Rant

formed between sunny weather and the number of boys suffering from painful penile erections. At issue wasn’t the penises, but the failure to occlude them while in their turgid state. Furthermore, the district’s legal counsel advised that a dress code requiring constraining, modest, fully binding undergarments would be impossible to enforce and serve the negative purpose of drawing increased attention to the issue.
    Our chief effort intended to deal with the issue of engorged phalluses obliquely and indirectly. Legal counsel advised no direct condemnation of erections on school property. No district representative was to acknowledge or attempt to mask or resolve any obvious erections.
    Cammy Elliot: The biggest secret in Rant’s life was his clothes. At home, he had a closet full of shirts and pants and jeans and vests. The hangers packed together so close the closet rod sagged in the middle from the weight. The trouble was, Irene Casey couldn’t not be creative. She wouldn’t not express herself. She was always trying some new skill, embroidering sunflowers and ivy leaves. Smiling half-moons and stars. Trying iron-on patches or colors of glitter paint. Chrome rivets. Batik and tie-dye. Mrs. Casey would sit up half a night, hunched over and stitching herself blind in bad light, trying to make regular clothes into something special.
    Wouldn’t hurt Rant’s pride to wear rainbow glitter and embroidery to high school, but he couldn’t tolerate what kids said about his ma’s work. Kids saying she was a terrible artist. Saying she had no kind of talent. He wasn’t wearing his heart on his sleeve. It’s more like she’d sewed her own heart on Rant’s sleeve.
    Logan Elliot ( Childhood Friend): Casey had the crowd of us whipped into a frantic. Shouting equal rights for hard-ons, saying how we’re oppressed, and burning jock straps in the school parking lot.
    Leif Jordan ( Childhood Friend): Rant advocating for us, our demands included a therapeutic, all-hours lunchroom, since it’s a known impossibility to eat food and maintain a woody. We asked for nothing short of equal recognition of our biological…But the next word stumped us. Should we say “obstacles”? “Handicaps”? “Disabilities”? This last word, we tortured over.
    We finally settled on the word “burden,” asking for “full and equal recognition of the burden inherent in the male anatomy.” Hearing how “burden” sounded fine and noble.
    Bodie Carlyle: Not much in all his dry years of algebra had trained Mr. W to deal with a potentially life-threatening emergency boner situation. Being displayed as a geometry idiot, or sporting wood in class—either way, you were trading away your dignity. At least this way it was Rant posing the tough problem and Wyland forced to sweat out the figuring with all those eyes waiting on him.
    Leif Jordan: We’d maybe talk some doctor into calling it “chronic boner syndrome.”
    Mary Cane Harvey ( Teacher): Rant Casey told me himself: “This here’s my inoculation against ever being embarrassed and humiliated in geometry, ever again.”
    Cammy Elliot: Had kids, politelike, raising their hand to say, “Beg pardon, Miss Harvey…” Saying, “I’d enjoy nothing more than diagramming that lovely sentence, but I’m suffering a chunk of pig iron so beet red it’s starting to pain me…”
    Cross my heart. Kids said, “Could be, if I got myself a breath of fresh air…” Until half the class was outside.
    Lowell Richards: Instructors hesitated in prompting full participation from male students out of the anxiety that students required to stand might exhibit inappropriate arousal, generating classroom disruption and undermining the instructor’s authority.
    Sheriff Bacon Carlyle ( Childhood Enemy): If we were talking about naturally sprung boners, that would be another kettle of fish. But these here were store-bought, chemically engineered woodies sprouted on purpose to disrupt the peaceful classroom environment.
    Lowell Richards: Though it was widely rumored that certain students abused medications designed to treat erectile dysfunction, legal counsel advised that no just cause existed for requiring that students submit urine for drug testing. Legal counsel cautioned that, though some tumescence may result from illegally obtained prescription drugs, the majority of genital arousal was naturally occurring and thus protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. On advice from the school