The one-two punch of Father Spencer saying that many of us wouldn’t survive the year and Mr. Kearney’s “God may own your soul, but your ass is mine” speech left us reeling. When Mr. Kearney introduced Mr. Jacobsen to speak to us next, there was tentative, stunted applause, as most of the audience was too shocked or frightened to know whether to clap. I was almost literally shitting myself; in addition to the stress and fear I now felt, the lunchtime cheesesteak had begun to set off a series of disturbances and warning shots in my belly.
Mr. Jacobsen, the director of admissions, who was already familiar to all of the students in the auditorium, tried to lighten the mood by opening with, “And now, the fun stuff!” His short talk focused on student life and all the exciting extracurriculars the Prep had to offer. He explained that representatives from the various clubs, organizations, and sports at the Prep were going to speak to us about their respective activities. After the talks were over, we’d be free to go home or stick around to learn more about the activities.
I wasn’t planning on joining any clubs; not right away. I was interested in a few—some of the mega-clubs like Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD) and the Community Service Corps (CSC), which boasted dozens and dozens of members, as well as maybe the newspaper or the yearbook committee—but I had to maintain a certain grade point average in order to keep my scholarship and I didn’t need any club taking up too much of my time and causing my grades to tank, which was at the front of my mind after Father Spencer’s speech. And besides, I could always join whatever club I wished later in the year or sophomore year, once I was sure I could handle the academic load.
There was only one fall activity that I was really interested in: football.
There was nothing in my past or in my personality that indicated I would want to play high school football. While I wouldn’t say that I was hopelessly unathletic, many others, including members of my family, my closest friends, and the people who knew me best, would. I generally preferred sitting and talking to moving and not talking. Sports—and really all physical activity—were a necessary evil, an unavoidable means to an end. (I want ice cream; I must walk to get ice cream.)
The author (second from right), taking part in one of his few athletic pursuits—in a matching sweat suit (I know the picture is in black and white, but you should know the sweat suit is a gorgeous turquoise color. I was very big into bright blues at this time).
And yet, I was drawn to football because of the simple fact that I was big.
Big, chubby, fat, whatever you want to call it: that was me. As a freshman, I was already five-eight or five-nine and over 170 pounds. This did not make me freakishly big—there were bigger kids my age, for sure—nor was I one of those kids who showed up the first day of ninth grade with a full beard and a credit history. But I was still a large kid, always toward the back when we lined up shortest to tallest, often the subject of insults about my weight. I was big, yes. But I was soft. And that’s where football came in.
What others saw as a heap of flesh with a deep, abiding fear of lightning and barely enough coordination to tie his shoelaces and breathe at the same time, I saw as a fount of untapped potential. It was not that I was unathletic. It was that I needed athletic direction, coaching, support. My dad, as fathers often do, tried to give me some of this coaching. But my father was not an athlete as much as he was tough. Though he, like his four brothers, played football in high school, my dad’s toughness was not gained on the gridiron but through hard work as a longshoreman and the occasional fisticuffs after a rowdy night out drinking. He and I threw the old pigskin around every once in a while, but we were not going to head down to Coley’s to drink whiskey and pick a fight.
Though my dad and I were on opposite ends of the toughness spectrum, I did have his genes, which was a plus. Perhaps if I got involved with football, with all its mandatory practices and weight room sessions, I could make myself into something—I could realize this potential. What if I kept growing and getting taller and turned some of this baby fat into muscle? And what if, as I got older and fitter, I’d grow into some of my dad’s toughness? I’d be fucking unstoppable, that’s what if.
I couldn’t play youth league football because I had been too big. In high school freshman football, I could use my size to my advantage, because the division of teams was based on class year rather than weight. I could also meet people while playing football, because I wasn’t going to join any clubs. And unlike clubs, if I joined football during sophomore year, I’d be too far behind. I had to start with practice number one, with the rest of the freshman team. And it was not lost on me that playing football might help with my titty-feeling ambitions, which were arguably as important as getting in shape and making friends. If you were a goddamned American, whether in Oelwein, Kansas; Lancaster, California; or South Philly, you knew that guys who played football got the girls.
The first person to speak was Coach Marks, the Prep football coach. What was remarkable about Coach Marks was how much he looked like a “Coach Marks”: Central Casting could not have done better. I wondered if he ate dinner with his family with his whistle around his neck, if he showered with his clipboard, whether he yelled “get low! get low!” at his wife during sex. Dressed in a polo shirt, he projected a toughness on par with that of Mr. Kearney, but he was less formal and more charming. He spoke about the team, which was good but not a football powerhouse, with a passion that was intoxicating—all sorts of manly shit. The teachers and staff would make us spiritually and academically strong, he said, but football would make us physically strong. I had already made up my mind and didn’t need convincing about playing football. But if Mr. Marks had been the fencing coach, I would have jotted down “Get mask thingee and bendy sword” in my notebook about a minute into his speech.
While Coach Marks spoke, I began to panic about my gastrointestinal distress. I had always been something of a nervous pooper. Perhaps it was all becoming too much for me: it was the first day of school, we had had all those mini-periods and went quickly from class to class, I had Father-Wan Kenobi telling me I might flunk out and Mr. Piggy scaring the crap out of me, I was hot and uncomfortable in my jacket and tie, and we still had a number of speakers to get through. As I was seated in the middle of the row, I couldn’t get out of my seat without causing a major disturbance. And anyway, I’d look like an asshole, walking out when someone was speaking. So I had to sit there and deal with it, suffering, sweating, and wondering if the kid sitting next to me could hear emanating from my stomach what sounded like a series of large meatballs being dropped into a pot of thick gravy.
Finally, mercifully, after a number of speakers and a seat-shift/sphincter-clench every few seconds, Mr. Jacobsen came back to the podium, thanked us for our time, and told us we were free to leave or to head over to the multipurpose room, where we could meet club and sports representatives and sign up. That sounded cool and all, but it was time for the reckoning. While others were slow to get out of their seats, sighing, stretching, and relaxing after the long session, I jumped up and over a number of students in my row, then ran straight up the aisle and right out the door.
Suffice it to say, the poo was everything that I dreamed it would be and more.* It was made even better because I had the entire bathroom to myself. There was a bathroom just outside the auditorium, but I figured that would be flooded by my fellow freshmen, who might get alarmed if there was any grunting, punching, or moaning involved (likelihood of any of these happening: over 85 percent). So instead I went to the main bathroom upstairs by the locker room, thinking that if I made it through an afternoon of sitting in the same seat and listening to speeches, I could make it a few additional feet and seconds to enjoy a more spacious—and empty—bathroom.
I relaxed and took my time, decompressing from the long day. Looking back, it may have been one of the happiest moments of my life. I had made it through my first day of high school! At the Prep! And without shitting myself! Well, I’d almost made it through my fi
rst day. There was the small matter of signing up for football, but that would only take but a moment, and then I’d be on my way home, day one in the books. I was now here, where I belonged. Not so much in the bathroom stall, but, you know, the Prep.
After a good while, I left the bathroom and walked to the multipurpose room to join many of my classmates and to find the line for football sign-ups. This was easy to do, because the football line was the longest by far. There were two freshmen by the literary journal line, a handful around the debate club, and about half the freshman class in the goddamn football line, waiting their turn to speak to the coach and the team captain and to sign up.
And in this moment, my decision had to be made. What did I want more? Did I want to play freshman football, to get myself fit, and to transform myself into a lean, mean killing machine? Or did I want to not wait in that super-long-ass line and go home instead? I thought about it for a few seconds. And maybe a few more seconds. Then I realized it was the latter. By a landslide. I walked out of the Prep and to the bus stop. Day one in the books.
Could I have signed up for football later? I suppose. But that would have required going out of my way, finding Coach Marks, introducing myself, and explaining why I didn’t sign up after the first day of school. I couldn’t tell the truth, as I wasn’t sure how well “um, I pooped for a while and then didn’t feel like waiting in line” would go over. If I lied and left out the poo and said I was in another line, I was sure he would retort, “What, you couldn’t wait for a few minutes in the football line? What kind of commitment is that?” If I couldn’t stand in a line for ten or fifteen minutes, how could Coach Marks and my teammates be expected to count on me on the field of battle? He’d have every right to chew me out and kick my noncommittal ass out of his office right then and there, embarrassing me in front of the whole team in the process.
Once I missed the sign-up sheet window that afternoon, it was over for me. I did not play football freshman year—or in any year in high school. I didn’t play any sports in high school at all. As a matter of fact, I failed gym my sophomore year because I didn’t meet the minimum requirements of twenty hours of organized physical activity. For those who didn’t play on a sports team, there were intramurals—basketball, volleyball, and ping-pong among them—through which even the least athletic kids could get their twenty hours of activity in. But sophomore year, for reasons that escape me, I didn’t hit the threshold. I had to come to summer school for one day to shoot hoops by myself for four hours, the only person in the entire school required to do so. I’m pretty sure that before me, no one had ever failed gym. And when I did, they realized they didn’t have a precedent or a plan for what to do with me. (“Just tell him to come in for a few hours on Monday and, uh, shoot baskets or something.”) Then I got my F changed to a P on my transcript and took the bus home. It was not my finest day.
In hindsight, I look at that poo as one of the defining moments of my life. A simple bowel movement not only drastically altered my high school career, but everything that came after it. What if I had not gone to the bathroom and instead signed up for and played freshman football? What if I had been good and enjoyed it? I won’t go so far as saying that I’d be in the NFL right now, getting blowjobs in my limo while drinking brandy from a chalice. But if I’d spent four years working out year-round, maybe that would have instilled in me a work ethic or a passion for physical fitness. Instead, during high school, I accumulated pounds the way one might accumulate rental properties in a down housing market: hastily, en masse, with an almost unconscionable greed. If I had baby fat as a freshman, I had middle-age, diabetic fat by the time I graduated.
In fact, even as I write this, I have no discernable muscle tone on my body. Sometimes I go for a run, as long as we understand “sometimes” to mean “so rarely that I could say ‘never’ and get away with it,” and “go for a run” to mean “put on all my gym gear, go to the gym, walk around the floor of the gym sipping water, and walk home.” (I will say that I am very good at making workout playlists, for whatever that’s worth.)
If I had played football, I probably would have made and been friends with the guys on the team, many of whom went on to become the BMOCs at the high school, going to and throwing the coolest parties, making out with the cutest girls, drinking the beeriest beers. Instead, while the friends I made in high school were good, funny guys, we could not exactly be thought of as pussy killers. We talked to girls on occasion, yes, but most of them were employed by a business we were patronizing. And we went to parties and drank some alcohol, but in the case of my friends and me there was usually a very public self-urination or vomiting or similarly shameful moment involved rather than a fingering in the nearest closet.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. Yes, because my poo and laziness prevented me from signing up for football on that first day of class, I probably missed out on a few minor things, like high school sex and the unbridled euphoria of being brought to orgasm by another person, invites to the coolest parties, general good health, esteem from my peers, approval from my father, and pride in myself. But I did gain in other areas.
Right now, you, [your name here], are reading a book about my experiences as a fat kid in high school. I’d like to think that you wouldn’t read the memoir of a teenager who was a reasonably decent lineman, had sex a few times, and graduated a member of the jocks. (Although if you’re reading this, there’s no telling what you’d read.) And the friends I did make in high school I count as my best friends today. So . . . that’s a bonus. These things beat all that other stuff about sex and being cool and respected and fit any day of the week.
Yep. Any day of the week.
master of crabs
David “Floody” Flood and I met in homeroom in the first grade. Our big friendship moment came a few months later when I was invited to his sixth birthday party, a week before Christmas. My gift, purchased by mom but in consultation with me, was a large, heavy action figure of the WWF wrestler Big John Studd, made of the same dense rubber material out of which sturdy dildos are made.* I was pumped; I would have loved to add Big John Studd to my WWF collection.
We sat in a circle at the party. David opened my gift and said, “Oh, I have him already.”
I was bummed and began to sulk. I thought I was giving the most awesomest gift of all time, and he already owned it. How was I supposed to know that? Six-year-olds don’t have registries. I drowned my sorrows in a big bowl of popcorn.
After the gift-giving portion of the party was over, David approached me and thanked me again for the gift (likely prompted by his mom, Eleanor, who couldn’t have helped but notice my sulking). He said that anyway, since he already had one Big John Studd, maybe he could keep the one I got him and we could melt the old one over the stove, just to see what happened. I smiled. He and I have been best of friends since. (Although Eleanor prevented us from doing any Big John Studd melting.)
A high-energy guy, David possessed a tremendous amount of street smarts and always seemed to have a plan or an idea or a hustle going. He and I had a number of adventures and ventures growing up, including a short-lived business selling fireworks that, like our Big John Studd–melting idea, was ultimately quashed by his mom. Such a setback did not stop David from being the hardest-workin’ kid on Second Street.
In the fall of our freshman year of high school, fate smiled upon David, and he got the coolest job that any sports-obsessed thirteen-year-old boy could get: he became a ball boy for the Philadelphia Eagles. He had a friend who worked as a ball boy but had to quit, and the friend offered the job to David, which he accepted without a second thought. Now he would train with the team, work all their home games, and spend all summer with them in the camp. With the Eagles! The NFL team! The one we watched on TV and talked and complained about! David would be in the locker room with them, and on the field during games! It was a dream come true.
And David already had the coolest job of anyone I knew. While the rest of us were delivering
papers or shoveling snow or scooping ice cream, David worked in a bar. A real, actual drinking bar. It was called Mick-Daniel’s and was owned by his uncle Mike, who had bought the bar a few years before. Even in a neighborhood where there was a corner pub every other block, Mick-Daniel’s stood out as the destination. When the wedding receptions ended, when the graduation parties were over, when the block parties had run out of booze, it was over to Mick-Daniel’s to keep the fun going. It had been the neighborhood hot spot for years, even under the previous ownership when it was called Friends’ Tavern (pronounced FREN-zees). The bar had a place in my family lore, as my parents had gotten engaged there. My dad had the cook, his friend Dan, stick the engagement ring in a bowl of cheese fries (“but not the cheesy part”). My dad was also arrested at Friends’. Twice. Though not on the night he proposed to my mom.
Despite my father’s apparent willingness to break laws within or in the vicinity of the bar, during lunchtime and the early evening hours Mick-Daniel’s was a family-friendly place, on account of a kitchen that served delicious and upscale (by South Philly standards) pub food. This is where David worked—in the kitchen, as a dishwasher.
Dishwasher is on the bottom rung of the kitchen food chain, but that was not important. David had a job in a bar. And not just any bar, but the bar. I’d eat at Mick-Daniel’s with my family and when I looked up to see David, peering out from the kitchen, talking to the chef or filling up ice behind the bar while joking with the bartenders, I was jealous. David would meet up with us on a Saturday morning and he’d stoke our jealousy by saying, “Man, you wouldn’t believe how crazy the bar got last night.” He actually got paid to hang out in a bar. It was his best hustle ever.
236 Pounds of Class Vice President Page 5
