Creating Yanzek Hestal
How the world's greatest unknown superhero immortalized a friendship.
The greatest superhero you’ve never heard of was born into a family of reindeer herders in a small village in Finland’s frozen north. When Yanzek Hestal emerged from his mother’s body, newspapers reported that he neither kicked nor screamed. Instead, he glowed, covered from head to toe in thick strands of golden hair that, seconds later, came together to form a pulsating orb around his skull. One paper described it as “a golden afro.”
By three months old, Yanzek had mastered his native Sami language and could converse in at least a dozen other tongues, from ancient Greek to modern English. By 10, his IQ topped Da Vinci’s. The Dalai Lama sought his tutelage, and he traveled from Finland to Tibet in world-record time…on foot. Yanzek’s international fame grew when, at 12, he became the first person to earn a doctorate from Yale, win the Nobel Peace Prize, and medal in the Winter Olympics before starting puberty.
He was a sight, this Yanzek Hestal. The British media reported him as being 7-feet-tall and weighing just 120 pounds. His cheeks were enduringly rosy, his features soft but serious like those of a ceramic doll that had come to life.
Despite accumulating fabulous wealth through his various intellectual and physical achievements, Yanzek eschewed leisure. Rather than attending school or retiring in his youthful prime, he turned his attention to crime fighting. Pirates cowered outside Mogadishu; neither common pickpockets nor international crime syndicates were safe with Yanzek on the prowl. “He is the real-life fusion of our greatest heroes: James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan,” The New York Times reported following his second Nobel Peace Prize at 15.
Few pictures exist today of Yanzek’s exploits—the cameras of the early 2000s were not equipped with shutter speeds fast enough to capture his frenetic, gazelle-like movements. But he always showed out in press conferences, donning his full superhero’s garb: green tights, which he credited for his speed and agility, turquoise ballet flats to creep up on his enemies undetected, a cherry cape handsewn by an admirer from the East. His crimefighting gadgets were stored in a pink fanny pack at his waist. He kept a second set within his afro, which scientists at Oxford speculate was the true source of his genius. They called it the Coif of Life.
By 18, when most teenagers were finishing high school and preparing for college or careers, Yanzek was a hot commodity in the global market, relentlessly courted into positions of Chief This-or-That Officer by governments the world over. Rumors swirled about him taking over the United Nations, or at the very least, purchasing a Pacific paradise—Fiji and Vanuatu proposed as much— from which to develop his plan for world peace or domination. Yanzek chose neither. Instead, he elected to split his time between his ancestral homeland, where he helped his parents with the reindeer, and the unremarkable urban jungle of Bayonne, New Jersey. It is from that city—my city—that Yanzek vanished into thin air more than 13 years ago.
I know the true story of Yanzek Hestal because, while in Bayonne, he befriended two buffoons who would later become his biographers. Some say they might have even been his best friends. They were Bertrando Cunoveri and Maverick Hensson.
I know this because I was Betrando.
It sounds silly to say it today, with a master’s degree and six years as a university professor under my belt, but my senior year at BHS remains the most fruitful learning year of my life.
The first two periods of my day were spent in European history with Mr. Szyposzynski and honors English with Mrs. Merkowski. After third-period psychology, I crossed land and sea to get to anthropology with Mr. Dunn, a middle-aged globetrotter with bronze skin and a flat-top haircut whose approach to teaching was the filibuster. At least three times a week, he’d share a detailed description of his various brushes with death during scuba diving travails through the Turks and Caicos and other tropical islands whose existence even Wikipedia cannot verify. We cherished him for his dedication to wearing Hawaiian shirts in winter and humoring us when we suggested he petition to become the White King of the West Indies.
After lunch and gym, our trio—because there is little Jeremy, Mickey, and I didn’t do together our senior year—had AP government with Mr. Prezioso, the coming-of-age film version of every grumpy but inspirational high school history teacher, with his half-tucked dress shirts, coffee-stained ties, and disillusioned rambles about the future of American education. (A year before, he had kindled my love of literature in the dual English–History honors course he taught with Mr. Sweeney, a meaner old guy.)
Our final class of the day was journalism with Ms. Z, who was funny, cool, and just a few years older than us. Naturally, we all developed crushes on her. Besides letting us watch Love Actually in class, she entertained our frequent and absurd inquiries into her personal life. She even defended me when our principal, Mr. Baccarella, tried to censor the paper she ran after I used the line “as bad as the dead animal carcass” on Donald Trump’s head in a story (my true sin, she explained, was redundancy).
Once, Ms. Z brought back newspapers from a trip to England to teach us about journalism abroad. Before handing them over, she cut out all the pictures of boobs, which was disappointing, though not as deflating as when my friends and I discovered the real reason for her visit was not our education but to see her English boyfriend, who she then informed us would be dropping in from across the pond before year’s end.
On that fateful day, Mickey, Jeremy, and I walked stoically and single-file into the classroom. The path to the back desks was clogged by the comatose bodies of our female classmates who had mistaken Lee for David Beckham. We eluded them and took our seats, from which we proceeded to launch a series of pre-coordinated attacks, veiled in the form of questions in the Englishman’s direction.
Jeremy opened. “What are your intentions with our teacher, Mr. Waller?” he asked. “You know she has responsibilities here in America, right?” Mickey followed up, outlining the calamity that might befall the paper (and our lives) if he were to take her away. Still, Lee didn’t flinch. We prodded him about his job, his relationship with his mother, and his football club. “You like Chelsea? Interesting,” I said, contorting my face to demonstrate just how unimpressed I was that he supported the plaything of a Russian oligarch, the equivalent of cheering for Goliath in his battle against David.
That did it.
He hesitated for just a second before justifying himself, claiming he’d supported them like way before they were owned by an oil tycoon. “Stop being jerks,” shouted a female classmate who’d awoken from her coma. Soon enough, they were all jumping to Lee’s defense. Before Mickey could get in another question, another girl blushed and asked, “So…do you know any of the Spice Girls?” Our opportunity was gone, and I’m sad to report that our noble plan backfired. At the time of writing, Ms. Z has taken the Englishman’s last name and borne two of his children. Rats!
While journalism class was the bee’s knees, the pinnacle of senior year was Advanced Creative Writing Online with Mrs. Giovinazzo. The format was simple: every month, we’d submit one piece of short fiction based on her instructions. In between, we’d read articles and write discussion posts about different elements of writing that, based on the days and hours I’ve spent rewriting each of the previous sentences, I’ve entirely ignored. I only met Mrs. G in person one time, but she managed to make the biggest impression on me. Because she did the greatest thing any teacher could do for a curious weirdo at 17: she stoked the flames of my delusion and asked for more.
Not once did Mrs. G penalize me for disobeying the rules of grammar. She did not cover my stories in red ink when I misused big words I’d just learned from the Thesaurus. When I meandered off into sidecountry with ludicrous descriptions of unimportant details, like the Great Dunn before me, she did not beg me to get back to the point. She applauded the effort and told me there was richer soil for me to till. She knew, before even I did, there was a storyteller in here yearning to get out.
Unlike every other year of high school, Mickey, Jeremy, and I no longer had to bury our true identities under the facades we fabricated to become attractive to girls or cool to upperclassmen. By August, we’d be off to college to befriend big fish from nicer ponds. We’d write our paths away from Bayonne into the greener grasses beyond. Senior year was about having fun before childhood was over forever. And the greatest coincidence is that by doing that, instead of worrying about my grades or reputation, I was a better student than I’d ever been before (or have been since).
The idea to create Yanzek Hestal was Mickey’s. He suggested it in December after Mrs. G had assigned us a story on the theme of Christmas. “What if we did a two-part story?” he said on our parents’ landline that night. “I write the first part, and you write the second.” I was down, and so was Mrs. G, who responded, “Sounds great!” when we emailed her about collaborating on a story about a superhero based on the third member of our trio, who was also in her class but had no idea of our plan to immortalize him in writing.
Considering how long it takes me to write anything today, it’s amazing to think that Yanzek Hestal came to be over just a phone conversation and a few AIM messages. The moniker is a play on Jeremy’s Polish name—Jacek (pronounced Yaht-zek)—and the fact that he is several inches taller than most non-Polish people we knew. In the stories, Mickey and I became Maverick and Bertrando, sidekicks of Yanzek’s who possessed all the fragility he did not. We doubted. We cowered when trouble surfaced. After working ourselves into situations that placed us on the verge of embarrassment or death, Yanzek would sweep in and save the day before delivering a monologue about how we best not do that again, for he had greater matters to tend to around the world.
While Mickey and I were happy to turn ourselves into fools for the sake of good literature, we were also extremely careful not to make Jeremy appear too awesome.
The core inspiration for the character was the fact that he really was way smarter than either of us—he’d go on to be named valedictorian, in part because of a campaign of sabotage Mickey and I launched to counteract the ambitions of his two fiercest adversaries, Alvin Aquino and Fatima Misbah. We didn’t want Jeremy to believe his own hype and abandon us once he discovered new friends in Michigan, where he planned to go to college.
The secondary inspiration, which aided in our bringing him back down to earth, was that he had a truly ridiculous hairstyle, a cross between shoulder-length Hasidic curls, a perm, and an afro. He wore it like Medusa, declaring that the secret to its radiance was that it only required washing, with water alone, once a week.
In towns and cities like Bayonne, where love is shown through a right hook to the heart, any physical divergence from the norm draws the spotlight (trust me, I wrote a book about it). Jeremy’s hair was a flaming torch in the dark of night. “What if that were the source of all his powers?” Mickey said. “We’ll call it the Coif of Life.”
I loved the idea.
We made Yanzek as outlandish as possible—green tights, ballet flats—not to ridicule our comrade but to keep him grounded. And we concocted ridiculous adventures, barely conforming to the rules of the assignments or the scenarios Mrs. Giovinazzo created for us to write about. The first story, the one with the holiday theme, we titled “Father Christmas,” an excerpt from a larger (fictional) work, The Diary of a Warrior: Maverick Hennsson’s Tale of His Acquaintance With Omnipotence.
The story involves Yanzek appearing at that winter’s International Valedictorian Convention, where a scuffle breaks out over who truly is the smartest in the room. Bertrando and Maverick cower as valedictorians from North and South Korea, Serbia and Montenegro, Australia and New Zealand sharpen their spears. They break bottles and light flamethrowers. Pure pandemonium erupts beside the podium. Until, with a single twirl of his cherry cape, Yanzek hypnotizes the crowd. He then procures a first-edition Bible from within the Coif of Life and begins to tell the story of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Jesus of Nazareth.
Peace appears to be established, though the Saudi Arabian valedictorian remains unsettled.
"‘What is wrong young one?’ Maverick says. ‘Why do you not rejoice at the words of the golden-curled one?’ She innocently replies, ‘I never knew such joy could be felt. I cannot comprehend this in its entirety. My ignorance is far too great for me to celebrate the peace that has been established on this glorious night.’ Yanzek immediately, sensing the grief of the pristine Arab, floats towards her, like Peter Pan, and grabs her hand. ‘Would you like to fly among the birds and gaze upon the world, young beauty?’ She replies to the majestic Yanzek with a smile, and he grabs her hand and soars away with her into the night sky.”
Our other Yanzek stories were no less ridiculous. Like the first, they were adapted from real events and concerns we had as three teenagers who knew little of the world outside Bayonne but pined for something more. We only had one stipulation for the future that awaited us outside our city: preserving our friendship for eternity.
That bond was threatened by a love interest I had that neither Jeremy nor Mickey approved of. The conflict between my head and my heart became the basis for “Bertrando’s Quandary,” which begins with Bertrando separated from Maverick and Yanzek. Sad and alone, he is seduced by a woman who offers him the world but not his two friends. Conflicted, Bertrando telephones Yanzek, but she cuts him off, begging that he choose her instead:
“As he ruminates over the situation, Huli Jing approaches ever nearer. He falls suddenly to his knees and howls into the air a distressed cry for help. He thinks that maybe this final act of sorrow and shame might somehow reach Yanzek and that the golden-curled crusader might, by some means, save him.
‘Do not worry, my darling, I will take care of you. No more tears,’ says Huli Jing, standing opposite the frightened man. Bertrando has grown so despaired that he cannot distinguish whether or not her statement is earnest. Just as he reaches for Huli Jing’s hand, Yanzek bursts through the side of the building and, with a solitary sway of his Coif of Life, sends out a gust of wind so immense that it topples her.
As he grounds beside Bertrando, the Glorious One whispers, "Friend, I am here now. Do not be afraid.’”
Other stories from that year include “The Origin of the Coif of Life,” “The Quest for the Green Tights,” “Yanzek Hestal’s Stroll throughout Eurasia,” and “Yanzek Hestal: Magnum Opus.” None is more or less ridiculous than the next. There are villains based more on our friends than any real adversaries we could’ve invented.
The only time I did concoct a character from thin air was years later in Professor Helff’s creative writing class my junior year at William Paterson University. By then, I was missing my best friends terribly. College hadn’t turned out like I’d expected. My new pond was no better than the one I’d left, and the fish no bigger than those back home. Desperate to turn back time, I resurrected the hero in a story I called “The Return of Yanzek Hestal: The Golden-Haired Crusador Battles the Dreaded Freddy Fanooch.”
In it, Bertrando is again alone, though this time instead of a woman’s love, he is seeking fresh mozzarella cheese in Little Italy. He overhears murmuring in the backroom of a pizza shop. Inside is a mafia-like contingent of gangsters who claim to have penetrated the White House and are about to stage a coup de etat so that their malevolent leader, Freddy Fanooch, might rule the world. Fearing for Maverick, who is in the nation’s capital lobbying for cape rights on behalf of his companion, he telephones Yanzek but is met with a pre-recorded greeting: “Salutations, you have reached Yanzek Hestal, the Finnish Superman, possessor of the Coif of Life, defender of the weak, savior of the penniless, protector of the innocent, attendant to the…”
The gangsters overhear Bertrando, and just as they are about to crush him under a mountain of fresh mutz, Yanzek soars into frame and saves the day, striking the leader with a spicy meatball shot from one of his coif strands. Struck right between the eyes, Freddy drops dead instantly.
Helff hated it. He gave me “C” and instructions to rewrite the story entirely for a new grade. I refused. With that came the end of Yanzek Hestal—until now.
Creating Yanzek Hestal is the most fun I’ve ever had as a writer. Once it became my profession and my stories started appearing in print, pressure, expectations, and rules followed. Mrs. G was no longer there to encourage me, replaced by teachers and editors who echoed my dad’s belief that you cannot feed families on imagination. The pleasure you get as a naive kid with nothing to lose is gone.
But I would like to feel the air in my lungs again. And, as I lay awake at night, long after my wife and children are asleep, I question whether maybe Yanzek really is out there somewhere, hovering in his aerodynamic tights, his coif at full glow, watching me. Maybe he wasn’t an invention of mine or Mickey’s mind. He was real all along, in an alternate reality—a timeline in the multiverse we couldn’t have known existed back in 2006.
I’ll end with a few lines Mickey wrote in our final Yanzek story just before we graduated and left home forever. In this scene, all of Yanzek’s enemies from our previous adventures have gathered. They stand in a united front before him at the end of the world, in the ultimate battle between good and evil. At Yanzek’s side, as always, are Maverick and Betrando. But this time they do not cower.
Mickey wrote:
“I looked from Doil to Wolfgang, from Froseph to Toasterhead, and then from Bertrando to Yanzek. All his surreptitiousness, all his dastardness, all his barbarity—it all had a purpose. I looked towards the vast army, but not a single fear quelled, for I realized standing before me was the greatest hero the world had ever seen, and he was my mate, my chap, my best friend: Yanzek Hestal.”
The tears are flowing now because the last line contains a truth I haven’t lost in the 16 years since Mickey wrote it. That truth is what led us to Scotland a year later. It brings us back home every winter and summer in hopes our travel plans align so we can dream together again. Who knows where it will take us next?
That is all for today, my friends.
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