People I Knew #5: Garth
Part of an ongoing series (names have been changed to protect the innocent, etc).
Every high school comes complete with “that kid.” Defining what makes him (and it’s typically “him,” bar a few of the more colorful horse girls) “that kid” is perennially tricky; I’d say there’s no hard-and-fast definition and it’s purely a question of vibes. Whatever the reason, “that kid” becomes a school’s dalit or cagot, an untouchable creature whose very visage strikes terror and loathing into even the most socially secure student (when he’s not also providing mirth). My high school was different than most: adhering to a weird, techno-hippie curriculum, we attracted a sizable number of oddballs, dorks, and theater kids who might’ve qualified as “that kid” at a different school. Yet even in this supposed judgment-free Eden we had “that kid”: he was called Garth, he was a grade ahead of me, and he was truly a force of nature. So burned is his personality into my unconscious I’ll likely hallucinate him on my deathbed and his heavy-browed scowl will instigate my final, eerie death rattle before I’m dragged off to the special hell which all zoomers are destined for.
Words fail to describe Garth; he was a sublime object, like Mount Everest or the Face of God, something so awe-inspiring gazing into it induces a fearful, mind-shattering madness. Garth wasn’t just large, but wide, and it’s important to distinguish between the two. Many people can be large, but Garth was mountainous: he was larger diagonally than vertically despite already being tall. Everything about him was massive: his head was like some colossal mutant pumpkin, topped with a shock of greasy, prematurely thinning blonde hair. He had the most unusual neckbeard: it resembled the Emperor Nero’s, a thick u-shaped chinstrap surrounded by baby-soft skin. His frame and arms were also large but his legs unusually small — not thin, but definitely out of proportion with his overall gestalt. His fashion sense was exuberantly spartan, as he only had two outfits: a large, discolored long-sleeve shirt with sweatpants during cold weather and a crude Hollywood Undead cut-off with red-and-white gym shorts for the warmer months. If I sound like I’m mocking Garth, I’m truly not — he was simply impossible to describe. I didn’t find him funny but horrifying, and anyone who’d dealt with him up-close-and-personal can attest that next to Garth even the tallest man felt puny; I was about his height and I felt positively diminutive next to him.
It wasn’t just Garth’s body which made one feel small, but his temper. Garth’s emotional register was limited to just one tone: rage. Singular, obstinate, glowering, barely-contained-on-a-good-day, free-flowing-on-a-bad-one rage. He scowled at students and barked at teachers and lashed out physically at any poor authority figure who happened to stand in his way. Inanimate objects were not free from his wrath, either: one day, I saw him hurl his school-assigned Chromebook laptop into a metal library book cart, KO’ing the device. The laptop was cheap and shitty but it was still horrifying to see: Garth destroyed a computer costing hundreds of dollars — and which was school district property, no less! — for no reason other than everyday frustration. He simply had no concept of money, worth, or personal inconvenience outside that which personally affected him. He lacked any empathy or remorse beyond the cursory amount expected from him by adults and I rather feared that about him.
Garth’s relations with his peers was poor. He couldn’t grasp personal boundaries or situationally appropriate behavior, and I once witnessed him full-bore charging down a hallway, barking at other students to get out of his way while wearing a comically diminutive Mario hat (he was a great fan of Nintendo). Lacking anything resembling an “inside voice,” Garth said everything a decibel or two higher than it needed to be, giving one the sensation they were always being yelled at — which, if you interacted with Garth, was usually the case anyway. In a particularly dark and unsettling incident I was unfortunate enough to witness, Garth screamed the n-word at a black guy right in the middle of math class, necessitating his removal from the classroom. I don’t quite understand why Garth said it other than he found the other student “annoying” and casually unleashed racist invective on him.
Then there was the stretch where Garth began an erstwhile “friendship” with a girl in the school library. The girl — the opposite of him in terms of interests, attitude, and social savvy — mostly indulged him out of politeness, but Garth presumed they were in love and endlessly pestered her, literally lording over her from a long desk behind her usual chair. I witnessed their stilted, one-sided interactions and winced; I felt so very bad for her, forced to carry on these endless dialogues (really monologues) against her will with someone who could very easily hurt her if she refused to engage him in “conversation.”
Both Garth and I are on the spectrum, but I never really felt any empathy for him; he steadfastly refused to alter his behavior or accommodate the interests of others, and when he was upbraided for this he’d use his diagnosis as an excuse. I always had the social intuition to know when enough was enough and how to comport yourself with someone who didn’t share your interests and to not randomly screech the worst racial slur in the English language at someone who was mildly annoying you, goddamnit! I felt for the black guy, the library girl, the special education teacher, random people in the hallway — everyone but Garth himself. Autism might have disadvantaged Garth, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t ever improve himself, and it certainly didn’t give him the license to flip off teachers (which he did) or physically intimidate people who displeased him (which he did) or holler at the special education teacher when criticized for drawing a penguin instead of doing work (which he did).
The one I empathized with most of all was his twin brother Gareth (their parents gave them nearly identical names and didn’t seem to worry about any potential confusion). I came to befriend Gareth at the very tail end of his final year of high school; dressed in a backwards baseball cap and sweatshirt and speaking in a deep Philly accent, Gareth was disarmingly sweet and thoughtful. While Gareth had been at my high school since the beginning of ninth grade, Garth had attended a different one that year and transferred in for tenth. Gareth dolefully explained to me that his ninth grade year had been decent: he’d managed to make friends and find a niche for himself and was glad to be away from Garth for a change. Garth’s transfer changed all that: suddenly, his social standing imploded as he became increasingly associated with his twin’s antics, and their nearly-the-same monikers didn’t help matters — even though they looked nothing alike, the orthographic similarity of their monikers would result in conversational mix-ups regardless. It’s difficult when your brother’s physically and verbally abusive behavior is ascribed to you, even accidentally, and it’s even worse when you’re forced to effectively babysit him on particularly bad days.
Once, my father encountered Garth: he had to come to school to sign me out early for something, and Garth was exiting the main office after being called in for some incident. Upon departing, he growled “Well, thanks for wasting my time” at the principal and teachers before returning to class. That incident to me represents Garth incarnate: receiving kindness from others, and responding with unexplainable rudeness. He was a tormented soul reaching out in the darkness for assistance and friendship and love and responding with a flurry of kicks and punches and bellowed profanities when these were extended towards him. He was our school’s id, the darkest elements of our souls offloaded onto one person who could be a chaotic hurricane of loathing and violence so everyone else could sleep nights. He was the void made manifest.