There is something about young teen boys getting together that should be the perpetual concern of all others. It’s not necessarily about what kind of trouble a group of stunted brained kids will get into. It is more about what is on their minds and how they share those thoughts with each other.
And if you give them more than five minutes, female anatomy, I’m sorry to say, is going to come up—even for those who might have a suppressed gay gene floating around. Also, there isn’t a better time to find a bigger group of nitwits carrying on like a bunch of self proclaimed experts about something they know nothing about—sort of like Kevin Trudeau and his Natural Cures infomercials. Never! Ever!
Such was the way it went one insufferable summer day at the Carteret Park, where we collected like hyenas before the hunt …
And if you give them more than five minutes, female anatomy, I’m sorry to say, is going to come up—even for those who might have a suppressed gay gene floating around. Also, there isn’t a better time to find a bigger group of nitwits carrying on like a bunch of self proclaimed experts about something they know nothing about—sort of like Kevin Trudeau and his Natural Cures infomercials. Never! Ever!
Such was the way it went one insufferable summer day at the Carteret Park, where we collected like hyenas before the hunt …
♦♦♦♦
It was early on a sunny summer afternoon at our local playground, Carteret Park. Just another warm one during a particularly rainless 1965 summer season. Fitzy and I were the first to show up and had already taken up our positions at the park benches, waiting for the recreation director and his daughter-assistant to return from lunch and open up the field house. We sat patiently as our buddies drifted in one by one. It was a gathering storm of “pre” and “early” male teenagers, always something quite ominous.
Rye Bread was approaching the tables, munching on a plum. He was always mauling some kind of exotic fruit after lunch.
“Whatcha have for lunch, Rye?” Fitzy asked without looking up, as he carved the finishing touches to his initials.
Rye Bread hopped up on the park bench, sat on the table top, resting his feet on the bench seat, while he scraped off every bit of fiber from the pulpy pit that he had shoved into his mouth.
“Usual. Grilled cheese.”
Rye Bread slurped as an unexpected thick river of drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth, landing on the top corner of the “F” in Fitzy’s initials. The muddy purple dribble started to fill the wooden canals that Fitzy had just toiled over with his mighty Boy Scout knife. I instinctively began to laugh, as Rye Bread wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
“Hey!” Fitzy complained. “You’re staining the ‘F’ you idiot!”
“Sorry Fitz.” But as Rye Bread spoke, another gem spilled onto the table.
“Geez Louise! What the hell is wrong with me?”
With a quick swipe of his hand, Rye Bread slapped the puddle off the table top and onto the bench. He turned his head towards a neighboring oak tree and spit the bare pit at it.
WHOO PHLEGGGG!
He hit the tree trunk dead on. The pit ricocheted back and bounced under the table.
“Bulls Eye!” Rye Bread yelled as he cleaned his mouth once more with his sleeve.
Fitzy meanwhile retrieved a used napkin from the trash can, a three day old remnant from pizza day most likely, and dabbed at the ‘F’ to clean out the slop inadvertently dropped by Rye Bread moments ago. I continued to laugh, which was beginning to annoy Fitzy.
“Hey Bosk, it’s not funny. How about if I were to spit a looger on your initials you jerk brain?”
“I’m just laughing at Rye Bread that’s all. Not you.”
“Hey that period is too big.” Rye pointed to the period next to the ‘F’.
Fitzy studied it. Rye Bread was right. Fitzy started to enlarge the period after his first initial to even it out. Meanwhile, my attention was drawn to Moon Muller who was approaching from the southern park entrance about fifty yards away.
“Hey here comes Mooner,” I announced.
Rye Bread looked over at the asphalt path that started at the south Carteret Street entrance. It snaked between the old and new basketball courts, meandering past the Barrows Field memorial rock and flag pole, and ended at the north entrance, where the Lorraine and Madison Street boys entered the park.
“Look at him,” Rye Bread said, indicating a little envy. “He thinks that madras surfer hat is the coolest thing. I bet he sleeps in it.”
We were all wearing surfer hats those days. To be blunt, they were dumb, as evidenced by the lack of any revival they should have had during the forty years of teen fashion hence. They were made of six or eight 6” triangular soft cotton panels that ran from the top of the hat lengthwise to a 2” floppy brim that circled the whole mess—each panel had a different color or print. The hats just sat kind of lifeless on the skull. The more shocking the color and pattern combination, the more cool the hat was considered. I think the hats were about the only thing more disturbing than the shirts we lived in. Surfer shirts were T-shirts with really wide horizontal stripes that had alternating colors like: orange and blue, or yellow and green, or red and black. We pulled the whole ensemble together with surfer beads and a surfer belt. This hat of Moon’s though, with the different madras patterns, was testing even our most primitive fashion senses. It was quite a look.
The truth is that we were all sleeping with our hats on. Another truth is that none of us surfed, except Kedso, who claimed he surfed at his lake—he had issues.
Hat aside, Moon was a bit different from the rest of us in one other curious way. He thought of himself as a downtown boy, kind of the Eminem of his day. He loved his Motown songs and was always singing something by the Four Tops or Temptations as he danced, while holding his heart, or shaking his flapping hand, or pointing his fingers at his eyes. Between the surfer look and black-speak, he was a breathing, cultural deformity, but fun to hang out with. And here he came, snapping his fingers, his face contorted as he sang.
“Baby, I need your lovin’. Got to have all your lovin’ …”
“What are you singin’ now?” I asked as he approached the tables.
“Four Tops man! Doncha know anything baby!” Moon slid over onto the bench and watched Fitzy. “Oh man, what happened to the ‘F’? A bird drop a little mulberry load on it?”
“Rye Bread drooled on it.” Fitzy snapped, as he continued to work on making the periods match.
“Shoowee! That’s not cool!”
“Well look who’s early?” Rye Bread yelled.
The Cooch had just arrived on his banana seat two wheeler, making a sweet flapping noise as the wheel spokes smacked the baseball cards held precisely in place along the rear wheel bar by two spring loaded cloths-pins. The Cooch was a mop-headed flagpole with a big attitude and a raspy, squawky voice that just didn’t fit his scrawny body. He backed away from his fine machine in admiration, pulled out his surfer hat, folded neatly in his back pocket, put it over his head, and turned to walk up to the benches. He always had a bop to his step.
Moon greets him first. “It’s the Coocher.”
“Hey!”
“Hey Cooch,” I followed.
“Hey Bobby.” He was one of the few kids who called me “Bobby” without it sounding stupid.
He walked around the table and leaned over the busy Fitzy.
“Hey what happened to the ‘F’?”
“Nothin’! All right nothing!”
“Well somethin’ happened to it. It looks like a bird dumped some purple diarrhea on it.” (There was a theme developing.)
Laughs broke out from Rye Bread and me, while Moon shook his head.
“It’s drool man. The Rye Man laid a little plummitation on it!”
Cooch walked around the bench to sit down.
“Oh man that's nasty—plum drool,” Cooch mumbled.
“I’m cutting it out! All right retardo!” Fitzy was starting to get a little short tempered, That could spell disaster for the first kid inadvertently putting him over the edge.
All of a sudden the Cooch reached down under his pants, his face squished with concern.
“What the hell is that?” He stood up patting his butt. “One of you jerk-offs spill something? It’s wet!”
“Hey look! Cooch had a wet fart!” Rye Bread claimed. We immediately broke into this chorus of spasmodic laughter. There were certain gratuitous words that just did that to empty headed guys—"fart" being one of them. And if you added "wet" to it, well then, you pretty much had pulled a rabbit out of your hat.
"Get outta here ass wipe! I sat in something!" Cooch cackled in useless defense.
"Ass wipe? You're the one who needs an ass wipe!" Rye Bread quickly countered. The laughter was moving into the uncontrolled type.
In the seedy world of adolescent male behavior, this was a no win situation for the normally subdued Cooch. It was the type of thing that would have driven lesser kids home for the day. To his credit, he stayed and took it.
“It smells like plums man,” Moon said. “Been eatin' plums Coochie?"
"Is that plum juice spit? Did I sit in spit?" Cooch was desperate to know so he could put an end to the "wet fart" claim.
"Nah, it's just some plum drool. What’s the big deal?” Rye Bread revealed.
“The big deal? The big deal?” Cooch was upset. "The big deal is that it could've been spit. Is my butt stained?”
“Looks like you sat in some purple crap, Coocher,” Moon said, while he practiced a Temptation spin move.
“What? God dammit! Son of a bitch Russell! You’re lucky it's just drool and not spit or you'd be hurtin' for certain, when I got done with ya.”
It was an interesting distinction between spit and drool the Cooch was making. One that was wisely intentional. Just as interesting, Cooch had no choice but to peacefully accept his misfortune. Rye Bread could snap him in two, if he chose to. It was a well played hand by Cooch to use the distinction as the only reason Rye Bread's life was spared. Such was the chess game that often meant the difference between a little red face or a big black eye.
“Here’s a napkin Cooch,” Fitzy barked. “Just use it and quit your complainin’. It doesn’t look so bad anyway.” Fitzy handed him the napkin he used minutes ago to clean his initials.
Cooch wiped his butt and threw the napkin into the grass, as he shook his moppy head in disgust.
“Well, anyway, I hunchie the Nok Hockey!” Cooch announced.
The “hunchie” was a simple but effective reservation system. When you “hunchied” something, it was yours as soon as whatever it was, became available. But you had to be there during the time it was unavailable to make the “hunchie’ stick. This way you could guard the “hunchie” from being trumped by a later “hunchie’. For example, when you arrived at the park after lunch break, you could “hunchie” the Nok Hockey table for the afternoon (as the Cooch was doing in this case). You could try to “hunchie” it for the afternoon before going home for lunch, but you might just as well have spit into wind—the "hunchie" wasn’t going to far.
“I hunchie second!” Moon shouted, trying to guarantee he played Cooch in the first game.
“Dibs here!” Fitzy screamed simultaneously to Moon’s claim—“dibs” being a rather loose synonym for “hunchie” but just as effective.
The concurrent claims created a situation.
“All right. I'll shoot ya for it. I’ve got odds,” Moon announced. ‘Shooting for it’ was the preferred and civil way to break a tie. It beat fighting by a long shot.
“Fine I got evens.” Fitzy responded. It didn’t matter what Fitzy chose, he was equally adept at “odds” or “evens”, when it came to “shooting for it”.
Moon leaned across the table to face Fitz. Their eyes locked on each other.
“Two outta Three!” Moon was following the normal protocol for this kind of decision.
“Okay loser!” Fitzy was always a bit cocky when it came to this test of cunning. He seldom lost.
Since Moon called for the "shoot", he got to call out the countdown, giving him a slight advantage. Something he would need if he was ever to have a chance of beating Fitzy.
“Once, twice, three—shoot!”
Having studied Fitzy’s hand during the count, Moon noticed Fitz was showing two fingers poised for release. Moon shot one finger out, anticipating Fitzy’s two fingers, thus giving him a count of three—an odd number and hence a win. But at the very last second, Fitzy released only his index finger. It was the patented Fitz fake.
“Even!” Fitzy bellowed. “One, nothing!”
Moon took a moment to lift his surfer hat up and wipe his brow. He pulled the hat back down so the brim hid his eyes from Fitzy. He started the second count.
“Once, twice, three—shoot!”
This time he had picked up that Fitzy had only one finger teasingly poised. Moon figured that Fitzy wanted him to think he would throw two but really throw one, employing the old double fake. So Moon shot out two fingers hoping to catch a single from Fitzy and get an odd count to tie the score.
Fitzy shot out two fingers. It was another shut-out.
“Even again. I win.” Fitzy said matter-of-factly, really annoying the usually subdued Moon.
“Damn boy! How do ya do that?”
“How do I do what?”
“How do ya always fake me out like that?”
“Cause you’re stupider than tar.”
“Yeah, whatever. Man, I have first winners then.” Moon declared.
“Seconds!” I yelled.
“Thirds!” Rye Bread chirped.
While the negotiations for playing Nok Hockey were in progress, Brain and Boner joined us.
Boner and Brain addressed the tables in unison.
“Hey!”
“Yo my brothers!” Moon replied.
“Hey,” sprinkled from the rest of us.
“So where is Louie?” Cooch asked impatiently—‘Louie’ being the disrespectful name of our summer recreation park director. “Com'on Fatso! We don't have all day!” he added gratuitously.
Mr. Louis Fortunato was a large, roly-poly, sweaty man who always wore this bright red bandana around his neck. Many of us thought he was simply on the "take", and that his real job was being a body guard for Tony Imperiale, a rather infamous state congressman from Newark. There had been some riveting debates at the park tables about this allegation.
More importantly though, he had a twenty year old assistant, his daughter Jeannie, who was the object of our collective, adolescent desire. On that there was no debate. She had beautiful, long, thick, auburn hair that smelled real clean, like freshly washed hands. She also maintained a fantastic body that looked even “fantasticker” in the short cut-off dungaree shorts she paraded around in. Her exposed long limbs always seemed to glisten in the sun as the rays played gently against her perfectly moistened skin. Her eyes were dark and enchanting. She was the complete package. And she was the cause of a lot of speculation, rumor and bravado by this motley group of stinky, drooling boys. I also think she was the endless worry of her overly protective dad.
“Forget Fat Louie,” Boner announced. “I want to do some arts and crafts with Jeannie.”
Hearing her name was a queue for us to break out in a chorus of our favorite ditty.
“I dream of Jeannie with the dark brown hair,” we sang in unison.
So there we were, singing about Jeannie, talking trash, and carrying on like a bunch of drunken sailors, when out of nowhere the Brain made a bold disclosure.
“Hey, I saw one of her nips yesterday!”
That was all it took. That was all it ever took for us to switch gears. The Brain had just shot the starting gun. We were off to the carnal races.
“Oh, yeah! Like you would know what one looked like?” Boner challenged—so much for the support of a best friend. Boner was like that. He challenged every claim. It was his duty and he took it to heart.
Brain quickly demonstrated the poor judgment he was known for. “I know what they look like. I saw my mom’s once.”
“Ooo-wee! That’s not good Brain,” Moon chimed in.
“That’s queer!” Rye Bread added.
“Oh yeah, what did it look like?” Boner asked, hounding Brain like a trial lawyer, pressing him into a sudden ‘guilty’ proclamation.
“It kinda looked like Fitz’s, if you gave him a purple nurple.”
“Hey Fitz, show us your nips!” Rye Bread teased.
“No you faggot!”
“Oh let me touch your nips Fitzy!” Rye Bread feigned.
“Get outta here douche bag!”
“Yeah, well how did ya see Jeannie’s nip Brain?” Cooch chimed in.
“Well ya see, we were making potholders—“
“You are such a queer!” Fitzy interrupted.
“I am not!”
“Ya are too!”
“Am not!”
“Am too!”
“Not!”
“Too!”
The exchange met its natural conclusion in a tie. Brain and Fitzy dropped the verbal jousting. Brain picked up where he left off.
“Anyway, Jeannie dropped something and leaned down to pick it up and I could see down her shirt.”
“Wow! You saw down her shirt?” I asked incredulously, always wondering about female mystery parts.
“Yeah, I looked down her shirt! What do ya think?”
“So what? You looked down her shirt ya dickhead.” Cooch yelled. “She wears a bra idiot.”
“Yeah, but it kind of puffed out at the top, and there she was, saying hello brain.”
“There what was?” I asked pathetically.
“There was her nip ya turd brain!”
“And—?”
“And what?”
“And what did it look like?” I was desperate to hear details.
“I already told ya. It looked like Fitzy’s but more pointed outward.”
The image rattled around my head for a while. It was not a pleasant one. And one, I might add, that was beginning to taint the girl of my dreams.
“Ah, ya didn’t see nothin’!” Moon claimed.
“I don’t know about you”, Fitzy mumbled. “But I’m kinda getting’ a little boner just thinkin’ about it.”
“Yeah, me too.” Boner announced. No shocking revelation there, after all he was nicknamed Boner for a reason.
"You guys are douches. I don't wanna hear about you gettin' boners!" Rye Bread complained.
"Yeah, we'll at least we get 'em! Fag face!" Fitzy snapped back.
Oh man. Such was the certain and simple logic of testosterone when left unchecked. And if one could get past the name calling and moronic points being made, it had a sing-song charm to it.
Fortunately, before headlocks and full nelsons were applied, the old Ford wagon pulled up to the curb, sputtering and choking as the engine refused to shut off long after the keys were removed. Leaving a blue smoky plume of pungent carbon monoxide in his wake, Mr. Fortunato had arrived. He lumbered out the driver’s side, tilting the shock worn wagon to its proverbial knees. And from the passenger door, in stunning contrast, like a contradiction in the physical laws of heredity and evolution, the beautiful but now less-than-perfect Jeannie hopped out.
I have wondered from time to time what it must have felt like to her as she walked up to the tables. I mean, there we were, all filled with saliva and "x's and y's", blankly staring at her with an assortment of devilish smiles plastered across our faces, looking pretty formidable in our collection of surfer hats and broad striped shirts. As she approached us, Mr. Fortunato opened the field house where all the games were safely locked away. Fitzy and Cooch followed him in to sign out the Nok Hockey board. Fitzy had to burrow his hands into his front pockets to run a little camouflage. The rest of us waited for a whiff of Jeannie’s shampoo.
“Hi boys! Have a good lunch?” she asked in that sweet breathy voice.
“Yeah.”
“Yup.”
“Uh ha.”
“Um hum.”
That was the best we could muster. Our steel-like maleness that just moments ago had us on the edge of pubescent heights was reduced instantly into pathetic blobs of soggy milquetoast. Meanwhile, deep inside the oft inquisitive recesses of our adolescent minds, we all pondered the alleged Brain “nip” sighting, as we tried desperately to keep our eyes from wandering into the “zone” in question. Some of us in vain.
We were all spellbound and moronic.
TTHHWWAACCKK!
The Nok Hockey board slammed onto the table, breaking the tension momentarily.
“All right!” Rye Bread shouted. “Let’s get this thing going!”
“Yeah!” Moon blurted. “A little Nok Hockey guys! Let’s do it!”
“Yeah! I’m after Moon!” I yelled.
“Then me!” Rye Bread proclaimed.
“Okay boys, I’m going inside the field house. It’s too hot out here. I’ll be listening. So keep the language clean!” The sound of her voice melted me instantly. The Brain blemish was a fading memory. She was perfect again.
But as she turned to leave, she spotted the discarded napkin the Cooch had tossed after cleaning his shorts. It had found its way underneath the corner of the bench seat, opposite where we were all sitting.
What happened next was debated endlessly for the remainder of that summer and into the next.
She leaned over to pick up the discarded napkin, revealing the zone for our eyes to zero in on. I couldn't control them. My eyes darted in and out, in and out, in and out. I was barely able to hide my indiscretion. The others were more obvious. The Cooch looked like his head was going to explode. And as quickly as the door of opportunity had opened, it had slammed shut. She stood up, seemingly unaware of our intrusion, although later I would find cause to doubt her innocence.
Unfortunately, Mr. Fortunato, standing behind us in silence, witnessed our little inquisitiveness.
Suddenly, he cleared his fatty throat.
“Ahem! Ahem!”
Startled, we snapped our heads to look at him. We were caught dead to rights! We knew it! He knew it!
“You boys gonna play some Nok Hockey or aren’t ya?” he bellowed, his chins bouncing in perfect cadence to his words. But his eyes were black slits, striking fear into every fiber of our being. He'd kill us for sure if he thought there was a chance he could get away with it.
There was prolonged silence while we were trapped in his icy gaze.
“Jeannie, I need to have a word with you,” he gruffed. They walked back into the field house.
The awkward stillness lingered in the thick humid air for some time, while each of us—head down, eyes to the ground—tried in our own inadequate way to sort out what had just occurred. None of us were really up to the task.
Finally, I looked over at Brain. He had this huge grin pasted across his face. By all accounts, he looked vindicated.
“Believe me now, Boner?” he whispered.
“You’re nuts!” Boner never gave in. “It was covered!”
“I think I saw somethin’ too Brain!” Fitzy claimed.
Rye Bread's face was the same color as his orange hair.
As for me, I couldn't tell if I had seen something or not. I mean there was something going on there but it sure wasn’t like Fitzy's but more pointed.
“You’re all nuts! Com'on let’s start this stupid game. I’m first!” Cooch said as he grabbed his favorite Nok Hockey stick.
He placed the wooden puck down in the center of the table, aimed and slapped at it. It smacked the side panel just above the faded blue line and caromed into the hole for a goal.
“One, nothing!” Cooch announced.
And the game began, pouring cold water on our overloaded imaginations. Just another afternoon at Carteret Park, as we all became a little more dumb and a little more smart.
It was early on a sunny summer afternoon at our local playground, Carteret Park. Just another warm one during a particularly rainless 1965 summer season. Fitzy and I were the first to show up and had already taken up our positions at the park benches, waiting for the recreation director and his daughter-assistant to return from lunch and open up the field house. We sat patiently as our buddies drifted in one by one. It was a gathering storm of “pre” and “early” male teenagers, always something quite ominous.
Rye Bread was approaching the tables, munching on a plum. He was always mauling some kind of exotic fruit after lunch.
“Whatcha have for lunch, Rye?” Fitzy asked without looking up, as he carved the finishing touches to his initials.
Rye Bread hopped up on the park bench, sat on the table top, resting his feet on the bench seat, while he scraped off every bit of fiber from the pulpy pit that he had shoved into his mouth.
“Usual. Grilled cheese.”
Rye Bread slurped as an unexpected thick river of drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth, landing on the top corner of the “F” in Fitzy’s initials. The muddy purple dribble started to fill the wooden canals that Fitzy had just toiled over with his mighty Boy Scout knife. I instinctively began to laugh, as Rye Bread wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
“Hey!” Fitzy complained. “You’re staining the ‘F’ you idiot!”
“Sorry Fitz.” But as Rye Bread spoke, another gem spilled onto the table.
“Geez Louise! What the hell is wrong with me?”
With a quick swipe of his hand, Rye Bread slapped the puddle off the table top and onto the bench. He turned his head towards a neighboring oak tree and spit the bare pit at it.
WHOO PHLEGGGG!
He hit the tree trunk dead on. The pit ricocheted back and bounced under the table.
“Bulls Eye!” Rye Bread yelled as he cleaned his mouth once more with his sleeve.
Fitzy meanwhile retrieved a used napkin from the trash can, a three day old remnant from pizza day most likely, and dabbed at the ‘F’ to clean out the slop inadvertently dropped by Rye Bread moments ago. I continued to laugh, which was beginning to annoy Fitzy.
“Hey Bosk, it’s not funny. How about if I were to spit a looger on your initials you jerk brain?”
“I’m just laughing at Rye Bread that’s all. Not you.”
“Hey that period is too big.” Rye pointed to the period next to the ‘F’.
Fitzy studied it. Rye Bread was right. Fitzy started to enlarge the period after his first initial to even it out. Meanwhile, my attention was drawn to Moon Muller who was approaching from the southern park entrance about fifty yards away.
“Hey here comes Mooner,” I announced.
Rye Bread looked over at the asphalt path that started at the south Carteret Street entrance. It snaked between the old and new basketball courts, meandering past the Barrows Field memorial rock and flag pole, and ended at the north entrance, where the Lorraine and Madison Street boys entered the park.
“Look at him,” Rye Bread said, indicating a little envy. “He thinks that madras surfer hat is the coolest thing. I bet he sleeps in it.”
We were all wearing surfer hats those days. To be blunt, they were dumb, as evidenced by the lack of any revival they should have had during the forty years of teen fashion hence. They were made of six or eight 6” triangular soft cotton panels that ran from the top of the hat lengthwise to a 2” floppy brim that circled the whole mess—each panel had a different color or print. The hats just sat kind of lifeless on the skull. The more shocking the color and pattern combination, the more cool the hat was considered. I think the hats were about the only thing more disturbing than the shirts we lived in. Surfer shirts were T-shirts with really wide horizontal stripes that had alternating colors like: orange and blue, or yellow and green, or red and black. We pulled the whole ensemble together with surfer beads and a surfer belt. This hat of Moon’s though, with the different madras patterns, was testing even our most primitive fashion senses. It was quite a look.
The truth is that we were all sleeping with our hats on. Another truth is that none of us surfed, except Kedso, who claimed he surfed at his lake—he had issues.
Hat aside, Moon was a bit different from the rest of us in one other curious way. He thought of himself as a downtown boy, kind of the Eminem of his day. He loved his Motown songs and was always singing something by the Four Tops or Temptations as he danced, while holding his heart, or shaking his flapping hand, or pointing his fingers at his eyes. Between the surfer look and black-speak, he was a breathing, cultural deformity, but fun to hang out with. And here he came, snapping his fingers, his face contorted as he sang.
“Baby, I need your lovin’. Got to have all your lovin’ …”
“What are you singin’ now?” I asked as he approached the tables.
“Four Tops man! Doncha know anything baby!” Moon slid over onto the bench and watched Fitzy. “Oh man, what happened to the ‘F’? A bird drop a little mulberry load on it?”
“Rye Bread drooled on it.” Fitzy snapped, as he continued to work on making the periods match.
“Shoowee! That’s not cool!”
“Well look who’s early?” Rye Bread yelled.
The Cooch had just arrived on his banana seat two wheeler, making a sweet flapping noise as the wheel spokes smacked the baseball cards held precisely in place along the rear wheel bar by two spring loaded cloths-pins. The Cooch was a mop-headed flagpole with a big attitude and a raspy, squawky voice that just didn’t fit his scrawny body. He backed away from his fine machine in admiration, pulled out his surfer hat, folded neatly in his back pocket, put it over his head, and turned to walk up to the benches. He always had a bop to his step.
Moon greets him first. “It’s the Coocher.”
“Hey!”
“Hey Cooch,” I followed.
“Hey Bobby.” He was one of the few kids who called me “Bobby” without it sounding stupid.
He walked around the table and leaned over the busy Fitzy.
“Hey what happened to the ‘F’?”
“Nothin’! All right nothing!”
“Well somethin’ happened to it. It looks like a bird dumped some purple diarrhea on it.” (There was a theme developing.)
Laughs broke out from Rye Bread and me, while Moon shook his head.
“It’s drool man. The Rye Man laid a little plummitation on it!”
Cooch walked around the bench to sit down.
“Oh man that's nasty—plum drool,” Cooch mumbled.
“I’m cutting it out! All right retardo!” Fitzy was starting to get a little short tempered, That could spell disaster for the first kid inadvertently putting him over the edge.
All of a sudden the Cooch reached down under his pants, his face squished with concern.
“What the hell is that?” He stood up patting his butt. “One of you jerk-offs spill something? It’s wet!”
“Hey look! Cooch had a wet fart!” Rye Bread claimed. We immediately broke into this chorus of spasmodic laughter. There were certain gratuitous words that just did that to empty headed guys—"fart" being one of them. And if you added "wet" to it, well then, you pretty much had pulled a rabbit out of your hat.
"Get outta here ass wipe! I sat in something!" Cooch cackled in useless defense.
"Ass wipe? You're the one who needs an ass wipe!" Rye Bread quickly countered. The laughter was moving into the uncontrolled type.
In the seedy world of adolescent male behavior, this was a no win situation for the normally subdued Cooch. It was the type of thing that would have driven lesser kids home for the day. To his credit, he stayed and took it.
“It smells like plums man,” Moon said. “Been eatin' plums Coochie?"
"Is that plum juice spit? Did I sit in spit?" Cooch was desperate to know so he could put an end to the "wet fart" claim.
"Nah, it's just some plum drool. What’s the big deal?” Rye Bread revealed.
“The big deal? The big deal?” Cooch was upset. "The big deal is that it could've been spit. Is my butt stained?”
“Looks like you sat in some purple crap, Coocher,” Moon said, while he practiced a Temptation spin move.
“What? God dammit! Son of a bitch Russell! You’re lucky it's just drool and not spit or you'd be hurtin' for certain, when I got done with ya.”
It was an interesting distinction between spit and drool the Cooch was making. One that was wisely intentional. Just as interesting, Cooch had no choice but to peacefully accept his misfortune. Rye Bread could snap him in two, if he chose to. It was a well played hand by Cooch to use the distinction as the only reason Rye Bread's life was spared. Such was the chess game that often meant the difference between a little red face or a big black eye.
“Here’s a napkin Cooch,” Fitzy barked. “Just use it and quit your complainin’. It doesn’t look so bad anyway.” Fitzy handed him the napkin he used minutes ago to clean his initials.
Cooch wiped his butt and threw the napkin into the grass, as he shook his moppy head in disgust.
“Well, anyway, I hunchie the Nok Hockey!” Cooch announced.
The “hunchie” was a simple but effective reservation system. When you “hunchied” something, it was yours as soon as whatever it was, became available. But you had to be there during the time it was unavailable to make the “hunchie’ stick. This way you could guard the “hunchie” from being trumped by a later “hunchie’. For example, when you arrived at the park after lunch break, you could “hunchie” the Nok Hockey table for the afternoon (as the Cooch was doing in this case). You could try to “hunchie” it for the afternoon before going home for lunch, but you might just as well have spit into wind—the "hunchie" wasn’t going to far.
“I hunchie second!” Moon shouted, trying to guarantee he played Cooch in the first game.
“Dibs here!” Fitzy screamed simultaneously to Moon’s claim—“dibs” being a rather loose synonym for “hunchie” but just as effective.
The concurrent claims created a situation.
“All right. I'll shoot ya for it. I’ve got odds,” Moon announced. ‘Shooting for it’ was the preferred and civil way to break a tie. It beat fighting by a long shot.
“Fine I got evens.” Fitzy responded. It didn’t matter what Fitzy chose, he was equally adept at “odds” or “evens”, when it came to “shooting for it”.
Moon leaned across the table to face Fitz. Their eyes locked on each other.
“Two outta Three!” Moon was following the normal protocol for this kind of decision.
“Okay loser!” Fitzy was always a bit cocky when it came to this test of cunning. He seldom lost.
Since Moon called for the "shoot", he got to call out the countdown, giving him a slight advantage. Something he would need if he was ever to have a chance of beating Fitzy.
“Once, twice, three—shoot!”
Having studied Fitzy’s hand during the count, Moon noticed Fitz was showing two fingers poised for release. Moon shot one finger out, anticipating Fitzy’s two fingers, thus giving him a count of three—an odd number and hence a win. But at the very last second, Fitzy released only his index finger. It was the patented Fitz fake.
“Even!” Fitzy bellowed. “One, nothing!”
Moon took a moment to lift his surfer hat up and wipe his brow. He pulled the hat back down so the brim hid his eyes from Fitzy. He started the second count.
“Once, twice, three—shoot!”
This time he had picked up that Fitzy had only one finger teasingly poised. Moon figured that Fitzy wanted him to think he would throw two but really throw one, employing the old double fake. So Moon shot out two fingers hoping to catch a single from Fitzy and get an odd count to tie the score.
Fitzy shot out two fingers. It was another shut-out.
“Even again. I win.” Fitzy said matter-of-factly, really annoying the usually subdued Moon.
“Damn boy! How do ya do that?”
“How do I do what?”
“How do ya always fake me out like that?”
“Cause you’re stupider than tar.”
“Yeah, whatever. Man, I have first winners then.” Moon declared.
“Seconds!” I yelled.
“Thirds!” Rye Bread chirped.
While the negotiations for playing Nok Hockey were in progress, Brain and Boner joined us.
Boner and Brain addressed the tables in unison.
“Hey!”
“Yo my brothers!” Moon replied.
“Hey,” sprinkled from the rest of us.
“So where is Louie?” Cooch asked impatiently—‘Louie’ being the disrespectful name of our summer recreation park director. “Com'on Fatso! We don't have all day!” he added gratuitously.
Mr. Louis Fortunato was a large, roly-poly, sweaty man who always wore this bright red bandana around his neck. Many of us thought he was simply on the "take", and that his real job was being a body guard for Tony Imperiale, a rather infamous state congressman from Newark. There had been some riveting debates at the park tables about this allegation.
More importantly though, he had a twenty year old assistant, his daughter Jeannie, who was the object of our collective, adolescent desire. On that there was no debate. She had beautiful, long, thick, auburn hair that smelled real clean, like freshly washed hands. She also maintained a fantastic body that looked even “fantasticker” in the short cut-off dungaree shorts she paraded around in. Her exposed long limbs always seemed to glisten in the sun as the rays played gently against her perfectly moistened skin. Her eyes were dark and enchanting. She was the complete package. And she was the cause of a lot of speculation, rumor and bravado by this motley group of stinky, drooling boys. I also think she was the endless worry of her overly protective dad.
“Forget Fat Louie,” Boner announced. “I want to do some arts and crafts with Jeannie.”
Hearing her name was a queue for us to break out in a chorus of our favorite ditty.
“I dream of Jeannie with the dark brown hair,” we sang in unison.
So there we were, singing about Jeannie, talking trash, and carrying on like a bunch of drunken sailors, when out of nowhere the Brain made a bold disclosure.
“Hey, I saw one of her nips yesterday!”
That was all it took. That was all it ever took for us to switch gears. The Brain had just shot the starting gun. We were off to the carnal races.
“Oh, yeah! Like you would know what one looked like?” Boner challenged—so much for the support of a best friend. Boner was like that. He challenged every claim. It was his duty and he took it to heart.
Brain quickly demonstrated the poor judgment he was known for. “I know what they look like. I saw my mom’s once.”
“Ooo-wee! That’s not good Brain,” Moon chimed in.
“That’s queer!” Rye Bread added.
“Oh yeah, what did it look like?” Boner asked, hounding Brain like a trial lawyer, pressing him into a sudden ‘guilty’ proclamation.
“It kinda looked like Fitz’s, if you gave him a purple nurple.”
“Hey Fitz, show us your nips!” Rye Bread teased.
“No you faggot!”
“Oh let me touch your nips Fitzy!” Rye Bread feigned.
“Get outta here douche bag!”
“Yeah, well how did ya see Jeannie’s nip Brain?” Cooch chimed in.
“Well ya see, we were making potholders—“
“You are such a queer!” Fitzy interrupted.
“I am not!”
“Ya are too!”
“Am not!”
“Am too!”
“Not!”
“Too!”
The exchange met its natural conclusion in a tie. Brain and Fitzy dropped the verbal jousting. Brain picked up where he left off.
“Anyway, Jeannie dropped something and leaned down to pick it up and I could see down her shirt.”
“Wow! You saw down her shirt?” I asked incredulously, always wondering about female mystery parts.
“Yeah, I looked down her shirt! What do ya think?”
“So what? You looked down her shirt ya dickhead.” Cooch yelled. “She wears a bra idiot.”
“Yeah, but it kind of puffed out at the top, and there she was, saying hello brain.”
“There what was?” I asked pathetically.
“There was her nip ya turd brain!”
“And—?”
“And what?”
“And what did it look like?” I was desperate to hear details.
“I already told ya. It looked like Fitzy’s but more pointed outward.”
The image rattled around my head for a while. It was not a pleasant one. And one, I might add, that was beginning to taint the girl of my dreams.
“Ah, ya didn’t see nothin’!” Moon claimed.
“I don’t know about you”, Fitzy mumbled. “But I’m kinda getting’ a little boner just thinkin’ about it.”
“Yeah, me too.” Boner announced. No shocking revelation there, after all he was nicknamed Boner for a reason.
"You guys are douches. I don't wanna hear about you gettin' boners!" Rye Bread complained.
"Yeah, we'll at least we get 'em! Fag face!" Fitzy snapped back.
Oh man. Such was the certain and simple logic of testosterone when left unchecked. And if one could get past the name calling and moronic points being made, it had a sing-song charm to it.
Fortunately, before headlocks and full nelsons were applied, the old Ford wagon pulled up to the curb, sputtering and choking as the engine refused to shut off long after the keys were removed. Leaving a blue smoky plume of pungent carbon monoxide in his wake, Mr. Fortunato had arrived. He lumbered out the driver’s side, tilting the shock worn wagon to its proverbial knees. And from the passenger door, in stunning contrast, like a contradiction in the physical laws of heredity and evolution, the beautiful but now less-than-perfect Jeannie hopped out.
I have wondered from time to time what it must have felt like to her as she walked up to the tables. I mean, there we were, all filled with saliva and "x's and y's", blankly staring at her with an assortment of devilish smiles plastered across our faces, looking pretty formidable in our collection of surfer hats and broad striped shirts. As she approached us, Mr. Fortunato opened the field house where all the games were safely locked away. Fitzy and Cooch followed him in to sign out the Nok Hockey board. Fitzy had to burrow his hands into his front pockets to run a little camouflage. The rest of us waited for a whiff of Jeannie’s shampoo.
“Hi boys! Have a good lunch?” she asked in that sweet breathy voice.
“Yeah.”
“Yup.”
“Uh ha.”
“Um hum.”
That was the best we could muster. Our steel-like maleness that just moments ago had us on the edge of pubescent heights was reduced instantly into pathetic blobs of soggy milquetoast. Meanwhile, deep inside the oft inquisitive recesses of our adolescent minds, we all pondered the alleged Brain “nip” sighting, as we tried desperately to keep our eyes from wandering into the “zone” in question. Some of us in vain.
We were all spellbound and moronic.
TTHHWWAACCKK!
The Nok Hockey board slammed onto the table, breaking the tension momentarily.
“All right!” Rye Bread shouted. “Let’s get this thing going!”
“Yeah!” Moon blurted. “A little Nok Hockey guys! Let’s do it!”
“Yeah! I’m after Moon!” I yelled.
“Then me!” Rye Bread proclaimed.
“Okay boys, I’m going inside the field house. It’s too hot out here. I’ll be listening. So keep the language clean!” The sound of her voice melted me instantly. The Brain blemish was a fading memory. She was perfect again.
But as she turned to leave, she spotted the discarded napkin the Cooch had tossed after cleaning his shorts. It had found its way underneath the corner of the bench seat, opposite where we were all sitting.
What happened next was debated endlessly for the remainder of that summer and into the next.
She leaned over to pick up the discarded napkin, revealing the zone for our eyes to zero in on. I couldn't control them. My eyes darted in and out, in and out, in and out. I was barely able to hide my indiscretion. The others were more obvious. The Cooch looked like his head was going to explode. And as quickly as the door of opportunity had opened, it had slammed shut. She stood up, seemingly unaware of our intrusion, although later I would find cause to doubt her innocence.
Unfortunately, Mr. Fortunato, standing behind us in silence, witnessed our little inquisitiveness.
Suddenly, he cleared his fatty throat.
“Ahem! Ahem!”
Startled, we snapped our heads to look at him. We were caught dead to rights! We knew it! He knew it!
“You boys gonna play some Nok Hockey or aren’t ya?” he bellowed, his chins bouncing in perfect cadence to his words. But his eyes were black slits, striking fear into every fiber of our being. He'd kill us for sure if he thought there was a chance he could get away with it.
There was prolonged silence while we were trapped in his icy gaze.
“Jeannie, I need to have a word with you,” he gruffed. They walked back into the field house.
The awkward stillness lingered in the thick humid air for some time, while each of us—head down, eyes to the ground—tried in our own inadequate way to sort out what had just occurred. None of us were really up to the task.
Finally, I looked over at Brain. He had this huge grin pasted across his face. By all accounts, he looked vindicated.
“Believe me now, Boner?” he whispered.
“You’re nuts!” Boner never gave in. “It was covered!”
“I think I saw somethin’ too Brain!” Fitzy claimed.
Rye Bread's face was the same color as his orange hair.
As for me, I couldn't tell if I had seen something or not. I mean there was something going on there but it sure wasn’t like Fitzy's but more pointed.
“You’re all nuts! Com'on let’s start this stupid game. I’m first!” Cooch said as he grabbed his favorite Nok Hockey stick.
He placed the wooden puck down in the center of the table, aimed and slapped at it. It smacked the side panel just above the faded blue line and caromed into the hole for a goal.
“One, nothing!” Cooch announced.
And the game began, pouring cold water on our overloaded imaginations. Just another afternoon at Carteret Park, as we all became a little more dumb and a little more smart.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 21, 2009
at Tuesday, April 21, 2009
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