model airplane and I
wanted to take a look at it . . .
The afternoon came when we decided to go to our first confession. We
walked to the church. We knew one of the priests, the main man. We had met
him in an ice cream parlor and he had spoken to us. We had even gone to his
house once. He lived in a place next to the church with an old woman. We
stayed quite a while and asked all sorts of questions about God. Like, how
tall was He? And did He just sit in a chair all day? And did He go to the
bathroom like everybody else? The priest never did answer our questions
directly but still he seemed like a nice guy, he had a nice smile.
We walked to the church thinking about confession, thinking about what
it would be like. As we got near the church a stray dog began walking along
with us. He looked very thin and hungry. We stopped and petted him,
scratched his back.
"It's too bad dogs can't go to heaven," said Frank.
"Why can't they?"
"You gotta be baptized to go to heaven."
"We ought to baptize him."
"Think we should?"
"He deserves a chance to go to heaven."
I picked him up and we walked into the church. We took him to the bowl
of holy water and I held him there as Frank sprinkled the water on his
forehead.
"I hereby baptize you," said Frank.
We took him outside and put him back on the sidewalk again.
"He even looks different," I said.
The dog lost interest and walked off down the sidewalk. We went back
into the church, stopping first at the holy water, dipping our fingers into
it and making the sign of the cross. We both kneeled at a pew near the
confessional booth and waited. A fat woman came out from behind the curtain.
She had body odor. I could smell her strong odor as she walked past. Her
smell was mixed with the smell of the church, which smelled like piss. Every
Sunday people came to mass and smelled that piss-smell and nobody said
anything. I was going to tell the priest about it but I couldn't. Maybe it
was the candles.
"I'm going in," said Frank.
Then he got up, walked behind the curtain and was gone. He was in there
a long time. When he came out he was grinning.
"It was great, just great! You go in there now!"
I got up, pulled the curtain back and walked in. It was dark. I kneeled
down. All I could see in front of me was a screen. Frank said God was back
in there. I kneeled and tried to think of something bad that I had done, but
I couldn't think of anything. I just knelt there and tried and tried to
think of something but I couldn't. I didn't know what to do.
"Go ahead," said a voice. "Say something!"
The voice sounded angry. I didn't think there would be any voice. I
thought God had plenty of time. I was frightened. I decided to lie.
"All right," I said. "I . . . kicked my father. I . . . cursed my
mother . . . I stole money from my mother's purse. I spent it on candy bars.
I let the air out of Chuck's football. I looked up a little girl's dress. I
kicked my mother. I ate some of my snot. That's about all. Except today I
baptized a dog."
"You baptized a dog?"
I was finished. A Mortal Sin. No use going on. I got up to leave. I
didn't know if the voice recommended my saying some Hail Marys or if the
voice didn't say anything at all. I pulled the curtain back and there was
Frank waiting. We walked out of the church and were back on the street.
"I feel cleansed," said Frank, "don't you?"
"No."
I never went to confession again. It was worse than ten o'clock mass.
18
Frank liked airplanes. He lent me all his pulp magazines about World
War 1. The best was Flying Aces. The dog-fights were great, the Spads
and the Fokkers mixing it. I read all the stories. I didn't like the way the
Germans always lost but outside of that it was great.
I liked going over to Frank's place to borrow and return the magazines.
His mother wore high heels and had great legs. She sat in a chair with her
legs crossed and her skirt pulled high. And Frank's father sat in another
chair. His mother and father were always drinking. His father had been a
flyer in World War I and had crashed. He had a wire running down inside one
of his arms instead of a bone. He got a pension. But he was all right. When
we came in he always talked to us.
"How are you doing, boys? How's it going?"
Then we found out about the air show. It was going to be a big one.
Frank got hold of a map and we decided to get there by hitch-hiking. I
thought we'd probably never make it to the air show but Frank said we would.
His father gave us the money.
We went down to the boulevard with our map and we got a ride right
away. It was an old guy and his lips were very wet, he kept licking his lips
with his tongue and he had on an old checkered shirt which he had buttoned
to the throat. He wasn't wearing a necktie. He had strange eyebrows which
curled down into his eyes.
"My name's Daniel," he said. Frank said, "This is Henry. And I'm
Frank."
Daniel drove along. Then he took out a Lucky Strike and lit it.
"You boys live at home?"
"Yes," said Frank.
"Yes," I said.
Daniel's cigarette was already wet from his mouth. He stopped the car
at a signal.
"I was at the beach yesterday and they caught a couple of guys under
the pier. The cops caught them and threw them in jail. One guy was sucking
the other guy off. Now what business is that of the cops? It made me mad."
The signal changed and Daniel pulled away.
"Don't you guys think that was stupid? The cops stopping those guys
from sucking-off?"
We didn't answer.
"Well," said Daniel, "don't you think a couple of guys have a right to
a good blow job?"
"I guess so," said Frank.
"Yeah," I said.
"Where are you boys going?" asked Daniel,
"The air show," said Frank.
"Ah, the air show! I like air shows! I'll tell you what, you boys let
me go with you and I'll drive you all the way there."
We didn't answer.
"Well, how about it?"
"All right," said Frank.
Frank's father had given us admission and transportation money, but we
had decided to save the transportation money by hitch-hiking.
"Maybe you boys would rather go swimming," said Daniel.
"No," said Frank, "we want to see the air show."
"Swimming's more fun. We can race each other. I know a place where we
can be alone. I'd never go under the pier."
"We want to go to the air show," said Frank.
"All right," said Daniel, "we'll go to the air show."
When we got to the air show parking lot we got out of the car and while
Daniel was locking it Frank said, "RUN!"
We ran toward the admission gate and Daniel saw us running away.
"HEY, YOU LITTLE PERVERTS! COME BACK HERE! COME BACK!"
We kept running.
"Christ," said Frank, "that son-of-a-bitch is crazy!"
We were almost at the admission gate.
"I'LL GET YOU BOYS!"
We paid and ran inside. The show hadn't started yet but a large crowd
was already there.
"Let's hide under the grandstand so he can't find us," said Frank.
The grandstand was built of temporary planks for the people to sit on.
We went underneath. We saw two guys standing under the center of the
grandstand and looking up. They were about 13 or 14 years old, about two or
three years older than we were.
"What are they looking at?" I asked.
"Let's go see," said Frank.
We walked over. One of the guys saw us coming.
"Hey, you punks, get out of here!"
"What are you guys looking at?" Frank asked.
"I told you punks to get out of here!"
"Ah, hell, Marty, let 'em have a look!"
We walked over to where they were standing. We looked up.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Hell, can't you see it?" one of the big guys asked.
"See what?"
"It's a cunt."
"A cunt? Where?"
"Look, right there! See it?"
He pointed.
There was a woman sitting with her skirt bunched back underneath her.
She didn't have any panties on, and looking up between the planks you could
see her cunt.
"See it?"
"Yeah, I see it. It's a cunt," said Frank.
"All right, now you guys get out of here and keep your mouths shut."
"But we want to look at it a little longer," said Frank. "Just let us
look a little longer."
"All right, but not too long."
We stood there looking up at it.
"I can see it," I said.
"It's a cunt," said Frank.
"It's really a cunt," I said.
"Yeah," said one of the big guys, "that's what it is."
"I'll always remember this," I said.
"All right, you guys, it's time to go."
"What for?" asked Frank. "Why can't we keep looking?"
"Because," said one of the big guys, "I'm going to do something.
Now get out of here!"
We walked off.
"I wonder what he's going to do?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Frank, "maybe he's going to throw a rock at
it."
We got out from under the grandstand and looked around for Daniel. We
didn't see him anywhere.
"Maybe he left," I said.
"A guy like that doesn't like airplanes," said Frank. We climbed up
into the grandstand and waited for the show to begin. I looked around at all
the women.
"I wonder which one she was?" I asked.
"I guess you can't tell from the top," said Frank. Then the air show
began. There was a guy in a Fokker doing stunts. He was good, he looped and
circled, stalled, pulled out of it, skimmed the ground, and did an Immelman.
His best trick consisted of a hook on each wing. Two red handkerchiefs were
fastened to poles about six feet above the ground. The Fokker flew down,
dipped a wing, and picked a handkerchief off the pole with the hook on its
wing. Then it came around, dipped the other wing, and got the other
handkerchief.
Then there were some sky-writing acts which were dull and some balloon
races which were silly, and then they had something good -- a race around
four pylons, close to the ground. The airplanes had to circle the pylons
twelve times and the one that finished first got the prize. The pilot was
automatically disqualified if he circled above the pylons. The racing planes
sat on the ground warming up. They were all built differently. One had a
long slim body with hardly any wings. Another was fat and round, it looked
like a football. Another was almost all wings and no body. Each was
different and each was grandly painted. The prize for the winner was $100.
They sat there warming up, and you knew you were really going to see
something exciting. The motors roared like they wanted to tear away from the
airplanes and then the starter dropped the flag and they were off. There
were six planes and there was hardly room for them as they went around the
pylons. Some of the flyers took them low, others high, some in the middle.
Some went faster and lost ground rounding the pylons; others went slower and
made sharper turns. It was wonderful and it was terrible. Then one of them
lost a wing. The plane bounced along the ground, the engine shooting flame
and smoke. It flipped over on its back and the ambulance and the fire truck
came running up. The other planes kept going. Then the engine just exploded
in another plane, came loose, and the remainder of the plane dropped down
like something lost. It hit the ground and everything came apart. But a
strange thing happened. The pilot just slid back the cockpit cowling and
climbed out and waited for the ambulance. He waved to the crowd and they
applauded like mad. It was miraculous.
Suddenly the worst happened. Two planes tangled wings while circling
the pylons. They both spun down and crashed and both caught on fire. The
ambulance and fire engine ran up again. We saw them pull the two guys out
and put them on stretchers. It was sad, those two brave good guys, both
probably crippled for life or dead.
That left only two planes, number 5 and number 2, going for the grand
prize. Number 5 was the slim plane almost without wings and it was much
faster than number 2. Number 2 was the football, he didn't have much speed,
but he made up a lot of ground on the turns. It didn't help much. The 5 kept
lapping the 2.
"Plane number 5," said the announcer, "is now two laps ahead with two
laps to go."
It looked like number 5 was going to get the grand prize. Then he ran
into a pylon. Instead of making the turn he just ran into the pylon and
knocked the whole thing down. He kept going, straight down the field, lower
and lower, the engine at full throttle, and then he hit the ground. The
wheels hit and the plane bounced high into the air, flipped over, skidded
along the ground. The ambulance and fire engine had a long way to go.
Number 2 just kept circling the three pylons that were left and the one
fallen pylon and then he landed. He had won the grand prize. He climbed out.
He was a fat guy, just like his airplane. I had expected a handsome tough
guy. He had been lucky. Hardly anybody applauded.
To close the show they had a parachute contest. There was a circle
painted on the ground, a big bullseye, and the one who landed the closest
won. It seemed dull to me. There wasn't much noise or action. The jumpers
just bailed out and aimed for the circle.
"This isn't very good," I told Frank.
"Naw," he said.
They kept coming down near the circle. More jumpers bailed out of the
planes overhead. Then the crowd started oohing and ahhhing.
"Look!" said Frank.
One chute had only partially opened. There wasn't much air in it. He
was falling faster than the others. You could see him kicking his legs and
working his arms trying to untangle the parachute.
"Jesus Christ," said Frank.
The guy kept dropping, lower and lower, you could see him better and
better. He kept yanking at the cords trying to untangle the chute but
nothing worked. He hit the ground, bounced just a bit, then fell back and
was still. The half-filled chute came down over him.
They cancelled the remainder of the jumps. We walked out with the
people, still watching out for Daniel.
"Let's not hitch-hike back," I said to Frank.
"All right," he said.
Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the
air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt.
19
The 5th grade was a little better. The other students seemed less
hostile and I was growing larger physically. I still wasn't chosen for the
homeroom teams but I was threatened less. David and his violin had gone
away. The family had moved. I walked home alone. I was often trailed by one
or two guys, of whom Juan was the worst, but they didn't start anything.
Juan smoked cigarettes. He'd walk behind me smoking a cigarette and he
always had a different buddy with him. He never followed me alone. It scared
me. I wished they'd go away. Yet, in another way, I didn't care. I didn't
like Juan. I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I
think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or
looked or talked, but I didn't like my father or mother either. I still had
the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a
slight nausea in my stomach. Juan was dark-skinned and he wore a brass chain
instead of a belt. The girls were afraid of him, and the boys too. He and
one of his buddies followed me home almost every day. I'd walk into the
house and they'd stand outside. Juan would smoke his cigarette, looking
tough, and his buddy would stand there. I'd watch them through the curtain.
Finally, they would walk off.
Mrs. Fretag was our English teacher. The first day in class she asked
us each our names.
"I want to get to know all of you," she said. She smiled.
"Now, each of you has a father, I'm sure. I think it would be
interesting if we found out what each of your fathers does for a living.
We'll start with seat number one and we will go around the class. Now,
Marie, what does your father do for a living?"
"He's a gardener."
"Ah, that's nice! Seat number two . . . Andrew, what does your father
do?"
It was terrible. All the fathers in my immediate neighborhood had lost
their jobs. My father had lost his job. Gene's father sat on his front porch
all day. All the fathers were without jobs except Chuck's who worked in a
meat plant. He drove a red car with the meat company's name on the side.
"My father is a fireman," said seat number two.
"Ah, that's interesting," said Mrs. Fretag. "Seat number three."
"My father is a lawyer."
"Seat number four."
"My father is a . . . policeman . . ."
What was I going to say? Maybe only the fathers in my neighborhood were
without jobs. I'd heard of the stock market crash. It meant something bad.
Maybe the stock market had only crashed in our neighborhood.
"Seat number eighteen."
"My father is a movie actor . . ."
"Nineteen..."
"My father is a concert violinist . . ."
"Twenty . . ."
"My father works in the circus . . ."
"Twenty-one.. ."
"My father is a bus driver . . ."
"Twenty-two..."
"My father sings in the opera . . ."
"Twenty-three.. ."
Twenty-three. That was me.
"My father is a dentist," I said.
Mrs. Fretag went right on through the class until she reached number
thirty-three.
"My father doesn't have a job," said number thirty-three. Shit, I
thought, I wish I had thought of that.
One day Mrs. Fretag gave us an assignment.
"Our distinguished President, President Herbert Hoover, is going to
visit Los Angeles this Saturday to speak. I want all of you to go hear our
President. And I want you to write an essay about the experience and about
what you think of President Hoover's speech."
Saturday? There was no way I could go. I had to mow the lawn. I had to
get the hairs. (I could never get all the hairs.) Almost every Saturday I
got a beating with the razor strop because my father found a hair. (I also
got stropped during the week, once or twice, for other things I failed to do
or didn't do right.) There was no way I could tell my father that I had to
go see President Hoover.
So, I didn't go. That Sunday I took some paper and sat down to write
about how I had seen the President. His open car, trailing flowing
streamers, had entered the football stadium. One car, full of secret service
agents went ahead and two cars followed close behind. The agents were brave
men with guns to protect our President. The crowd rose as the President's
car entered the arena. There had never been anything like it before. It was
the President. It was him. He waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls
circled overhead as if they too knew it was the President. And there were
skywriting airplanes too. They wrote words in the sky like "Prosperity is
just around the corner." The President stood up in his car, and just as he
did the clouds parted and the light from the sun fell across his face. It
was almost as if God knew too. Then the cars stopped and our great
President, surrounded by secret service agents, walked to the speaker's
platform. As he stood behind the microphone a bird flew down from the sky
and landed on the speaker's platform near him. The President waved to the
bird and laughed and we all laughed with him. Then he began to speak and the
people listened. I couldn't quite hear the speech because I was sitting too
near a popcorn machine which made a lot of noise popping the kernels, but I
think I heard him say that the problems in Manchuria were not serious, and
that at home everything was going to be all right, we shouldn't worry, all
we had to do was to believe in America. There would be enough jobs for
everybody. There would be enough dentists with enough teeth to pull, enough
fires and enough firemen to put them out. Mills and factories would open
again. Our friends in South America would pay their debts. Soon we would all
sleep peacefully, our stomachs and our hearts full. God and our great
country would surround us with love and protect us from evil, from the
socialists, awaken us from our national nightmare, forever . . .
The President listened to the applause, waved, then went back to his
car, got in, and was driven off followed by carloads of secret service
agents as the sun began to sink, the afternoon turning into evening, red and
gold and wonderful. We had seen and heard President Herbert Hoover.
I turned in my essay on Monday. On Tuesday Mrs. Fretag faced the class.
"I've read all your essays about our distinguished President's visit to
Los Angeles. I was there. Some of you, I noticed, could not attend for one
reason or another. For those of you who could not attend, I would like to
read this essay by Henry Chinaski."
The class was terribly silent. I was the most unpopular member of the
class by far. It was like a knife slicing through all their hearts.
"This is very creative," said Mrs. Fretag, and she began to read my
essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words
filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and
bounced off, they covered Mrs. Fretag's shoes and piled up on the floor.
Some of the prettiest girls in the class began to sneak glances at me. All
the tough guys were pissed. Their essays hadn't been worth shit. I drank in
my words like a thirsty man. I even began to believe them. I saw Juan
sitting there like I'd punched him in the face. I stretched out my legs and
leaned back. All too soon it was over.
"Upon this grand note," said Mrs. Fretag, "I hereby dismiss the class .
. ."
They got up and began packing out.
"Not you, Henry," said Mrs. Fretag. I sat in my chair and Mrs. Fretag
stood there looking at me. Then she said, "Henry, were you there?"
I sat there trying to think of an answer. I couldn't. I said, "No, I
wasn't there."
She smiled. "That makes it all the more remarkable."
"Yes, ma'am . . ."
"You can leave, Henry."
I got up and walked out. I began my walk home. So, that's what they
wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That's what they needed. People were fools. It
was going to be easy for me. I looked around. Juan and his buddy were not
following me. Things were looking up.
20
There were times when Frank and I were friendly with Chuck, Eddie and
Gene. But something would always happen (usually I caused it) and then I
would be out, and Frank would be partly out because he was my friend. It was
good hanging out with Frank. We hitch-hiked everywhere. One of our
favorite places was this movie studio. We crawled under a fence surrounded
by tall weeds to get in. We saw the huge wall and steps they used in the
King kong movie. We saw the fake streets and the fake buildings. The
buildings were just fronts with nothing behind them. We walked all over that
movie lot many times until the guard would chase us out. We hitch-hiked down
to the beach to the Fun House. We would stay in the Fun House three or four
hours. We memorized that place. It really wasn't that good. People shit and
pissed in there and the place was littered with empty bottles. And there
were rubbers in the crapper, hardened and wrinkled. Bums slept in the Fun
House after it closed. There really wasn't anything funny about the Fun
House. The House of Mirrors was good at first. We stayed in there until we
had memorized how to walk through the maze of mirrors and then it wasn't any
good any more. Frank and I never got into fights. We were curious about
things. There was a movie featuring a Caesarean operation on the pier and we
went in and saw it. It was bloody. Each time they cut into the woman blood
squirted out, gushers of it, and then they pulled out the baby. We went
fishing off the pier and when we caught something we would sell it to the
old Jewish ladies who sat . on the benches. I got some beatings from my
father for running off with Frank but I figured I was going to get the
beatings anyhow so I might as well have the fun.
But I continued to have trouble with the other kids in the
neighborhood. My father didn't help. For example he bought me an Indian suit
and a bow and arrow when all the other kids had cowboy outfits. It was the
same then as in the schoolyard -- I was ganged-up on. They'd circle me with
their cowboy outfits and their guns, but when it got bad I'd just put an
arrow into the bow, pull it back and wait. That always moved them off. I
never wore that Indian suit unless my father made me put it on.
I kept falling out with Chuck, Eddie and Gene and then we'd get back
together and then we'd fall out all over again.
One afternoon I was just standing around. I wasn't exactly in good or
in bad with the gang, I was just waiting around for them to forget the last
thing I had done that had made them angry. There wasn't anything else to do.
Just white air and waiting. I got tired of standing around and decided to
walk up the hill to Washington Boulevard, east to the movie house and then
back down to West Adams Boulevard. Maybe I'd walk past the church. I started
walking. Then I heard Eddie:
"Hey, Henry, come here!"
The guys were standing in a driveway between two houses. Eddie, Frank,
Chuck and Gene. They were watching something. They were bent over a large
bush watching something.
"Come here, Henry!"
"What is it?"
I walked up to where they were bending over.
"It's a spider getting ready to eat a fly!" said Eddie. I looked. The
spider had spun a web between the branches of a bush and a fly had gotten
caught in there. The spider was very excited. The fly shook the whole web as
it tried to pull free. It was buzzing wildly and helplessly as the spider
wound the fly's wings and body in more and more spider web. The spider went
around and around, webbing the fly completely as it buzzed. The spider was
very big and ugly.
"It's going to close in now!" yelled Chuck. "It's going to sink its
fangs!"
I pushed in between the guys, kicked out and knocked the spider and the
fly out of the web with my foot.
"What the hell have you done?" asked Chuck.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" yelled Eddie. "You've spoiled it!"
I backed off. Even Frank stared at me strangely.
"Let's get his ass!" yelled Gene.
They were between me and the street. I ran down the driveway into the
backyard of a strange house. They were after me. I ran through the backyard
and behind the garage. There was a six-foot lattice fence covered with
vines. I went straight up the fence and over the top. I ran through the next
backyard and up the driveway and as I ran up the driveway I looked back and
saw Chuck just reaching the top of the fence. Then he slipped and fell into
the yard landing on his back. "Shit!" he said. I took a right and kept
running. I ran for seven or eight blocks and then sat down on somebody's
lawn and rested. There was nobody around. I wondered if Frank would forgive
me. I wondered if the others would forgive me. I decided to stay out of
sight for a week or so . . .
And so they forgot. Not much happened for a while. There were many days
of nothing. Then Frank's father committed suicide. Nobody knew why. Frank
told me he and his mother would have to move to a smaller place in another
neighborhood. He said he would write. And he did. Only we didn't write. We
drew cartoons. About cannibals. His cartoons were about troubles with
cannibals and then I'd continue the cartoon story where his left off, about
the troubles with the cannibals. My mother found one of Frank's cartoons and
showed it to my father and our letter writing was over.
5th grade became 6th grade and I began to think about running away from
home but I decided that if most of our fathers couldn't get jobs how in the
hell could a guy under five feet tall get one? John Dillinger was
everybody's hero, adults and kids alike. He took the money from the banks.
And there was Pretty Boy Floyd and Ma Barker and Machine Gun Kelly.
People began going to vacant lots where weeds grew. They had learned
that some of the weeds could be cooked and eaten. There were fist fights
between men in the vacant lots and on street corners. Everybody was angry.
The men smoked Bull Durham and didn't take any shit from anybody. They let
the little round Bull Durham tags hang out of their front shirt pockets and
they could all roll a cigarette with one hand. When you saw a man with a
Bull Durham tag dangling, that meant look out. People went around talking
about 2nd and 3rd mortgages. My father came home one night with a broken arm
and two black eyes. My mother had a low paying job somewhere. And each boy
in the neighborhood had one pair of Sunday pants and one pair of daily
pants. When shoes wore out there weren't any new ones. The department stores
had soles and heels they sold for 15 or 20 cents along with the glue, and
these were glued to the bottoms of the worn out shoes. Gene's parents had
one rooster and some chickens in their backyard, and if some chicken didn't
lay enough eggs they ate it.
As for me, it was the same -- at school, and with Chuck, Gene and
Eddie. Not only did the grownups get mean, the kids got mean, and even the
animals got mean. It was like they took their cue from the people.
One day I was standing around, waiting as usual, not friendly with the
gang, no longer really wanting to be, when Gene rushed up to me, "Hey,
Henry, come on!"
"What is it?"
"COME ON!"
Gene started running and I ran after him. We ran down the driveway and
into the Gibsons' backyard. The Gibsons had a large brick wall all around
their backyard.
"LOOK! HE'S GOT THE CAT CORNERED! HE'S GOING TO KILL IT!"
There was a small white cat backed into a corner of the wall. It
couldn't go up and it couldn't go in one direction or the other. Its back
was arched and it was spitting, its claws ready. But it was very small and
Chuck's bulldog, Barney, was growling and moving closer and closer. I got
the feeling that the cat had been put there by the guys and then the bulldog
had been brought in. I felt it strongly because of the way Chuck and Eddie
and Gene were watching: they had a guilty look.
"You guys did this," I said.
"No," said Chuck, "it's the cat's fault. It came in here. Let it fight
its way out."
"I hate you bastards," I said.
"Barney's going to kill that cat," said Gene.
"Barney will rip it to pieces," said Eddie. "He's afraid of the claws
but when he moves in it will be all over."
Barney was a large brown bulldog with slobbering jaws. He was dumb and
fat with senseless brown eyes. His growl was steady and he kept inching
forward, the hairs standing up on his neck and along his back. I felt like
kicking him in his stupid ass but I figured he would rip my leg off. He was
entirely intent upon the kill. The white cat wasn't even fully grown. It
hissed and waited, pressed against the wall, a beautiful creature, so clean.
The dog moved slowly forward. Why did the guys need this? This wasn't a
matter of courage, it was just dirty play. Where were the grownups? Where
were the authorities? They were always around accusing me. Now where were
they?
I thought of rushing in, grabbing the cat and running, but I didn't
have the nerve. I was afraid that the bulldog would attack me. The knowledge
that I didn't have the courage to do what was necessary made me feel
terrible. I began to feel physically sick. I was weak. I didn't want it to
happen yet I couldn't think of any way to stop it.
"Chuck," I said, "let the cat go, please. Call your dog off."
Chuck didn't answer. He just kept watching. Then he said, "Barney, go
get him! Get that cat!"
Barney moved forward and suddenly the cat leaped. It was a furious blur
of white and hissing, claws and teeth. Barney backed off and the cat
retreated to the wall again.
"Go get him, Barney," Chuck said again.
"God damn you, shut up!" I told him.
"Don't talk to me that way," Chuck said. Barney began to move in again.
"You guys set this up," I said.
I heard a slight sound behind us and looked around. I saw old Mr.
Gibson watching from behind his bedroom window. He wanted the cat to get
killed too, just like the guys. Why?
Old Mr. Gibson was our mailman with the false teeth. He had a wife who
stayed in the house all the time. She only came out to empty the garbage.
Mrs. Gibson always wore a net over her hair and she was always dressed in a
nightgown, bathrobe and slippers. Then as I watched, Mrs. Gibson, dressed as
always came and stood next to her husband, waiting for the kill. Old Mr.
Gibson was one of the few men in the neighborhood with a job but he still
needed to see the cat killed. Gibson was just like Chuck, Eddie and Gene.
There were too many of them.
The bulldog moved closer. I couldn't watch the kill. I felt a great
shame at leaving the cat like that. There was always the chance that the cat
might try to escape, but I knew that they would prevent it. That cat wasn't
only facing the bulldog, it was facing Humanity.
I turned and walked away, out of the yard, up the driveway and to the
sidewalk. I walked along the sidewalk toward where I lived and there in the
front yard of his home, my father stood waiting.
"Where have you been?" he asked. I didn't answer.
"Get inside," he said, "and stop looking so unhappy or I'll give you
something that will really make you unhappy!"
21
Then I started attending Mt. Justin Jr. High. About half the guys from
Delsey Grammar School went there, the biggest and toughest half. Another
gang of giants came from other schools. Our 7th grade class was bigger than
the 9th grade class. When we lined up for gym it was funny, most of us were
bigger than the gym teachers. We would stand there for roll call, slouched,
our guts hanging out, heads down, shoulders slumped.
"Jesus Christ," said Wagner, the gym teacher, "pull your shoulders
back, stand straight!"
Nobody would change position. We were the way we were, and we didn't
want to be anything else. We all came from Depression families and most of
us were ill-fed, yet we had grown up to be huge and strong. Most of us, I
think, got little love from our families, and we didn't ask for love or
kindness from anybody. We were a joke but people were careful not to laugh
in front of us. It was as if we had grown up too soon and we were bored with
being children. We had no respect for our elders. We were like tigers with
the mange. One of the Jewish fellows, Sam Feidman, had a black beard and had
to shave every morning. By noon his chin was almost black. And he had a mass
of black hair all over his chest and he smelled terrible under the arms.
Another guy looked like Jack Dempsey. Another guy, Peter Mangalore, had a
cock 10 inches long, soft. And when we got in the shower, I found out I had
the biggest balls of anybody.
"Hey! Look at that guy's balls, will ya?"
"Holy shit! Not much cock but look at those balls! "
"Holy shit!"
I don't know what it was about us but we had something, and we felt it.
You could see it in the way we walked and talked. We didn't talk much, we
just inferred, and that's what got everybody mad, the way we took
things for granted.
The 7th grade team would play touch football after school against the
8th and 9th graders. It was no match. We beat them easy, we knocked them
down, we did it with style, almost without effort. In touch football most
teams passed on every play, but our team worked in lots of runs. Then we
could set up the blocking and our guys would go for the other guys and knock
them down. It was just an excuse to be violent, we didn't give a damn about
the runner. The other side was always glad when we called a pass play.
The girls stayed after school and watched us. Some of them were already
going out with high school guys, they didn't want to mess with jr. high
school punks, but they stayed to watch the 7th graders. We were known. The
girls stayed after class and watched us and marveled. I wasn't on the team
but I stood on the sidelines and sneaked smokes, feeling like a coach or
something. We're all going to get fucked, we thought, watching the girls.
But most of us only masturbated.
Masturbation. I remember how I learned about it. One morning Eddie
scratched on my bedroom window.
"What is it?" I asked Eddie.
He held up a test tube and it had something white in the bottom of it.
"What's that?"
"Come," said Eddie, "it's my come."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, all you do is spit on your hand and begin rubbing your cock, it
feels good and pretty soon this white juice shoots out of the end of your
cock. That stuff is called 'come."'
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Eddie walked off with his test tube. I thought about it awhile and then
I decided to try it. My cock got hard and it felt real good, it felt better
and better, and I kept going and it felt like nothing I had ever felt
before. Then juice spurted out of the head of my cock. After that I did it
every now and then. It got better if you imagined you were doing it with a
girl while you whacked-off.
One day I was standing on the sidelines watching our team kick the shit
out of some other team. I was sneaking a smoke and watching. There was a
girl on either side of me. As our guys broke out of a huddle I saw the gym
coach, Curly Wagner, walking toward me. I ditched the smoke and clapped my
hands.
"Let's dump 'em on their butts, gang!"
Wagner walked up to me. He just stood there staring at me. I had
developed an evil look on my face.
"I'm going to get all you guys!" Wagner said. "Especially you!"
I turned my head and glanced at him, casually, then turned my head
away. Wagner stood there looking at me. Then he walked off.
I felt good about that. I liked being picked out as one of the bad
guys. I liked to feel bad. Anybody could be a good guy, that didn't take
guts. Dillinger had guts. Ma Barker was a great woman teaching those guys
how to operate a submachine gun. I didn't want to be like my father. He only
pretended to be bad. When you're bad you didn't pretend, it was just there.
I liked being bad. Trying to be good made me sick.
The girl next to me said, "You don't have to take that from Wagner. Are
you afraid of him?"
I turned and looked at her. I stared at her a long time, motionless.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked.
I looked away from her, spit on the ground, and walked off. I slowly
walked the length of the field, exited through the rear gate and began
walking home.
Wagner always wore a grey sweatshirt and grey sweatpants. He had a
little pot belly. Something was continually bothering him. His only
advantage was his age. He would try to bluff us but that was working less
and less. There was always somebody pushing me who had no right to push.
Wagner and my father. My father and Wagner. What did they want? Why was I in
their way?
22
One day, just like in grammar school, like with David, a boy
attached himself to me. He was small and thin and had almost no hair on top
of his head. The guys called him Baldy. His real name was Eli LaCrosse. I
liked his real name, but I didn't like him. He just glued himself to me. He
was so pitiful that I couldn't tell him to get lost. He was like a mongrel
dog, starved and kicked. Yet it didn't make me feel good going around with
him. But since I knew that mongrel dog feeling, I let him hang around. He
used a cuss word in almost every sentence, at least one cuss word, but it
was all fake, he wasn't tough, he was scared. I wasn't scared but I was
confused so maybe we were a good pair.
I walked him back to his place after school every day. He was living
with his mother, his father and his grandfather. They had a little house
across from a small park. I liked the area, it had great shade trees, and
since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to
the sun, darkness to light.
During our walks home Baldy had told me about his father. He had been a
doctor, a successful surgeon, but he had lost his license because he was a
drunk. One day I met Baldy's father. He was sitting in a chair under a tree,
just sitting there.
"Dad," he said, "this is Henry."
"Hello, Henry."
It reminded me of when I had seen my grandfather for the first time,
standing on the steps of his house. Only Baldy's father had black hair and a
black beard, but his eyes were the same -- brilliant and glowing, so
strange. And here was Baldy, the son, and he didn't glow at all.
"Come on," Baldy said, "follow me."
We went down into a cellar, under the house. It was dark and damp and
we stood awhile until our eyes grew used to the gloom. Then I could see a
number of barrels.
"These barrels are full of different kinds of wine," Baldy said.
"Each barrel has a spigot. Want to try some?"
"No."
"Go ahead, just try a god-damned sip."
"What for?"
"You think you're a god-damned man or what?"
"I'm tough," I said.
"Then take a fucking sample."
Here was little Baldy, daring me. No problem. I walked up to a barrel,
ducked my head down.
"Turn the god-damned spigot! Open your god-damned mouth!"
"Are there any spiders around here?"
"Go on! Go on, god damn it!"
I put my mouth under the spigot and opened it. A smelly liquid trickled
out and into my mouth. I spit it out.
"Don't be chicken! Swallow it, what the shit!"
I opened the spigot and I opened my mouth. The smelly liquid entered
and I swallowed it. I turned off the spigot and stood there. I thought I was
going to puke.
"Now, you drink some," I said to Baldy.
"Sure," he said, "I ain't fucking afraid!"
He got down under a barrel and took a good swallow. A little punk like
that wasn't going to outdo me. I got under another barrel, opened it and
took a swallow. I stood up. I was beginning to feel good.
"Hey, Baldy," I said, "I like this stuff."
"Well, shit, try some more."
I tried some more. It was tasting better. I was feeling better.
"This stuff belongs to your father, Baldy. I shouldn't drink it all."
"He doesn't care. He's stopped drinking."
Never had I felt so good. It was better than masturbating. I went from
barrel to barrel. It was magic. Why hadn't someone told me? With this, life
was great, a man was perfect, nothing could touch him.
I stood up straight and looked at Baldy.
"Where's your mother? I'm going to fuck your mother!"
"I'll kill you, you bastard, you stay away from my mother!"
"You know I can whip you, Baldy."
"Yes."
"All right, I'll leave your mother alone."
"Let's go then, Henry."
"One more drink . . ."
I went to a barrel and took a long one. Then we went up the cellar
stairway. When we were out, Baldy's father was still sitting in his chair.
"You boys been in the wine cellar, eh?"
"Yes," said Baldy.
"Starting a little early, aren't you?"
We didn't answer. We walked over to the boulevard and Baldy and I went
into a store which sold chewing gum. We bought several packs of it and stuck
it into our mouths. He was worried about his mother finding out. I wasn't
worried about anything. We sat on a park bench and chewed the gum and I
thought, well, now I have found something, I have found something that is
going to help me, for a long long time to come. The park grass looked
greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.
Maybe that stuff wasn't good for surgeons but anybody who wanted to be a
surgeon, there was something wrong with them in the first place.
23
At Mt. Justin, biology class was neat. We had Mr. Stanhope for our
teacher. He was an old guy about 55 and we pretty much dominated him. Lilly
Fischman was in the class and she was really developed. Her breasts were
enormous and she had a marvelous behind which she wiggled while walking in
her high-heeled shoes. She was great, she talked to all the guys and rubbed
up against them while she talked.
Every day in biology class it was the same. We never learned any
biology, Mr. Stanhope would talk for about ten minutes and then Lilly would
say, "Oh, Mr. Stanhope, let's have a show!"
"No!"
"Oh, Mr. Stanhope!"
She would walk up to his desk, bend over him sweetly and whisper
something.
"Oh, well, all right . . ." he'd say.
And then Lilly would begin singing and wiggling. She always opened up
with "The Lullaby of Broadway" and then she went into her other numbers. She
was great, she was hot, she was burning up, and we were too. She was like a
grown woman, putting it to Stanhope, putting it to us. It was wonderful. Old
Stanhope would sit there blubbering and slobbering. We'd laugh at Stanhope
and cheer Lilly on. It lasted until one day the principal, Mr. Lacefield,
came running in.
"What's going on here?"
Stanhope just sat there unable to speak.
"This class is dismissed!" Lacefield screamed.
As we filed out, Lacefield said, "And you, Miss Fischman,
will report to my office!"
Of course, after that we never studied our homework, and that was all
right until the day Mr. Stanhope gave us our first examination.
"Shit," said Peter Mangalore out loud, "what are we going to do?"
Peter was the guy with the 10-incher, soft.
"You'll never have to work for a living," said the guy who looked like
Jack Dempsey. "This is our problem."
"Maybe we ought to burn the school down," said Red Kirkpatrick.
"Shit," said a guy from the back of the room, "every time I get an 'F'
my father pulls out one of my fingernails."
We all looked at our examination sheets. I thought about my
father. Then I thought about Lilly Fischman. Lilly Fischman, I thought,
you are a whore, an evil woman, wiggling your body in front of us and
singing like that, you will send us all to hell. Stanhope was watching us.
"Why isn't anybody writing? Why isn't anybody answering the questions?
Does everybody have a pencil?"
"Yeah, yeah, we all got pencils," one of the guys said. Lilly sat up in
front, right by Mr. Stanhope's desk. We saw her open her biology textbook
and look up the answer to the first question. That was it. We all opened up
our textbooks. Stanhope just sat there and watched us. He didn't know what
to do. He began to sputter. He sat there a good five minutes, then he jumped
up. He ran back and forth up and down the center aisle of the room.
"What are you people doing? Close those textbooks! Close those
textbooks!"
As he ran by, the students would close their books only to open them
again when he had run past.
Baldy was in the seat next to mine, laughing. "He's an asshole!
Oh, what an old asshole!"
I felt a little sorry for Stanhope but it was either him or me.
Stanhope stood behind his desk and screamed, "All textbooks must be
closed or I will flunk the entire class!"
Then Lilly Fischman stood up. She pulled her skirt up and yanked at
one of her silk stockings. She adjusted the garter, we saw white flesh. Then
she pulled at and adjusted the other stocking. Such a sight we had never
seen, nor had Stanhope ever seen anything like it. Lilly sat down and we all
finished the exam with our textbooks open. Stanhope sat behind his desk,
utterly defeated.
Another guy we jerked around was Pop Farnsworth. It began the first day
in Machine Shop. He said, "Here we learn by doing. We will begin right now.
You will each take an engine apart and put it back together, until it is in
working order, during the semester. There are charts on the wall and I will
answer your questions. You will also be shown movies about how an engine
works. But right now please begin to dismantle your engines. The tools are
on your workshelf."
"Hey, Pop, how about the movies first?" some guy asked.
"I said, 'Begin your project!"'
I don't know where they got all those engines. They were greasy and
black and rusted. They looked really dismal.
"Fuck," said some guy, "this one is a hunk of clogged shit."
We stood over our engines. Most of the guys reached for monkey
wrenches. Red Kirkpatrick took a screwdriver and scraped it slowly along the
top of his engine carefully creating a black ribbon of grease two feet long.
"Come on, Pop, how about a movie? We just got out of gym, our asses are
dragging! Wagner had us doing the hop, skip and jump like a bunch of frogs!"
"Begin your assignment as requested!"
We started in. It was senseless. It was worse than Music Appreciation.
Some clanking of tools could be heard and some heavy breathing.
"FUCK!" hollered Harry Henderson, "I'VE JUST SKINNED MY WHOLE GOD-
DAMNED KNUCKLE! THIS IS NOTHING BUT FUCKING WHITE SLAVERY!"
He wrapped a handkerchief tenderly around his right hand and watched
the blood soak through. "Shit," he said.
The rest of us kept trying. "I'd rather stick my head up an elephant's
cunt," said Red Kirkpatrick.
Jack Dempsey threw his wrench to the floor. "I quit," he said,
"do anything you want to me, I quit. Kill me. Cut my balls off. I
quit."
He walked over and leaned against a wall. He folded his arms and looked
down at his shoes.
The situation seemed truly terrible. There weren't any girls. When you
looked out the back door of the shop you could see the open schoolyard, all
that sunlight and empty space out there where there was nothing to do. And
here we were bent over stupid engines that weren't even attached to cars,
they were useless. Just stupid steel. It was dumb and it was hard. We needed
mercy. Our lives were dumb enough. Something had to save us. We'd heard Pop
was a soft touch but it didn't seem true. He was a giant son-of-a-bitch with
a beer gut, dressed in his greasy outfit, and with hair hanging down in his
eyes and grease on his chin.
Arnie Whitechapel threw down his wrench and walked up to Mr.
Farnsworth. Arnie had a big grin on his face. "Hey, Pop, what the fuck?"
"Get back to your engine, Whitechapel!"
"Ah, come on. Pop, what the shit!"
Arnie was a couple of years older than the rest of us. He had spent a
few years in some boys' correctional school. But even though he was older
than we were, he was smaller. He had very black hair slicked back with
vaseline. He would stand in front of the mirror in the men's crapper
squeezing his pimples. He talked dirty to the girls and carried Sheik
rubbers in his pockets.
"I got a good one for you. Pop!"
"Yeah? Get back to your engine, Whitechapel."
"It's a good one, Pop."
We stood there and watched as Arnie began to tell Pop a dirty joke.
Their heads were close together. Then the joke was over, Pop began laughing.
That big body was doubled over, he was holding his gut. "Holy shit! Oh my
god, holy shit!" he laughed. Then he stopped. "O.K., Arnie, back to your
machine!"
"No, wait, Pop, I got another one!"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, listen . . ."
We all left our machines and walked over. We circled them, listening as
Arnie told the next joke. When it was over Pop doubled up. "Holy shit, oh
lord, holy shit!"
"Then there's another one, Pop. This guy is driving his car in the
desert. He notices this guy jumping along the road. He's naked and his hands
and feet arc tied with rope. The guy stops his car and asks the guy, 'Hey,
buddy, what's the matter?' And the guy tells him, 'Well, I was driving along
and I saw this bastard hitch-hiking so I stopped and the son-of-a-bitch
pulls a gun on me, takes my clothes away and then ties me up. Then the dirty
son-of-a-bitch reams me in the ass!' 'Oh yeah?' says the guy getting out of
his car. 'Yeah, that's what that dirty son-of-a-bitch did!' says the man.
'Well,' says the guy unzipping his fly, 1 guess this just isn't your lucky
day!"'
Pop began laughing, he doubled over. "Oh, no! Oh, NO! OH . . . HOLY . .
. SHIT, CHRIST . . . HOLY SHIT . . . !"
He finally stopped.
"God damn," he said quietly, "oh my lord . . ."
"How about a movie, Pop?"
"Oh well, all right."
Somebody closed the back door and Pop pulled out a dirty white screen.
He started the projector. It was a lousy movie but it beat working on those
engines. The gas was ignited by the spark plugs and the explosion hit the
cylinder head and the head was thrust down and that turned the crankshaft
and the valves opened and closed and the cylinder heads kept going up and
down and the crankshaft turned some more. Not very interesting, but it was
cool in there and you could lean back in your chair and think about what you
wanted to think about. You didn't have to bust your knuckles on dumb steel.
We never did get those engines taken apart let alone put back together
again and I don't know how many times we saw that same movie. Whitechapel's
jokes kept coming and we all laughed our heads off even though most of the
jokes were pretty terrible, except to Pop Farnsworth who kept doubling over
and laughing,
"Holy shit! Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no!"
He was an O.K. guy. We all liked him.
24
Our English teacher, Miss Gredis, was the absolute best. She was a
blonde with a long sharp nose. Her nose wasn't much good but you didn't
notice it when you looked at the rest of her. She wore tight dresses and low
v-necks, black high-heeled shoes and silk stockings. She was snake-like with
long beautiful legs. She only sat behind her desk when she took roll call.
She kept one desk vacant at the front of the room and after roll call she
would come down and sit on that desk top, facing us. Miss Gredis sat perched
there with her legs crossed and her skirt pulled high. Never had we seen
such ankles, such legs, such thighs. Well, there was Lilly Fischman, but
Lilly was a girl-woman while Miss Gredis was in full bloom. And we got to
gaze upon her for a full hour each day. There wasn't a boy in that class who
wasn't sad when the bell rang ending the English period. We'd talk about
her.
"Do you think she wants to be fucked?"
"No, I think she's just teasing us. She knows she's driving us crazy,
that's all she needs, that's all she wants."
"I know where she lives. I'm going over there some night."
"You wouldn't have the balls!"
"Yeah? Yeah? I'll fuck the shit out of her! She's asking for it!"
"A guy I know in the 8th grade said he went over there one night."
"Yeah? What happened?"
"She came to the door in a nightgown, her tits were practically hanging
out. The guy said he had forgotten the next day's homework and wondered what
it was. She asked him in."
"No shit?"
"Yeah. Nothing happened. She made him some tea, told him about the
homework and he left."
"If I had of gotten in, that would have been it!"
"Yeah? What would you have done?"
"First I would have corn-holed her, then I would have eaten her pussy,
then I would fuck her between the tits and then I would force her to give me
a blow job."
"No kidding, dreamer boy. You ever been laid?"
"Fuck yes, I've been laid. Several times."
"How was it?"
"Lousy."
"Couldn't come, hub?"
"I came all over the place, I thought I'd never stop."
"Came all over the palm of your hand, hub?"
"Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"Ha, ha!"
"All over your hand, hub?"
"Fuck you guys!"
"I don't think any of us has been laid," said one of the guys. There
was silence.
"That's shit. I was laid when I was seven years old."
"That's nothing. I was laid when I was four."
"Sure, Red. Lay it on good!"
"I got this little girl under the house."
"You got a hard?"
"Sure."
"You came?"
"I think so. Something squirted out."
"Sure. You pissed in her cunt, Red."
"Balls!"
"What was her name?"
"Betty Ann."
"Fuck," said the guy who claimed to have gotten laid when he was seven.
"Mine was named Betty Ann too."
"That whore," said Red.
One tine Spring day we were sitting in English class and Miss Gredis
was sitting on the front desk facing us. She had her skirt pulled especially
high, it was terrifying, beautiful, wondrous and dirty. Such legs, such
thighs, we were very close to the magic. It was unbelievable. Baldy sat in
the seat across the aisle from me. He reached over and began poking me on
the leg with his finger:
"She's breaking all the records!" he whispered. "Look!
Look!"
"My God," I said, "shut up or she'll pull her skirt down!"
Baldy pulled his hand back and I waited. We hadn't spooked Miss Gredis.
Her skirt remained as high as ever. It was truly a day to remember. There
wasn't a boy in class without a hard-on and Miss Gredis went on talking. I'm
sure that none of the boys heard a word she was saying. The girls, though,
turned and glanced at each other as if to say, this bitch is going too far.
Miss Gredis couldn't go too far. It was almost as if there weren't even a
cunt up there but something much better. Those legs. The sun came through
the window and poured in on those legs and thighs, the sun played on that
warm silk pulled so tightly. The skirt was so high, pulled hack, we
all prayed for a glimpse of panty, a glimpse of something, Jesus
Christ, it was like the world ending and beginning and ending again, it was
everything real and unreal, the sun, the thighs, and the silk, so smooth, so
warm, so alluring. The whole room throbbed. Eyesight blurred and returned
and Miss Gredis went on sitting there as if nothing was happening and she
kept talking as if everything was normal. That's what made it so good and so
terrible: the fact that she pretended that it wasn't happening. I looked
down at my desk top for a moment and saw the grain in the wood heightened as
if each pattern was a pool of whirling liquid. Then I quickly looked back at
the legs and thighs, angered with myself that I had looked away for a
moment, and perhaps missed something.
Then the sound began: "Thump, thump, thump, thump . . ."
Richard Waite. He sat in a seat in the back. He had huge ears and thick
lips, the lips were swollen and monstrous and he had a very large head. His
eyes were almost without color, they didn't reflect interest or
intelligence. He had large feet and his mouth always hung open. When he
spoke the words came out one by one, halting, with long pauses in between.
He wasn't even a sissy. Nobody ever spoke to him. Nobody knew what he was
doing there in our school. He gave the impression that something important
was missing from his makeup. He wore clean clothing, but his shirt was
always out in the back, one or two buttons were gone on his shirt or on his
pants. Richard Waite. He lived somewhere and he came to school every day.
"Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump . . ."
Richard Waite was jerking-off, a salute to Miss Gredis' thighs and
legs. He had finally weakened. Perhaps he didn't understand society's ways.
Now we all heard him. Miss Gredis heard him. The girls heard him. We all
knew what he was doing. He was so fucking dumb he didn't even have sense
enough to keep it quiet. And he was becoming more and more excited. The
thumps grew louder. His closed fist was hitting the underside of his desk
top.
"THUMP, THUMP THUMP . . ."
We looked at Miss Gredis. What would she do? She hesitated. She glanced
about the class. She smiled, as composed as ever, and then she continued
speaking:
"I believe that the English language is the most expressive and
contagious form of communication. To begin with, we should be thankful that
we have this unique gift of a great language. And if we abuse it we are only
abusing ourselves. So let us listen, heed, acknowledge our heritage, and yet
explore and take risks with language . . ."
"THUMP, THUMP, THUMP . . ."
"We must forget England and their use of our common tongue. Even though
English usage is fine, our own American language contains many deep wells of
unexplored resources. These resources, as yet, remain untapped. Given the
proper moment and the proper writers, there will one day be a literary
explosion . . ."
"THUMP, THUMP, THUMP . . ."
Yes, Richard Waite was one of the few we never talked to. Actually, we
were afraid of him. He wasn't somebody you could beat the shit out of, that
would never make anybody feel better. You just wanted to get as far away
from him as possible, you didn't want to look at him, you didn't want to
look at those big lips, that big unfolding mouth like the mouth of a bruised
frog. You shunned him because you couldn't defeat Richard Waite.
We waited and waited while Miss Gredis talked on about English versus
American culture. We waited, while Richard Waite went on and on. Richard's
fist banged against the underside of his desk top and the little girls
glanced at each other and the guys were thinking, why is this asshole in
this class with us? He's going to spoil everything. One asshole and Miss
Gredis will pull her skirt down forever.
"THUMP, THUMP, THUMP . . ."
And then it stopped. Richard sat there. He was finished. We sneaked
glances at him. He looked the same. Was his sperm laying in his lap or was
it in his hand? The bell rang. English class was over.
After that, there was more of the same. Richard Waite thumped it often
while we listened to Miss Gredis sitting on that front desk with her legs
crossed high. We boys accepted the situation. After a while we even were
amused. The girls accepted it but they didn't like it, especially Lilly
Fischman who was almost forgotten.
Besides Richard Waite, there was another problem for me in that class:
Harry Walden. Harry Walden was pretty, the girls thought, and he had long
golden curls and wore strange, delicate clothing. He looked like an 18th
century fop, lots of strange colors, dark green, dark blue, I don't know
where the hell his parents found his clothes. And he always sat very still
and listened attentively. Like he understood everything. The girls said,
"He's a genius." He didn't look like anything to me. What I couldn't
understand was that the tough guys didn't mess with him. It bothered me. How
could he get off so easy? I found him one day in the hall. I stopped him.
"You don't look like shit to me," I said. "How come everybody thinks
you're hot shit?"
Walden glanced over to his right and when I turned my head to look in
that direction, he slid around me as if I were something from the sewer and
then a moment later he was in his seat in the class.
Almost every day it was Miss Gredis showing it all and Richard thumping
away and this guy Walden sitting there saying nothing and acting like he
believed he was a genius. I got sick of it.
I asked some of the other guys, "Listen, do you really think Harry
Walden is a genius? He just sits around in his pretty clothes and doesn't
say anything. What does that prove? We could all do that."
They didn't answer me. I couldn't understand their feelings about this
fucking guy. And it got worse. Word got out that Harry Walden was going to
see Miss Gredis every night, that he was her favorite pupil, and that they
were making love. It made me sick. I could just imagine him getting out of
his delicate green and blue outfit, folding it across a chair, then climbing
out of his orange satin shorts and sliding under the sheets where Miss
Gredis cuddled his curly golden head on her shoulder and fondled it and
other things as well.
It was whispered about by the girls who always seemed to know
everything. And even though the girls didn't particularly like Miss Gredis,
they thought the situation was all right, that it was reasonable because
Harry Walden was such a delicate genius and needed all the sympathy he could
get. I caught Harry Walden in the hall one more time.
"I'll kick your ass, you son-of-a-bitch, you don't fool me!"
Harry Walden looked at me. Then he looked over my shoulder and pointed
and said, "What's that over there?"
I looked around. When I looked back he was gone. He was sitting in the
class safely surrounded by all the girls who thought he was a genius and who
loved him.
There was more and more whispering about Harry Walden going over to
Miss Gredis' house at night and some days Harry wouldn't even be in class.
Those were the best days for me because I only had to deal with the thumping
and not the golden curls and the adoration for that kind of stuff by all the
little girls with their skirts and sweaters and starched gingham dresses.
When Harry wasn't there the little girls would whisper, "He's just too
sensitive... "
And Red Kirkpatrick would say, "She's fucking him to death."
One afternoon I walked into class and Harry Walden's seat was empty. I
figured he was just fucking-off as usual. Then the word drifted from desk to
desk. I was always the last to know anything. It finally got to me: Harry
Walden had committed suicide. The night before. Miss Gredis didn't know yet.
I looked over at his seat. He'd never sit there again. All those colorful
clothes shot to hell. Miss Gredis finished roll call. She came and sat on
the front desk, crossed her legs high. She had on a lighter shade of silk
hose than ever before. Her skirt was hiked way back to her thighs.
"Our American culture," she said, "is destined for greatness. The
English language, now so limited and structured, will be reinvented and
improved upon. Our writers will use what I like to think of, in my mind, as
Americanese . . ."
Miss Gredis' stockings were almost skin-colored. It was as if she were
not wearing stockings at all, it was as if she were naked there in front of
us, but since she wasn't and only appeared to be, that made it better than
ever.
"More and more we will discover our own truths and our own way of
speaking, and this new voice will be uncluttered by old histories, old
mores, old dead and useless dreams . . ."
"Thump, thump, thump . . ."
25
Curly Wagner picked out Morris Moscowitz. It was after school and eight
or ten of us guys had heard about it and we walked out behind the gym to
watch. Wagner laid down the rules, "We fight until somebody hollers quit."
"0. K. with me," said Morris. Morris was a tall thin guy, he was a
little bit dumb and he never said much or bothered anybody.
Wagner looked over at me. "And after I finish with this guy, I'm taking
you on!"
"Me, coach?"
"Yeah, you, Chinaski."
I sneered at him.
"I'm going to get some god-damned respect from you guys if I have to
whip all of you one by one!"
Wagner was cocky. He was always working out on the parallel bars or
tumbling on the mat or taking laps around the track. He swaggered when he
walked but he still had his pot belly. He liked to stand and stare at a guy
for a long time like he was shit. I didn't know what was bothering him. We
worried him. I believe he thought we were fucking all the girls like crazy
and he didn't like to think about that.
They squared off. Wagner had some good moves. He bobbed, he weaved, he
shuffled his feet, he moved in and out, and he made little hissing sounds.
He was impressive. He caught Moscowitz with three straight left jabs.
Moscowitz just stood there with his hands at his sides. He didn't know
anything about boxing. Then Wagner cracked Moscowitz with a right to the
jaw. "Shit!" said Morris and he threw a roundhouse right which Wagner
ducked. Wagner countered with a right and left to Moscowitz' face. Morris
had a bloody nose. "Shit!" he said and then he started swinging. And
landing. You could hear the shots, they cracked against Wagner's head.
Wagner tried to counter but his punches just didn't have the force and the
fury of Moscowitz'.
"Holy shit! Get him, Morrie!"
Moscowitz was a puncher. He dug a left to that pot belly. Wagner gasped
and dropped. He fell to both knees. His face was cut and bleeding. His chin
was on his chest and he looked sick.
"I quit," Wagner said.
We left him there behind the building and we followed Morris Moscowitz
out of there. He was our new hero.
"Shit, Morrie, you ought to turn pro!"
"Naw, I'm only thirteen years old."
We walked over behind the machine shop and stood around the steps.
Somebody lit up some cigarettes and we passed them around.
"What has that man got against us?" asked Morrie.
"Hell, Morrie, don't you know? He's jealous. He thinks we're fucking
all the chicks!"
"Why, I've never even kissed a girl."
"No shit, Morrie?"
"No shit."
"You ought to try dry-fucking, Morrie, it's great!"
Then we saw Wagner walking past. He was working on his face with his
handkerchief.
"Hey, coach," yelled one of the guys, "how about a rematch?"
He stood and looked at us. "You boys put out those cigarettes!"
"Ah, no, coach, we like to smoke!"
"Come on over here, coach, and make us put out our cigarettes!"
"Yeah, come on, coach!"
Wagner stood looking at us. "I'm not done with you yet! I'll get every
one of you, one way or the other!"
"How ya gonna do that, coach? Your talents seem limited."
"Yeah, coach, how ya gonna do it?"
He walked off the field to his car. I felt a little sorry for him. When
a guy was that nasty he should be able to back it up.
"I guess he doesn't think there'll be a virgin on the grounds by the
time we graduate," said one of the guys.
"I think," said another guy, "that somebody jacked-off into his ear and
he has come for brains."
We left after that. It had been a fairly good day.
26
My mother went to her low-paying job each morning and my father, who
didn't have a job, left each morning too. Although most of the neighbors
were unemployed he didn't want them to think he was jobless. So he got into
his car each morning at the same time and drove off as if he were going to
work. Then in the evening he would return at exactly the same time. It was
good for me because I had the place to myself. They locked the house but I
knew how to get in. I would unhook the screen door with a piece of
cardboard. They locked the porch door with a key from the inside. I slid a
newspaper under the door and poked the key out. Then I pulled the newspaper
from under the door and the key came with it. I would unlock the door and go
in. When I left I would hook the screen door, lock the back porch door from
the inside, leaving the key in. Then I would leave through the front door,
putting the latch on lock.
I liked being alone. One day I was playing one of my games. There was a
clock on the mantle with a second hand and I held contests to see how long I
could hold my breath. Each time I did it I exceeded my own record. I went
through much agony but I was proud each time I added some seconds to my
record. This day I added a full five seconds and I was standing getting my
breath back when I walked to the front window. It was a large window covered
by red drapes. There was a crack between the drapes and I looked out. Jesus
Christ! Our window was directly across from the front porch of the
Andersons' house. Mrs. Anderson was sitting on the steps, and I could look
right up her dress. She was about 23 and had marvelously shaped legs. I
could see almost all the way up her dress. Then I remember my father's army
binoculars. They were on the top shelf of his closet. I ran and got them,
ran back, crouched down and adjusted them to Mrs. Anderson's legs. It took
me right up there! And it was different from looking at Miss Gredis' legs:
you didn't have to pretend you weren't looking. You could concentrate. And I
did. I was right there. I was red hot. Jesus Christ, what legs, what flanks!
And each time she moved, it was unbearable and unbelievable.
I got down on my knees and I held the binoculars with one hand and
pulled my cock out with the other. I spit in my palm and began. For a moment
I thought I saw a flash of panties. I was about to come. I stopped. I kept
looking with the binocs and then I started rubbing again. When I was about
to come I stopped again. Then I waited and began rubbing again. This time I
knew I wouldn't be able to stop. She was right there. I was looking right up
her! It was like fucking. I came. I spurted all over the hardwood floor in
front of the window. It was white and thick. I got up and went to the
bathroom and got some toilet paper, came back and wiped it up. I took it
back to the toilet and flushed it away.
Mrs. Anderson came and sat on those steps almost every day and each
time she did I got the binocs and whacked-off.
If Mr. Anderson ever finds out about this, I thought, he'll kill me . .
.
My parents went to the movies every Wednesday night. The theatre had
drawings for money and they wanted to win some money. It was on a Wednesday
night that I discovered something. The Pirozzis lived in the house south of
ours. Our driveway ran along the north side of their house and there was a
window which looked into their front room. The window was veiled by a thin
curtain. There was a wall which became an arch over the front of our
driveway and there were bushes all about. When I got between that wall and
the window, in among all those bushes, nobody could see me from the street,
especially at night.
I crawled in there. It was great, better than I expected. Mrs. Pirozzi
was sitting on the couch reading a newspaper. Her legs were crossed, and in
an easy chair across the room, Mr. Pirozzi was reading a newspaper. Mrs.
Pirozzi was not as young as Miss Gredis or Mrs. Anderson, but she had good
legs and she had on high heels and almost every time she turned a page of
her newspaper, she'd cross her legs and her skirt would climb higher and I
would see more.
If my parents come home from the movie and catch me here, I thought,
then my life is over. But it's worth it. It's worth the risk.
I stayed very quiet behind the window and stared at Mrs. Pirozzi's
legs. They had a large collie, Jeff, who was asleep in front of the door. I
had looked at Miss Gredis' legs that day in English class, then I had
whacked-off to Mrs. Anderson's legs, and now - there was more. Why
didn't Mr. Pirozzi look at Mrs. Pirozzi's legs? He just kept reading his
newspaper. It was obvious that Mrs. Pirozzi was trying to tease him because
her skirt kept climbing higher and higher. Then she turned a page and
crossed her legs very fast and her skirt flipped back exposing her
pure white thighs. She was just like buttermilk! Unbelievable! She
was best of all!
Then from the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Pirozzi's legs move.
He stood up very quickly and moved toward the front door. I started
running, crashing through the bushes. I heard him open his front door. I was
down the driveway and into our backyard and behind the garage. I stood a
moment, listening. Then I climbed the back fence, over the vines and on over
into the next backyard. I ran through that yard and up the driveway and I
began dog-trotting south down the street like a guy practicing for track.
There was nobody behind me but I kept trotting. If he knows it was me, if he
tells my father, I'm dead. But maybe he just let the dog out to take a shit?
I trotted down to West Adams Boulevard and sat on a streetcar bench. I sat
there five minutes or so, then I walked back home. When I got there, my
parents weren't back yet. I went inside, undressed, turned out the lights
and waited for morning . . .
Another Wednesday night Baldy and I were taking our usual short cut
between two apartment houses. We were on our way to his father's wine cellar
when Baldy stopped at a window. The shade was almost down but not quite.
Baldy stopped, bent, and peeked inside. He waved me over.
"What is it?" I whispered.
"Look!"
There was a man and a woman in bed, naked. There was just a bedsheet
partly over them. The man was trying to kiss the woman and she was pushing
him away.
"God damn it, let me have it, Marie!"
"No!"
"But I'm hot, please."
"Take your god-damned hands off me!"
"But, Marie, I love you!"
"You and your fucking love . . ."
"Marie, please. "
"Will you shut up?"
The man turned toward the wall. The woman picked up a magazine, bunched
a pillow behind her head, and began reading it.
Baldy and I walked away from the window,
"Jesus," said Baldy, "that made me sick!"
"I thought we were going to see something," I said. When we got to the
wine cellar Baldy's old man had put a big padlock on the cellar door.
We tried that window again and again but we never actually
saw anything happen. It was always the same.
"Marie, it's been a long time. We're living together, you know.
We're married!"
"Big fucking deal!"
"Just this once, Marie, and I won't bother you again, I won't
bother you for a long time, I promise!"
"Shut up! You make me sick!"
Baldy and I walked away.
"Shit," I said.
"Shit," he said.
"I don't think he's got a cock," I said.
"He might as well not have," said Baldy. We stopped going back there.
27
Wagner wasn't done with us. I was standing in the yard during gym class
when he walked up to me.
"What are you doing, Chinaski?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
I didn't answer.
"How come you're not in any of the games?"
"Shit. That's kid stuff."
"I'm putting you on garbage detail until further notice."
"What for? What's the charge?"
"Loitering. 50 demerits."
The kids had to work off their demerits on garbage detail. If you had
more than ten demerits and didn't work them off, you couldn't graduate. I
didn't care whether I graduated or not. That was their problem. I could just
stay around getting older and older and bigger and bigger. I'd get all the
girls.
"50 demerits?" I asked. "Is that all you're going to give me? How about
a hundred?"
"O.K., one hundred. You got 'em."
Wagner swaggered off. Peter Mangalore had 500 demerits. Now I was in
second place, and gaining . . .
The first garbage detail was during the last thirty minutes of lunch.
The next day I was carrying a garbage can with Peter Mangalore. It was
simple. We each had a stick with a sharp nail on the end of it. We picked up
papers with the stick and stuck them into the can. The girls watched us as
we walked by. They knew we were bad. Peter looked bored and I looked
like I didn't give a damn. The girls knew we were bad.
"You know Lilly Fischman?" Pete asked as we walked along.
"Oh, yes, yes."
"Well, she's not a virgin."
"How do you know?"
"She told me."
"Who got her?"
"Her father."
"Hmmm . . . Well you can't blame him."
"Lilly's heard I've got a big cock."
"Yeah, it's all over school."
"Well, Lilly wants it. She claims she can handle it."
"You'll rip her to pieces."
"Yeah, I will. Anyhow, she wants it."
We put the garbage can down and stared at some girls who were sitting
on a bench. Pete walked toward the bench. I stood there. He walked up to one
of the girls and whispered something in her ear. She started giggling. Pete
walked back to the garbage can. We picked it up and walked away.
"So," said Pete, "this afternoon at 4 p.m. I'm going to rip Lilly to
pieces."
"Yeah?"
"You know that broken-down car at the back of the school that Pop
Farnsworth took the engine out of?"
"Yeah."
"Well, before they haul that son-of-a-bitch away, that's going to be my
bedroom. I'm going to take her in the back seat."
"Some guys really live."
"I'm getting a hard just thinking about it," said Pete.
"I am too and I'm not even the guy who's going to do it."
"There's one problem though," said Pete.
"You can't come?"
"No, it's not that. I need a look-out. I need somebody to tell me the
coast is clear."
"Yeah? Well, look, I can do that."
"Would you?" asked Pete.
"Sure. But we should have one more guy so we can watch in both
directions."
"All right. Who you got in mind?"
"Baldy."
"Baldy? Shit, he's not much."
"No, but he's trustworthy."
"All right. So I'll see you guys at four."
"We'll be there."
At four p.m. we met Pete and Lilly at the car.
"Hi!" said Lilly. She looked hot. Pete was smoking a cigarette. He
looked bored.
"Hello, Lilly," I said.
"Hi, Lilly baby," said Baldy.
There were some guys playing a game of touch football in the other
field but that only made it better, a kind of camouflage. Lilly was wiggling
around, breathing heavily, her breasts were moving up and down.
"Well," said Pete, throwing his cigarette away, "let's make friends,
Lilly."
He opened the back door, bowed, and Lilly climbed in. Pete got in after
her and took his shoes off, then his pants and his shorts. Lilly looked down
and saw Pete's meat hanging.
"Oh my," she said, "I don't know . . ."
"Come on, baby," said Pete, "nobody lives forever."
"Well, all right, I guess . . ."
Pete looked out the window. "Hey, are you guys watching to see if the
coast is clear?"
"Yeah, Pete," I said, "we're watching."
"We're looking," said Baldy.
Pete pulled Lilly's skirt all the way up. There was white flesh above
her knee socks and you could see her panties. Glorious. Pete grabbed Lilly
and kissed her. Then he pulled away.
"You whore!" he said.
"Talk to me nice, Pete!"
"You bitch-whore!" he said and slapped her across the face, hard. She
began sobbing. "Don't, Pete, don't . . ."
"Shut up, cunt!"
Pete began pulling at Lilly's panties. He was having a terrible time.
Her panties were tight around her big ass. Pete gave a violent tug, they
ripped and he pulled the panties down around her legs and off over her
shoes. He threw them on the floorboard. Then he began playing with her cunt.
He played with her cunt and played with her cunt and kissed her again and
again. Then he leaned back against the car seat. He only had half a hard.
Lilly looked down at him.
"What are you, a queer?"
"No, it's not that, Lilly. It's just that I don't think these guys are
watching to see if the coast is clear. They're watching us. I don't
want to get caught in here."
"The coast is clear, Pete," I said. "We're watching!"
"We're watching!" said Baldy.
"I don't believe them," said Pete. "All they're watching is your cunt,
Lilly."
"You're chicken! All that meat and it's only at half-mast!"
"I'm scared of getting caught, Lilly."
"I know what to do," she said.
Lilly bent over and ran her tongue along Pete's cock. She lapped her
tongue around the monstrous head. Then she had it in her mouth.
"Lilly . . . Christ," said Pete, "I love you . . ."
"Lilly, Lilly, Lilly . . . oh, oh, oooh ooooh . . ."
"Henry!" Baldy screamed. "LOOK!"
I looked. It was Wagner running toward us from across the field and
also coming behind him were the guys who had been playing touch football,
plus some of the people who had been watching the football game, boys and
girls both.
"Pete!" I yelled, "It's Wagner coming with 50 people!"
"Shit!" moaned Pete.
"Oh, shit," said Lilly.
Baldy and I took off. We ran out the gate and halfway up the block. We
looked back through the fence. Pete and Lilly never had a chance. Wagner ran
up and ripped open the car door hoping for a good look. Then the car was
surrounded and we couldn't see any more . . .
After that, we never saw Pete or Lilly again. We had no idea what
happened to them. Baldy and I each got 1,000 demerits which put me in the
lead over Mangalore with 1,100. There was no way I could work them off. I
was in Mt. Justin for life. Of course, they informed our parents.
"Let's go," said my father, and I walked into the bathroom. He got the
strop down.
"Take down your pants and shorts," he said. I didn't do it. He reached
in front of me, yanked my belt open, unbuttoned me and yanked my pants down.
He pulled down my shorts. The strop landed. It was the same, the same
explosive sound, the same pain.
"You're going to kill your mother!" he screamed. He hit me again. But
the tears weren't coming. -My eyes were strangely dry. I thought about
killing him. That there must be a way to kill him. In a couple of years I
could beat him to death. But I wanted him now. He wasn't much of anything. I
must have been adopted. He hit me again. The pain was still there but the
fear of it was gone. The strop landed again. The room no longer blurred. I
could see everything clearly. My father seemed to sense the difference in me
and he began to lash me harder, again and again, but the more he beat me the
less I felt. It was almost as if he was the one who was helpless. Something
had occurred, something had changed. My father stopped, puffing, and I heard
him hanging up the strop. He walked to the door. I turned.
"Hey," I said.
My father turned and looked at me.
"Give me a couple more," I told him, "if it makes you feel any better."
"Don't you dare talk to me that way!" he said. I looked at him.
I saw folds of flesh under his chin and around his neck. I saw sad wrinkles
and crevices. His face was tired pink putty. He was in his undershirt, and
his belly sagged, wrinkling his undershirt. The eyes were no longer fierce.
His eyes looked away and couldn't meet mine. Something had happened. The
bath towels knew it, the shower curtain knew it, the mirror knew it, the
bathtub and the toilet knew it. My father turned and walked out the door. He
knew it. It was my last beating. From him.
28
Jr. high went by quickly enough. About the 8th grade, going into the
9th, I broke out with acne. Many of the guys had it but not like mine. Mine
was really terrible. I was the worst case in town. I had pimples and boils
all over my face, back, neck, and some on my chest. It happened just as I
was beginning to be accepted as a tough guy and a leader. I was still tough
but it wasn't the same. I had to withdraw. I watched people from afar, it
was like a stage play. Only they were on stage and I was an audience of one.
I'd always had trouble with the girls but with acne it was impossible. The
girls were further away than ever. Some of them were truly beautiful --
their dresses, their hair, their eyes, the way they stood around. Just to
walk down the street during an afternoon with one, you know, talking about
everything and anything, I think that would have made me feel very good.
Also, there was still something about me that continually got me into
trouble. Most teachers didn't trust or like me, especially the lady
teachers. I never said anything out of the way but they claimed it was my
"attitude." It was something about the way I sat slouched in my seat and my
"voice tone." I was usually accused of
"sneering" although I wasn't conscious of it. I was often made to stand
outside in the hall during class or I was sent to the principal's office.
The principal always did the same thing. He had a phone booth in his office.
He made me stand in the phone booth with the door closed. I spent many hours
in that phone booth. The only reading material in there was the Ladies
Home Journal. It was deliberate torture. I read the Ladies Home
Journal anyhow. I got to read each new issue. I hoped that maybe I could
learn something about women.
I must have had 5,000 demerits by graduation time but it didn't seem to
matter. They wanted to get rid of me. I was standing outside in the line
that was filing into the auditorium one by one. We each had on our cheap
little cap and gown that had been passed down again and again to the next
graduating group. We could hear each person's name as they walked across the
stage. They were making one big god-damned deal out of graduating from Jr.
high. The band played our school song:
Oh, Mt. Justin,
Oh, Mt. Justin
We will be true,
Our hearts are singing wildly
All our skies are blue . . .
We stood in line, each of us waiting to march across the stage. In the
audience were our parents and friends.
"I'm about to puke," said one of the guys.
"We only go from crap to more crap," said another, The girls seemed to
be more serious about it. That's why I didn't really trust them. They seemed
to be part of the wrong things. They and the school seemed to have the same
song.
"This stuff brings me down," said one of the guys. "I wish I had a
smoke."
"Here you are . . ."
Another of the guys handed him a cigarette. We passed it around between
four or five of us. I took a hit and exhaled through my nostrils. Then I saw
Curly Wagner walking in.
"Ditch it!" I said. "Here comes vomit-head!"
Wagner walked right up to me. He was dressed in his grey gym suit,
including sweatshirt, just as he had been the first time I saw him and all
the other times afterward. He stood in front of me.
"Listen," he said, "you think you're getting away from me because
you're getting out of here, but you're not! I'm going to follow you the rest
of your life. I'm going to follow you to the ends of the earth and I'm going
to get you!"
I just glanced at him without comment and he walked off. Wagner's
little graduation speech only made me that much bigger with the guys. They
thought I must have done some big goddamned thing to rile him. But it wasn't
true. Wagner was just simple-crazy.
We got nearer and nearer to the doorway of the auditorium. Not only
could we hear each name being announced, and the applause, but we could see
the audience. Then it was my turn.
"Henry Chinaski," the principal said over the microphone. And I walked
forward. There was no applause. Then one kindly soul in the audience gave
two or three claps.
There were rows of seats set up on the stage for the graduating class.
We sat there and waited. The principal gave his speech about opportunity and
success in America. Then it was all over. The band struck up the Mt. Justin
school song. The students and their parents and friends rose and mingled
together. I walked around, looking. My parents weren't there. I made sure. I
walked around and gave it a good look-see.
It was just as well. A tough guy didn't need that. I took off my
ancient cap and gown and handed it to the guy at the end of the aisle -- the
janitor. He folded the pieces up for the next time.
I walked outside. The first one out. But where could I go? I had eleven
cents in my pocket. I walked back to where I lived.
29
That summer, July 1934, they gunned down John Dillinger outside the
movie house in Chicago. He never had a chance. The Lady in Red had fingered
him. More than a year earlier the banks had collapsed. Prohibition was
repealed and my father drank Eastside beer again. But the worst thing was
Dillinger getting it. A lot of people admired Dillinger and it made
everybody feel terrible. Roosevelt was President. He gave Fireside Chats
over the radio and everybody listened. He could really talk. And he began to
enact programs to put people to work. But things were still very bad. And my
boils got worse, they were unbelievably large.
That September I was scheduled to go to Woodhaven High but my father
insisted I go to Chelsey High.
"Look," I told him, "Chelsey is out of this district. It's too far
away."
"You'll do as I tell you. You'll register at Chelsey High."
I knew why he wanted me to go to Chelsey. The rich kids went there. My
father was crazy. He still thought about being rich. When Baldy found out I
was going to Chelsey he decided to go there too. I couldn't get rid of him
or my boils.
The first day we rode our bikes to Chelsey and parked them. It was a
terrible feeling. Most of those kids, at least all the older ones, had their
own automobiles, many of them new convertibles, and they weren't black or
dark blue like most cars, they were bright yellow, green, orange and red.
The guys sat in them outside of the school and the girls gathered around and
went for rides. Everybody was nicely dressed, the guys and the girls, they
had pullover sweaters, wrist watches and the latest in shoes, They seemed
very adult and poised and superior. And there I was in my homemade shirt, my
one ragged pair of pants, my rundown shoes, and I was covered with boils.
The guys with the cars didn't worry about acne. They were very handsome,
they were tall and clean with bright teeth and they didn't wash their hair
with hand soap. They seemed to know something I didn't know. I was at the
bottom again.
Since all the guys had cars Baldy and I were ashamed of our bicycles.
We left them home and walked to school and back, two-and-one-half miles each
way. We carried brown bag lunches. But most of the other students didn't
even eat in the school cafeteria. They drove to malt shops with the girls,
played the juke boxes and laughed. They were on their way to U.S.C.
I was ashamed of my boils. At Chelsey you had a choice between gym and
R.O.T.C. I took R.O.T.C. because then I didn't have to wear a gym suit and
nobody could see the boils on my body. But I hated the uniform. The shirt
was made of wool and it irritated my boils. The uniform was worn from Monday
to Thursday. On Friday we were allowed to wear regular clothes.
We studied the Manual of Arms. It was about warfare and shit like that.
We had to pass exams. We marched around the field. We practiced the Manual
of Arms. Handling the rifle during various drills was bad for me. I had
boils on my shoulders. Sometimes when I slammed the rifle against my
shoulder a boil would break and leak through my shirt. The blood would come
through but because the shirt was thick and made of wool the spot wasn't
obvious and didn't look like blood.
I told my mother what was happening. She lined the shoulders of my
shirts with white patches of cloth, but it only helped a little.
Once an officer came through on inspection. He grabbed the rifle out of
my hands and held it up, peering through the barrel, for dust in the bore.
He slammed the rifle back at me, then looked at a blood spot on my right
shoulder.
"Chinaski!" he snapped, "your rifle is leaking oil!"
"Yes, sir."
I got through the term but the boils got worse and worse. They were as
large as walnuts and covered my face. I was very ashamed. Sometimes at home
I would stand before the bathroom mirror and break one of the boils. Yellow
pus would spurt and splatter on the mirror. And little white hard pits. In a
horrible way it was fascinating that all that stuff was in there. But I knew
how hard it was for other people to look at me.
The school must have advised my father. At the end of that term I was
withdrawn from school. I went to bed and my parents covered me with
ointments. There was a brown salve that stank. My father preferred that one
for me. It burned. He insisted that I keep it on longer, much longer than
the instructions advised. One night he insisted that I leave it on for
hours. I began screaming. I ran to the tub, filled it with water and washed
the salve off, with difficulty. I was burned, on my face, my back and chest.
That night I sat on the edge of the bed. I couldn't lay down. My father came
into the room.
"I thought I told you to leave that stuff on!"
"Look what happened," I told him. My mother came into the room.
"The son-of-a-bitch doesn't want to get well," my father told
her. "Why did I have to have a son like this?"
My mother lost her job. My father kept leaving in his car every morning
as if he were going to work. "I'm an engineer," he told people. He had
always wanted to be an engineer.
It was arranged for me to go to the L.A. County General Hospital. I was
given a long white card. I took the white card and got on the #7 streetcar.
The fare was seven cents for four tokens for a quarter). I dropped in my
token and walked to the back of the streetcar. I had an 8:30 a.m.
appointment.
A few blocks later a young boy and a woman got on the streetcar. The
woman was fat and the boy was about four years old. They sat in the seat
behind me. I looked out the window. We rolled along. I liked that #7
streetcar. It went really fast and rocked back and forth as the sun shone
outside.
"Mommy," I heard the young boy say, "What's wrong with that
man's face?"
The woman didn't answer. The hoy asked her the same question again. She
didn't answer.
Then the boy screamed it out, "Mommy! What's wrong with that man's
face?"
"Shut up! I don't know what's wrong with his face!"
I went to Admissions at the hospital and they instructed me to report
to the fourth floor. There the nurse at the desk took my name and told me to
be seated. We sat in two long rows of green metal chairs facing one another.
Mexicans, whites and blacks. There were no Orientals. There was nothing to
read. Some of the patients had day-old newspapers. The people were of all
ages, thin and fat, short and tall, old and young. Nobody talked. Everybody
seemed very tired. Orderlies walked back and forth, sometimes you saw a
nurse, but never a doctor. An hour went by, two hours. Nobody's name was
called. I got up to look for a water fountain. I looked in the little rooms
where people were to be examined. There wasn't anybody in any of the rooms,
neither doctors or patients.
I went to the desk. The nurse was staring down into a big fat book with
names written in it. The phone rang. She answered it.
"Dr. Menen isn't here yet." She hung up.
"Pardon me," I said.
"Yes?" the nurse asked.
"The doctors aren't here yet. Can I come back later?"
"No."
"But there's nobody here."
"The doctors are on call."
"But I have an 8:30 appointment."
"Everybody here has an 8:30 appointment."
There were 45 or 50 people waiting.
"Since I'm on the waiting list, suppose I come back in a couple of
hours, maybe there will be some doctors here then."
"If you leave now, you will automatically lose your appointment. You
will have to return tomorrow if you still wish treatment."
I walked back and sat in a chair. The others didn't protest.
There was very little movement. Sometimes two or three nurses would
walk by laughing. Once they pushed a man past in a wheelchair. Both of his
legs were heavily bandaged and his ear on the side of his head toward me had
been sliced off. There was a black hole divided into little sections, and it
looked like a spider had gone in there and made a spider web. Hours passed.
Noon came and went. Another hour. Two hours. We sat and waited. Then
somebody said, "There's a doctor!"
The doctor walked into one of the examination rooms and closed the
door. We all watched. Nothing. A nurse went in. We heard her laughing. Then
she walked out. Five minutes. Ten minutes. The doctor walked out with a
clipboard in his hand.
"Martinez?" the doctor asked. "Jose Martinez?"