure I laughed this off. I probably made a joke. If I’d known anything in my 15 years of life, it was that I wasn’t a fighter. I could throw words around, but when it came to throwing a punch, it just wasn’t my style. I’d been punched and kicked throughout middle school. I was tripped, thrown into lockers, and called names. But since I’d been in high school, I assumed that was all behind me. I’d spent freshman year free from physical assault.

Blaine was deep into her project to realize and the teacher was too distracted or too apathetic to care that things were getting heated between Bishop and me.

"I want that fucking necklace,” he repeated, and the intensity in his eyes revealed that this wasn’t a joke. I felt my hackles raise. My heart beat faster. I quickly went through a list of things to say to him to, to do to him, but alas I was too much of a coward and too much of a pacifist to sufficiently respond to him.

And that’s when he took his boot and raked the sharpened screws down my exposed shin. Instantly, lines of blood gushed from the wounds and my socks filled with blood. I felt tears hurling toward the edges of my eyes. And I wanted to cry. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to yell, and claw his eyes out. I wanted to be anywhere but in that art room, sitting across from a teenage psychopath with parental issues, and I didn’t want Blaine to see me cry.

And so, I reached behind my neck, unscrewed the clasp, and gave him the necklace. Bishop laughed. I told Blaine I needed to take off, that’d I’d forgotten something in my locker. Instead, I limped home (which was conveniently located a few hundred yards from school), and shouted “FUCK!” at the top of my lungs in the woods separating the school from my neighborhood. I tended to my wounds, threw out my socks, and vowed revenge.

My mind raced. I thought of all the ways I could harm Bishop. The things I could do to embarrass him. How, if I could be so lucky, I’d kill him. Kids like Bishop, they were a waste. They didn’t deserve life. I’d get a gun and I’d put a bullet in Bishop’s head.

———

My parents did an amazing thing during the Christmas of 1993. They bought me SimCity 2000 and Myst to play on our Macintosh IIci. One game let me build my own world while the other let me explore other worlds - and both let me escape from my small section of suburbia. I’d spend so many hours alone in front of the computer and lost in these worlds that, when asked to describe me, my brother would say, “I don’t know. He just sits in front of the computer all day.”

The “nerds” in my school didn’t play Myst. They were into comic books, and Dungeons & Dragons. They played Doom. And when I casually mentioned that I played Myst - they scoffed. What I didn’t tell them was that I had a Myst poster in my bedroom. I owned the Myst novels. I drew maps of my own “ages,” and spent far too much time actively reading up about the upcoming release of Myst’s sequel: Riven. It seemed, even for the geeks in my high school, I didn’t possess the coolness to join them. And so, I explored and discussed the intricacies of Myst alone.

Myst was an escape for me. It gave me these strange islands to walk around, and look at the 3D rendered butterflies. It let me wonder what sort of things were beyond the horizon of suburbia, and it did it in a completely non-violent way.

On the day of my incident with Bishop, I went home and fumed. I daydreamed about inflicting violence. I happily imagined Bishop in various states of distress. And then, I turned on Myst. I walked to one of my favorite sections of Myst island, stood on the shore, and stared out into the (non-moving) ocean listening to the digital sounds of water lap against the beach.

And I calmed down. I escaped. Deep within those polygonal shapes and simulated natural noises, I found peace. I didn’t need to shoot zombie Nazis. I didn’t drive cars over helpless pedestrians. I just walked in what - some might argue - is a glorified slideshow, and took a deep breath.

———

Bored at work one day, I fell down the rabbit hole of looking up past acquaintances and co-workers on Facebook. And, purely out of morbid curiosity, I searched for Bishop. I half expected him to be dead, or so addicted to drugs that he couldn’t muster the mental fortitude to build a profile. What I found not only surprised me, but left me delighted.

Bishop looked happy. There were pictures of him smiling with his wife, of being incredibly enthusiastic about the birth of his child, and details about him running his own art gallery. The angry kid I knew in high school had transformed into a respectable man who seemed to have his head on straight. And while Facebook tends to be an incongruous and optimistic peek into the lives of semi-strangers, what I saw on the surface of Bishop’s adult life seemed genuine and loving.

I thought about the day he took my necklace and damaged my shins, and I can still remember the pain and anger I felt, and how I wanted to cause him retributive harm more than anything. But those scares are gone. And the more horrible thought is: what if I’d gone through with hurting him? What if I didn’t take the time to take a deep breath and sit in a simulated island on my family’s computer screen? While I had zero access to guns or knives, what if I’d tried to destroy this punk kid? I would have prevented the world from having another loving father. Another inspired artist. Another devoted husband. And that is truly horrifying.