The Genius

I met The Genius in middle school and I learned a lot from him. Not facts, but life lessons that have stuck with me for decades. I can’t use his real name, because he’s Somebody now, a paragon in his field. Early on The Genius would assert that he was destined to become a great scientist as if it were somehow divinely ordained. It was easy to believe, he’s brilliant, among the smartest people I’ve ever met. You could see him receiving accolades in any endeavor he undertook.

The summer between freshman and sophomore year The Genius did a program through the local Ivy League University, spending several weeks extracting the sex organs from fruit flies. He came back and declared he did not want to be a scientist any more, he wanted to be a rock star.

The Genius would later attend the same Ivy League University where he’d spent several weeks extracting the sex organs from fruit flies. He was an academic Eagle Scout, smart enough to maintain his GPA while devouring entire novels under his desk over the course of a single school day. Eventually he’d settle into the sort of career that combines art with other disciplines in ways that one needs to be brilliant to do well in and has since received the highest awards available in his field. You could see that coming, he’s a genius.

Among my high school friends I got the worst grades. The smart kids let me hang because I knew as much about science fiction and fantasy as they did, and more about creepy, weird stuff. I was their Dungeonmaster. Characters in Dungeons & Dragons can be reduced to a series of numbers, decided by rolls of dice, that determine your strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. All of these guys had rolled very high intelligence, but their other stats were a mixed bag.

Most of them went to Ivy League schools. The Swimmer very purposefully attended a school that allowed him to wear his own name on his clothing, because he was that kind of guy. I dropped out of film school because I’m that kind of guy. The Genius graduated third in my class, but the salutatorian was in our Dungeons & Dragons group as well. Let’s call him The Supreme Intelligence, he was the smartest one of the bunch and a Renaissance man from an early age.

I can hear you asking if he’s so smart why wasn’t he valedictorian. Well, he was neck in neck with a girl for first place for four years, but at the end of our senior year he saw that it was much more important to her than it was to him, so he got a B on a test and let her have it. Intelligence and Wisdom are two different things and there’s no number for kindness.

Mike Tyson said “If you are not humble in this life, humbleness will be thrust upon you,” and that’s the truth, Ruth. There are people upon the earth whose task is to thrust humbleness upon others. Also in this group was a kid we’ll call The Agent of Chaos. He’d regularly go to bookstores and swap the dust jackets on similarly sized hardcovers so you’d think you’d be curling up with Jackie Collins and wind up with Stephen King or vice-versa.

We were all in the same English class freshman year, taught by a haughty, matronly Anglophile who affected an accent and exuded disdain for common things in the way of people who confuse intellectualism for superiority. She took herself very seriously. The Agent of Chaos saw that as a cardinal sin and seized on any opportunity to get her to lower her veil of refinement and, ideally, drop her accent.

She was not pleased the day he broke a pencil off in the keyhole of the door to her classroom. She tutted and summoned the custodian. It took thirty of the class’s forty minutes for him to open the door. When he did it again the next day I thought she was going to have a medical episode. I don’t remember what the punishment was but it was worth it for how American she sounded when she yelled. When he did it the third consecutive day I thought the entire class, including The Supreme Intelligence, The Genius, The Swimmer, and myself were going to federal prison, but it was fine. Looking back she probably didn’t want to get thirty “my kid would never” phone calls, plus I suspect she suspected The Russian, and accusing him would have meant dealing with his Russian parents. She took it like The Queen took The Blitz.

The Agent of Chaos delighted in tormenting The Genius. I remember one day when class met in the library for some instruction regarding the new computerized Dewey Decimal System. The Genius knew all about computers and confidently sat down in the chair at the desk so he could demonstrate the librarian’s instructions while the rest of us sat on the floor. About sixty seconds before she approached The Agent of Chaos stood up and walked a circle around the area. He paused at the computer, leaned in over The Genius and tapped away at the keys. The machine booped and was crashing hard by the time the librarian arrived. She looked at the screen, spewing error codes, no sign of Dewey anywhere, and scolded the Genius, who knew even then that responsible people must own their mistakes, something it would take me decades to understand.

Once the idea of becoming a rock star took hold The Genius grew his hair out. He fostered a luxurious black mane that gave him the look of an astronomy professor or a melanistic lion. It was a good prop to play with during intellectual debates and he would shake it for emphasis. The sheen of The Genius’s hair caught the light even in the windowless language lab, but we knew he dreamed of it reflecting multicolored stage lights as he played riffs to make Hendrix’s heart bleed. He’s bald now, completely shaved. I am too.

The Genius kept a red hairbrush in the front pocket of his backpack and would tame his locks often. Looking back this was necessary to maintain the shine, but the fact that he would do it in class seemed to rankle The Agent of Chaos, who stole the brush one day. The Genius assumed he had merely misplaced it and arrived the following morning with a blue brush. Things returned to how they had been without skipping a beat. However, The Agent of Chaos was just as likely to engage in a long game as he was to push your buttons in the moment. He waited a full six months before switching the brushes.

The Genius would later recount to me that when he got home and opened his bag, revealing not the blue brush he’d been using all year, but the long-lost red brush, he had doubted his sanity and felt his grip on reality slipping. We didn’t have the vocabulary at the time, but I think now he might describe it as “A glitch in the matrix.” When you’re very smart it’s easy to think your understanding of things is complete, but it never is, not for anybody.

We were all part of the literary magazine. I’d go to the meetings, but I wouldn’t participate. I was only there to put it on my college transcript. I needed at least one extracurricular activity. I didn’t care about the reflections on growing up or the sometimes Christian poetry. I went to joke around with my friends and show them things I had written, but could never submit, things that today would get me profiled as a school shooter, but this was before Columbine.

I rarely got in trouble but my brain has always been a wellspring of bad ideas. In middle school kids started folding up bits of paper really tight and shooting “paper wasps” at each other with rubber bands. I figured out that they go much faster when you use the long, thick rubber bands that come wrapped around asparagus. I also casually mentioned that if you added a thumbtack to the tip they’d be even more wasp-like. The next day kids showed up with weapons that, in retrospect, were more than capable of taking an eye out. That was an important lesson.

We were all at a meeting of the literary magazine one time when I said to The Agent of Chaos that I bet if he went up to The Genius and opened his mouth wide and went “Aaaaaaaaah!” The Genius would mimic him and he’d have the perfect opportunity to stick whatever he wanted into The Genius’s mouth. He retrieved The Swimmer’s still-wet-from-swim-practice Speedos and shoved them down to The Genius's tonsils as soon as it opened. I think we all learned something that day.

I sometimes reflect on the way, despite his profound intelligence, The Genius was often guided by emotion. We became friends because one day I ripped his shirt entirely not-really by accident and he responded by trying to choke the life out of me. Maybe this passion is what has allowed him, decades later, to reach the top of his field. The ability to combine his intellect with his feelings puts him right in the middle of a Venn diagram that, with a little luck, leads to great success for a scientist, a rock star, or anyone if they can keep it together.

The Genius eventually figured it all out, but being present for the larval stages of this development I saw many staggering lapses of common sense and only now, looking back, do I see how crucial those were in determining the outcome of the final product. The Genius always owned his mistakes, even when that mistake is, in a moment of pride, sitting at a machine that can easily be sabotaged with Chaos loose in the room.

One time The Genius and I borrowed ten-speeds from The Swimmer and went riding the way bookish kids rarely do. This was well before the time the three of us had been on a conference call, which is what we did before the internet. The Swimmer told The Genius and me to be quiet and added his dad to the call. He asked some innocuous question which his dad answered before adding to wash out the tub after he’s done shaving his legs. We all become victims of our own lapses of judgement, and The Swimmer paid for that one.

The three of us were riding around the neighborhood when the banter paused as we shifted gears and began to climb a hill. The smooth-legged Swimmer and I reached the top and turned around to see The Genius halfway up the incline pushing his bike. We assumed he’d slipped his chain but when he arrived everything was in perfect working condition. We asked what happened and he told us he thought one was supposed to use the hardest gear to go up hills. It’s easy to mistake intelligence for being right.

A few times I was able to cajole The Genius to help me do yard work, something my mom would pay us for. We planted a tree small enough for two teenagers to carry that now stands forty feet tall. My grandfather was a small, strong, capable man. His nickname may have been “Peanut,” but he built his house with his own two hands. He was the kind of guy you might call to get your husband’s body out of the car he gassed himself in, but that’s another story. Peanut was a careful, reliable man and I remember the look in his eyes the day The Genius had electric hedge-trimmers in his hands for less than ten seconds before he cut through the extension cord, showering himself and the yard with sparks. My grandfather just said “Jesus Christ.”

The Genius’s immigrant parents were relatively strict, but they tolerated plenty of shenanigans. The entire family was brilliant. His sister spoke seven languages and went to the same Ivy League University he did. As long as the kids kept their grades up his parents let him have sleepovers where we’d stay up all night playing D&D. They didn’t know how often The Swimmer would bring over a bottle of siphoned gasoline that we’d pour in long streaks down the asphalt in the suburban quiet after midnight before igniting one end and watching the flames race through the darkness.

We’d set fires and sometimes ding-dong-ditch random houses. I’ll tell you now that this is gateway behavior to destroying mailboxes, but what else is to be expected from kids who are intimately familiar with The Anarchist’s Cookbook by freshman year? We occasionally allowed The Nerd access to our group because his father was a chemist and he’d make flares that burned like upside-down rocket engines. In my memory the thin flames rise like miniature Towers of Babel made of roaring light. Do kids these days still burn the night?

We were supposed to be asleep in the Genius's basement one time. We didn’t have any gasoline or explosives but we were certainly hopped up on high fantasy when we decided to attempt to have a silent pillow fight on the pitch-black main level of the house. The Genius made us swear to be quiet no matter what as we didn’t want to wake up his parents. The risk is what made it fun. I found a good spot where the little bit of light coming through the kitchen windows afforded me extra darkness to hide in while providing the brightest view of the room possible. It was extremely dark, but I saw what happened relatively clearly.

The Supreme Intelligence wasn’t just smart. He had vast skills in the visual arts, sang like an angel, and was in very good shape. His parents were incredibly strict. I remember one time helping abduct him after school and taking him to one of the other D&D games I played in. The Dungeonmaster of this game was a sharp kid I’d lose touch with after middle school. A few years later I’d see him at diners talking to people he was now sponsoring in recovery, even though he was still a teen. I can see how that worked out, he was a hell of a storyteller.

When this other group wasn’t roleplaying they were making trouble. These were the first friends I had who would go drinking around bonfires in the woods. I committed at least one felony with them. Looking back I see how the notion that risk and fun are intertwined could lead scratch-off lottery tickets, malt liquor, and sex with strangers later. This was not a group that The Supreme Intelligence’s parents wanted him to associate with. They were very strict and these were the kids who showed me my first porno movie.

Upon arriving at the game The Supreme Intelligence immediately called home to explain why he’d blown off his piano lesson. I suspected he didn’t mention dungeons or dragons as this was well into Satanic Panic and these people wept holy water. The God Squad showed up minutes later to gather the lost sheep back to the flock. You can’t let that kind of potential get tarnished.

I rarely saw The Supreme Intelligence get angry, but he was wound pretty tight, so I can see how the events of the pillow fight unfolded. Separated by the length of the counter I saw the shadow of The Supreme Intelligence enter the kitchen. Moments later I saw The Genius enter the room from the other side. I cannot say with any degree of certainty that The Supreme Intelligence knew who his quarry was when he struck but I can say with surety that The Genius had no idea what hit him.

I’m not saying the kid ever had to stand with bibles stacked on his outstretched hands, but he had the kind of wiry strength that might develop from such a thing. Stress gets people wound up tight and things like academic and religious pressure can build up until it has to explode outward. I’m not saying that’s what I saw happen that night, but it would explain how and why The Supreme Intelligence unleashed a barrage of pillow strikes to The Genius’s head that must have felt like he’d stepped into the ring with a Muhammad Ali made of artificial down.

When the furious assault subsided I saw that they had turned ninety degrees during the one-sided melee. The Genius kept his feet, but stood there disarmed and dazed.

One of the kan-kans that brought this granfalloon together was that we had all read The Hobbit very young. We’d all read a lot and could collectively contextualize, so I think we all recognized what was happening when The Genius sounded his barbaric yawp before charging through the darkness at The Supreme Intelligence, who sidestepped the assault with nimble grace, causing The Genius to slam full-body into the metal side of the washing machine which clanged like thunder in the darkness. The light upstairs came on immediately.

Years later The Genius would chill out drastically. I might put it down to reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but I think it was the realization that accompanied the tedious removal of fruit fly sex organs that really did it, but this was brfore all that. In that moment I saw emotion completely eclipse reason in one of the smartest people I knew and it was beautiful. The washing machine was still vibrating as The Genius’s father came down the stairs yelling. However, that was not the most magnificent display of this phenomenon he ever granted me the gift to witness.

What I’m about to recount happened after a meeting of the literary magazine at The Agent of Chaos’s house. I loved going over there. His parents were not at all strict and it showed in the way he tossed ninja throwing stars at the wall of his attic bedroom. I still have a scar on my shoulder from where I sliced it in his above-ground pool around which a large deck was built. It was a great place to hang out and if you took the bus over after school you might get to see his younger brother fight. I don’t know why he was given the exact same name as a world famous celebrity, but one result of that decision is that the kid had to fight all the way through school.

I bring this up to illustrate that there was little impetus to be on one’s best behavior there, so what happened on the deck makes a little more sense. It was a freezing cold February night when The Genius and I stepped outside with The Agent of Chaos. The house lights illuminated trees, their branches heavy with snow, and the icy slats of the deck underfoot ran toward the great blue circle of the pool, covered for the winter with a tight-fitting tarp.

The meeting had ended at nine and outside was crystal-clear darkness. Our breath hung in the air in luminous clouds. I rubbed my shoulder and thought about how I’d cut myself the previous summer splashing around out here and how it hadn’t healed right. The scar would stay an angry red for decades. The Genius hadn’t been there that day, this was his first time here. He’d never thrown any ninja stars into the wall, which I think would have been good for him.

It was a gorgeous, perfect night, but we had barely a moment to feel the cold on our faces before The Genius exclaimed “A trampoline!” What happened next played out in my mind before it happened in reality and what happened happened so fast that I don’t remember yelling or even reacting, just watching the incredible moment unfold.

The Genius yelled “A trampoline!” and sprinted across the deck toward the taut pool-cover. He leapt into the air and came crashing down on top of the vinyl, immediately breaking through it and sinking into the icy water beneath.

Reading allows one to rapidly absorb the experiences of others and incorporate them into their own understanding of the world. I read a lot and The Genius read more than me. I know for a fact that in all those tomes of speculative fiction and philosophy and memoir and science, not once was there a house featuring a gigantic trampoline bereft of any safety measures as the centerpiece of a family’s outdoor leisure time. Neither parent was a trampoline instructor and none of the children were pursuing Olympic trampoline dreams. Despite all of that The Genius saw what looked like a trampoline so he jumped. In Dungeons & Dragons intelligence and wisdom are two different things.

The Genius was fine after toweling off and changing his clothes. Years later he’s even better. Or at least I think he is. I lost touch with all of them as you do, and that’s fine. I don’t know where any of them are or what they’re doing, except for The Genius. One might say he’s exceeded expectations with the awards and accolades and transformation of the world, but I don’t think so. I think if you knew him back then you’d see how it’s just the beginning for him, for any of us, for you, for me, even. These are the lessons I learned from The Genius.