Still Pitching

by Michael Steinberg

  I thought about it all morning until I couldn’t stand the tension any longer. In fourth period Social Studies I asked for a bathroom pass and ducked beneath a staircase where no one could see me. All I could hope for was a polite rejection. Or some suggestions on how to improve the writing. I ripped the envelope open and inside was a handwritten note. Two short sentences: “We don’t accept work like this. Besides, it isn’t even typed.” It was signed “The Editors.”

  My knees began to shake. I read those heartless comments over and over again. What did they mean by “work like this”? I felt a momentary stab of anger. It was all Mr. Aaron’s fault. Why did he subject me to this? When the anger passed, I began to blame myself. I should have known better. I hadn’t felt so humiliated since the sixth grade dance.

  All afternoon, I walked around in a stupor. In the halls, I avoided eye contact with everyone. On the bus ride home I sat alone and buried my head in a book. The rejection stung so much that, finally, I couldn’t keep it to myself. I blurted it out to my parents at dinner.

  “That’s OK,” my father said. “You took a chance and it didn’t work out. You’ll bounce back.”

  Easy for him to say. I wish I had his resilience.

  My mother felt sorry for me—which was, of course, the reaction I was looking for. She suggested I talk to Mr. Aaron. Maybe he could say something to the two editors. It was good of her to take my setback to heart. But the last thing I wanted was to give those two harpies the satisfaction of knowing how I felt.

  Every time I saw them at lunch I’d imagine them in that broom closet, laughing and making fun of my writing. When I passed them in the halls, I couldn’t bear to look them in the eye. Even if I did have the balls to stare them down, they wouldn’t have had the slightest idea who I was.

  Which is worse, I wondered: rejection or invisibility? Lately, those seemed to be my only two options.

  5

  Just before Thanksgiving break, I was walking into home-room, head down, feeling sorry for myself. I was a few minutes early, and Madeline Feeney, a pale, angelic-looking blonde girl, was a couple of steps ahead of me. I happened to pick my head up just in time to spot Edward Farley standing in front of the big windows on the other side of the room. He had a crazed look in his eyes. Farley was the last guy you’d want to be alone with in a room. We all knew that he’d been to reform school. His idea of a good time was to grab some poor schlemiel in the hall or at recess and smack him around with his open hand. Everyone in homeroom kept a distance from him. Even the street gangs didn’t want any part of this guy. They knew he was a dangerous psycho.

  Nobody knew anything about Farley’s family or his home life. He looked like a derelict. Every day he wore the same ratty clothes to school: ripped, grease-stained dungarees, scuffed leather boots, and tattered, hand-me-down shirts. His disheveled blonde hair and perpetual scowl made him seem even more menacing.

  Last week in the schoolyard he picked a fight with Martin Ackereizen, who was not exactly a slouch when it came to defending himself. When Ackereizen got back from the nurse’s office he had a half dozen stitches and a bloody bandage on his forehead. A bunch of eighth graders had witnessed the fight, but no one had the guts to rat on Farley. All he got was two days of detention before he was back in class.

  And now I was looking right into his steely green eyes. Before I could figure out what to do, he cocked his right arm behind his ear and released what looked liked a yellow pearl handled knife, its open blade glinting in the sun. I yelled “Head’s up!” and Madeline jerked her head forward just as the knife whizzed between us and lodged in the bulletin board, its handle vibrating and rattling in the cork.

  Madeline was too stunned to even scream. Farley just stood there with a sneer on his face—as if he was challenging me to do something. But I was frozen in my tracks. Then the recess bell sounded and the classroom began to fill up. When homeroom was over, I got out of there as fast as I could.

  All night I agonized over whether to tell someone about what I’d seen. I needn’t have worried, though. During homeroom the next morning, I got a note to report to the assistant principal’s office. Madeline’s father, it seems, had already reported the incident.

  Madeline, Farley, and I were each called in separately. When it was my turn I described to Mr. Sanders about what I’d seen. He took notes on a clipboard pad, and then he abruptly ordered me to go back to class.

  Was he nuts? Who would protect me from Farley? I had a momentary urge to sneak out of the building and go hide in my bedroom. It was one of the few times that I actually wanted to be invisible.

  All day I worried about encountering Farley. Sure enough, he was waiting for me outside of seventh period biology. While the other kids headed out to catch the bus, he wrapped his right arm around my right shoulder blade and steered me down the empty hall. How could Sanders have been such an asshole? If I got killed, it would be his fault. I wanted to scream for help. But suppose this psycho had another knife on him?

  When we were far enough out of sight, Farley grabbed me by the shirt collar and slammed my head against the concrete wall. The pain shot up my neck to the back of my head. Cascades of splintered lights erupted behind my eyes.

  “You’ll pay for this, Jew boy,” he said. I was sure he was going to smack me around some more. Maybe even cut me. He was that crazy. But he just laughed and walked away. I was too numb to remember how I got home.

  I couldn’t decide what to do. If I told my parents, my mother would surely order me to stay home from school. My father, I was certain, would tell me to go back. And he’d have been right. If I didn’t show up, things could go a lot worse with this weirdo.

  I stayed up all night rereading The Amboy Dukes, asking myself what Frank Goldfarb would have done had he been in my place. Then it came to me. Of course, he’d have packed a weapon and arranged for the other Dukes to watch his back.

  That’s when I hatched my plan. I’d been looking for an excuse to approach Manny and his guys. Now I had one. They thrived on this kind of stuff.

  The next morning, just as the bus made the turn past McGuire’s, I leaned over in my seat, casually took out the switchblade I’d brought with me, and showed it to Manny and Stuie. Then, as if we’d been cohorts for years, I told them what had happened. I was hoping they’d see my dilemma as a big adventure. They did. Both of them volunteered to follow me around in the halls between classes. I was so grateful, I wanted to hug them.

  I stuck close to them in the schoolyard until it was time to go to homeroom. They escorted me right up to the door.

  “Don’t walk in the halls by yourself,” Stuie said.

  “Pick anybody, even a couple of dorks,” Manny added.

  Good. They were taking charge.

  I walked into homeroom head down, frozen with fear. When I got to my seat, I turned around slowly. Farley’s desk was empty. My heart skipped. He’s probably waiting for me right outside the door. Who could I walk with to first period Algebra? Before I could decide, the bell rang and Mr. Aaron called me up to his desk.

  I was in a panic watching everyone file out for first period classes. The idea of walking the halls alone terrified me. When the room was empty Mr. Aaron sat me down and calmly explained that Farley wouldn’t be back.

  “He’s already on his way to reform school,” he said. The knot in my stomach began to dissolve.

  I found out later that Mr. Sanders had alerted every teacher in school, in addition to calling my parents. It was the right thing to do. But it seemed odd that no one had bothered to inform me until now. Still, I was elated by the news. At lunch, I told Manny and Stuie what had happened. I could see the disappointment in their eyes.

  By the end of the day, the story had already made the rounds. On the bus ride home, everyone—even the clique and the greasers—were anxious to hear about what had happened. Of course, I exaggerated. When would I get this kind of attention again?

  While I was holding court I wondered what Manny and Stuie were
thinking. If I built myself up too much, maybe they’d blow my cover. But neither one said a word. I could have sworn that Stuie gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  When the bus got to Beach 132nd Street, Manny got off with me—at my stop, not his.

  “Drop by some night for a game of pool and a few beers.” He said it like we were best friends.

  Me, play pool? Drink beer? My impulse was to say yes immediately. But I held back. This time, I’d play it cool—like Frank Goldfarb, or even Manny himself would have done.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I just might take you up on it.”

  I was wildly ambivalent about Manny’s offer. A part of me was curious to see what went on inside his inner sanctum. But compared to those guys, I was a Goody Two Shoes. How would I ever fit in?

  It’s funny how something like the Farley incident can take on a life of its own. My worst nightmare had turned into a brief moment of celebrity. As word began to spread, I became more and more of a hero in each new version of the story. One particularly outlandish variation even had me putting a switchblade to Farley’s throat.

  Needless to say, I thrived on being in the spotlight. When questioned, I neither admitted nor denied what had happened. My answer frequently was that “My lawyer advised me not to talk about it.” The fib embarrassed me, though obviously not enough to remove it from my repertoire.

  The fallout from the incident had even gotten me a moment of attention from the clique. And I wanted to make it last for as long I could. That week, Mandel invited me to fill in for him in one of Pearlman’s pickup basketball games. And when Freddy Klein had a Friday night Bar Mitzvah lesson, I got asked to a party at Bonnie Lerner’s house. There was no turning that invitation down.

  I was beginning to think that maybe I’d finally arrived. Perhaps this would be my big chance to make an impression on the popular crowd. Two nights before the party, I was already rehearsing what I’d say to anyone who asked me about the Farley episode.

  As soon as I arrived, the first thing I saw was the coterie of popular girls surrounding Manny and his boys. They were fawning all over them. That evening, no one paid any attention to me. By the end of the night, I felt like an idiot. I was disappointed and angry with myself for being so hopeful and so naive. By the time the lights were lowered and the make out music was on, I was burning with envy. How could stuck-up, prissy girls like Elaine and Alice be attracted to such cocky, crude guys? How come those guys could get away with it and I couldn’t? What was their secret?

  The next morning, I decided to take Manny up on his offer.

  Manny’s parent’s rec room had faux knotty pine paneling, a well stocked Naugahyde and stainless steel bar with a mirror behind it, a green felt pool table, an oversized sofa, a Dumont TV set, a roulette wheel, a card table, and a Schaeffer Beer wall clock. Where on earth did Manny get all this stuff? Maybe his father really was in the Jewish Mafia.

  The basement room was an ultra stylish version of the Amboy Dukes clubhouse. Depending on Manny’s whim, the group would shoot pool, or play five card stud, black jack, or roulette. It was also the setting for the monthly circle jerks.

  All the guys—Stuie Issacs, Jerry Shapiro, Paul Goldman, and Larry Rabin—looked and dressed just like Manny: slicked back DAs, and sculpted, rooster-like pompadours with a wispy spit curl winding down the forehead. They had expensive black leather jackets, tight Levi’s or pegged pants, and black motorcycle boots. Each one carried a switchblade in his jacket pocket, a packet of Trojans or Ramses in his wallet, and a comb in his back pocket. Like every other group in junior high, they thought of themselves as trendsetters.

  For the next few weeks, I tagged along wherever they went. On weeknights, they hung out in Manny’s basement or at Art’s candy store a few blocks away on 129th Street.

  The neighborhood stores were all located on 129th, between Cronston and Newport Avenues: Tishman’s tailor shop, the Peter Reeves market, the Shell station, Johnny’s Bar and Grill, and Willie’s butcher shop. Art’s was right next to Sam Cahmi’s deli, a few stores up the block from Neiman’s Pharmacy.

  At Art’s, the five guys would sit at the soda fountain, sipping egg creams and shooting the breeze. Each month when the new magazines came in, they always pulled the same scam. Three of them would talk to Art and the two others would stand at the magazine and comic book racks pretending to leaf through Tales of the Crypt Keeper or Mad Magazine, while one of them slipped the latest girlie magazine or True Detective under his jacket.

  Art was onto them. He’d simply add the price of the magazine to the bill. Everyone just played along with the game. Once I saw Art wink at Manny and say, “Look, Burtchick, anyone catches you with a girlie magazine, you didn’t get it in my store. You hear me, big shot?”

  He turned to look right at me when he said it. “What’s wrong with you?” he seemed to be saying. Why are you hanging around with these Nogoodnicks?”

  That’s what I’d been asking myself every day for the past three weeks. But then, whenever they talked about girls, I’d remember exactly why.

  When the temperature was above freezing the guys would stand in front of Art’s smoking Lucky’s or Dunhill filter tips and boasting about copping a feel off some girl at a make out party, or a back row hand job in the balcony of the Park Theater.

  I was all ears—especially when they identified the girls by name. Manny said that he and Cindy Levine had a hot session under the boardwalk on 116th Street one night last summer. I felt a sharp pang of resentment. How did he ever get to her?

  I’d had dreams about Cindy since sixth grade. Tanned olive skin, dark brown eyes, and jet black curly hair, she was the most exotic looking girl in our class. At school she wore tight, straight, wool skirts, form-fitting Orion sweaters, and black penny loafers with white ribbed socks. Nobody seemed to know much about her—which only added to her mystique. I’d heard that her parents were part Gypsy and that she had a history of dating older guys.

  Cindy wasn’t like any of the other girls I knew. She wasn’t the least bit interested in the clique or in what the popular girls thought of her. She never bothered to even show up at the Beth El dances or at make out parties.

  In my grade school fantasies, I imagined Cindy and I were kindred spirits. Together we shunned all the popular kids. I also dreamed that we went out on coke dates, made out under the boardwalk, studied together in her room, and talked passionately about jazz and the books we were both reading. Every time someone in the clique made fun of her, I’d come to her defense—usually by squaring off in the schoolyard with one of the guys and beating the crap out of him right in front of Cindy and everyone else.

  I’d always wanted to approach Cindy and tell her how I felt. But every time I was around her, I got dry mouth. If I tried to speak, nothing came out. In time, I convinced myself that she was simply out of my league. By junior high, I’d even convinced myself that she was beyond all of our reaches. That is, until I heard Manny’s story.

  Weeks afterwards, I was still tormented by the image of the two of them lying on an army blanket, going at it hot and heavy under the boardwalk. I was too scared to ask him how far they went. Part of me wanted to know, and part of me wanted to avoid the anger and self-loathing I’d feel if my fears were confirmed.

  It perplexed me that girls like Cindy and the smart, rich girls from the Five Towns fell for guys like Manny—guys who didn’t give a damn about them. But that’s what I was here to find out, wasn’t it? I decided it was time to join up. If they’d have me, that is.

  I launched my campaign by trying to persuade my father to buy me a leather jacket.

  “Why do you want to look like those hoodlums?” my mother asked.

  She didn’t get it. But my father did. I know he didn’t approve, but he never nagged at me the way my mother did. He’d grown up in the streets, and he knew how important this was to me. So, he proposed a compromise. He’d get me the jacket if I agreed to work two Sundays a month at the pharmacy to help pay for it.

&nb
sp; To my father the notion of working for your allowance was almost a given. So far I’d managed to avoid it, mostly because of my mother’s intervention. Now, I had no choice but to agree.

  My job at Neiman’s was to deliver prescriptions on my bicycle. I hated it. To avoid having to pedal for blocks against the cutting ocean wind, I did everything I could to make myself useful around the store. I soda jerked, worked in the stockroom, even sold cosmetics to the women. But when I did have to deliver a prescription, I’d go out of my way to make sure I didn’t ride past Art’s. What would those guys think if they saw me riding a bicycle? Especially now that Manny was driving them around town in his father’s DeSoto coupe.

  Once I got the leather jacket, I started wearing tight Levi’s and boots, and styling my hair in a DA and pompadour. In the schoolyard, in classes, and at lunch I was always stealing glances at the popular girls—hoping they’d notice my new look. So far though, nothing had changed. As usual, it only made me try harder.

  I tried to imitate the things the guys did. But none of it felt right. I was lousy at pool because I couldn’t get the hang of how to hold the cue stick. And I couldn’t bluff convincingly at poker because my eyes and grimaces always gave me away.

  If you expect to fail, that’s usually what happens. I’d learned at least that much as an athlete. In jock lingo, you “choked” or “took the big apple” if you didn’t come through under pressure.

  When I was younger, I had a tendency to tighten up whenever I knew people were watching me. I remember blowing two potentially game-winning foul shots in a Jewish Community League game. I was so rattled by the crowd that I lost my concentration. That’s exactly the kind of thing that would happen in Manny’s basement. Just by razzing me, the guys could goad me into scratching a pool shot or misplaying a poker hand.