Say My Name – Non Fiction Short Story

This is the story of my transformation.

Now I know what you’re thinking—“Whoa there man, you’re being overdramatic.” You know what? You’re probably right. This tale might not count as a real story of transformation to you, after all some stories transform frogs into people, others tell of mouse wizards who turn brooms into servants, and the most famous one has a crucified dead man transform into a walking proselytizing ghost in three days. Sure. This story is nowhere near as dramatic and romantic as the others, you’re right about that.

At least my story actually happened.

One non-suspect day in band, the director had us play “Endurance” by Timothy Mahr—a piece set in alternating undulating rhythms with a very complicated time signature and beautiful sectional interludes that crossfade among each other. I play the bassoon, but I greatly appreciated the beautiful sounds coming from the flute and trombone section, notes that oscillated up and down a scale while a deep bass note shifted slowly. And then When I heard a glorious lick by the trumpets, I wanted to share in that beautiful moment with the baritone saxophonist beside me.

“Wow, that's a really cool sound I've never heard before!”

“Yeah, you would've known if you showed up more often!” he retorted with a dumb grin on his face.

I sat there and said absolutely nothing.

Alight, let me explain what the hell just happened. The guy who just gave me the kind gift of embarrassment, humiliation, and a frog in my throat was Michael Greene, hereafter referred to as Mike. All I wanted was to express my admiration for the piece. Nothing more. Instead, I received a metaphoric right hook to my self-esteem.

You see, Mike was a cemented senior, loved by the masses, and entrenched in the clique known as Wind Ensemble. He played baritone sax and gave me a hard time ever since I got to school. You could say he’s a bully, but bullies only exist in elementary school, middle school, and high school. By the time everyone gets to college, the word bully disappears. Instead you get jocks, frat bros, and douche bags. Through some stroke of fate, Mike happened to be all three of those things.

To be fair, it wasn’t the first time Mike made it clear that he held people with attendance exceptions in no favor. Whenever the director made a quip about one section having less-than-stellar personnel showing up, Mike would chime in and give his two cents to the reply of a chorus of class laughter. For anyone else in the band, I wouldn’t have thought any further into it. However in Mike’s case, I saw how he acted as if his stellar ability to just show up all the time made him more integral, better member of the band. In other words, on a grunt level, Mike always felt the need to make it known that he was better than me.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “You’re overanalyzing this.” Again, you’re probably right but at least I have a valid excuse. Last year I was diagnosed with Major Depression with Anxious Distress, DSM-V 296.22 with caution that I’ve most likely had this condition for years. Yeah. I know I overthink things. I’ve overthought every little thought for as long as I could remember. If I was the last person picked on the kickball team, I would assume nobody liked me as a person. Of course the reality is that they just wanted the more talented players on their team. If people gave me dirty looks after I received the highest grade in the class, I would assume nobody liked me as a person. More probably they were just jealous of me and coincidentally had dirty looks on their faces. I could go on and on. But what I’m trying to say is that I know I could be overthinking Mike’s verbal sucker punch. If I was years younger and much more inexperienced with my anxiety, you’d probably be right. I would’ve thought he didn’t like me as a person. On the other hand, I’ve struggled through anxiety for years. I’ve perfected the art of knowing exactly when I’m letting my anxiety get the best of me, and when I’m actually on to something.

That time? I was on to something big.

Now before I think about what I know you’re going to say, lemme just get this little bit out. At that moment right after Mike socked me in the jaw of my self esteem, I didn’t throw any punches back. I didn’t stand up for myself. You see, most kids are taught that when someone insults you, your best bet is to retaliate with an insult in return. That way they understand that they shouldn’t mess with you. It’s kind of like two male bulls with giant horns—if you’re a bull and you see another bull charging at you, you must charge right back for your own safety! It’s also the same as the principle of war. If someone strikes out at you with the intent to kill, do you not have the right to strike first to prevent it?

All of this is nothing more than excitations of power.

In that moment I had made a connection between Mike’s insult to that of power. When Mike threw that insult at me, it was simply a way for him to exert his power over me. As soon as I gave him a soft opening by commenting on how nice the band sounded, he used his power of being a senior, his attendance record, and being integral to the band dynamic to bruise my self-esteem. After all, for that moment I was just a junior, I had a tendency to show up only on Tuesdays, and I played the bassoon—which was never an important part of the wind ensemble sound.

To him, I was nobody. I was powerless.

It’s no wonder that Mike threw that punch. He could get away with it and he knew it. He was more powerful than me. How could I ever get up after such a beat down?

Now I know what you’re thinking. “If I already saw that connection between Mike’s insult to his power, why didn’t I do anything to stop it? If I know he’s throwing me an insult, why didn’t I throw one back? If he’s charging at me with his bull horns at full speed, shouldn’t I protect myself by doing the same thing? If he intended to bruise my self esteem, then did I not have the right to bruise it first to prevent it from happening to me?”

Yes. Yes. And yes.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t because I know power is toxic.

You see, power is nothing more than the ability to change something. Power can be strength, like that time the US changed a functioning society in Iraq to a desert wasteland at the turn of the millennium. Power can be money, especially when people use it to change their sobriety into a heroin addiction on the streets of Chicago. Power can even be words, capable of changing peaceful countrymen into psychopathic Aryan supremacists in Europe.

It’s for reasons like this that I've never had a high opinion of power, especially to use it on other people. It's uncivil, tragic, and plainly wrong—yet people exert power over others every single day! Parents scold their kids and then wonder why their children resent them. Governments struggle to maintain order in their society and wonder why they’re accused of police brutality. Bullies verbally insult their peers and then they wonder why they continue to feel empty inside. I just don’t understand it. I mean, I do, but I don’t understand why people do it. People’s lives depend on power.

Power is toxic.

Now I know what you must be thinking. “Oh, but what about all those good people who use power for good things? Power can’t be all bad, can it?” No, I suppose it isn’t all bad. Let me repeat that again. I suppose. You and I only assume that these so called good people are using this so called power for so called good things. This is just assumptions! What about the hard reality?

I’ve been stepped on by powerful people for all of my life! You see, this is what happens to me. Instead of being gently let down by my peers when they disagree with something I have to say, I get squashed and ideologically ganged up on. Instead of gently ignoring my presence, the socialites boo me off stage by throwing me you-can’t-sit-here looks and go-away glances. Instead of giving me the silent treatment for when I make a mistake, people spit in my face and rub it in my nose. This has been my narrative for as long as I remember. And dare I say it? It’s probably yours as well. We’ve both been shafted by the tainted stick of power.

And so I hated power.

But…

After a while, I realized that I hated being stepped on even more.

So there I was, beaten down, and out of the fight—and I finally decided that I had God damn enough of this treatment. I wanted to take back my life somehow, so I tried thinking about people who had been stepped on and then turned it around. The first name that came to mind was Walter White.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Walter White is a terrible human being! He’s a drug lord, murderer, and psychopath!” Yes, yes, and yes, right again. You’re just so smart, aren’t you? But remember that Walter White wasn’t always the drug-cooking, mass-murdering psychopath that he was by the end of the show. He used to be just Walter White.

Walter White just wanted to practice chemistry, the study of change, but what happened to him in his early life is absolutely tragic. He was a Nobel Prize winner, a cofounder of the multimillion dollar biochemical firm, and lover to an intelligent and attractive woman. As the plot summary describes, none of this was ‘meant to be’. Personally I would have written that his live was ‘stolen from him’. Walter White didn’t simply miss out on the better life, he was robbed and beaten mercilessly away from what was rightfully his. Instead of a Nobel Prize, millions of dollars, and a happy marriage, Walter White became a high school teacher who struggled to pay bills, a washout yuppie who sold his share of the budding company, and a mediocre man who married a mediocre wife. The oppressive power of unpaid bills robbed him of a life of practicing real chemistry. The crushing power of his son’s handicapped needs stepped on his dreams of living rich. And then the overpowering weight of his wife’s whims stamped out the rest of his dreams and autonomy.

Just like how the power of Mike’s words punched my spirit into the ground.

For the rest of the class I was brought back to the defining moments of Walter’s story. The first of which happened after he got his cancer diagnosis. I remember what he said after he got the ‘talking pillow’. He said that he knew he had never really made any of his own choices, like his entire life had passed him by without ever stopping to consider what he actually wanted out of it.

Walter White was powerless. It’s no wonder Heisenberg took his place a few seasons later in the TV show.

If you’ve not seen Breaking Bad, I’ll spare you the details. Heisenberg is the name of Walter’s alter ego. He initially used it as a fake name when he did his business deals with drug lords, but it eventually came to symbolize the power that the actual Walter White never had before. Where Walter White used to teach high school students unwillingly, Heisenberg refined the purest meth because he wanted perfection. Where Walter White was responsible for raising a mediocre son, Heisenberg was the cornerstone of a multi-million dollar empire. And where Walter White bent to the whims of his wife at every stage in his life, Heisenberg never took orders from anybody, and asserted himself above all others.

As I sat there hearing the power of Mike’s words ring in my head, I realized the similarities between me and Walter White; the difference between me and Mike; the difference between me and Heisenberg. Walter White hated power. Heisenberg hated being stepped on. Heisenberg won.

I realized what I had to do.

Then the final note of the rehearsal hit. The director bid us all farewell, and I watched Mike rise from his seat and fist bump one of his buddies in another section across the room. He left and I just bided my time with my stand partners

“Will I see you tomorrow in Orchestra?” I asked as I gathered the loose music sheets together.

“Probably not man, I’ve got a lot of shit to do this week,” Eric said, exhaustion prevalent in his breath. “Senior thesis, about three quizzes, and a paper. Fuck my life. Let Professor D know, alright?”

“Yeah, will do,” I responded. “See ya.”

As he left me to my devices, I couldn’t help but visualize Heisenberg at one of his finest moments as I took apart my instrument and gathered my belongings.

When the body of Walter White approached the drug distributer Declan in the desert to negotiate a new meth empire, it wasn’t the powerless Walter White who spoke. It was the powerful and mighty Heisenberg who took his place—whose name was known and feared throughout the entire American Midwest. When Declan asked who the hell Walter was, he knew exactly what to say.

“You know. You all know exactly who I am. Say my name.”

I shifted the sheets of music together and visualized Heisenberg’s confident face.

“Do what?—No. I don’t know. I don’t have a damn clue who you are.”

As I folded the music folder closed I pictured Declan’s witless face on Mike.

“Yeah you do.”

I smiled and took off the bell of my instrument.

“I’m the cook. I’m the man who killed Gus Fring.”

I’m the man who’s starting to feel good about myself.

“Bullshit. Cartel got him.”

I closed the case on all of the instrument pieces.

“Are you sure? No? That’s right. Now. Say my name.”

I methodically left the band room, deposited my instrument back in its locker and then left the music department.

“You’re Heisenberg.”

Before Mike could turn away from one of the band officers to leave, I saw him standing in the hallway. I decided that I would confront Mike the same way Walter White confronted Declan in the desert.

“You’re god damn right.”

It was now or never.

“Hey Mike, can I pull you aside for a minute?”

“Yeah what's up?”

Remember. Power is toxic.

“This is gonna sound a bit confrontational, and it is. I don't have to be here.”

“Oh, no! Dude it was a joke, I was just joking I—”

And I hate power.

“I know. And I don't have to be here. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

But you know what?

“Good. Now… who am I?”

“Uh... Uh, you’re Chris Carl?”

I hate being stepped on even more.

“Good.”

“I’m glad we established that.”