by David Leite
Some boys, like Tommy Shields, were small and nearly hairless. They reminded me of those yapping stray dogs that run around the edges of playgrounds only to get kicked, yet keep coming back, hoping for affection. To survive, these boys sidled up to some of the bigger guys, often playing their flunkies and suffering their abuses. Like the time Carl Mullard pissed all over Tommy in the shower, great yellow arcs splashing across his chest and belly. Tommy laughed it off; it was his only defense. Later I saw him trying to joke with Carl, trailing after him as he left the locker room. A cartoon sidekick, bludgeoned and beaten, but always loyal.
And then there were boys like me who, mercifully, fell in the middle. Big enough to blend in, but physically unremarkable enough to be the target of an occasional bully with his shoves and jibes.
Once “faggot” had been added to the short and unimaginative roster of names I’d been called—“homo” and “queer” pretty much rounded out the list—I noticed it was being volleyed indiscriminately at everyone, as innocently as if they were calling each other a butthole or a “who-a”—our particular way of pronouncing the word whore. But ever since that afternoon when Billy Meechan had pitched me into the bushes, I couldn’t help feeling like these ubiquitous, mindless slurs were somehow personal and deeply descriptive when hurled at me.
Erections, I was certain, would be my undoing. Almost overnight, they began happening—without warning and without regard for time, place, or company. Anything could set them off: the jouncing of the morning bus, riding my ten-speed bike, slipping on underwear warm from the dryer. And that was nothing compared to their staying power. An entire science class on the emphatically unsexy topic of latitude and longitude could pass, and I’d still be stuck pointing toward magnetic north. I walked through the halls with my books clasped in front of me and prayed Antunes or Mullard wouldn’t slap them out of my hands, because as much as they’d never admit it, they knew what it meant. So the shower was always a crapshoot. Not one to press my luck, I made sure to be the first in and out and to face the corner while washing—digging my nails into that soap as hard as possible.
If at school the locker room was the scene of a possible life-shattering humiliation no twelve-year-old could survive, at home—and behind locked doors—it became the stuff of fantasies, throbbing with sexual energy that drove my newly discovered, nearly round-the-clock compulsion. All that was missing was a funky electronic soundtrack.
The summer before seventh grade, with the whole House of Wax episode behind me, I hung out with Jimmy and Russell Cantor, who lived around the corner from Vu and Vo Costa in Somerset. Russell was a tall kid, a few years older than us, who had matured early. He had one of those sinewy athletic builds, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, nothing like my stout, barrel-chested frame. Some of the kids called him a retard because he’d been held back a grade or two and didn’t say much when we all hung out together. Sometimes when he was taunted, he’d lash out, lumbering at anyone in his way, forgetting how much stronger he was than the rest of us.
Jimmy and Russell’s backyard sloped down to the Taunton River, where an outcropping of rocks tumbled into the water. They were goofing off, motioning to me to join them. I’d never learned to swim, so I was terrified of jumping in over my head. It didn’t help that the summer before Russell, who had thought I was teasing him, had pushed me in the back so hard the air expelled in a violent wheeze, like a broken accordion, and I’d pitched headfirst into the water. He had sat on the rocks, glaring at me, as I blubbed and sputtered, trying to make my way back to shore.
When Russell saw that I wasn’t about to move off the rocks, he swam over and walked out of the river, water sluicing off his body. He was wearing fringed jeans shorts as a bathing suit.
“Come on,” he said. I shook my head. “I’ll help you. I swear.” I was hesitant. I couldn’t tell if he remembered the previous summer. He put his hands up in the air, the way bandits did in movies to prove they weren’t hiding a gun.
He reached out for my hand, and I bumbled off the rocks and slipped into the water.
“It’s okay,” he said in a soft voice. “Get up.” Holding both of my hands, he walked backward into the river as I planted each foot firmly on the bottom. When the water was up to my neck, I shook my head.
“I can’t do this.” I pulled hard, trying to guide him back to shore.
“Just turn around.” I did as I was told and faced the shore. Jimmy was now on the rocks watching, a smirk on his face.
“Trust me?” I nodded my head. He threaded his left arm under mine and around my chest. “Lean back.” He pulled me close, and I could feel the warmth coming from his body even in the water. He pushed off, and I lost contact with the bottom, my last bit of surety and control. With his free arm he paddled out into the river. Now and again, I could feel one of his legs slip between mine as it scissored through the water. I grabbed hard on to his arm with both hands.
When we were out way over our heads, he stopped lurching and began treading water. “Still alive?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Now, just relax.” He let his legs go still, and I felt us float up, me on top. Lying on him, his stubble rubbing against my temple, I was struck by that engulfing fish-eye sky; we were too far out for trees and houses to puncture the circle of my vision.
“Nice, right?”
“Yeah.”
We stayed there for I don’t know how long. The sun beating on my face and Russell’s rhythmic breathing in my ear caused me to slip away, forgetting myself and gravity.
When we reached shore, Jimmy was gone. While Russell and I walked up to the house, I watched as the water from his shorts ran down the back of his thighs, creating rivulets in the hair. We entered the basement through the back door. Russell wrapped a towel around his waist and tossed one to me. I did the same.
“My mom would kill me if we got the couch wet.” I didn’t see why; it already looked ratty and exhausted, as if the cushions had just given up and deflated. He put his feet on the coffee table—which was covered with a Venn diagram of watermarks from sweaty soda cans and beer bottles over the years—and heaved a deep sigh.
“Feel better?”
I plopped down beside him. “Yes.”
“Think you could go out there later and do that on your own?” I had no idea if I could, but I didn’t want to. I had felt so transported in his arms, anything else would just be a disappointment.
He sat there with his eyes closed, then out of the blue asked, “Do you know what ‘whacking off’ means?” I swallowed hard. I had heard the guys at school talk about it, but I didn’t really understand the mechanics of it.
“Of course,” I lied.
“Have you ever?”
I hadn’t because I had no idea how. I figured if I waited long enough, someone at school would say something that would clue me into it, and I’d join the armada of boys who bragged about being able to go at it three or four times a day.
Although I didn’t think Russell would tease me, I hesitated.
“Have you?” he asked again.
“No.”
“Do you know how?”
I paused for what felt like a million hours. “No.”
And just as with swimming, he took it upon himself to teach me. He flipped off his towel, unbuttoned his shorts, and slid them down to his knees. He wasn’t wearing underwear. I looked nervously to the door that led upstairs. “Don’t worry, no one’s home.”
“What about Jimmy?” He explained that his bike was gone, so he was probably at his girlfriend’s house.
He was already hard and began moving his hand. I watched, hypnotized. He didn’t ask me to join in or to help. He was content with simply showing me. I was awed at how his fist pistoned, faster at times and then slower, like he was trying to turn over a stubborn engine. His belly hollowed as he breathed heavier. Some charge seemed to zap through his body: His thighs tightened, calves knotted, toes spread, then curled under hard; his face contorted. Bene
ath my musty towel and shorts I was listing undeniably toward magnetic north, but even that didn’t stop me from freaking out. All I could think of was that girl who’d had a seizure on the bus and fallen off the seat and began flailing on the floor. Suddenly, he let out a deep, guttural moan, like he was hurt. An arc of something white shot up to the middle of his chest, and some puddled in the hollow of his throat.
If that was whacking off, you could count me out.
“Woah!” he heaved deeply. He grabbed the towel and cleaned himself. He lay there for a few minutes, drowsily. Then he lolled his head in my direction. “That’s all you have to do to become a member of the Boys’ Club.” I nodded, still not convinced he was okay. “And think how much better it will be when a girl does it to you.”
Huh?
It was as if someone had switched off all the electricity in the air. The thought of doing that with a girl a) had never crossed my mind, and b) grossed me out. I wanted this to be something special between Russell and me, something we’d eventually share, but, apparently, he had other plans.
Back home, in the darkness of my room, it didn’t work the first two times. I felt like a peeled carrot. I thought of going back to Russell and asking him what was wrong with me, but seventh grade had started, and I got swept up in the activity of classes. Eventually, on an inconsequential Saturday, I became a card-carrying member of the Boys’ Club. As soon as it was over, though, I felt shrouded in shame and guilt. Unlike Russell, who when he was done had clapped me on the back and made us sandwiches, I turned over and over in my head whether I would have to confess this, this thing, to Father Adam at St. John of God. Instead, I decided to confess to my own father.
He was stacking some apple baskets in the garage, and I stood beside him, silent.
“What is it, Son?” How do I say this? “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah. It’s nothing,” and I headed back inside.
“You sure?”
I stopped. “No.” I took a deep breath and looked at the smooth cement floor he had poured years ago. “Daddy . . .”
He stood up, concerned now.
“Yes.”
“I . . . I touched myself and cream came out.”
A very long pause followed. “You didn’t just touch yourself, did you?”
Oh, God, he’s going to make me talk about it. “No.” My head was down.
“No, you didn’t.” He motioned to the stairs to the breezeway. “Son, sit down.” I prepared myself to be punished. “Son, what you did and what happened to you is very natural. It means you’ve become a man.” I nodded, my heart pounding. “But you can’t do it too often.”
“Why?”
“The more you do it, the weaker you’ll become. It takes away your strength.”
I felt my stomach squirm. I’d been doing it for several weeks by then. By my calculations, I should be bedridden and drooling by the time I turned thirteen. I promised myself right there that I’d never do it again. But over the next several months, I couldn’t help myself. No matter how hard I tried, I’d get all bothered looking at the men’s underwear ads in the Bradlees circular, and I’d have to creep off to the bathroom, the only room in the house that locked.
One afternoon, we had gym class with a substitute teacher who looked like a G.I. Joe action figure. Rather than making us play football or baseball or run laps in the back field, he had us gather in the boys’ side of the gymnasium. In front of us were blue mats, a thick rope spiraling up to the ceiling, and a horizontal bar whose feet were held down by weights. When he blew his whistle, he explained, we were supposed to climb the rope to the tape marker and then jump down. After that we had to run to the bar and do as many chin-ups as we could, and then when we were so weak we couldn’t budge, we were to fall to the mats and keep doing sit-ups until we felt like puking.
While the jocks like Antunes and Mullard elbowed one another out of the way to be first in line, I hung back. I worried the hem of my maroon shorts, running my fingers over the gold rectangle on the leg where my mother had written “LEITE” in big block letters with her Magic Marker. Boy after boy clambered up the ropes, most with no problem, then jumped down and trotted over to the bar. When it was my turn, I wrapped the rope around my leg, like I’d seen those lady trapeze artists do, and tried to hoist myself up, but no matter how hard I yanked, I didn’t budge from the floor. I stepped back and gave myself a running start. Nothing helped.
“Forget it,” the teacher said. “Go do chin-ups.” I jumped up and hung from the bar. The most I could squeeze out was one. The other boys, who were on their way to hurling breakfast doing sit-ups, began laughing. The teacher leaned in as I was hanging there like so much limp laundry and whispered, “That’s disgusting.”
Trying for just one more, I was reminded of my father. He was right. I’d grown weak. And now that they knew what I’d been up to, it’d be all over school by sixth period: David Leite whacked himself nearly comatose.
10
DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION
Stupid comes in an assortment of sizes, but none dumber than that of a pudgy adolescent boy. For the previous six months or so, ever since summer, I’d appeared to everyone to be fine. Exuberant, even. The terror of House of Wax had been reeled in, and from this side of the ordeal I think they all chalked it up to bad timing. A sensitive kid who’d clashed headlong into life a bit too early and suffered a concussion. Nada mais, nada menos, they all said—nothing more, nothing less—nodding to each other in that “I told you so” way my family has, as they reached for capon (my father doesn’t like turkey), Portuguese stuffing, creamy rose-colored rice, roasted potatoes, and a cork of cranberry sauce my mother had pushed out of a can and set out for Thanksgiving dinner.
What no one knew was the monumental effort I was exerting to feel fine. I moved through my days in a tight, prescribed circle with just enough space for the familiar. A narrow spotlight, out of which I refused to step. Anything new or unknown was deeply suspect, and therefore rejected. On the spot. I’d never heard a good enough explanation of what had happened to me the year before, and I didn’t see the point in taking chances. So I created a Byzantine set of rules that governed my behavior. Just a few I remember: Funeral homes, cemeteries, and hearses were to be avoided. If we happened to drive by one, I closed my eyes. Any conversation at school having to do with ghosts, murders, war, the occult, being buried alive, or freezing to death was to be walked away from. Immediately. In church, the near life-size statue of Jesus on the cross, with its wet, winking enamel blood coursing down its head, hands, and torso, was never to be gazed at or prayed to again. Movies, as I’d told my mother in China Village, were blacklisted. If my parents tuned into the ABC Movie of the Week, I suddenly had homework to do. I avoided PBS at night; too many historical programs. The haunted, hollowed faces in concentration camps, the anguish of college students after shootings, the emotional explosions following the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, left me rattled. If a TV show didn’t have a laugh track, I didn’t watch it.
Those were the rules, and as long as I followed them, I was safe.
So then what possessed me to walk back into a movie theater just nine months later, in January 1973, to see The Poseidon Adventure? Some unique brand of stupidity? A hormone-addled brain? Adolescent short-term memory loss? All these years later, I think it was veneta. I had to prove to myself that I really was fine, and that Brian Davis and all those kids at the sixth-grade lunch table, many of whom had gone on to become bottom feeders in junior high, could go straight to hell.
Bad call.
As I sat in my seat, something grotesquely familiar began roiling inside as I watched the ship capsize, people skittering down walls and being crushed by pianos, falling, arms spread, waiting those few horrid seconds for impact on the huge stained-glass ceiling below. It didn’t help that Shelley Winters was always bleating, “MANNY!”—her on-screen husband—in that same shrill, frantic way my mother calls for my father when she’s nervous. I began
having emotions by proxy. Their panic was my panic. Their terror, hysteria, desperation—all mine. The membrane between me and the world had become so permeable that I was helpless to stop myself. I went hurtling back, fiercely. Déjà vu. That metallic taste flooded my mouth again, prickling my tongue. Hot molten lead poured onto my chest, sending waves of heat galloping through my face, arms, and legs. I gripped the arms of the seat, determined not to run but to stand it down this time, when a close-up of a man’s burnt face, so reminiscent of the burnt wax dummies, flashed large on the screen. I careened out, out, out of the theater. In the lobby, I felt I was disintegrating, as if bits of me were dropping off with each step: double-jointed thumbs unhinging from my hands. Shoulders dislocating and slipping from their perches. Teeth scattering like jacks on the stained carpet. Nothing left to hold me together. Stuck with no ride home, I took a few shuddering breaths and returned to the theater.
That winter, time spliced. All the good that had happened since summer was edited out, curled and forgotten on the floor. Jump-cut to anxiety, insomnia, inability to concentrate, and loss of appetite, all of which were rested and reporting for duty. If that weren’t enough, my mysterious invisible mouth breather was back, too. I could plot the nosedive of my grades before it happened. Between classes, teachers murmured in their hallway clusters, looking my way and shaking their heads at one another. Friends noticed I was preoccupied, distant. “You’re being wicked weird,” they said. Wee-id, is how they pronounced it. Wee-id.
I needed a distraction.
Having been abandoned by sleep, I sat up in bed one night, trying to calm myself, inhaling deeply and whispering a mantra from some bullshit Transcendental Meditation workshop a friend had gone to. I looked toward the window on the far wall, the one my father said would always be bright, and saw a demonic face peering at me. I tried blinking it away, but it didn’t move. Just stared, lurid and ungodly. I covered my mouth so my parents couldn’t hear me cry, because I was terrified I’d be committed to Taunton State, the local psychiatric hospital.
