Fruitcake.

A story of rural NZ tough kid awesomeness.

So there I was, a young man….

There was a calm creative time in my life at 15 when I was still at school, living in a house and not on the streets training for a Mad Max future and experimenting with ways to fuck myself up.

A time where I had a good group of friends, that I ran In a very regular Dungeons and Dragons game. I had respect, comradery and we had a lot of fun.

Instead of the grind life of the gutter, there was companionship and warmth.

I still hated all things normal and middle class and would always seek out the fringe people and ingratiate myself with them.

One guy I decided to take into my regular Dungeons and Dragons game ( to the horror of my players ) was called Fruitcake by the others at school.

We were your regular small-town New Zealand 15 year olds secretly playing Dungeons and Dragons at home while pretending to be normal by playing rugby at lunchtime at school.

We had a good thing going - 10 am to 7 pm Saturdays and Sundays and every moment of every holiday. Some of the kids rode for 2 hours on their rusty bikes through horizontal sleet along a gravel road to get to my house in the full blown wilderness. We had a good thing going...

Why did I invite Fruitcake?

Well, many reasons... One, because he was a new kid to our school and a weirdo and thus a potential friend, and as a weirdo he was one of my own. He had heard us whispering about D and D and he was all up on it and had expressed his great interest in playing.

Two, because he would wear a leather tank top to school and had a blond mullet and muscles. Like some kind of Miniature Conan.

Three, because he was intelligent and creative.

Four, his nickname had permeated the school to such a degree that very few people could honestly recall his real name.

One kid made a speech as a class project about making fruit cakes with the sole purpose of embarrassing and humiliating the guy.

At the end of the speech after the teacher had left the room Fruitcake calmly walked over to the guy and unleashed a sudden flurry of face and head punches upon him. Then he dragged the guy by the throat over to the open window and forced him out of it, calmly ignoring the guy’s struggles and pleading and giving him a whack or two to get him out.

The half-unconscious guy fell from the 8 foot high window and landed on his back, there was a silence then a super long pain scream. He was carried to the sick bay and did not come back to school for the rest of the week.

I immediately ran to the principal’s office to tell him a story of a really intelligent caring guy pushed to the edge by one clown’s callousness.

I was the head of the debating team and I should have got a cup for my efforts that day.

The principal took Fruitcake into his office and told him off and then sent him home for the day. But I think he was secretly proud.

The principal also hated that smart ass who got beat.

I was on a huge high all day and used my skills as an Orator to proclaim Fruitcake’s Victory to all at the school. “Bashed by a Fruitcake” was the name of my soapbox speech.

On the merit of the eradication of one of our enemies, my players agreed to let him in on the game.

He made a character for the game. And the character was female. This was so novel and unusual that my players were having second thoughts and they seriously doubted his sanity. I had to let on that he had a crossbow to bring them around.

We decided to play at his house downtown which was a medium-sized tin shed. This is the NZ equivalent of living in a trailer park. As soon as you know some family lives in a converted shed, you know exactly what’s going on.

We all arrived and the first thing he did was angrily smack his dad around, yelling at him for being a useless cunt. His tiny dad just cowered from him.

We just stared … this was insane.

Then he went and got a bottle of Black Heart rum from his side of the room - poured himself a cup of it, added blue food coloring, and downed it in one gulp, followed by a blue-mouthed battle scream.

Then he put on a plastic Viking helmet.

He was ready.

I got the game ready. The players were assaulting The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. And playing in this creepy kids’ tin shed just added to the terror. He had a crossbow on the wall and a pretty cool-looking homemade steel sword... which he was now waving about to punctuate his excitement and show how he was killing the monsters.

The guys roleplaying was flawless. He cooperated fully, had most of the great ideas, was valorous in battle, and was generous with treasure. He saved each player at least once and the game was one of the best I have EVER played.

At the end of the game as we were heading off he took his crossbow outside and within 30 seconds had shot a feral cat through the neck at 30 paces.

PETA disclaimer: Feral cats are the scourge of New Zealand. They eat all the nice and pretty endangered flightless birds. It’s good to kill them. I probably won’t write stories about my years as a feral cat killer though… it’s a different time now…

So he was a LEGEND in my mind.

So cool.

My players thought differently though.

They just could not get over the fact that he was playing a female character. So they voted him out. His other behavior did not worry them much - I was their Dungeon Master, and they had seen worse.

He and I remained good friends though and continued to share adventures and tales, but within a few months, he went full twisted drifter hobo and disappeared from school.

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Now on writing this I had to find out what happened to him!

Just found him on Facebook. Short hair, tough muscle bound redneck, two kids, lives in small-town New Zealand. Facebook stalk shows he still takes no shit from anyone and all the MMA pictures of the gym he goes to prove this.

One of those born in the wrong era guys for sure.

Fruitcake, I salute you.

Your youthful Viking example increased my inner strength by 27%.

Go well and Live Strong Fruitcake.

END

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