All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  “He’s just not going back to the ship for a while.”

  “You mean he’s home for good?”

  “For a while, Walter.”

  Something happened. Something bad.

  But something good, too: There was no more talk about Wally joining the navy.

  He sits on the front step now and watches the yellow sweat roll off his father’s back. Some of the neighborhood boys are throwing a football in the street. It’s Sunday.

  His father cuts the mower. He leaves it stranded in the middle of the yard and walks over to Wally, mopping his forehead with his T-shirt. His body is hard and toned, with a patch of gray hair curling between his flat, defined pectorals. Several brown moles above his father’s right nipple form a little crescent pattern. Wally has come to notice these things, things he never paid much attention to before.

  “Why are you inside on such a nice day?” his father asks.

  “I’m outside now.”

  “Take over cutting the grass. I need a drink.” His father presses his hand to his sweaty chest then puts his fingers to his mouth. “Too much salt. We eat too much salt. Your mother puts salt in everything.”

  Wally waits until his father has gone inside before heading out to the lawnmower. He starts it up, but it quickly chokes on the grass, then sputters and dies.

  “Turn it over,” his father calls from the front steps, drinking a glass of lemonade. It’s probably spiked with vodka. “Pull out the grass that’s caught.”

  Wally hesitates. He’s afraid that the machine will kick back into gear, severing his hand. But he obeys. He flips the lawnmower over and begins pulling out clumps of grass in his hands. He sneezes once, twice, then three times.

  His father has come up behind him. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m allergic to grass,” Wally tells him.

  “You’re not allergic to grass.”

  “Mom took me to the doctor. He said I was.”

  “Aw, go on, get out of here.” His father shoves him aside to reclaim the lawnmower. Wally looks up to see the boys in the street are laughing at him.

  And worse.

  They’re laughing at his father.

  Something happened. Something bad.

  High school changes everything. Once, Wally had many friends. Freddie and Michael and Philip and Steve. The teachers all liked him. He was going to go far. a straight-A student, a golden boy.

  Not anymore. Now Wally’s sullen and quiet and the teachers yell at him for never raising his hand in class. And in the entire school, he has just one friend, a geeky Jewish kid named David Schnur. His old friends from grade school went on to become cool, especially Freddie Piatrowski, who’s on the junior varsity basketball team and has a girlfriend. Those two things alone are enough to make you cool. Wally has no such résumé.

  But in the last three weeks, things have gotten even worse—ever since he and David went to see Saturday Night Fever at Cine 2 out on north Washington, the boxy little movie house that opened after the Palace Theater closed down. They each paid their three dollars and seventy-five cents and found two seats way in back, settling in to watch the kid from Welcome Back, Kotter. They had no idea of what was to come, any clue of the power the movie might wield. Yet from its very first frame it ensnared Wally: John Travolta strutting down a Brooklyn street to a throbbing Bee Gees soundtrack. The way he walked, the way he moved, the way he was dressed, the way he looked from side to side. The movie did something to Wally. Something weird. While David sat there shoving handful after handful of buttery popcorn into his mouth, Wally sat transfixed in the dark, unable to take his eyes from the screen.

  The images burned themselves into his brain: Travolta in his black briefs shouting “Attica! Attica!” Travolta in those tight polyester pants. Travolta in the backseat getting a blow job. It didn’t matter that the blow job was from Donna Pescow. What took hold of Wally’s mind was the fact that all Travolta’s mean, tough friends were watching him get it—mean, tough, handsome guys who said “fuck this” and “fuck that” and wore beautiful, shiny, tight-fitting clothes, topped off with gold jewelry and hairspray. Wally could practically smell their cologne through the screen. Something about the combination—the tough and the mean with the beautiful and the sweet—did something to Wally. Something weird.

  He hasn’t been able to get the movie off his mind since.

  Since seeing the film, Wally has started styling his hair with a blow-dryer, something his father makes a lot of grumbling about. Extra electricity. Besides, it’s girly. But Wally wants his hair to look like Travolta’s, feathered back and shiny.

  “Would ya just watch the hair?” he’s said to David in a bad imitation of Travolta’s Brooklyn accent. “Ya know, I spend a long time on my hair.”

  Last week, Wally pressured his mother to take him to Grant’s to buy him some clothes. Usually she only bought him clothes in late summer, before school started. But even though it was spring now and school had only a few months left before summer vacation, Wally insisted he needed new pants, because none of the ones he had fit him right anymore. His mother acquiesced, not wanting Wally to make a fuss in front of his father. So down they trooped to Grant’s, where Wally picked out the tightest, stretchiest, shiniest pair of burgundy slacks he could find, and threw in a silky green shirt with a yellow floral pattern as well. His mother was a little reluctant about the shirt, thinking his father wouldn’t like the additional expense, but in the end she went along with it. Wally was thrilled by his new outfit. Trying the clothes on, his heart was thudding in his chest. He couldn’t wait to wear them to school.

  “Hey, John Revolting,” Freddie Piatrowski teased, but somehow the taunt didn’t bother Wally. He liked being John Travolta. He liked wearing the clothes. They felt good on his body. They excited him.

  That’s when he started making the phone calls.

  His father’s still snarling over the sputtering lawn mower when Wally walks off. He cuts through the group of boys in the street, ignoring their laughter. He should’ve taken his bike, but he has no idea where he’s going, no plan. He’s just walking. He heads down the cul-de-sac out onto Washington Avenue. Before long he’s getting close to Main Street.

  He knows it’s wrong. Obscene phone callers—he’s read about them in “Dear Abby”—are sick. Weirdos. And now he’s one of them. But he can’t help himself. He’ll see a guy he thinks is sexy and then he just has to call him. He has to tell him he wants to fuck him. Then they’ll say “fuck you” back and it will make Wally shoot.

  At least that’s how it usually works. Sometimes they just hang up. Wally hates it when that happens.

  He used to worry that the police could track these calls, but not anymore. The old cop shows had made it look so easy. But Starsky and Hutch is far more realistic. You have to be on the phone for a long time before they can trace you, and your phone had to be rigged up with some gizmo from the police department. If Wally got them talking quick, got them to say fuck, he could hang up before no more than two or three minutes had elapsed. No one would ever catch him.

  “Hello, Wally.”

  He looks up. He’s been walking quite a while, all the way down Washington and crossing over to Main Street. He realizes he’s passing by St. John the Baptist Church, next door to the school where Wally once attended, before his father was home all the time, before Wally lost all his friends, before he was an obscene phone caller and was still an All American boy.

  “How have you been, Wally?”

  At first he can’t see anyone. The voice makes him uneasy, like it’s God talking to him. But then he sees the priest standing in the doorway of the church, surrounded by little old ladies. It’s Father Carson, and he’s looking straight over at him. Wally gives him a small wave.

  Wally was baptized in this church. In grade school, his class would troop next door for Mass on every First Friday and whatever holy day popped up in the calendar. But now the church seems an alien place to him, a place of shadows and whispe
rs. Wally was a Catholic only when his father was home from the ship; when his father was away, his mother would take him to the Lutheran church. Now there is no church at all. Since he’s been home, Wally’s father has made no effort to get up on Sunday morning and head off to Mass.

  “Wally,” the priest is calling, “would you come over here a moment?”

  Father Carson’s a young man, no more than thirty-five, with wavy brown hair and green eyes. He’s kind of like Travolta’s older brother in Fever, but more handsome. He’s saying good-bye to very small Italian ladies in black dresses who are coming out of Mass. Wally heads over slowly, watching as the priest makes the sign of the cross over one of the ladies’ Rosary beads.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you,” Father Carson says, turning his full attention now to the boy. “How is your father?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Tell him we miss him at Mass.”

  “I will.”

  “And how are you?”

  Wally shrugs. “Okay.”

  “How’s school going?”

  “Okay.”

  Father Carson makes a sympathetic face. “I guess you’ll be leaving Brown’s Mill soon, going off to the military academy.”

  Wally’s not sure why the priest is talking to him. Has there been talk? Have his high school teachers reported back to the nuns at St. John’s? What’s happened to Wally Day? You said he was such a good boy.

  Wally looks up into Father Carson’s face. The priest smiles at him. His eyes are set very deeply into his face.

  “Wally,” Father Carson says, “anytime you wish to talk, about anything, you’re welcome to call me.”

  The boy makes a little sound. “Why should I need to talk to you?”

  “I’m not sure. But if you want to talk, I’m here.” The priest puts his hands on Wally’s shoulders. “Sometimes you just want somebody to talk to, somebody you can trust.”

  Wally likes the feel of the priest’s hands on his shoulders. He feels a tingling in his shoulders that goes all the way down his arms and his spine. He looks down at Father Carson’s black pants. They’re tight and very shiny. Wally feels his cock stir in his jeans. He wishes he could fall to his knees and bury his face in the somber black cloth of the priest’s crotch.

  Wally pulls away, hurrying down the street.

  “Please call me,” Father Carson says after him. “Please call me if you need to.”

  Three days after seeing Saturday Night Fever, Wally made his first obscene telephone call.

  “You want to suck my cock?” he breathed into the phone.

  “Who is this?”

  “You want to suck my cock?”

  Click. Dial tone.

  Wally frantically pushed the buttons again. Freddie Piatrowski picked up the phone, irritated now.

  “Or I can suck yours,” Wally offered, disguising his voice.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  He said fuck! Wally pumps his cock hard and fast in his fist, lubed with Vaseline.

  “I said,” Freddie growls, “who the fuck is this, faggot? I’ll beat your fucking head in, you fucking faggot.”

  “Ohhhh!” Wally shouts, shooting a cannonball of spunk onto his mirror. He slams down the phone.

  He said fuck. Oh, man, he said fuck!

  That fuckin’ faggot, we’ll beat his fuckin’ ass, huh, Tony? We’ll beat his fuckin’ ass.

  Some of these chicks think if I fuck ’em, I gotta dance with ’em.

  Travolta was always saying “fuck.” In one scene, he said, “Fuck the future,” but Fusco told him no, that you can’t fuck the future. “The future fucks you,” Fusco said. “It catches up with you and it fucks you if you aren’t prepared for it!”

  Wally had turned to David Schnur in the cafeteria a week later and asked, “What do you think he meant, that the future fucks you?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You think it means that if you don’t know what’s coming, it can fuck you up for life? Keep you trapped? Keep you from ever being happy?”

  “I don’t know what you’re taking about, Wally,” David said, eating his Cheetos.

  “Don’t you ever think about it? Don’t you ever have dreams about it?”

  “About what?”

  “Saturday Night Fever.”

  “No,” David told him, unwrapping his Ring Ding.

  “Well, you’re a fuckin’ liar.”

  “Why should I dream about it?”

  “Because you’re a faggot.”

  “I am not,” David protested.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Wally said. “I could tell by the way you were looking at those guys on the screen. You wanted to have sex with John Travolta. And Joseph Cali. And the other guys. Admit it.”

  “Fuck you, Wally!” David tossed his Ring Ding at him. It bounced off of Wally’s shoulder and rolled across the floor.

  “Oh, lookit the little girlfriends having a spat!” Freddie Piatrowski shouted from the next table. “Whatsa matter, girls?”

  Wally let it drop. David acted sulky for a while but eventually forgot about it, and they went on being friends.

  “Hey, queerhead!”

  Wally looks up. He’s wandered over to the playground behind the church, and now some boys playing basketball have started taunting him. He pays them no mind. He just watches them through the fence. He likes the way their shorts inch up their asses when they shoot the ball. He stuffs his hands down deep into his pockets and rubs his cock through his jeans.

  “Faggot, want to suck my cock?”

  One boy approaches the chain-link fence and pulls down his shorts. He sticks his cock through the fence at Wally. It’s very small and pink. It hangs through the fence like the trunk of a tiny sick elephant at the zoo. It disgusts him.

  He returns home.

  His father is asleep in his chair. His shirt is still off. He smells of grass and sweat. His chest rattles as he sleeps.

  Wally finds his mother in the kitchen ironing. “Shh,” she says. “Your father’s asleep.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Where did you go? Did you quarrel with him again?”

  Wally doesn’t answer. He opens the refrigerator and takes a gulp of milk straight from the container. When he closes the door his mother is looking at him reprovingly.

  “What?” he asks, daring her to say something.

  Anything.

  But she just goes back to her ironing.

  He thinks of the phone and starts to breathe in quick little gasps.

  He walks into his parents’ room and takes the phone, its long cord trailing behind, twisting sinuously down the hallway.

  “Why are you taking the phone in your room again?” his mother asks.

  He ignores her, locking the door behind him, the phone cord pulled through the space at the bottom.

  He unbuttons his jeans and lets them fall to the floor. From his closet he removes the polyester pants his mother bought him at Grant’s. He pulls them onto his legs, snapping and zipping up the front. How tight they are. How smooth and shiny. He admires himself in the mirror. He moves his hand around to his butt, reveling in the tightness of the fabric across his cheeks. His cock goes rock hard.

  “Fuck man,” he whispers. “Fuckin’ ass.”

  Lying facedown on his bed, he rubs his cock against the mattress, imagining John Travolta and his tough, Italian friends getting blow jobs as they wore pants like these, Donna Pescow on her knees in the backseat servicing them all. He rolls over and reaches under his bed for his jar of Vaseline. It’s almost empty, with lots of finger valleys and pubic hairs. He unzips his pants and pulls out his cock. He begins sliding his fist up and down the shaft.

  Maybe the Corvette guy is home.

  The push button tones make his cock jump in his hand.

  Ringing …

  His eyes stare straight into the mirror.

  Ringing …

  “Hello?”

  “I want—”

  “W
hat are you doing in there?” It’s his father now, rapping at the door.

  “Hello?” the guy on the phone demands.

  Wally whispers. “I want to suck your cock.”

  “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”

  “What are you doing in there with the phone?” his father shouts.

  Wally cups his hand over the mouthpiece. “I want to suck your cock!”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “Who is speaking?”

  “Answer me! Who is on the phone?”

  “Who is this?”

  Wally slams the phone down. Damn them both! Damn them both to hell!

  “I’m talking to David,” he shouts. “It’s about homework.”

  His father grumbles as he moves away from the door.

  Wally presses the numbers again.

  “Hello!” The Corvette guy is clearly pissed off.

  “I want to suck your cock.”

  “You want to do what?”

  “I want to suck your cock!”

  Pause. “Who is this?”

  “Would you like that?” Wally’s voice is breathy and he’s pumping his cock harder.

  “No.” Dial tone.

  Wally slams down the receiver. Why didn’t he just say fuck?

  He hesitates. He needs to climax.

  He pulls out the soiled phone book and flips through the pages until he finds the exact number he’s looking for.

  Push tones. Oh, God …

  Ringing …

  He pumps his cock, watching his reflection in the mirror.

  Ringing …

  “Answer the phone,” he mutters.

  Ringing …

  Oh for God’s sake, hurry up and answer the fucking phone!

  “Hello?”

  His throat is tight.

  “Hello?”

  “I want to fuck you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I … I want you to fuck me.”

  “Oh.” There is a long pause.

  “Would you like that?” Wally asks.

  “Would you?”

  Oh, shit, he’s talking. Wally can feel his cock getting ready to burst.

  “Do you have the right number?” the voice asks him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you realize you’re talking to Father Carson?”