The vandal, part 1
They will come for your first grade bronze roof and your daughters
Around 400 AD the Western Roman Empire was pretty much cooked. Rome had already been sacked twice, but the third sack was the heaviest: the 455 AD edition, which lasted a whooping 14 days.
The people responsible were the Vandals, nomads coming from Germany and Poland, but actually taking the long road through Spain and northern Africa. The pillaging was so terrible that from their name the term vandalism was coined: the deliberate destruction of other people’s property, often done for fun and without any real reason.
There are certain workplaces where good news basically doesn’t exist. When your boss comes up to you with a friendly look to tell you “there’s some news,” you already know it’s going to be a shit day. And that’s exactly how it was that day: a nice convention with the ITS D’Annunzio institute to “occupy” the suspended kids.
Doing what?
Socially useful work.
What the fuck is that?
Don’t know. It’s up to you. Make them do something, like, you know woodworks.
Are you insane? Giving them power tools?
Well maybe you can make them just use sandpaper.
My parasympathetic system made it very clear: my asshole clenched. It clenched for good when they gave me the description of the first kid they were sending.
So, what this fella did?
He’s a vandal.
In what sense?
A boy suspended for acts of vandalism.
Example?
One morning he brought a wrench to school in his backpack and waved it in front of the face of someone who was bothering him. He threatened to smash his skull.
That doesn’t sound like vandalism to me. Sounds more like plain violence.
Technically for the school it is. Otherwise they should have called the cops.
And they didn’t called the cops because…
Because it was vandalism. Cut that shit.
Anyway, we still had to take him in. And don’t let the name “Istituto Tecnico Scientifico” (Technical Scientifical Institute) fool you: we’re not talking about Sheldon Cooper here. In a place like that they didn’t even have books. The kids went there to study mechanics just to stay off the streets. Basically it’s the membrane that separates you from a life in the jaws of social service.
But the truly incredible thing was when I found myself standing right in front of him. I had prepared for the worst: the classic phenotype. I was expecting a big, tall guy, physically dominant, dressed in black and white. Expensive clothes, curly black hair drenched in gel. Pimples, zero cooperation.
Highly physical.
One of the problems they have at school with these kids is that they are too physical. They bust their ass non-stop at the gym, they clash, they fight. You see them around: they’re sitting on a bench smoking a joint, they’re friends, but then one gets up and starts kneeing his buddy. You notice with deep sadness that he must have watched some MMA or Muay Thai clips on YouTube, and he’s trying to land these flying knees, and there are no girls around to impress, so you ask yourself: why is he doing this?
Because they are highly physical. You can’t even go to the amusement park; they are constantly glaring at each other, shoving each other. It always looks like they’re about to fight, but they don’t. What is that? GTA5, Roblox, the UFC? When I was their age, I didn’t give a shit about fighting. I cared about music, stupid art crap, pussy, PS1, weed, drinking by the hose and shit. You could get pretty much all of it easily enough, except for the pussy. I had friends who were generally into that.
“[Gaiseric,] arriving in Rome..., took possession of the palace... [...and] took Eudoxia prisoner, along with Eudocia and Placidia, her daughters with Valentinian, and, after loading a vast amount of gold and other imperial treasures onto his ships, he set sail for Carthage, having spared neither the bronze nor anything else in the entire palace. He even plundered the temple of Jupiter Capitoline and stripped off half of its roof. Now, this roof was of the finest grade of bronze... But of Gaiseric’s ships, one, which was carrying the statues, was lost, so they say, but the Vandals reached the port of Carthage with all the others.” (Procopius, History of the Wars, III, 5.)
The fact is: the dude was not menacing at all. He was probably 5 feet 6, and must’ve weight 130 pounds with wet clothes.
Salvatore, nicknamed Salvo. Means “saviour”, nicknamed “safe”. I realize this while i’m writing it down here. Strange, indeed.
But this didn’t do the least to relax either my parasympathetic nervous system or my asshole: my generation knows very well that the internet’s height-related neurosis is bullshit. Because another internet neurosis is partly true: in educational settings, a sort of “alphas” exist, only we call them “prima donnas”. The ones who take center stage at the opera. When one prima donna leaves, another one immediately arrives, and more than height, it’s charisma that matters, the desire to piss off educators because your parents didn’t spanked you enough as a child, or they spanked you way too many.
Or didn’t kissed you enough.
The fact is: a short guy can be just as dangerous as a big guy, and the fact that he knew he had to overcome his fitness with a wrench, well, the fact spoke for itself.
Another common trait of the guys like this: they have a series of common features, we call them “the bullet list.”
Severe smartphone addiction. It kept coming out like some fucking card pulled out from the sleeve by Houdini at a redneck county fair. One minute that bastard was in the pocket, in the drawer, in the backpack, then, just like that, bam, suddenly it’s in his hand.
He goes to the gym to “bulk up.” Looked like a lie, given he was a scrawny little thing, but fit in the bullet list.
He has a dirt bike even though he’s not allowed to ride it. No one understands why the scuttlefuck parents buy those for kids when they’re not even 16 yet.
He basically doesn’t know how to write by hand.
A big part of the educational work revolves around the fact that he refuses to do any activity that might dirty his expansive tracksuit, like painting wood.
The other part is making sure he never smokes those shitty cigarettes: because he just can’t. And that’s where things get real messy: “you just can’t” is a dangerous, dangerous territory, an Area 51, a no man’s land. It’s not allowed. It’s illegal. “Everyone does it.” Nope. “I won’t do it here, I’ll just smoke when I’m out.” Nope. “Your coworker lets me do it.” Nope. “Come on, I won’t tell anyone.” Nope. “I’ll close myself in the bathroom, you can’t do shit.” Nope. “Please, come on.” Nope. And on it goes. Dude acts like he’s studied Heidegger, Kant, and Popper just to craft some whole damn thesis on ethics.
He has a desperate need for attention. This often mixes with his extreme physicality: out of nowhere, he’ll suddenly start doing push-ups or similar exercises.
He has a girlfriend (this is its own sub-list):
She’s not the first one and all of them are under social services.
He says he’s the love of his life and wants to marry her and grow old and die by her side (they’ve been together for 3 months).
They have an app that lets them track each other’s location in real time.
Alright, that last part struck me as the worst, the one we really needed to dig into especially in a scene like ours, all desperation and squalor. I mean, two things that just don’t mix: carrying a wrench in your backpack and being possessive over your girl. It got to me ‘cause another guy from the Desertic Wastelands, one of ours, was wrapped up in some real dark shit.
I’ll tell you about it later, but spoiler: it ain’t no joke. There’s a dead body in the mix, and it all went down less than four years back.
That’s exactly what set off my spider-sense: the whole “carrying a weapon in your backpack” thing.
Yeah, I already mentioned it: there was a body involved.
For most people, “vandals” are just the assholes who trash or at least mess with other folks’ stuff. But back sixteen centuries ago, they were actually the most polished and sophisticated bunch among the tribes that “invaded” the Western Roman Empire. So what the hell happened? When did the Vandals turn into vandals?
It all kicked off in 395, when Theodosius I died and the empire got split into East and West. The first “barbarians” to blow up the shaky alliance with Rome were the Visigoths, led by General Alarico, who in 410 went full berserker. The rest of the tribes didn’t waste any time. But their run in southern Spain was over almost before it began: squeezed by the Visigoths, King Gaiseric pulled his people across the Strait of Gibraltar in 429. And then, in the 455 AD, Vandals where born.
But who is a Vandal?