"What's your names?" Buddy asked halfheartedly.
"WHAT?" they both asked in unison.
"Let's get the fuck outta here," Buddy said to Eugene.
One of the girls made another adjustment on the plug in her head. "I'M SORRY," she yelled as if trying to be heard in a hurricane, "WE GOT NEW HEARING AIDS TODAY AND THEY'RE NOT WORKING RIGHT."
"WHAT?" Buddy asked. Eugene elbowed him. The other girl pulled out her hearing aid and and whacked it a couple of times. When she put it back it made a high-pitched whine, and all four of them jumped.
"C'mon, Eugene, I ain't drinkin' wit' robots." Buddy got up.
"ITS O.K. NOW," the girl said.
Buddy was standing; Eugene yanked him down to his seat. One of the girls winked at Buddy, and he thought he saw the tip of her tongue dart out and back in like the head of a snake.
"I'M NANCY," said the girl with the sonic-boom hearing aid, "AN' THIS IS MARIE." Marie was the winker.
Suddenly Buddy became very interested. Crazy Salad Face fed the juke box a quarter, playing "Patches." "WANNA DANCE?" Buddy invited Marie. Eugene was taken aback but recovered nicely as he grabbed Nancy's hand, nodding in the direction of the dance floor. These girls didn't fuck around. They slammed crotches, bit ears, and licked necks. Buddy tried to lick Marie's ear but got a mouthful of plastic transistor for his troubles. In the light on the dance floor the girls didn't come off too hot Marie had skin like a pizza pie and Nancy was cross-eyed. It pained Eugene to dance with somebody so uncunty as a cross-eyed girl, but when he crossed his eves she looked normal Buddy was too far crone to care either way. He was nibbling on Marie's transistor wires giving her tiny shocks with each nip.
After the dance Buddy grabbed Eugene. "WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK, GIRLS." He shoved Eugene into the John.
"Whadya doin', you asshole?" said Eugene.
"Lissen." Buddy's lips were parched. "Let's take 'em home!" He was so excited that when he leaned against the wall, he put his hand in the high urinal.
"Nah, they're dogs."
"C'mon, Eugene, my parents ain't home. I know we could score!" Buddy wiped his hand on a revolving towel holder.
"Oh, man, ain't you got no pride?"
"Bu-u-u-ulshit man, my pride's right here." He grabbed his crotch.
"I dunno." Eugene crossed his eyes in the mirror.
"C'mon, c'mon, whadya say?" Before Eugene could answer, Buddy had led the girls halfway to the car.
***
One of the reasons Eugene had so many girls was because of bis attitude. He never allowed himself to feel anything for any female because if he got involved he eventually would have to fuck and then the show would be over. Also, he was afraid of really liking a girl and having to insult her to save himself, so he always came on with an I-don't-give-a-shit attitude, and he never slobbered over women like some lovesick people he knew. He had perfect control over his sex drive—he couldn't afford not to. Girls liked him—his aloofness challenged them. Of course, many thought he was conceited and his former "conquests" hated him, but the truth of the matter was that Eugene was just plain scared shitless.
***
Eugene lay naked on top of a naked girl, stone deaf without the hearing aid, which dangled over Buddy's parents' night table like a used intravenous tube, and he couldn't talk his way out of this because she couldn't hear a word he was saying. She was holding him on top of her with arms of steel and his fucking hard-on pointed down at his feet as usual. And he knew this girl wouldn't take no for an answer. All of a sudden, she reached between his legs, grabbed his cock, and yanked it toward her cunt. In it went, and Eugene was no longer a virgin.
The first thought Eugene had after the shock of realization was a memory of an old Little Rascals show in which Dicky had a stiff neck. Dicky's parents spent the whole program taking him to specialists, but in the end Stymie cured him simply by yanking his head around.
Eugene stayed inside her five minutes without moving, just enjoying the thought of where he finally was. Nancy wriggled impatiently under his body.
Buddy felt like he was wearing damp towels for underwear. Marie had been studying his bowling trophies for half an hour. As he stalked her around the room she focused on everything from the paint job on the walls to the loose-leaf on his desk. He thought of Eugene in the next bedroom, wondering what he would do in a case like this. Just as Buddy reached twenty in the twenty-eight count he was making before jumping Marie, Eugene and Nancy came into the room holding hands and looking mildly drugged. "Sonovabitch," Buddy muttered, "he did it again."
"So, Ace, what's new?" Al wore a red brocade smoking jacket with black silk lapels.
Eugene high-jumped the back of the couch, landing ass-first on the cushion. He breathed heavily.
"I got laid!"
"Good. Thirty-five, right?"
"What?"
"Thirty-five, ain't it?" He offered his son a cigarette from the case.
"Thirty-five?" Eugene experimented with the number as if it were a new concept in modern living. "Thirty-five? Fifty! A hundred! Who cares!" He jumped over the couch again and bounded out of the living room.
Breathless, he sat at his desk, turning quickly to the DIAL page in the black book. In large letters he wrote NANCY CROSS-EYES. Then he put a line through DIAL and wrote LAID. Turning to the EVERYTHING BUT page, his eyes roamed slowly down the list of names, and his expression was that of a starving man reading a menu.
7. The Death of Hang On Sloopy
IN DECEMBER, in a drunken fit of patriotic passion, ten of the toughest Fordham Baldies joined the navy. This involved a twenty-foot walk from one end of the kidney-shaped traffic island where the Baldies hung out to the other end where a trailer had been set up as a navy recruiting center. For more than a year the recruiting officer had stared from his office window at the black-jacketed scum and cursed the day he enlisted for the Big One. The idea of making the world safe for democracy so that these little actually not so little pricks could spend their days and nights standing around driking out of brown paper bags leering at women occasionally grabbing an ass and in general terrorizing decent civilians made him sick with rage.
The day they staggered into the trailer his first reaction was to go for his forty-five in the desk drawer. When he realized they wanted to sign up, the ten of them leaning and staggering around his desk, eyes at half-mast, breath smelling like the tail end of a distillery, he whipped out the papers, hustled their signatures, and booted them out with, "At least you guys don't need no navy haircuts, har har har." The navy needed these bastards like they needed lead lifeboats but at least they'd be off the traffic island—out of his sight for good.
Later, after they sobered up they came back to say it was all a joke. He had prayed they would do that. "Sorry, boys."
"Whadya mean, sorry, boys. I ain't twenty-one."
"You don't gotta be. Har har har."
"C'mon, give us a break."
"Nope, them's the rules."
"My muther'll die wit'out me."
"You shoulda thought a that before."
"Whad you say about my mother?"
He took out his forty-five. They clammed up. "Now get outta here. Don't worry, the navy'll make men outtaya, har har har." They stared balefully at his leather face, at his steel blue gun, muttered, and left.
The only guy rejected after the examinations was Terror. He tried to maul the psychiatrist when the man asked him if he ever had wet dreams about his mother. When three MPs dragged Terror from the shrink's office, the psychiatrist wrote in a trembling hand on Terror's card, "The only uniform this man should wear is a strait jacket." But Terror's official rejection was for physical reasons—he had asthma. This was ironic because he was as strong as any two men. He had hands as big as coal shovels and a head the size and shape of a diving helmet. He was a mean mother and might have enjoyed a war.
So Terror was back on the traffic island, along with Joey DiMassi, Cookie Scalisi, who was busy with the dry heaves when his friend
s signed up, and ten to twenty faces that kept changing.
This was the end for the Fordham Baldies and Joey DiMassi knew it. The heart and muscle were gone, Jay-Jay, Butler, Peter DiLuca, Fat Sally, the Martin brothers, Big Chief, Gussie, even the gang nigger Roger—although no one except Terror would dare call him a nigger, because to be a nigger and to be in the Baldies you had to be twice as tough as a white guy—all gone. At least they didn't take Terror, though Terror cut his own value with unpredictable rampages. Also, the new guys weren't the same. The old guys who didn't enlist started dropping out because a lot of their friends weren't around anymore. Joey knew his own days as a Baldie were numbered, and when he left that would be it. The heart and muscle were gone; and he was the brain. No brain, no gang.
***
A low concrete wall bordered the traffic island. When the Baldies got tired of standing they sat on the ground, backs against the wall, and watched the constant stream of shoppers walking across the island from Alexander's and smaller stores.
Saturday, February 14, Valentine's night. Terror, Joey, Hang On Sloopy, and Cookie sat against the wall, smashed on Tango, each in his own private rage. Cookie picked his nose, rolled the snot on his fingertips into a ball, and flicked it at the leg of a passing shopper. Terror was amused but didn't say anything. Joey DiMassi, on the other hand, was pissed and slapped Cookie across the back of his head.
"What's wrong wit' you?" Joey had bright eyes. Cookie winced.
"C'mon, Joey, man, hah?"
"Ain't you got no manners?" Joey sneered with irritation. Terror snickered. "How'd you like me to fling snot at you?"
"Awright, awright."
"You guys are hopeless!" he shouted.
"O.K., awready! Shit, you ain't no ... no ..." Cookie was stuck for a word.
Terror lifted his leg and bounced a fart off the pavement. This cracked up Cookie and Sloopy. Terror giggled like a little kid. Joey got up, dusted the seat of his pants, and started to walk away.
"Where you goin'?" Terror asked.
"Away from you pigs." Joey stood with his back to them, surveying Fordham Road.
"You gonna go to the movies?"
"Yeah."
Terror struggled to his feet. "I'll go wit' you."
"Don' do me no favors." Joey walked toward the Loew's. Terror tagged behind like Joey's pet gorilla.
"What's playin'?"
"Mondo Cane."
"It's Italian?" Joey didn't answer. "What's it about?"
Cookie and Hang On Sloopy watched Joey and Terror disappear down the hill. It started to snow, and the wind picked up.
"Fuck. What you wanna do, Sloop?"
Cookie took another slug of Tango and belched up some burning bile. Sloopy grabbed the bottle from Cookie, taking a wet gulp.
"Wha' time is it?"
Cookie looked over his shoulder at the big clock atop the Dollar Savings Bank three blocks away. "Half-past nine."
Sloopy took another belt and handed the bottle to Cookie. Cookie wiped the mouth with his sleeve. The idea of drinking from Sloopy's lips made him nauseous. Hang On Sloopy had a mouth that looked like it was put in his face with a can opener. A small bloodless, lipless hole with multicolored teeth going in four directions. Cookie was no stud either, but he thanked God daily that he didn't look like Sloopy. Sloopy's head was a narrow skull wrapped in skin. He had no nose save for two flaring holes and his ears were the size of quarters. His eyes were pale blue—not bad in a normal face, but nice eyes in Hang On Sloopy's face looked awful. Tommy Tatti said that Sloopy looked like somebody went over his face with a jumbo eraser and quit halfway through the job. But what God left out in the way of facial features he substituted with a galaxy of pimples. Not just the overnight breakout type, but permanent dark brown, sunk-in ones that had been nesting for years, the type that could withstand a laser beam. And the final touch was that Hang On Sloopy, like all the Baldies, shaved his head down to the scalp.
The wind whipped the snow sideways. Cookie and Sloopy stood up, turned up the collars of their Fordham Baldies' jackets, and jiggled in place to keep warm. The Fordham Baldies' jackets were better suited to the spring but snow or no, they had class. Black silk with butter yellow piping on the sleeves. The back was a work of art. Across the shoulder blades was "Fordham" in Gothic lettering. Below the letters was the profile of a grinning skull wearing a top hat like some dude ready for a night out on the town. Beneath the skull were two crossed ebony canes with silver tips. Everything lay on a background of orange-and-red flames, and at the bottom was "Baldies" in the same painstakingly beautiful print.
"Whoo, shit! C'mon, let's go somewhere!"
They walked down Fordham toward the Third Avenue el. Sloopy went into a liquor store to buy another quart of Tango.
***
Every year on February 14 Bronx House Community Center had a Valentine's Dance. The gym was decked out in crepe streamers and big cardboard hearts were hung every ten feet along the walls. Girls wearing ankle bracelets could get in for half price providing they were accompanied by their boyfriends who had proof that their name was the name on the ankle bracelet and providing that they both had Bronx House membership cards. Rumor had it that either Dion or Johnny Maestro and the Crests was going to be there, and the Wanderers decided to make the scene—Richie and Buddy with their girl friends, Perry, Joey, and Eugene stag. Once inside, the five guys went straight to the John to tease and pat their already frozen pompadours and waterfalls, elbowing twenty other guys for a good position in front of the mirror. Buddy and Richie split as the band warmed up. The other three stayed to piss. Joey and Eugene finished first, and after Joey zipped his fly, he gave Perry a little shove as he was peeing, making Perry spray his light gray sharkskins from knee to thigh Laughing Eugene and Joey split, leaving Perry cursing and pulling wads of sandpaper-like brown towels from the towel machine. He rubbed furiously at the stain, feeling the creepy wetness of piss on his leg. By the time he made it to the dance floor both Joey and Eugene were dancing. He was unset Joey's girl was a royal skank, so that wasn't too bad but Eugene's was a real cunt. When the music stopped, Joey started talking to his dancing partner but she walked away. Perry felt better.
"Jeez, what a skank," Joey said defensively.
"I seen you wit' worse."
Perry and Joey anxiously watched Eugene. Eugene and his girl were talking and laughing like old friends. The music started again. Eugene and his girl started dancing.
"Fuckin' Eugene."
"That guy mus' brush his teeth with Spanish fly."
The next song was slow. In a controlled panic, the stag guys pushed through the crowd asking first the nice-looking girls, then anything without a dick to dance. Joey got a girl right off. Perry got shot down straight across the dance floor. The song was half over, and Perry started to sweat. He checked Joey out—Joey was dancing close but he wasn't grinding. Eugene was dancing like he should be wearing a Trojan. A girl stood next to Perry smiling into space her hands clasped in front of her. She had orange hair and the biggest tits Perry had ever seen. He tapped her on the arm.
"'Scuse me." She didn't notice him. He felt like everybody was watching. "'Scuse me." She smiled dumbly. "You wanna dance?"
She put her arms around his neck and socked right in there. Yes. She was grinding. And her tits were like two fireballs pressed into his chest. He moved his leg between hers for two beats, then she moved her leg between his for two beats. Joey saw him. And Perry was in heaven. Too soon it was over. They separated.
"Ah, you go to Columbus?"
"Yeah, do you?"
"Nah. Tully."
"Do you know a guy named Steve?"
And so it went. Three dances. Then another slow one. They forgot the two-beat grinding rhythm in a delirium of new-found passion and stood in one spot frantically banging crotches. Perry's boner. He wanted to split for the John to jerk off, but he was afraid she would find someone else before he came back. He smiled at her as they waited, sweating, for the next dance.
She looked up at him.
"Are you Jewish?"
Cave-in. "Ah ... no." He noticed the Jewish star around her neck—heavy enough to kill—and kill it did.
"Uh, 'scuse me, I wanna see where my friends went." She smiled. Perry stood there drowning.
"She wasn't your type," said Joey, "she was nice."
Eugene and his girl were making out against the wall. Richie and Buddy were irrelevant—they had dates.
The band was a piece of shit. Little Domenick and the Sharktones. Three guineas and two niggers—couldn't harmonize for squat. The drummer used only one drumstick because he'd lost the other one. Eugene and his pickup won the twist contest with Buddy and Despie taking second—a Wanderer sweep. Richie and C smooched it up in a corner. Joey and Perry stood in the middle of the dance floor not even bothering to ask anybody to dance. Two shattered egos, having been shot down a total of twenty-six times. Perry cupped his hand in front of his face, checking his breath. Joey pretended to look at the back of his shirt and checked his armpits.
***
Hang On Sloopy and Cookie took the el to Pelham Parkway. They finished the Tango on the train. When they got off they were staggering drunk. They saw two girls walking to Bronx House and followed them, making sucking noises and discreet inquiries into their sex lives, family heritage, and toilet training. The girls walked briskly through the storm, the Baldies stumbling six feet behind like two retarded snow demons. During the last block, the girls broke into a genteel trot for the safety of bright lights and a crowd.
"You wanna go in?" Sloopy proposed.
"Nah." Cookie was self-conscious about bis baldness. "Too many Jews."
"Bullshit. C'mon."
"Nah."
"Lissen, man."
"I don' wanna. You deaf?"
"Fuck ya!" Sloopy marched in, leaving Cookie outside in the snow.
The minute he got inside people cleared a path. He was older, he was drunk, and his skinhead and Baldie jacket were more obvious than an American flag. Oblivious to everyone around him, he started dancing alone like a monkey, hunching his shoulders, eyes closed, head bouncing in tune to the music. Joey nudged Perry. "Look who's here."
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