I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  The sound that came out of me was what got them off my body. Eighteen years of taking shit and sick to death of it – the sound of that – came out of my mouth. One moment I had three motherfuckers on me, then I started yelling, and the next thing I know, they’re all standing around looking down at me, their mouths hanging open as if I was having some kind of fit.

  It was a fit all right. A Big Ben fit. Fight or flight. Up to that day it had always been flight.

  The next thing I know I’m up and standing free. Phil Rousse was the closest. His beady eyes and those glasses. The books in my hand slammed his head so hard his glasses went flying. Knocked him all the way across the hall. I guess I was still yelling because nobody – not Abe or Marty or anybody else in the hallway was moving. Just standing there stuck in place as if a horror show was happening in front of their eyes.

  It wasn’t long and Abe and I squared off. Phil was down and who knows where Marty went. Abe was calling me a pussy, a queer, a fag – all the while beating his chest like a gorilla. But that day, squaring off didn’t scare me. Nothing could have scared me. Even though my whole body was trembling so bad, from out my mouth came such a surprise – a deep voice from way down in my toes speaking out, loud and clear.

  “Abe Martin,” I said. “Always trying to get my pants off me. What’s that about?”

  Our bodies weren’t apart for long. Abe wasn’t going to let his ambush get out of control. He jumped and we were body to body. Over the years, one on one, Abe and I had been evenly matched, so our bodies knew what to expect. But this time it was different. And it was startling. The way we went at each other. Both of us wanted to kill.

  What came next was one of those long moments. Heaving breath, yelling, cussing – fists and elbows, body slammed against body. One of my punches was straight out of John Wayne and right into Abe Martin’s nose. Immediately there was blood. Then a blow to my right ear that after I’ve never heard out of quite right.

  Just Abe and me. It was just us two swinging, lunging, falling down, and rolling. One point, Abe and I were on our knees, Abe behind. Abe had my head in an arm lock and I couldn’t breathe and I fucking hate it when I can’t breathe. My whole life somebody’d had that choke hold on me one way or another. It was rage, deep rage, and Big Ben that doubled over and threw Abe’s body clean over my head. His back hit the hard cement floor. Sounded like everything was breaking. But he stood back up.

  That’s the way we were, two killers, barely standing, trying to get breath. Abe’s shirt was torn. My belt was hanging loose. My fists were bleeding. Abe’s nose was bleeding. My right ear gone haywire.

  Slow and weird, the rest of the world started coming into focus. Just about then Mr. Sloat, the mechanical drawing teacher, showed up. He was a Mormon bishop and never liked me much. The moment, just as Mr. Sloat stepped in between, what I’d managed to say just then Mr. Sloat didn’t take kindly at all.

  “You’re the one who’s the queer,” I said.

  Abe Martin was a Mormon, too, so he didn’t get sent to the principal. The principal, Mr. Bagley, who was also a Mormon, was filled with indignation and all sorts of authoritarian outrage. He threatened to call my parents, not to let me be in the graduation ceremony, and a bunch of other stuff. But I could give a shit. I’d finally stood up for myself. And I was higher than a kite. And for a few brief moments in my life there was nobody in the world who could hurt me.

  THE THING THAT pisses me off most about Abe Martin, though, didn’t really piss me off until years later. It wasn’t until after the second time Big Ben knew that this was it and I had to stand and fight that I realized something important.

  I’d spent all my life in a kind of resignation. Shit was always going to happen to me and I just had to learn how to withstand it. Bullies were going to come and go and I just had to brace myself and somehow get through it. For instance, I never once thought of getting even with Abe Martin. I mean he was a real asshole. He didn’t fight me fair. He ganged up on me with his friends. With the intention of ridiculing me as I stood there in the high school hallway with my dick hanging out.

  I defended myself and I succeeded in my defense. And I’d go on that way until the next time I needed to defend myself. Fucking Catholicism, man.

  TWENTY YEARS LATER, another bully. And once again he wasn’t alone. Two this time instead of three. In a basement in New York City. Then, after I picked myself off the concrete floor, we were out in the street.

  Didn’t know for sure what I was doing. Just knew I had to do something.

  But Big Ben knew. It was revenge.

  I’D JUST QUIT my job at Café Un Deus Trois and was a full-time super. The building on Seventh Street, right next to the Ukrainian Catholic church, was a pain in the ass. The sewer always backed up. As soon as I walked in the foyer, which was every morning, if the basement was full of sewerage, I could smell it. Believe me.

  It was a summer morning, because the mimosa tree in front of the church was blooming. The moment I unlocked the front door, I could tell it was bad. When I turned the basement light on and looked down, I couldn’t believe it. Eight to ten inches of human shit and toilet paper lapping over the bottom step. It was a weekend, too, so my boss wasn’t in the office. I immediately walked back to my apartment and put on my Key West shrimper boots. I almost didn’t buy the shrimper boots because they were white, mid-calf, and looked kind of sissy. But as it turned out, those white, mid-calf, solid rubber boots saved my ass with all the shit I had to wade through.

  Down in the basement, the only light was at the bottom of the stairs. I pulled my red bandana over my nose and mouth. Turned on my flashlight. My first step off the bottom stair was the scariest. I had to walk real slow to the sump pump. Just a beam of flashlight in a dark, dingy basement. Sloshing shit-water lapping up against the tops of my rubber boots. Fucking wade in the water, man.

  Thank God that day the sump pump was working. It took a couple hours, but when the pump sucked all the water down, solid waste and TP still covered the cement floor. I didn’t know what else to do, so I went for it. Pulled the red bandana back over my nose and mouth and started scraping. Human excrement down the sewer hole with the heavy duty metal push broom. Stepping careful because that shit was slick. Then I hooked up the hose and hosed down the whole basement. Sprayed out a whole can full of aerosol Lavender Mist.

  But there was another problem that day. It was when I was hosing away the shit away from the base of the boiler that I realized. The line on the side of the boiler. Sometime in the night, the shit-water level had reached over two feet high and the boiler had quit.

  Back in my apartment, I left my boots in the hallway. Next to my phone was the list of emergency numbers to call. Repairs would be expensive on the weekend and my boss would be pissed but there was no way I could fix that boiler. I ran my finger down the list. Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair.

  Two things about that company that fucked me up.

  The first. It took a big dick just to call up Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair. You had to be prepared. If you fucked up the account number or the address the guy hung up. Then you had to be specific about what you needed. Choose one: installation, replacement of parts, maintenance and cleaning, other. You had to speak loud and clear and get to the point fast or the guy hung up. The first time I called them it took me all day to keep the guy on the phone.

  And there I was again, my index finger on the telephone number. Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair. The Running Boy just wanted to run. Be prepared: I wrote down on a piece of paper the account number and the street address. Then how do you say in ten words or less your boiler was drowned in a shit flood? Fuck.

  The guy on the phone was as tough as ever. John Gotti in New Jersey.

  “What’s your problem?”

  I gave him the account number and the street address.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “Other.”

  “What’s your other problem?”

  I s
aid it fast, loud, and fuck you.

  “Boiler emergency,” I said.

  There was a silence, just for a moment, and then the guy laughed.

  “I remember you. You’re the super getting the college education.”

  If you wait you lose. Before I had a chance to open up my mouth, the guy was talking at me again.

  “Two hours,” he said. “You be there on the stoop with the keys.”

  “If you’re not on the stoop we don’t stop.”

  In the shower, no matter how hard I scrubbed I couldn’t get the basement turd smell off me. Poured a bunch of Polo aftershave into my hands and slapped it on my neck and face. Put on fresh clothes. Tied a new red handkerchief around my neck. Grabbed the flashlight and the keys. In the hallway. I slipped on my shrimper boots.

  THE MOMENT THAT black van pulled up in front I knew. Which is the second reason why Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair fucked me up.

  Marco.

  Three months earlier, the last time I was alone with Marco, was in another basement. 211 East Fifth – the first time I’d called Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair. After getting hung up on all day, I’d finally I got a repairman sent over.

  My boss gave me specific instructions to stay with the repairman the whole time. Just to watch him. Make sure he doesn’t goof off. Plus you might learn something.

  Marco arrived in a black van. Maria Callas playing a little too loud. Baldini. He was in his late twenties, tall and thin. Dark faux Aviator glasses. Under his ballcap, his hair was short and jet black. Orange coveralls, Marco sewed in red above his pocket.

  He was sullen at first, you know like most straight guys, answered my questions with a grunt. I bought him a cup of coffee and he warmed up. Probably helped with his hangover. Turns out the oil pump had blown out and we had to undo the boiler assembly. I didn’t know my ass from my elbow about boilers, but my boss had told me I had to stay, so I became Marco’s assistant – handing him tools and running to his van for shit.

  The first time I got a close look at Marco we were taking a break, standing outside in the sunlight in front of the basement door. A smashed nose that bent off to one side. One of those pencil-thin mustaches. Lips that seemed unreal, the way they were red. When he took his faux Aviators off, I mean I had to stare. His eyes were light brown, almost gray. Eyes like they could never look up into the sun or at God the Father or work for Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair. Those sensitive eyes, the thin mustache, and his red lips, man. Marco must have known about his eyes, how he had to keep them covered up, or maybe he was just weirded out by my stare, because he quick started down the basement steps. I waited a bit before I followed him down, and when I looked at him again, he was in the dark and wearing his safety glasses.

  The cement walls of the boiler room were only a couple feet wider than the boiler itself. The motor and the oil burner assembly were on the floor of the boiler room right next to the pit the boiler was set in. The whole apparatus had to come off and then we had to bleed out the pipes. Or something like that. In any case, in no time at all, the whole magilla was torn apart. Just one light in the room. I had to plug in an extension cord for another light. Marco’s hands were thick and calloused. Grease along the nails. On his left hand third finger a simple gold ring.

  There were boiler parts everywhere and I had to be careful where I stepped. We talked some as we worked. Guy talk, as much as I can figure out what that is. I told him I was from Idaho and he mistook Idaho for Iowa then mixed them both up with Ohio. I didn’t try and correct him. He was a Yankees fan and had a motorcycle. Some kind of fast Honda motorcycle. He didn’t cuss like most guys. I went to ask him about his wife, and if he had any kids, but decided against it.

  After a couple hours of handing him wrenches, after an afternoon of holding my monkeywrench on the bolt heads while he screwed the washers and nuts on tight, hours and hours of maneuvering my body around so I could get a better grip, both of us our arms up inside the dark hole of the boiler – there was no fucking way I couldn’t not touch him – something changed. I have a theory about men working close in dark New York basements. Brings something out in you.

  Sometime in the late afternoon, Marco stood up. He started making a big deal about how hot the basement was. A production number, him taking off his coveralls. Underneath he was wearing one of those Guinea T-shirts and a pair of jeans. White white skin. Lots of black hair on his chest. His jeans were some kind of designer washed-out jeans. When he bent over in those jeans. I mean he had to know he was showing hairy cleavage.

  Propinquity. At this one point, I’m lying next to him on the cement floor, holding some damn oil pump burner thing steady, while Marco tightened a screw down. All the while his armpit’s in my face. Sweat is what always tells the tale.

  Marco smelled like my father.

  And the most amazing thing. I didn’t want to be in the next borough.

  Later on, seven-thirty, eight o’clock, we were outside having a smoke. The boiler was back up and running, Marco was wearing his faux Aviators and his orange coveralls were back on. The tools were put away. The early evening was hot, and after a day in a dark basement, the bright burnt orange sky was good on my eyes and the air felt warm on my skin. I was sitting on the stoop. Marco was leaning against his black van. There was something different about Marco. The way he just kept standing there smoking. And his lips, Marco kept moving his red red lips, as if he was trying to say something. I wanted to say something too. I mean I felt like the boiler had lost and Marco and I were on the winning team. Didn’t most guys feel this way after their hard work paid off for them? Wasn’t that called camaraderie? Of course, I wanted to say something more. But Marco’s lovely butt crack kept flashing in my brain. Made my breath stop. And how Marco smelled like my father. How fucked up I was that smell was sexy. So I didn’t say anything. I had no voice, my heart was broke, same way as my dick was.

  Marco pushed away from the van, walked through all the sunset bright orange, over to me on the stoop. I put my hand over my eyes. When his body was between me and the sun, I could see his hand stuck out. Marco shook my hand the way I always shake hands with men, too hard. All that overcompensation. Then he got in his van, started it up. I was halfway up the stoop when he called out.

  “Hey, Ben!”

  I had no idea Marco knew my name, so when I heard my name coming out from under that pencil thin mustache, from out of those red red lips, that place inside me that’s always scared in that moment stopped being scared. How I stopped, looked at my arms, at my hands, looked around me at the world. Blessed fearless moment. When you’re Catholic the way I am, you don’t have to die to spend eternity in hell.

  Marco had his window rolled down. On the window ledge, his black hairy forearm. He reached up under the visor and pulled out a pen and began writing on something. Maria Callas too loud. Just as he handed me out the business card, the way he turned his head, his faux Aviators shone the bright orange sky right into me.

  When I got back to my apartment, I put the card under my reading lamp.

  Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair

  Marco Tucciarone

  Scribbled on the back, his phone number and weekends call after nine o’clock.

  About a week later, after a bottle of Vin Santo, I sat with my telephone in my lap, wrapping the curlicue cord in my fingers. Marco’s business card under my reading light. Weekends call after nine o’clock written in strangely cursive handwriting.

  THREE MONTHS LATER, on the stoop of 39 East Seventh, Frank’s First Call Boiler Repair’s black van pulls up, double parks. At first I’m relieved because the too loud music isn’t Maria Callas. It’s hip-hop. The Italian guy that gets out on the passenger side looks like he’s still in high school. His orange coveralls are too long for him and he has to stop and roll the pant legs up off his boots. He doesn’t like that his coveralls don’t fit. He’s cussing the long legs of the coveralls, or cussing his short legs. I just know there’s something h
e isn’t happy about. He’s bent over, his ass pointed my way. It’s through his legs he sees me standing on the second stair of the stoop. He straightens up fast and turns around. The look on his face as he looks at me, his dark eyes, inside those eyes, it’s hate.

  “What the fuck you looking at?”

  I have to remind my internal homophobia that I’m just standing on the stoop on the second step waiting for the boiler guys. And the boiler guys came and one of them stepped out, bent over, and started pointing his ass at me.

  A gorilla this guy, the way he stares at my white boots, walks up to me, past me, up to the third step so he can look me in the eye. Frankie Junior sewn in red above his pocket. Puffed up in his chest, like Hank makes his chest, but I don’t know Hank yet and this guy isn’t pretty at all like Hank. He’s mean, Frank’s First Call Boiler Repair mean, and up this close his breath smells of beer and his skin is bad and there’s something about his eyes. He isn’t twenty years old yet, and his tiny brown eyes are dead.

  “Frankie Junior!”

  That voice. I know that voice. It’s the voice who called out my name one evening three months ago in the glowing. Marco.

  “Your dad’s on the two-way. He wants to talk to you.”

  Frankie Junior’s brown dead eyes go from my eyes down to Marco. It’s in that moment I can see the hate in Frankie Junior’s eyes doesn’t have anything to do with me. He’s got a chip on his shoulder, or a hangover, bad drugs, really bad gas, or he’s just somehow fucked up and whoever he runs into has to pay for it.

  Frankie Junior steps down, the too-long pant leg scraping the bottom step.

  “Motherfucker!” he yells and kicks his too-long pant leg at the step.

  “Orange cunt fucking pants!” he yells. “Can’t fucking even walk!”

  Marco stands tall on the sidewalk, his toolbox in his right hand. His thin mustache, those red red lips. Faux Aviator glasses. Even though I can’t see his eyes, I can tell his dove gray eyes are not looking at me. They’re not looking at Frankie Junior either. There’s something resigned about Marco. Like this is my fucking job and this is my fucking life and this is my boss’s fucking spoiled brat son and this guy on the second stair is the fucking guy who never called me back.