93 Comments
Feb 5, 2023Liked by Guttermouth

Ah, kiddo. I do not know whether I can stay on with the extra blogs I have found on substack. You have setting mastered, you have Narrative hook down, and your authorial voice is the bomb.

If I disappear, it's just that life is crazypants

I promise to keep praying for you.

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We all have the capacity for bad within us.

I was up at my friend Matt Perry's house as a kid, and jealous I think when his next door neighbor Bobby Defore would come over to play with us. Bobby had an almost peroxide blonde buzzcut.

I just remember I had a general "not liking" of the kid which I think was also a year younger than me in grade school. As kids our not liking/liking of kids at times could be arbitrary. Sometimes I'd get on the outs with Matt Perry too.

I remember we were in Matt's backyard and digging in the dirt. He had a bunch of Hotwheels and Matchbox cars and we were doing things like building a race track or creating a large "junkyard" type environment for the cars. It didn't matter really. All I know is, Bobby Defore for some unknown reason annoyed me. It felt like he was disrupting our play, but Matt didn't seem to mind and was a "the more the merrier" type.

I was using an old bicycle axel to dig with. We would do that, take random implements, sticks, anything to dig around in the dirt. And I think at some point I must have called Bobby Defore a a name, most likely a play on his last name "Defore." And He said "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

I was holding a bicycle axel and thought I would do something clever. No, I didn't backhand him with the axel. Beating the kid senseless was not my intention, but giving him a moderate tap was me in a bullyish way showing him that I could test the theory.

The axel that I envisioned tapping him on the side of the head missed its mark when he turned. All I know is he was clutching his eye, and I did anything a kid my age would do when confronted with the prospect of blinding a kid.

I ran.

I highlight t is, because it speaks to your story of the golf ball as to what would have happened next if the golf ball had done as intended.

I ran and made it home and my parents should have known something was up when I was pushing to get a bath, or rather, I didn't resist. I thought to myself "if I can push forward the notion of bathing and then sleeping, this will all slip past. I'll be asleep before I know it and it will be the next day. Problem solved.

Bobby DeFore's older sister arrived shortly after I got into the tub at ourfront door. I was dragged out of the tub wet and clothed, and marched by my father up the street. I don't remember how we got there. Was I dragged? Did we drive?. All I know is, I was at Bobby Defore's door. And I was told to apologize.

I was sorry as soon as I hit him. The moderate tap in my mind had removed his eye. But it hadn't the cut was right next to it, but the point was, it had been close. I said I was sorry. And would continue to be sorry for the rest of a couple of weeks. I received the mother of all spankings and grounded (the first and only time I was grounded) for what felt like weeks. It might have only been a couple days.

There are times where I would do impulsive things like this in my life, and would come to immediately regret them.

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Feb 5, 2023·edited Feb 5, 2023Liked by Guttermouth

I see ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, thoroughly disgraced for lying the country into W's jihad against Saddam Hussain, worming his way back into the political discourse, getting positively aroused when discussing WEF electronic IDs for fake-MRNA-potions-LARPing-as-vaccines and I'd have to ask;

"Are you some kind of cunt? A real bad one?"

Rhetorical question, ofcourse.

I've also never known anyone use "cunt" in any gendered sense. Same way anyone can be "a dick".

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Feb 5, 2023Liked by Guttermouth

It's enough to make you think the old ones were on to something with their physiognomy, the way a certain kind of mind seemingly always or often enough to seem like design occupies a certain body-type.

The chubby yet muscular heavy-set bully, and his lanky sneakily smart taller friend, and their third wheel; the runt that's only good for coming up with nasty stuff, and finally the dim hanger-on, always a "A-huh what?" on his lips.

Or the Alpha-bitch, her coterie, and their designated victim (re-watched 'Carrie' the other night so the stereotypes are a mickle americanised at present.)

I'm of the opinion thatwe don't really change no. But we become more in some ways, and may work to become less in others. Examples:

Girl I used to know (not in that way!) was a compulsive thief. You'd walk into the supermarket to get beer and smokes, and she'd come out with a frozen pot-roast or four rolls of toilet paper in her jacket, random stuff. It was unconscious for her, and she didn't have any poverty or trauma or something in her background, she was just wired that way. Took her years to channel that impulse into something else, but as fas as I understood, it never went away.

Friend I had (same circle of friends as the aforementioned girl), total martial arts nutter. Tall and gangly, topping two meters, which meant he looked skinny despite weighing close to 100 kilos. Wing-Tsun, judo, karate, shaolin, krav maga, systema, gesundheit, whatever. When that wasn't ebough, it was swords and staves and nunchucks. Then it was learning japanese, thai and chinese. Then getting tattoos, motifs from classical oriental art. Then going to China to train in some temple.

Point is, he didn't change from his starting template; he just levelled up continously following that template.

You could argue both examples show change and they do, if we mean change as increasing/decreasing whatis already present. But if we mean change as in actually becoming something else (insert chrysalis bursting or facehugger and chestburster or something), then the examples show it just doesn't happen.

The leper doesn't change his shorts, as the late Terry Pratchett put it.

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Feb 5, 2023Liked by Guttermouth

Crumbs, Guttermouth. I can only imagine the endless waves of terror and forgetting that that episode put you through. I can understand your visceral loathing of bullies, too. It's such a pity that you didn't come across the alleged brain damaged "victim" sooner, to help put to bed the lie. I can imagine an even more intricate layer of bullying and deceit, where he would deliberately conceal himself and/or get his mate to taunt you in that manner. No. People don't change. They just start learning to lie to themselves better.

I can understand, too, that this whole psyop we're going through must have brought so much of that back to the surface. Perhaps, in a twisted way, it was your saving grace - as you at least had cultivated the resilience to resist it and to tell people exactly where to get off. That saved you a dangerous shot in the arm.

I'm curious. What would you do if you came across either of them today? Have you imagined the scenario? Would there be any redemptive act that would convince you that, possibly, there might be an exception to the rule? I ask myself the same about the whole Covid gene-jab bully-fest, when I consider what it has done to me. Never mind the billions of others out there - including Covid itself, and its GOF origins, or deliberately-mutated directed-evolution, whatever-they're-calling-it-now Shitshow. I know it has affected you deeply, too (last I had an exchange with you, your dad was deeply ill - dare I ask?).

I don't know if I would know the answer myself, to be honest. I would probably just be grabbing my knitting needles and start baying for blood. Or stabbing, myself. I'm no saint.

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Feb 5, 2023Liked by Guttermouth

We think kids are resilient and sure they mostly are, but the torments of youth are so vivid and frightening that living through them is a feat.

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That's some top notch writing! And that ginger kid probably works as a homicide detective now, playing mind games with suspects and guilt-tripping and scaring them into giving confessions. Who knows? Maybe he's changed and is one of the good guys now, using his knack for psychological torture to help get dangerous criminals off the streets?

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Feb 6, 2023Liked by Guttermouth

Love your random stuff. Gonna share a story. Was about 10 and a mean girl, Donna, picked on me daily. Pushed, stole my lunch, etc. Slammed my face in the snow. Finally ran into her back with my fist out like a sword lol. Never bugged me again. She called me a slut!! Had to ask my Mom what that meant😂

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You never finished the story. What congressional district does this ginger kid now "serve?"

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Thank you, for the kind words and mention of my substack. Glad the article helped spark such a great story from yourself.

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i broke a kids arm once, i was probably around 8 to 10 at the time. he was very small for his age and sometimes hung out with us playing football (soccer to you). for some reason i forget i was shaking his hand and shook it violently enough that he yelled out then ran off. it was a day later that his mother called mine to tell her that he wasnt allowed to play with me any more because i was a bully and had broken his arm. i felt terrible and went to apologise and explain there was no malice, i was just playing around but his mom never let him near us again.

about 15 years later i was in a nightclub draining the lizard and some big monster of a bloke next to me says my name and wouldnt you know it was him, i felt that instant guilt again but he was fine about it and was ok with me he said his mom over reacted.

as an adult ive never been very tolerant of bullies i guess because i was bullied as a kid a fair bit and even when they are much bigger than me will stand up to them, i guess i do a pretty good mean face cos they never want to fight me

no im mostly not a cunt but i have met a lot

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This piece makes me ponder that many bullies are skilled in the art of manipulating other people through words (mostly their words, and occasionally by their actions - my bullies of high school wielded words while mine in elementary school did the chasing and pushing - i use possesive but there were other victims besides me who shared in the outrages of my bullies). As such they have an intuitive understanding of the psychology of manipulation, and are probably predisposed to success in any endeavor requiring political savvy, such as politicians, leaders in business, top administrators in government, etc. Speaking for myself, we victims may be less endowed with political acumen, who are frequently blind-sided by the politics of others in the workplace, and have a difficult time surviving and flourishing in our team endeavors.

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I hate that I have so many thoughts in my head ,and I text ridiculously slowly and poorly ( honest...if y'all think my typos are bad you dobt see how much time I spend backspacing and retyping what I DO catch) ...because I usually can't get out the multitude of responses that bounce around. I cant even get to return to state everything...because by then its gone. I'm a twit.

I may be ... naive. Ivecseen a lot of bad,and I've had an 'interesting' life...but I don't think there are no good people. I've met them. They remind me that I could be better.

I think people DO bad things ,and that there are some people who are just bad...through and through.

I don't know if they recognize it. Do they have the capacity to self reflect that way?

I know that I still torment myself about things I did should have done,or should have managed better...from as early as I can remember. I often wonder if my dad was an alcoholic to help cope with his childhood( of which I know almost nothing) or what a bad person he was.

People grow,and they can change..but within parameters ,I think.

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Another ponder-ance from this piece is the topic of people don’t change. Accepting that as premise, I ponder the cognitive dissonance created by workplace team culture and performance reviews. This is also created on cancel culture platforms , when employers and recruiters and our professional network have visibility to what we say, particularly when our employer requires us to sign an agreement that we won’t speak ill of the company or an agreement that all social media postings comply with their policies of respect etc and/or be accompanied by an explicit disclaimer that views are our own not our employer’s. The cognitive dissonance between what we are and what we must project in these alternate lives must certainly lead to some degree of psychosis and dysfunction.

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Thanks. Really enjoyed this.

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