I hated you.

The school-wide ban on gum made it precious contraband, and kids who wouldn't even chew gum at home just had to have that shit when you broke it out between classes. Couldn't do it in class, because if you even tried to sneak a piece for yourself, some needy motherfucker would be all like PSST CAN I HAVE A PIECE, risking the teacher's ire and the confiscation of your stash. Really, the safest place to distribute was on the bus, the no-man's-land between home and school where school rules seemed to apply a little less the closer you were to home.

Practically everybody broke the no-gum rule, and not even the most priggish Goody Two-Shoes would snitch on a supplier. Sure, some tattle-tale might tell on you for CHEWING gum--particularly as a strike in some schoolyard intrigue--but no one betrayed the supplier. After all, sooner or later, anyone might want a piece.

Bubble gum was what you wanted, because its flavor lasted longer, there were better flavors available, it was more fun to chew, and you could blow bubbles with it. But it was bulky, so you couldn't store much--important if you were pressed to share your personal stuff, more important if you planned to sell it. It was typically more expensive, too, so most kids bought chewing gum. Juicy Fruit, Wrigley's Spearmint, fucking Carefree (sugarless, but practically bubble gum), pretty much anything you could cop in a Plen-T-Pack. They gave you enough to share, and they were compact, so you could hide 'em easily. And it was much easier to unfold that foil on the sneak than to fuck around with crinkly, twisted paper wraps on Super Bubble.

But Extra, especially Extra Winterfresh, was the bane of my fucking existence.

Extra is the fucking Marlboro Lights of chewing gum. Seemed like every tasteless motherfucker who ever snuck gum in his JanSport had a pack on him at all times. This scene was typical:

Fiend: Hey, man, you got some gum?

Supplier: Huh? Oh, yeah. *unzips backpack; familiar flash of white and blue packaging*

Fiend: Ugh, Extra? Fu...all right.

You'd be hard up, so you'd take it. But that shit was the antithesis of a pleasant chewing experience. The texture was all wrong. You'd pop it in your mouth, and as soon as it hit your tongue, it would just...flop. Wouldn't snap, wouldn't bend. Just go soft, like it didn't even have the will to live--like it didn't even have the strength to fake the funk. That cool menthol flavor would hit, pleasant enough at first, but it'd overwhelm your shit like you were chewing Certs. Fuckin' clouds of mint stank billowing out your mouth and shit, eyes just watering.

Then, it was over. Flavor vanished except for a stain of aftertaste that somehow tasted blue. The gum itself couldn't even stand up to your saliva, let alone chewing. It'd start falling apart on you, loose strings catching on your teeth and all that, until you either stuck it to the roof of your mouth (why keep the gum in your mouth if you ain't gonna chew it?) or accidentally swallowed that dishwater shit when it slipped too far back on your tongue.

Couldn't even spit the motherfucker out without disgust. Faded blue wad all tooth-marked, little bit of spit still shining. No dignity even in death. You'd work up those last few bites trying to get every last bit off your gums so you could spit it all out, and the gum would fuckin' elongate and get all thin, chewed-up worm of fucking wintry cool working its way out the side of your jaw. Take that motherfucker out with your fingertips, and you'd look at it and feel the immense disappointment and shame your parents must have known when you didn't turn out to be a piano prodigy or even that good-looking. If that gum had been your fetus, your ass would be pro-choice today.

And yet y'all bought that shit, you brought it with you to school and passed it out, and you had the nerve to fucking like it. I'd understand if you were buying that cheap shit because that's what you gave out, keeping the good stuff to yourself. And it was cheap shit. It was forever cheaper than Big Red or fuckin' Teaberry, and you know why? 'Cause nobody with functioning taste buds or a brain in his head likes Extra. No one with a soul, no one who can love or hate likes that shit. It's cheap shit for cheap shit, cud for people who find Doublemint a little too adventurous, people who can watch Maury Povich in anything more than Youtube doses.

And you liked it. The one point of fucking common ground I had with you was the gum thing, la costa scolastica nostra. We broke the rules, and we could have broken them together, could have fuckin' cultivated the capacity to question authority and learned the right of our instincts for what is good and righteous...

...but you liked Extra. You were the enemy of sense and feeling, the end of joy. I reached out to you with a need--hey, man, do you have any gum?--and you fell so far short that the gulf between us has been widening ever since. Gum was the flower in the prison yard, you stupid son of a bitch: the one beautiful thing any of us had, the greatest gift we could have asked for, because it would have led us to ourselves so much sooner all the dumb-fuck kid mistakes we had to suffer through to wrest experience out of life drop by drop. There's nothing between you and me now but those crumpled foil wrappers, each one tainted by Winterfresh powder, and I will never stop hating you for it.

6/12/2009 4:51:09 PM

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6/12/2009 4:55:27 PM

6/12/2009 4:55:51 PM

6/12/2009 5:09:24 PM

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6/12/2009 5:30:06 PM