BattleBrains

Pressure

Photo by fsefefs sefesfesfesf on Unsplash

There’s a video on YouTube of Kevin Slattery, in 10th Grade at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, answering a question about fermentation on the show BattleBrain.

Kevin was wrong.

Queen of Martyrs came in second of four teams, and each participant got a fifty dollar gift certificate for Crazy Castle Lazer Tag.

Kevin’s mom framed the gift certificate. Kevin probably wasn’t going to use the gift certificate anyway, but he thought it rather odd that his mom would latch on to the slip of paper with a bar code as a symbol of her son’s achievement, especially after he only attempted to answer one question, and was wrong.

Father Thurman was at the taping of BattleBrain, as were the members of Queen of Martyrs basketball team.

The priest decided it was important for the athletes to support the kids competing in academic contests.

Father Thurman checked in on Kevin pretty regularly. He’s in his 90’s now, and no longer able.

Thomas Thurman, Society of Jesus, never quite got used to the scent of burnt popcorn in Kevin Slattery’s home.

He accepted that Kevin knows what he’s doing, that Kevin is comforted by the scent of burnt popcorn, and that Kevin is capable of turning the burner down once he’s achieved the desired scent and before he torches the entire kitchen.

Kevin was mocked pretty hard after the BattleBrain experience. Not so much for the wrong answer, but for giving up after, failing to ring in to attempt another answer.

Excuses were made.

The cameras.

The temperature of the studio.

A grumbling gut from Warsaw Delights All You Can Eat Goląbki the night before.

The true culprit, unknown at the time, was the presence of Easton Lambert.

Kevin Slattery had a huge crush on Easton Lambert, who couldn’t have identified Kevin Slattery as a schoolmate until the taping of BattleBrains.

But Easton knew failure. Easton knew ridicule.

At 6’9 for real and listed at 6’10, he was the tallest player in the Metro Catholic League who wasn’t a starter and didn’t average double figures in points.

He was slow, clumsy, and prone to freezing up under pressure.

Kevin Slattery made a clock.

It’s a nude picture of Sam Rockwell, with two of Sam’s right arms as the hands. Kevin Slattery broke the left arm piece, accidentally, and in a rush to get it done accidentally glued on another picture of the right arm.

Julia, Kevin’s occupational therapist, thinks it’s genius.

For an injury like Kevin’s, it’s an astounding reclamation of small motor function.

Easton Lambert was great comfort to Kevin after BattleBrains.

Kevin didn’t care that Easton wasn’t good at basketball.

Kevin vented about his eccentric, probably mentally ill mom.

Easton vented that he probably couldn’t even work for his dad’s plumbing company after high school because he was just too big to fit into small places plumbers needed to get.

Kevin complained that Easton’s Tuesday night basketball games conflicted with dollar movie night at Harbor Cinema.

Easton complained that the coach gave him a key to the gym so he could work on his game, a game that wasn’t gonna get any better.

Kevin Slattery doesn’t do much complaining these days.

Strangely, to him, he’s become more of a basketball fan in recent years, though sometimes he just closes his eyes and listens because the constant flashes of color up and down the court give him headaches.

It was Kevin’s idea that he help Easton work on his game after hours in the gym, even though he knew nothing about basketball.

He just figured he’d throw the ball back to Easton after missed shots or set up orange cones or…

It was Easton’s idea that they steal Gatorades from the secret room behind the closet where the green and silver Martyrs warmup unis hung, and it was Easton’s idea to kiss Kevin.

Kevin told his mom he had a job at school that started at 9pm, which was kind of reckless because she could check and see that he didn’t and Easton told his dad he was really committed to working on his game.

At halftime of the Pacers Pistons game the news teases a story about a school shooting outside of Memphis.

Kevin Slattery spits on his own area rug.

They’d never let a kid have a key to a gym and be unsupervised now.

They’d never let two kids sneak off into a room off a locker room, drink free Gatorade, talk about life.

They’d certainly never let a plumber walk in off the street, into a chapel to light a candle and pray for his overgrown son to get his basketball shit together and get a college scholarship.

That plumber wasn’t there for the candle as much as he was there to sneak out of the chapel, through the sacristy, down the hallway and into the gym to see his only son. The gym where he didn’t hear his son or anyone else dribbling or shooting a basketball.

Easton’s size 4XL Puma windbreaker was draped over the scorers table, so Woody Lambert kept looking.

Kevin Slattery has never seen Woody Lambert.His eyes were closed. He had Woody Lambert’s son’s cock in his mouth, facing the other way anyway.

Easton told the court he panicked.

He wasn’t lying.

Easton Lambert punched the kid he met at BattleBrains, the kid who knew almost all his secrets, and the kid’s head hit the tile wall of the little room off the locker room where the warmups hung.

Woody Lambert didn’t call that kid an ambulance until 20 minutes later at a pay phone outside a Burger King.

The morning Kevin Slattery was dressing for BattleBrain, he wanted to be a lawyer.

He’s pushing sixty now, and has been going to therapy for as long as he can remember.

He wants to speak better, so he can go to an open mic night. He thinks he has some pretty good jokes about not being very good at giving head.

He’s not quite ready yet.

But he can feed himself, he can get himself to bed.

He can’t explain why the smell of burnt popcorn is comforting to him.

There are no cameras here.

He has the thermostat set at a comfortable temperature, and he hasn’t eaten goląbki in decades.

*****

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