For the next two months, I felt more empowered to use my phone to record stuff at school.
In November, as part of our unit on the digestive system Mrs. Grant brought out some sheep lungs and inflated them for us to see, and I caught the whole thing on camera. A week later, we had a concert at the school for this terrible karaoke performance some people had put together, and this short bespectacled kid sitting next to me stood up and starting headbanging to it. I recorded that too, and when he saw that I was doing it, he tried headbanging even harder.
In art class, as I got more acquainted with the kids at my table, I started recording our antics more. There was Norman; there was Asiah, a Muslim girl who wore a hijab and everything but was otherwise pretty anglified; Amy, this short, pudgy bespectacled girl who didn’t know about the Holocaust until Reece told her; and Reece, a guy who always wore a beanie and had a similar sense of humour to me and Norman. He didn’t arrive at Saint Frederick until late October, but we got to making friends with him pretty quickly.
There was also Jasper, who had been in our class since the beginning of the year, but rarely attended for the first two months; he only starting coming regularly when he was threatened with a 0 grade in the class. I also remember him for looking almost exactly like Yung Lean when he was the same age. When I told him this, he said, “No I fucking don’t.”
Most of the stuff I recorded in our art class was just me and the others bantering with each other or doing stupid things with our art projects. I once recorded a 7-minute-long video of Norman trying to dismantle a wall painter that we were using to paint large canvases with. On another occasion, I had Reece drink water out of a paint cup for five dollars and recorded it as proof. Another time, Norman brought in this pseudo-infographic on Ancient Egypt that was more than a little racist in nature, and I filmed him explaining the whole thing as if it were completely factual. Another time, we made these paper mâché birds and, when the teacher wasn’t looking, we filmed a porno with them. Don’t ask.
I did use my Samsung in art class for somewhat more productive purposes too. One day we had a lesson by this Anishinaabe woman on how to make these aboriginal wheel of life things, and I filmed her as she gave us the whole instructions. I also filmed the attempts of me and the others to make them the same. We were not very successful.
In other news, I joined a private Discord group with Noah, the crew, and some online friends they had made, called the Art Kids, which was also what the group called themselves in real life. (Apparently most of them had met in an art class.) We enjoyed sharing each other memes and hentai with each other, but we were just as with it together offline. We would always congregate at lunch break, and oftentimes Noah would bring his card games with him for all of us to play. He had Cards Against Humanity, some card game involving well-known memes, and another involving hentai screenshots. I recorded a couple of our matches, with surprisingly nobody ever objecting to it. Noah was also really into Dungeons and Dragons, and when he didn’t bring card games, he brought this huge lore book on the D&D. He would try to set up characters for all of us using the book as guidance, and honestly, to this day, I still don’t fully understand it.
It was all really fun though, and I was surprised at how willing they were to have me, someone who was otherwise a total outsider to them, join along. One of the Art Kids, Lance, was the one who organised all the D&D sessions at his house, and that’s where they would all go to have them. In December, I asked him if he could have me come over for one, and to my surprise he agreed to it. He promised to hook me up with some others who could teach me how to play, and that genuinely put me in a really good mood for the rest of the day.
And not once did I ever get the indication that Noah was any type of bigot, let alone any of his groupmates. Really, Noah came off like the exact type of person I needed. He was sharp and witty with his humour, and was very outgoing. He always knew the right thing to say, and he always seemed to know when it was best to use sarcasm or irony. And he was full of energy, always exclaiming he said. And if someone said something he disagreed with, he sure as hell made it known. It was easy to see how he had gathered up such a dedicated little friend group, and truthfully, I envied his charisma.
But my mother still didn’t like the sound of it when I told her I was playing D&D with them. She had it in her mind that only incels and other women-hating types played games like that, and she said I was not allowed to hang out with the Art Kids again. That didn’t discourage me at all; if anything, it made me more certain that these were the type of guys I belonged with.
One day, as we were in our usual spot at lunch outside the library, some girl in my English class came up to us with her phone out and asked us what our favourite thing about high school was.
Noah replied, “The best thing is the fact that someone can just walk up to you with a smartphone and ask you any kind of question like that.”
Finally, the day did come, on Saturday 15 December, a week before Christmas break. I met up with this kid named Gill – whom Lance had appointed to be my D&D instructor – and a couple of his own friends. They lived on a large hill at the edge of town – not far away from where Jocelyn lived – so I had to take a bus ride just to find them. When I did arrive at Gill’s place, he and his buddies were outside on the lawn all smoking joints, while it was almost twenty degrees below zero. I asked them if they were up for some dragons, and they all just sort of looked at me confused.
Gill finally spoke up and said, “You a friend of Lance?”
“Yeah. He told me to meet you guys so you could prepare for your next D&D session.”
“Oh. Nah man, we’re done with Lance and Noah and shit. They’re all a bunch of fucking assholes.” He shoved his cigarettes back into his mouth as if he had just dropped a sick burn.
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that at first. Eventually I just said, “Well, I came all the way up here on the fucking bus, so... should we do something else?”
Gill shrugged. “Wanna smoke with us?”
I had never smoked anything before. But this seemed like a guy thing I was supposed to agree with, so I simply said, “Sure.”
I walked over and sat down, and Gill personally gave me a cigarette and lit it up for me. Truth be told, that did make me feel like a real homie for a few seconds.
Gill and his friends chatted with each other for a while, while I just sort of sat there listening, never really being able to figure out when to chime in. Eventually they all got up and Gill said, “We’re going to the convenience store, come on.”
We went to the convenience store a few blocks away, where the group met up with some more kids in the parking lot. They all looked like your stereotypical white trash folk; I felt out of place. I stood a few paces away from all of them until Gill came up to me and said, “Hey man, mind going in there and getting some of those ice cream sandwiches? The ones in like, the big long containers and shit?”
“Well, I don’t have money on me.”
“Just get ‘em for us, alright?” He walked back off to his crew.
I wasn’t sure what to do. But I guess I felt an obligation to prove my strength to my fellow adolescent boys, so I decided that shoplifting this one time wasn’t too bad. I walked in, avoided the cashier’s gaze, got two big boxes of ice cream sandwiches, and dashed out while the cashier was on the phone with his back to me.
I headed outside with the ice cream sandwich boxes high in the air.
“Yo, thanks dude,” Gill said as he plucked them from me, opening them up and passing them around to the others. I got an ice cream sandwich too, and that was the full extent of the recognition I got for my little deed there.
The next Monday, something in me just didn’t feel like sitting with the rest of the Art Kids, so I went into the library and surfed the internet on one of the computers for lunch break instead. It was the time I had spent a full break in the library. It was actually kind of cool, hearing the chatter and buzz all around me as I just did my thing alone. Tables filled up with study groups and sharing stuff on their phones; guys sitting on the couches near the fireplace reading books and talking about whatever; kids playing games on the other computers; and a couple kids that were actually browsing the bookshelves. It was an atmosphere that I could get used to.
We had a Christmas talent show on the Thursday before break, and I decided to audition for it. My talent was going to be reading the first few pages of the Bee Movie script, because I thought the show could do with a little bit of memes. I put on my yellow sweatshirt and black pants again as a costume too. The audition was in front of these two kids who were hosting the show, and my careers teacher who was managing the whole thing. She didn’t get it, but the two guys hosting it thought it was pretty funny, so she gave me a spot on the show.
So, on that Thursday, I got up in front of maybe 200 people (most had either already left school or were elsewhere in the building) and I read up until the “we’ll sure try!” part in the script, using a music stand to put my printed sheets on. When I finished reading, I simply muttered into the mic, “And that’s all I bothered to print off,” and the whole audience cheered for me and the memes. Not going to lie, that day felt pretty good.
Afterwards, I met up with Reece, Jasper and their friend group out on the school’s front porch. I saw a large, icy snowball off to the side and tried stomping it. When it didn’t immediately break, I took out my phone and recording myself trying to do it. Jasper asked why I was doing what I was doing, and I said because I felt like it. Then the other dudes all joined in and started stomping and kicking the snowball with me, and we managed to break it into maybe three or four pieces before kicking them all down the stairs. Then some other guy came along, picked one of the pieces up and chucked it at a car. I tried to get him to say hi to the camera, but he didn’t seem to care.
Christmas Break was pretty quiet. I played a bit of Space Engineers and Hearts of Iron IV with the Art Kids (I was terrible at both games) but not much other than that. What struck me the most was when I realised how much I was growing more distant with Jocelyn and her friends; we had almost no interaction with each other since the start of the school year.
But Jocelyn was a friend I had since grade two, and for many years she was my best and only friend. Personality-wise we were pretty different; she was an extrovert who was always full of energy, while I was an introvert who got tired from other peoples’ company pretty quickly. But we had a similar sense of humour, and we liked the same YouTubers, video games, TV shows and all of that. When we were younger, she was a bit of a tomboy who didn’t really care what others thought of her, and that’s what I liked most about her. I didn’t feel I had to try so hard around her, since she didn’t try so hard herself.
But as soon as we hit puberty that began to change: she came out as bisexual and started following the woke culture; she started doing more girly things like wearing all this crazy makeup; she also took on this new personality of being “quirky”, and it almost felt as if she was regressing in her social awareness. I wasn’t a fan of any of it, so I kind of ghosted her for a while.
Over the holidays though, we started talking again, albeit only for a short time. We had a big snowstorm a few days before Christmas and she texted me about how cool it was. I agreed, but for some reason I thought about school being cancelled, and told her that I hope the buses would be off. She obviously pointed out that we were on break, and in response I made a comment about how “mentally retarded” I must be.
That did not sit well with her, and we proceeded to get into a heated debate over text about whether I was bigot for using the word retard. I tried to make the case that it was just a general insult I used that had no reference to actual disabled people, but she wasn’t buying it. She mocked my “fragile white boy heart” and declared that she would never talk to me ever again. She then blocked me on Instagram, and honestly, at the time I thought it was all pretty funny. Over the next couple days though, I realised that all of Jocelyn’s friends had blocked me on Instagram too. And that’s when I knew what it was like to be a victim of cancel culture.
Being that I had hardly interacted with any of these people, I wasn’t too bothered about being cut off from all of them. But the fact that Joce had devolved into this level of pettiness felt quite disheartening. She was my best friend for basically eight years, yet she didn’t seem to have any trouble dropping me off just like that, over something so small. This was not the Jocelyn I knew growing up, and it just made me more resentful of woke culture and what it had done to my best friend.
There was one person who hadn’t blocked me though, and that was Patrick. When school opened back up in January 2019, I found him in the cafeteria and asked what the hell was going on. I already did know, but for some reason I needed his confirmation. He basically told me to just stay away from things for a while and that I should think about what I said. I appreciated that he didn’t insult my character or anything, but that didn’t exactly make me feel any better, especially since it had already been over two weeks since the incident.
School-related priorities provided something of a distraction though. Aside from exams coming up in February, we were also all given the task of choosing our courses for next year. Us grade ten kids were particularly excited for this, because we would finally be at the stage where we could start choosing more elective courses.
We were given this webpage that listed out all the courses Saint Frederick had, with a timetable to the side to submit the courses in. I chose most of my subjects pretty easily, but one caught my eye: “English (Indigenous Studies) Grade 11”. That was the only English course available, meaning that Grade 11 English would be devoted entirely to Indigenous literature. And since Ontario kids need a mandatory minimum of four English credits, this meant that I had no other choice but to concede with it.
My mother was pretty enthused to hear this, since she’s always been a strong advocate of indigenous rights. But me and the other Art Kids were not as pleased. In a Discord chat one late night, one of the guys remarked that his mother was considering taking him out of Saint Frederick because she was worried that that kind of course would not offer the full credits a university would appreciate. And of course, none of us really felt inclined to sit in a classroom for five months being lectured on how us evil white kids were personally responsible for the persecution of aboriginals; somehow, we got the idea that that’s what studying their literature would entail. But there was absolutely nothing we could do about it, so we sort of just mused until we all got tired and logged off for the night.
Monday, February 4th soon came, which was the day of my English and science exams. I asked Kayla how she felt; she said she smoked a huge joint of weed the previous night to calm her anxiety. SJ had a whole bunch of calculators laid out on his desk, his reasoning being that with calculators, there was no way he could fail.
On Tuesday I had careers and art exams. Careers was easy enough – just a mock job interview – but for art class we had to decorate a paper bag with a store front. It really did seem a bit child-like for a bunch of fifteen-year-olds, but I decided to have fun with it; I decorated my “store front” with the symbols of Ascensionism, a fake internet cult.
After that, I got together with Reece, Jasper and a few of their friends and we sort of just waltzed around the building. Reece kept telling me to shut up whenever I talked though, and I wasn’t sure that was just him or him trying to act cool for his group. One of his friends was this guy named Devon, who was apparently a rapper on SoundCloud. He played one of his tracks while we were all sitting around in the stairwell, and it was actually pretty good. Sounded like a blend of Yung Lean and Spooky Black. Eventually I decided it wasn’t worth staying with them anymore since they didn’t seem too interested in me, so I just ditched them and headed home.
And that was my first term of grade ten.