Truman Capote was telling a long story to Merv Griffith. It went something like this: A young man is visiting a woman in a New York City apartment. It’s not their first date, but it’s early on in their time together, He’s still trying to impress her. They’re on their way to a movie. The woman excuses herself, says she needs to go into the other room to get ready. The man is left alone in the kitchen with the woman’s dog, which is small, a terrier, white. He’s playing with the dog, tossing a sponge rubber ball around the apartment, letting the dog retrieve it. The woman calls in, “Just a few more seconds.” The man throws the ball one last time. But he throws it too hard. It bounces off the linoleum tiles of the kitchen floor and out the window. The dog goes leaping after it, right out the window.
The woman reappears. “We better hurry,” she says. “We’re going to miss the beginning.”
They leave in a rush. She doesn’t have a chance to notice the dog isn’t there. The man doesn’t say anything then, nor does he say anything during the movie. He can barely watch the movie at all. At the end of the night, he kisses the woman at the door, and leaves quickly. He knows she’s going to notice the dog is missing when she gets inside. But she’s going to think the dog jumped out the window by itself. He knows she won’t suspect him for a minute. He also knows he’s never going to call her again, or take her calls. Which in fact is what happens: they never do get together again after that night.
Truman exaggerated every detail of the story, which was why it took him so long to tell it. He couldn’t just say “a sponge ball.” He had to talk about how there was one side of the ball already bitten off, how wet it was with the dog’s drool.
“He’s drunk,” my mother said, about midway through the story.
“Do you think so? Or is it only because he talks like that?” I asked.
“No. He’s drunk.”
My mother and I liked to watch Merv on nights when my father wasn’t around, which was most nights these days. Sometimes he stopped for a few drinks after work and didn’t come home until well after dinner; sometimes something one of us said set him off and he’d storm off in the car. Thursdays he was in a bowling league, and Fridays he played poker at the VFW.
It was fine with us. It was much more relaxed without him here. There was less shouting.
My mother and I liked talk shows in general. Our favorite was Lee Leonard, the host on the midday show from New York City. We both admired the way he was able to talk to anyone, how curious he seemed to be about every minor Broadway actor or first novelist who sat down in the chair across from him.
Merv wasn’t curious. He more or less just let people talk and laughed at their jokes. But he did get bigger stars than Lee Leonard did.
“So here’s my point,” Truman said, in that nasal, syrupy voice. “Would you tell the woman about her dog? I think if you’re truthful with yourself, you’ll have to think long and hard about that. And here’s my other point: was the killing of the dog the reason the man never got together again with the woman, whom he really liked and anticipated a future with, or was it his being unable to admit it to her?”
“Of course I’d tell her,” my mother said. “How can anyone think they wouldn’t tell?”
“I guess he considers it a moral test,” I answered.
“That’s no test! What kind of person wouldn’t tell someone they’d killed their dog? Can you imagine how that woman must have felt? And this person, he just let her go on thinking that nothing was happening, let her go to the movie without knowing.”
I tried to smile. There was too much emotion in my mother’s voice. It wasn’t right for this silly story. It wasn’t right for Merv in general.
“It’s not that big a deal,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“It is a big deal,” my mother insisted. “How about you? Would you tell?”
I truly didn’t know. I guessed it would have depended on the girl. But I knew what my mother wanted to hear. “Yes. I would.”
“That’s right. Of course you would. Anyone, anyone moral, as you call it, would. I know that. I don’t care what any Truman Capote says about it.”
I nodded again. When the show came back from commercial, Truman was gone. Maybe he had been drunk after all. Merv introduced his next guest, David Jannsen. We’d seen David Jannsen before on other shows, and knew he was what my mother liked to call a “snore bore.” I was grateful to have an excuse to go to bed.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
28. King Tut
My girlfriend Lisa’s father got tickets to see the King Tut exhibition at the Metropolitan. It was the hottest ticket in town. I’d read the articles in the New York Times and even our local paper about how impossible it was to track one down. “How’d he manage that?” I asked.
“He said the elevator man at his office had some kind of connection. Do you want to go?”
“Really?”
“Sure. He told me to invite you. He ended up with extras, I have no idea how.
As you know, he likes to be mysterious. I’m surprised he even told me about the elevator man.”
Lisa and I had been going out for about 8 months. We’d met at a National Honor Society dance in the spring. I was a member, Lisa wasn’t, but I never took the NHS very seriously anyway. I’d only gone to the dance because they made me volunteer to help set up.
Lisa was the one who asked me to dance. She was also the one who started the kiss, after we’d danced together four dances in a row, including a slow one. Her face tasted bitter. It was the first time I’d kissed anyone like that, full tongue, and I wasn’t sure if maybe that was the way such kisses tasted. She told me later it must have been her acne medicine.
Lisa was my first girlfriend, and I approached the task with the same focus and attention to detail I would an assignment at school. I bought her gifts to commemorate milestones like our first and second and third month together. I wrote her a poem about how she shimmered like light refracted through a prism. I was determined to fall in love with her and eventually did.
I think she started out a little in love with me—she’d mentioned a few times things about “having my eye on you for a while”— but my intensity scared her. I wrote a poem about that, too, her cruel detachment, but she was unmoved. “It’s too much,” she kept saying. Then she went away on vacation for a week to Virginia Beach and when she came back she was as in love with me as I was with her. “What changed?” I asked, not able to leave well enough alone.
“The moon on the beach was so big,” she answered, and wouldn’t say anything more. Her father wasn’t the only one prone to mysterious pronouncements.
We’d had sex for the first time the weekend before she told me about the King Tut tickets. It was something of a technicality, since we’d done everything but over the summer, yet it still felt momentous to me. Back seat of the car parked at the circle at the end of the street where Lisa lived, only as much clothes off as necessary, quick the first time and nicer the second. “Are you okay?” I asked afterward, conditioned by the teen novels I claimed not to read for tears, regret. “Okay?” Lisa said. “I’m great!” That’s when we started our second try.
“So do you want to go to Tut or not?” Lisa asked.
“Of course I do,” I said. “It’s the hottest ticket in town, right?”
Her father drove us down: me, Lisa, her mother, her two sisters. Her older brother Neil didn’t want to go. Lisa’s father drove a big car, a Lincoln, but it was still crowded with three of us in the back seat and three in the front. It was mid-January, so we were all wearing heavy winter coats, which made it even more of a tight squeeze.
During the ride Lisa’s father made each of the girls tell a story about something that had happened to them during the week. Lisa had told me he often did this. He worked long hours during the week, and there were many evenings he didn’t see them at all. Julie, Lisa’s younger sister, told a story about a friend who’d copied from her on a test. Karen, Lisa’s older sister, told a story she’d heard that one of her teachers was on an extended leave of absence because he’d gone into rehab. Lisa told about how I’d driven over to her house on a Thursday night just to help her with her homework.
I really had done that, and really just to help her with her homework. It wasn’t because I’d expected us to have sex again. I knew we would, sooner or later, but I wanted to make sure Lisa knew I would still do special things like that for her without the expectation of sex.
“How romantic,” Lisa’s father said, which embarrassed me, although I couldn’t tell if he meant it or was being sarcastic. He really was an inscrutable guy.
At the museum, Lisa and I quickly split off from the rest of her family. The place was a zoo. There were so many people you could barely walk. You had to wait in the crowd for five minutes to even get a glimpse of the exhibits. And once you did get there, what you mostly saw was gold. Piece after piece, room after room, until it was almost too much of a good thing, until you lost track of how valuable it all was.
“I guess expecting more like, ancient rocks and sarcophaguses and stuff,” I whispered to Lisa.
“He was kind of into jewelry, huh?” Lisa answered.
What impressed me much more than the exhibit was the people. They were so stylish, so clearly rich and sophisticated and powerful. I even thought I recognized Lee Leonard, who hosted the midday talk show on Channel 5 that my mother and I liked to watch during the summer.
I could see myself in crowds like this, going forward into the future. The high society of New York City, the elite, the best and the brightest. I picked out a young couple, the woman dark-haired and beautiful, the man in a green turtleneck sweater. They looked confident, relaxed, in love, and most importantly like they belonged here, like it was their due. Lisa and I would look like that someday.
“It says King Tut died at 18. They called him the boy king,” Lisa said, while we waited to look at yet another showcase full of gold.
“I read that. But he was only king for a couple of years, did you see that?”
“I guess his people must have really loved him, if they gave him all this stuff, right?”
“Or else they were just sad because he’d died so young.”
“Maybe.”
“Probably better for him that way, too. Didn’t get a chance to screw things up, right?”
Lisa smiled. “Step up. It’s our turn to look.”
We stayed a long time at the museum. There were so many rooms, and then we had a hard time finding Lisa’s family. By the time we got back to the car it was past midnight. We squeezed back in and Lisa’s father turned the heat way up. Before we even made it to the Thruway, Lisa had fallen asleep holding my hand, and by the toll booths Karen and Julie and Lisa’s mother were out too.
“Look at you back there, Chris,” Lisa’s father said, glancing in the rear view mirror in tollbooth light. “Sleeping with all the Pratt girls.”
One them at least, I thought, and smiled. I had no gold. Gold would come, or it wouldn’t. But there was more than one way to be a boy king.
“He said the elevator man at his office had some kind of connection. Do you want to go?”
“Really?”
“Sure. He told me to invite you. He ended up with extras, I have no idea how.
As you know, he likes to be mysterious. I’m surprised he even told me about the elevator man.”
Lisa and I had been going out for about 8 months. We’d met at a National Honor Society dance in the spring. I was a member, Lisa wasn’t, but I never took the NHS very seriously anyway. I’d only gone to the dance because they made me volunteer to help set up.
Lisa was the one who asked me to dance. She was also the one who started the kiss, after we’d danced together four dances in a row, including a slow one. Her face tasted bitter. It was the first time I’d kissed anyone like that, full tongue, and I wasn’t sure if maybe that was the way such kisses tasted. She told me later it must have been her acne medicine.
Lisa was my first girlfriend, and I approached the task with the same focus and attention to detail I would an assignment at school. I bought her gifts to commemorate milestones like our first and second and third month together. I wrote her a poem about how she shimmered like light refracted through a prism. I was determined to fall in love with her and eventually did.
I think she started out a little in love with me—she’d mentioned a few times things about “having my eye on you for a while”— but my intensity scared her. I wrote a poem about that, too, her cruel detachment, but she was unmoved. “It’s too much,” she kept saying. Then she went away on vacation for a week to Virginia Beach and when she came back she was as in love with me as I was with her. “What changed?” I asked, not able to leave well enough alone.
“The moon on the beach was so big,” she answered, and wouldn’t say anything more. Her father wasn’t the only one prone to mysterious pronouncements.
We’d had sex for the first time the weekend before she told me about the King Tut tickets. It was something of a technicality, since we’d done everything but over the summer, yet it still felt momentous to me. Back seat of the car parked at the circle at the end of the street where Lisa lived, only as much clothes off as necessary, quick the first time and nicer the second. “Are you okay?” I asked afterward, conditioned by the teen novels I claimed not to read for tears, regret. “Okay?” Lisa said. “I’m great!” That’s when we started our second try.
“So do you want to go to Tut or not?” Lisa asked.
“Of course I do,” I said. “It’s the hottest ticket in town, right?”
Her father drove us down: me, Lisa, her mother, her two sisters. Her older brother Neil didn’t want to go. Lisa’s father drove a big car, a Lincoln, but it was still crowded with three of us in the back seat and three in the front. It was mid-January, so we were all wearing heavy winter coats, which made it even more of a tight squeeze.
During the ride Lisa’s father made each of the girls tell a story about something that had happened to them during the week. Lisa had told me he often did this. He worked long hours during the week, and there were many evenings he didn’t see them at all. Julie, Lisa’s younger sister, told a story about a friend who’d copied from her on a test. Karen, Lisa’s older sister, told a story she’d heard that one of her teachers was on an extended leave of absence because he’d gone into rehab. Lisa told about how I’d driven over to her house on a Thursday night just to help her with her homework.
I really had done that, and really just to help her with her homework. It wasn’t because I’d expected us to have sex again. I knew we would, sooner or later, but I wanted to make sure Lisa knew I would still do special things like that for her without the expectation of sex.
“How romantic,” Lisa’s father said, which embarrassed me, although I couldn’t tell if he meant it or was being sarcastic. He really was an inscrutable guy.
At the museum, Lisa and I quickly split off from the rest of her family. The place was a zoo. There were so many people you could barely walk. You had to wait in the crowd for five minutes to even get a glimpse of the exhibits. And once you did get there, what you mostly saw was gold. Piece after piece, room after room, until it was almost too much of a good thing, until you lost track of how valuable it all was.
“I guess expecting more like, ancient rocks and sarcophaguses and stuff,” I whispered to Lisa.
“He was kind of into jewelry, huh?” Lisa answered.
What impressed me much more than the exhibit was the people. They were so stylish, so clearly rich and sophisticated and powerful. I even thought I recognized Lee Leonard, who hosted the midday talk show on Channel 5 that my mother and I liked to watch during the summer.
I could see myself in crowds like this, going forward into the future. The high society of New York City, the elite, the best and the brightest. I picked out a young couple, the woman dark-haired and beautiful, the man in a green turtleneck sweater. They looked confident, relaxed, in love, and most importantly like they belonged here, like it was their due. Lisa and I would look like that someday.
“It says King Tut died at 18. They called him the boy king,” Lisa said, while we waited to look at yet another showcase full of gold.
“I read that. But he was only king for a couple of years, did you see that?”
“I guess his people must have really loved him, if they gave him all this stuff, right?”
“Or else they were just sad because he’d died so young.”
“Maybe.”
“Probably better for him that way, too. Didn’t get a chance to screw things up, right?”
Lisa smiled. “Step up. It’s our turn to look.”
We stayed a long time at the museum. There were so many rooms, and then we had a hard time finding Lisa’s family. By the time we got back to the car it was past midnight. We squeezed back in and Lisa’s father turned the heat way up. Before we even made it to the Thruway, Lisa had fallen asleep holding my hand, and by the toll booths Karen and Julie and Lisa’s mother were out too.
“Look at you back there, Chris,” Lisa’s father said, glancing in the rear view mirror in tollbooth light. “Sleeping with all the Pratt girls.”
One them at least, I thought, and smiled. I had no gold. Gold would come, or it wouldn’t. But there was more than one way to be a boy king.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
27. My First Porno Movie
Andy told us he’d found it in his father’s underwear drawer. We were all so intrigued, sitting there around the cafeteria table during 8th period lunch like we did every day, that we didn’t even think to give him a hard time about what he was doing going through his father’s underwear drawer. “How do you know it’s porn?” Olson asked.
“It was in his underwear drawer,” Andy answered. “It’s called ‘Butcher Boy.’ What else do you think it could be?”
“Is there a picture on the box?” I asked hopefully.
“No. No picture.”
“We have to watch it,” Jack proclaimed. “We need to watch it.”
“I have a projector,” I said. “It’s 8 millimeter, right?”
“I have no fucking idea how many fucking millimeters it is,” Andy answered.
“My parents are going to be away for the weekend in two weeks,” Jack said. “We’ll do it then. You can all
come over.”
“I can’t drive at night yet,” Tierney said.
“Then we’ll do it in the afternoon,” Jack answered.
“Do you think you could sneak it out, Andy ?” I asked.
“I think so. I doubt he watches it, like, every night. But who knows, maybe he’s more a perv than I give him credit for.”
***
It was something of a big deal, planning to get together outside of school. We’d never done that before. We were new to being a group. We’d known each other on and off since elementary school, but we’d only ended up spending time together because we were hangers-on to the jocks, who let us sit with them at their lunch table. We all played sports but weren’t among the first-rank starters. At the lunch table, we listened as the jocks talked about the weekend parties they went to and the girls they were going to ask out. We were never invited to these parties. It was sort of boring, and eventually we started talking to each other, which was much more fun.
The Saturday afternoon designated for the showing, my father noticed me taking the movie projector out the door. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t. “What do you need that thing for?” he asked.
“Uh, Jack has some old movies he wants to watch. Sports movie. Ali and Foreman in Africa.”
My father smiled. He didn’t know what I was doing, but it was clear he didn’t believe me for a minute.
“Okay. Just be careful with it.”
***
I was the last to arrive. They were all down in the basement of Jack’s house: Andy, Tierney, Olson, Jack, and some guy named John Dickson who wasn’t really a part of our group but was totally obsessed with Jack, idolized him, and who Jack tolerated because he liked being idolized. None of the rest of us thought too much of John Dickson.
“All right, all right, all right,” Jack said. “Here he is. Here’s the man. Here’s the man with the plan.”
It was like he couldn’t stop himself. We normally would have made fun of him for this nervousness, but I think we were all feeling a similar way.
I threaded up the movie and someone turned out the lights. Jack didn’t have a screen, but he’d taped a light-blue sheet between the door and the wall. He’d also put black paper over the basement windows so we’d have maximum darkness.
There were no opening titles. It started right in with a young boy—he looked a little older than us, eighteen or so—showing up at the front door of a suburban home with a bag of groceries. A woman answered the door. She was wearing a negligee. He offered the bag. She shrugged, and there was a dialogue title, like in an old silent movie—“But I have no money.” The butcher boy waited. Another title card: “Come in. Maybe I have something better.” Cut to him sitting on the couch while she was blowing him. He looked happy, but disinterested. I noticed he was still holding the bag he was supposed to deliver in his hands. There was another abrupt cut, and the action shifted to the bedroom.
Jack’s basement, as we watched this, was utterly silent. None of us even seemed to be breathing.
The film ran out while the butcher boy was in mid-doggie-style-stroke. We sat in silence in the dark for a few seconds, as though we expected it to magically continue.
“You want to watch it again?” Jack asked.
This time, we couldn’t shut up. We made fun of the butcher boy’s haircut. We made jokes about his bag of meat. We made disparaging remarks about the appearance of the woman in the negligee and her thick bush of pubic hair. When the dialogue title cards came on, we all screamed the words at the top of our lungs: “BUT I HAVE NO MONEY.”
***
During our fourth viewing, we were at the scene in the bedroom where the butcher boy is holding the woman’s ankles to spread her legs, which was fast-becoming my personal favorite scene, when an amoeba suddenly appeared in the middle of the picture.
“It’s burning,” Andy yelled hysterically. “It’s burning up. Stop it! Stop it!”
I leaped up. But it was too late. The projector had burned the film right through. It flapped around the take-up reel with a sound like a baseball card in a bicycle tire.
“Oh, shit,” Andy said. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit, what’s my father going to say when he sees this? Jesus Christ, he’s going to kill me!”
We were silent again, caught up in Andy's panic. Then Tierney said, “Just put it back where you found it, Tony. He’s not going to say anything. Do you think he wants to think of you thinking of him as someone who owns something like this?”
It made sense. No one was going to get in trouble. But our mood had been punctured: something curdled hung in the air along with the acrid smell of the burning film. I felt embarrassed by how excited the film had made me and embarrassed to have seen how excited it made everyone else. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, I’d been dying to see a real porno movie, but then why the sudden rush of guilt when I’d thought about Andy's father and my parents finding out I’d watched one?
Glancing at the averted eyes around the room I didn’t think I was the only one trying to sort through some complicated reactions.
“You have anything else we can watch, Jack?” John Dickson asked.
“I think I have some old movies of a vacation my parents took to Florida.”
We put those on. It was something to do. We made jokes about the way Jack’s mother looked in a bathing suit, but then Jack threatened to turn the movie off if we didn’t shut up so we shut up. Jack’s mother turned and waved at the camera, as though telling Jack’s father to film something else. She smiled a radiant smile: for the camera? For Jack’s father behind the camera? John Dickson reached a hand up and hand-shadowed squeezing her tit on the screen and Jack made me turn off the projector and threw us all out.
“It was in his underwear drawer,” Andy answered. “It’s called ‘Butcher Boy.’ What else do you think it could be?”
“Is there a picture on the box?” I asked hopefully.
“No. No picture.”
“We have to watch it,” Jack proclaimed. “We need to watch it.”
“I have a projector,” I said. “It’s 8 millimeter, right?”
“I have no fucking idea how many fucking millimeters it is,” Andy answered.
“My parents are going to be away for the weekend in two weeks,” Jack said. “We’ll do it then. You can all
come over.”
“I can’t drive at night yet,” Tierney said.
“Then we’ll do it in the afternoon,” Jack answered.
“Do you think you could sneak it out, Andy ?” I asked.
“I think so. I doubt he watches it, like, every night. But who knows, maybe he’s more a perv than I give him credit for.”
***
It was something of a big deal, planning to get together outside of school. We’d never done that before. We were new to being a group. We’d known each other on and off since elementary school, but we’d only ended up spending time together because we were hangers-on to the jocks, who let us sit with them at their lunch table. We all played sports but weren’t among the first-rank starters. At the lunch table, we listened as the jocks talked about the weekend parties they went to and the girls they were going to ask out. We were never invited to these parties. It was sort of boring, and eventually we started talking to each other, which was much more fun.
The Saturday afternoon designated for the showing, my father noticed me taking the movie projector out the door. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t. “What do you need that thing for?” he asked.
“Uh, Jack has some old movies he wants to watch. Sports movie. Ali and Foreman in Africa.”
My father smiled. He didn’t know what I was doing, but it was clear he didn’t believe me for a minute.
“Okay. Just be careful with it.”
***
I was the last to arrive. They were all down in the basement of Jack’s house: Andy, Tierney, Olson, Jack, and some guy named John Dickson who wasn’t really a part of our group but was totally obsessed with Jack, idolized him, and who Jack tolerated because he liked being idolized. None of the rest of us thought too much of John Dickson.
“All right, all right, all right,” Jack said. “Here he is. Here’s the man. Here’s the man with the plan.”
It was like he couldn’t stop himself. We normally would have made fun of him for this nervousness, but I think we were all feeling a similar way.
I threaded up the movie and someone turned out the lights. Jack didn’t have a screen, but he’d taped a light-blue sheet between the door and the wall. He’d also put black paper over the basement windows so we’d have maximum darkness.
There were no opening titles. It started right in with a young boy—he looked a little older than us, eighteen or so—showing up at the front door of a suburban home with a bag of groceries. A woman answered the door. She was wearing a negligee. He offered the bag. She shrugged, and there was a dialogue title, like in an old silent movie—“But I have no money.” The butcher boy waited. Another title card: “Come in. Maybe I have something better.” Cut to him sitting on the couch while she was blowing him. He looked happy, but disinterested. I noticed he was still holding the bag he was supposed to deliver in his hands. There was another abrupt cut, and the action shifted to the bedroom.
Jack’s basement, as we watched this, was utterly silent. None of us even seemed to be breathing.
The film ran out while the butcher boy was in mid-doggie-style-stroke. We sat in silence in the dark for a few seconds, as though we expected it to magically continue.
“You want to watch it again?” Jack asked.
This time, we couldn’t shut up. We made fun of the butcher boy’s haircut. We made jokes about his bag of meat. We made disparaging remarks about the appearance of the woman in the negligee and her thick bush of pubic hair. When the dialogue title cards came on, we all screamed the words at the top of our lungs: “BUT I HAVE NO MONEY.”
***
During our fourth viewing, we were at the scene in the bedroom where the butcher boy is holding the woman’s ankles to spread her legs, which was fast-becoming my personal favorite scene, when an amoeba suddenly appeared in the middle of the picture.
“It’s burning,” Andy yelled hysterically. “It’s burning up. Stop it! Stop it!”
I leaped up. But it was too late. The projector had burned the film right through. It flapped around the take-up reel with a sound like a baseball card in a bicycle tire.
“Oh, shit,” Andy said. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit, what’s my father going to say when he sees this? Jesus Christ, he’s going to kill me!”
We were silent again, caught up in Andy's panic. Then Tierney said, “Just put it back where you found it, Tony. He’s not going to say anything. Do you think he wants to think of you thinking of him as someone who owns something like this?”
It made sense. No one was going to get in trouble. But our mood had been punctured: something curdled hung in the air along with the acrid smell of the burning film. I felt embarrassed by how excited the film had made me and embarrassed to have seen how excited it made everyone else. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, I’d been dying to see a real porno movie, but then why the sudden rush of guilt when I’d thought about Andy's father and my parents finding out I’d watched one?
Glancing at the averted eyes around the room I didn’t think I was the only one trying to sort through some complicated reactions.
“You have anything else we can watch, Jack?” John Dickson asked.
“I think I have some old movies of a vacation my parents took to Florida.”
We put those on. It was something to do. We made jokes about the way Jack’s mother looked in a bathing suit, but then Jack threatened to turn the movie off if we didn’t shut up so we shut up. Jack’s mother turned and waved at the camera, as though telling Jack’s father to film something else. She smiled a radiant smile: for the camera? For Jack’s father behind the camera? John Dickson reached a hand up and hand-shadowed squeezing her tit on the screen and Jack made me turn off the projector and threw us all out.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
26. Black Socks
When I got to Junior High and they started having school sports teams, I just assumed I would be on one. I was too skinny for football, and baseball didn’t start until High School, and I wasn’t fast enough for track, so I went out for basketball. Basketball wasn’t my best sport, but I’d played a lot around the block, in someone’s backyard afterschool with “Spiders and Snakes” and “Seasons in the Sun” blasting in the background on a portable radio. I had a decent outside shot, but I wasn’t much of a ball handler. I tended to make wild passes out of bounds whenever there was any pressure on me at all.
Still, I made the team in both seventh and eighth grades, mostly because I’d hit my growth spurt early and was taller than almost everyone else. The extra inch or two helped me out on defense.
I didn’t play much in games, usually just a few minutes at the end whenever we were winning or losing by a large amount. But I liked being on the team, liked the routine of the drills and the way I could feel myself getting better through repetition. I even scored a few points, all on outside shots: I never did get any good at dribbling or driving in for layups. I liked the ride home at night on the late bus, bone-tired, looking out the window into the dark and cold still steamy warm from my after-practice shower.
***
I wasn’t going to bother to go out for the ninth grade team. By then, everyone had caught up with me height-wise, and I knew even if I made it I’d be looking at four months of practice every night just to sit on the bench during games. It seemed like a waste of time, and I thought I’d be better off concentrating on school.
My father persuaded me to give it a try. He said if I did manage to get on the team it would be good for my college applications. Colleges, he insisted, looked for well-rounded kids, who had something going on besides just academics.
My father had been a basketball player himself, and a pretty good one. He’d been a starter on the Varsity team during the two years of college he’d had after getting out of the Navy, and he could still beat me in the games of H-O-R-S-E we played in the backyard. There was a ratty old black and white photo he had from when he played in college, even skinnier than I was, going up for a rebound against a bunch of guys who were much bigger and taller but he was the one who had the gray-ish ball gripped in his hands. He looked, I had to admit, like a pro in that picture.
***
I’m not sure why I made that ninth grade team. Part of it must have been how hard I played during tryouts, throwing myself after every loose ball, running tirelessly up and down the court. Any coach would have been impressed. And it probably didn’t hurt that the ninth grade coach happened to be Mr. Masten, my teacher that year for Math Advanced Placement. Maybe he liked the idea of being able to keep one of his smart kids on the team.
Making the team made me happy, and my father happier, but it turned out pretty much the way I’d expected. I didn’t have the skills to back up my hustle, and even in the scrimmages at the end of practice I didn’t play much, and not at all in the real games. Mr. Masten was the type of coach who put his best five players out there and let them play the whole time unless someone got hurt.
I didn’t care. I liked the uniforms, the cheerleaders. I liked thinking of myself as one of the 15 best basketball players in the whole ninth grade, even as I doubted it was really true. I liked the occasional times in practice when I’d swish a shot from the right corner, my favorite spot even from back during those around-the-block games.
***
The first time Randy Vite whipped me with is towel, I shrugged it off, let it go. It was after practice. I was coming out of showers, crossing over to my locker, and Randy flicked the end of his towel at me. It must have been purely an impulse thing. Randy and I had no history, had never even spoken.
It hurt, but not so much I cried out or anything. I ignored it, walked over to my locker and started getting my clothes on. Randy and his sidekick, a short, crew-cutted kid named Dave Miseak, giggled and high-fived.
Randy was a starter on the team, our best scorer. He was the opposite of me as a player: totally in control even when the defense was all over him, always able to get off a shot that more often than not went in. He had a terrible attitude, though: he never hustled, never ran back to get on defense. Mr. Masten would scream at him, but he didn’t pay any attention. Randy knew he was too important to the team for Masten to bench him.
Off the court, Randy was sort of a burn-out: everyone knew he cut classes, and we’d occasionally seen him sneaking a cigarette out near the edge of the playground during lunch. Later, I’d wonder if that was the issue he had with me, that I was good at school and he wasn’t—but I didn’t think it was. I don’t think he cared enough about school to dislike me because I was better at it.
***
A few days later, I happened to be walking across the locker room at the same time Randy was sitting on the bench, and he did the towel whipping again. Randy always waited as long as he could to get dressed after taking his after-practice shower. He’d sit on the bench with a towel wrapped around his waist making jokes with Dave Miseak or telling the team all the things wrong with Mr. Masten and how his bad coaching was the reason we lost most of our games. Randy was usually the last one on the team out of the locker room, and a few times we’d had to wait the late bus for him.
Like last time, it stung when he whipped me. It wasn’t like overpowering pain, but it did stung.
By reflex, I grabbed at the towel. “Stop,” I said, and in my voice I heard a little bit of a whine I wished wasn’t there. “Knock it off.”
“Stop,” Randy mimicked, and then Dave Miseak mimicked “Knock it off.” Then they stood up and high-fived, Randy totally naked, Miseak fully clothed.
***
It became a regular thing. “Time for your whips,” Randy would say every day after practice as I walked out of the shower, and then he’d flick his towel at me, two times, three times. I was usually walking fast to get to my locker, so only one of the whips would actually land, and that one not very hard.
Two or three whips were all he ever did. Then he and Miseak would giggle and do their high fives.
I thought it would stop by itself. I thought it was a kind of hazing, something Randy was doing to make me earn my place on the team. I thought if I didn’t show any reaction, didn’t let him get a rise out of me, he’d lose interest.
But he didn’t lose interest. I actually think it became his favorite part of practice, the one thing he looked forward to.
“Why don’t you just hit him?” Joey Licata asked me one day. Joey was another starter, not as good as Randy. We weren’t friends, but we’d sat at the same homeroom table for the last few years, and had talked a few times.
“You think I should?” I asked.
“He’s not going to stop unless you do,” Joey said. “We’d break it up before you got too beat up.”
“What good would it do, though?” I asked Joey, because of course I’d thought about this, thought about it over and over as I lay in bed trying to get to sleep. “Wouldn’t he just come at me harder if I hit him? You don’t think he’d just stop, do you?”
“No,” Joey admitted. “Probably not.”
During those nights in lying in bed, I’d wonder if it was just that I was afraid of getting hit. Coward, I’d think to myself, wimp. Asshole. Maybe you deserve to get whipped if you won’t fight back. I knew this was what my father would have thought, if I’d had enough courage to tell him about what was happening.
***
I’d never had any real friends on the team, but now no one wanted anything to do with me at all. It was as though watching me be humiliated by Randy embarrassed them, too, made them feel uncomfortable to speak to me. I went through the practices in a kind of trance, the dread of what was going to happen afterward preoccupying me. “Newsome,” Coach Masten would yell during scrimmages, “for Christ’s sake get your head in the game!”
I thought about going to Coach Masten and telling him what was happening. But what was he going to do about it? Tell Randy he had to stop? Randy wouldn’t listen, and Masten couldn’t be in the locker room with us all the time. And it seemed like such a baby-ish thing to do, to go behind Randy’s back and talk to the coach. I didn’t want to be someone who would do that.
I also thought about just quitting. It wasn’t like my being there or not made a bit of difference to the team.
But no, I wasn’t going to give that to Randy and Miseak. I wasn’t a quitter, either.
I stopped taking showers. As soon as practice ended, I’d walk fast to the locker room, pull my street clothes on over my sweaty body, get out of there fast. Some nights this worked, and I’d be out of the locker room before Randy made his way in. I’d sit by myself in the dark hallway, waiting for everyone else to come out and the late bus to arrive. Other times, my timing would be off and Randy would get a flick or two in through my clothes. I could barely feel them, but it had never been about the pain of the whips anyway.
***
It stopped as mysteriously as it had begun, on a day I wore black socks to practice. I couldn’t find any white socks in my gym bag. I’d thought for sure I had put them in that morning, but even after I’d frantically looked and looked again they weren’t there. So I had to leave on the black socks I’d worn to school. I rolled them down as low as I could, but you could still see.
It felt like just a matter of time, and sure enough about midway through practice Dave Miseak got behind me in line as we were doing a layup drill and whispered, “Randy is going to whip you good for wearing those socks. I can’t wait to see you get whipped.”
I looked at him. I didn’t want to be wearing black socks. But without socks my feet would have ended up torn and bloodied. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to walk home. No one else on the team liked me well enough to lend me a pair of socks even if I’d tried to ask, which I never would have done. I had to use what I had, I had no choice.
All this went through my mind, and I wondered if I said any of it how Dave Miseak would have reacted. I had a feeling it only would have made him hate me more, and I wouldn’t have blamed him.
All right, then. If Randy was going to whip me harder for wearing black socks, he was going to do it. I couldn’t worry about it anymore. There was a road I’d put myself on, and maybe I could have changed it at some point but with three weeks left in the season I couldn’t change it now, any more than I could change having to wear black socks.
I nodded at Dave Miseak. I may have even smiled. It was just this peaceful feeling, of sinking into a kind of blackness myself, of everything being decided and having no option but to go along with it.
Randy got held after practice that night to talk to Mr. Masten—he’d been dogging it during line drills, not running when Masten turned his back, and he’d gotten caught—and I was out of the locker room before he arrived. And then the next day there was a snowstorm, and practice got cancelled. The day after that was an away game against Goshen that we won by twenty points, and then that Friday we finally had practice and I did my usual thing of getting into the locker room quickly and putting on my regular clothes even though the shirt clung to my clammy back but Randy didn’t even look at me when he got into the locker room. And it was the same way the next few practices the next week: like I wasn’t there, like he’d forgotten all about the whippings, the way I’d hoped he would weeks ago.
The damage was done, though, for me on the team. I endured the last few weeks of the season in almost total silence, like I was invisible. I skipped the last game, told Coach Masten I had a cold. There was an end-of-season pizza party at Joey Licata’s house, but I didn’t go.
**
I never played basketball again, not even at home in the backyard, which upset my father since he still liked to get out on the court sometimes. I played a year of Junior Varsity baseball and then two years of Varsity soccer, where I turned out to be pretty good goalie, and no one bothered me because the real jocks played football in the fall.
Randy went on to have a great season of Junior Varsity basketball, but then he broke his hand during a practice when he was one of the only three Juniors on the Varsity team and was out the entire season. The story going around was that it happened when he punched the wall after missing an easy layup, during a practice, not even in a game.
When I heard, I almost felt sorry for Randy. What a stupid thing to do. I knew the basketball team would lose a lot more games without him playing.
The next year, though, when I heard Dave Miseak had been killed in a car accident, I was ashamed of how happy it made me. Someone else was driving, a kid named Chrismy Bloodgood. He’d taken the hairpin turn at Dunderberg Road too fast and they went right over the guard rail. Bloodgood had only had his license for six weeks.
I wanted to find Randy, high-five him the way he and Miseak had high-fived after the whippings. Would he understand? Almost better if he didn’t. I never did that high five, but I carried the image around in my head for weeks, always ashamed, always enjoying it.
Still, I made the team in both seventh and eighth grades, mostly because I’d hit my growth spurt early and was taller than almost everyone else. The extra inch or two helped me out on defense.
I didn’t play much in games, usually just a few minutes at the end whenever we were winning or losing by a large amount. But I liked being on the team, liked the routine of the drills and the way I could feel myself getting better through repetition. I even scored a few points, all on outside shots: I never did get any good at dribbling or driving in for layups. I liked the ride home at night on the late bus, bone-tired, looking out the window into the dark and cold still steamy warm from my after-practice shower.
***
I wasn’t going to bother to go out for the ninth grade team. By then, everyone had caught up with me height-wise, and I knew even if I made it I’d be looking at four months of practice every night just to sit on the bench during games. It seemed like a waste of time, and I thought I’d be better off concentrating on school.
My father persuaded me to give it a try. He said if I did manage to get on the team it would be good for my college applications. Colleges, he insisted, looked for well-rounded kids, who had something going on besides just academics.
My father had been a basketball player himself, and a pretty good one. He’d been a starter on the Varsity team during the two years of college he’d had after getting out of the Navy, and he could still beat me in the games of H-O-R-S-E we played in the backyard. There was a ratty old black and white photo he had from when he played in college, even skinnier than I was, going up for a rebound against a bunch of guys who were much bigger and taller but he was the one who had the gray-ish ball gripped in his hands. He looked, I had to admit, like a pro in that picture.
***
I’m not sure why I made that ninth grade team. Part of it must have been how hard I played during tryouts, throwing myself after every loose ball, running tirelessly up and down the court. Any coach would have been impressed. And it probably didn’t hurt that the ninth grade coach happened to be Mr. Masten, my teacher that year for Math Advanced Placement. Maybe he liked the idea of being able to keep one of his smart kids on the team.
Making the team made me happy, and my father happier, but it turned out pretty much the way I’d expected. I didn’t have the skills to back up my hustle, and even in the scrimmages at the end of practice I didn’t play much, and not at all in the real games. Mr. Masten was the type of coach who put his best five players out there and let them play the whole time unless someone got hurt.
I didn’t care. I liked the uniforms, the cheerleaders. I liked thinking of myself as one of the 15 best basketball players in the whole ninth grade, even as I doubted it was really true. I liked the occasional times in practice when I’d swish a shot from the right corner, my favorite spot even from back during those around-the-block games.
***
The first time Randy Vite whipped me with is towel, I shrugged it off, let it go. It was after practice. I was coming out of showers, crossing over to my locker, and Randy flicked the end of his towel at me. It must have been purely an impulse thing. Randy and I had no history, had never even spoken.
It hurt, but not so much I cried out or anything. I ignored it, walked over to my locker and started getting my clothes on. Randy and his sidekick, a short, crew-cutted kid named Dave Miseak, giggled and high-fived.
Randy was a starter on the team, our best scorer. He was the opposite of me as a player: totally in control even when the defense was all over him, always able to get off a shot that more often than not went in. He had a terrible attitude, though: he never hustled, never ran back to get on defense. Mr. Masten would scream at him, but he didn’t pay any attention. Randy knew he was too important to the team for Masten to bench him.
Off the court, Randy was sort of a burn-out: everyone knew he cut classes, and we’d occasionally seen him sneaking a cigarette out near the edge of the playground during lunch. Later, I’d wonder if that was the issue he had with me, that I was good at school and he wasn’t—but I didn’t think it was. I don’t think he cared enough about school to dislike me because I was better at it.
***
A few days later, I happened to be walking across the locker room at the same time Randy was sitting on the bench, and he did the towel whipping again. Randy always waited as long as he could to get dressed after taking his after-practice shower. He’d sit on the bench with a towel wrapped around his waist making jokes with Dave Miseak or telling the team all the things wrong with Mr. Masten and how his bad coaching was the reason we lost most of our games. Randy was usually the last one on the team out of the locker room, and a few times we’d had to wait the late bus for him.
Like last time, it stung when he whipped me. It wasn’t like overpowering pain, but it did stung.
By reflex, I grabbed at the towel. “Stop,” I said, and in my voice I heard a little bit of a whine I wished wasn’t there. “Knock it off.”
“Stop,” Randy mimicked, and then Dave Miseak mimicked “Knock it off.” Then they stood up and high-fived, Randy totally naked, Miseak fully clothed.
***
It became a regular thing. “Time for your whips,” Randy would say every day after practice as I walked out of the shower, and then he’d flick his towel at me, two times, three times. I was usually walking fast to get to my locker, so only one of the whips would actually land, and that one not very hard.
Two or three whips were all he ever did. Then he and Miseak would giggle and do their high fives.
I thought it would stop by itself. I thought it was a kind of hazing, something Randy was doing to make me earn my place on the team. I thought if I didn’t show any reaction, didn’t let him get a rise out of me, he’d lose interest.
But he didn’t lose interest. I actually think it became his favorite part of practice, the one thing he looked forward to.
“Why don’t you just hit him?” Joey Licata asked me one day. Joey was another starter, not as good as Randy. We weren’t friends, but we’d sat at the same homeroom table for the last few years, and had talked a few times.
“You think I should?” I asked.
“He’s not going to stop unless you do,” Joey said. “We’d break it up before you got too beat up.”
“What good would it do, though?” I asked Joey, because of course I’d thought about this, thought about it over and over as I lay in bed trying to get to sleep. “Wouldn’t he just come at me harder if I hit him? You don’t think he’d just stop, do you?”
“No,” Joey admitted. “Probably not.”
During those nights in lying in bed, I’d wonder if it was just that I was afraid of getting hit. Coward, I’d think to myself, wimp. Asshole. Maybe you deserve to get whipped if you won’t fight back. I knew this was what my father would have thought, if I’d had enough courage to tell him about what was happening.
***
I’d never had any real friends on the team, but now no one wanted anything to do with me at all. It was as though watching me be humiliated by Randy embarrassed them, too, made them feel uncomfortable to speak to me. I went through the practices in a kind of trance, the dread of what was going to happen afterward preoccupying me. “Newsome,” Coach Masten would yell during scrimmages, “for Christ’s sake get your head in the game!”
I thought about going to Coach Masten and telling him what was happening. But what was he going to do about it? Tell Randy he had to stop? Randy wouldn’t listen, and Masten couldn’t be in the locker room with us all the time. And it seemed like such a baby-ish thing to do, to go behind Randy’s back and talk to the coach. I didn’t want to be someone who would do that.
I also thought about just quitting. It wasn’t like my being there or not made a bit of difference to the team.
But no, I wasn’t going to give that to Randy and Miseak. I wasn’t a quitter, either.
I stopped taking showers. As soon as practice ended, I’d walk fast to the locker room, pull my street clothes on over my sweaty body, get out of there fast. Some nights this worked, and I’d be out of the locker room before Randy made his way in. I’d sit by myself in the dark hallway, waiting for everyone else to come out and the late bus to arrive. Other times, my timing would be off and Randy would get a flick or two in through my clothes. I could barely feel them, but it had never been about the pain of the whips anyway.
***
It stopped as mysteriously as it had begun, on a day I wore black socks to practice. I couldn’t find any white socks in my gym bag. I’d thought for sure I had put them in that morning, but even after I’d frantically looked and looked again they weren’t there. So I had to leave on the black socks I’d worn to school. I rolled them down as low as I could, but you could still see.
It felt like just a matter of time, and sure enough about midway through practice Dave Miseak got behind me in line as we were doing a layup drill and whispered, “Randy is going to whip you good for wearing those socks. I can’t wait to see you get whipped.”
I looked at him. I didn’t want to be wearing black socks. But without socks my feet would have ended up torn and bloodied. I didn’t know if I’d even be able to walk home. No one else on the team liked me well enough to lend me a pair of socks even if I’d tried to ask, which I never would have done. I had to use what I had, I had no choice.
All this went through my mind, and I wondered if I said any of it how Dave Miseak would have reacted. I had a feeling it only would have made him hate me more, and I wouldn’t have blamed him.
All right, then. If Randy was going to whip me harder for wearing black socks, he was going to do it. I couldn’t worry about it anymore. There was a road I’d put myself on, and maybe I could have changed it at some point but with three weeks left in the season I couldn’t change it now, any more than I could change having to wear black socks.
I nodded at Dave Miseak. I may have even smiled. It was just this peaceful feeling, of sinking into a kind of blackness myself, of everything being decided and having no option but to go along with it.
Randy got held after practice that night to talk to Mr. Masten—he’d been dogging it during line drills, not running when Masten turned his back, and he’d gotten caught—and I was out of the locker room before he arrived. And then the next day there was a snowstorm, and practice got cancelled. The day after that was an away game against Goshen that we won by twenty points, and then that Friday we finally had practice and I did my usual thing of getting into the locker room quickly and putting on my regular clothes even though the shirt clung to my clammy back but Randy didn’t even look at me when he got into the locker room. And it was the same way the next few practices the next week: like I wasn’t there, like he’d forgotten all about the whippings, the way I’d hoped he would weeks ago.
The damage was done, though, for me on the team. I endured the last few weeks of the season in almost total silence, like I was invisible. I skipped the last game, told Coach Masten I had a cold. There was an end-of-season pizza party at Joey Licata’s house, but I didn’t go.
**
I never played basketball again, not even at home in the backyard, which upset my father since he still liked to get out on the court sometimes. I played a year of Junior Varsity baseball and then two years of Varsity soccer, where I turned out to be pretty good goalie, and no one bothered me because the real jocks played football in the fall.
Randy went on to have a great season of Junior Varsity basketball, but then he broke his hand during a practice when he was one of the only three Juniors on the Varsity team and was out the entire season. The story going around was that it happened when he punched the wall after missing an easy layup, during a practice, not even in a game.
When I heard, I almost felt sorry for Randy. What a stupid thing to do. I knew the basketball team would lose a lot more games without him playing.
The next year, though, when I heard Dave Miseak had been killed in a car accident, I was ashamed of how happy it made me. Someone else was driving, a kid named Chrismy Bloodgood. He’d taken the hairpin turn at Dunderberg Road too fast and they went right over the guard rail. Bloodgood had only had his license for six weeks.
I wanted to find Randy, high-five him the way he and Miseak had high-fived after the whippings. Would he understand? Almost better if he didn’t. I never did that high five, but I carried the image around in my head for weeks, always ashamed, always enjoying it.
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