Under Pressure

In the hands of a truly talented person graffiti can be elevated to an art form.  My high school buddies were not artists and they didn't claim to be.  They didn't even call what they did graffiti, it was graffilthy and they took pride in their work. Their medium was black Sharpie marker, their canvas any surface in the school where they could scrawl the names of their favorite heavy metal bands without getting caught.  

Somehow during senior year they managed to get their hands on a master key to the school that gave them access to the locked bathrooms in the shop wing where they could safely create their own Sistine chapels in Sharpie on the bathroom walls and stalls.  Metallica, Iron Maiden, Dio and Black Sabbath. Sistine chapel?  Maybe more like Neanderthal cave painting:  crude but effective.

They hit their targets with such ferocity it fed rumors the perpetrators were a gang or even a satanic cult, but it was just a couple of stoned metalheads with markers.  During lunch hour they'd share their latest exploits outside over borrowed cigarettes.  I thought they were crazy . . . entertaining, but crazy.  I didn't smoke but rain or shine I was usually out with the smokers. It beat the claustrophobic cafeteria.  Besides, that's where the best stories were.

One day after listening to them describe their latest adventure I must have made some smart remark  because they dared me to join them.  Next came the part when I was supposed to say that they were idiots and walk away.  That crap might work in an after school tv special but in the real world kids under pressure cave.  I'd like to tell myself that I was stronger than that but I'd be lying.

I said that it wasn’t my style but they goaded and goaded me until I caved in.  I grabbed a Sharpie, walked to the front of the building and emblazoned the four stainless steel  doors of our school with the letters of one of my favorite bands at the time.  It wasn't until after I finished the last letter that I realized the stupidity of what I'd done: R.I.O.T.

We all do reckless shit when we're young.  My graffilthy artists never got caught.  Even if they had it’s likely they wouldn't have gotten more than a slap on the wrist.  They probably would have been ordered to clean up their mess and pay a small fine.  I might not have been so lucky.  Inciting a riot is a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison.  

So the guys who'd been secretly defiling our school for months get away clean and I, who was dumb enough to write four letters in broad daylight get taken down as the mastermind behind the whole thing?  R.I.O.T. was my first and last attempt at graffiti.  You only get one chance to be that stupid . . .