236 Pounds of Class Vice President
Page 18
With the story wrapping up, my dad will say, “So that’s how I broke my neck and that’s why I got this scar,” pointing to a six-inch scar that runs from the base of his hairline down to just above the middle of his shoulder blades. If I’m in the room, or my younger brother, Dennis, or my little sister, Megan, is, he’ll point us out and add, “And that’s why you’re gonna be rich some day,” explaining to all those present that in order to “meld” (his word) the bones of his neck together, the doctors used three ounces of platinum wire, which is still in his neck, and which he has made abundantly clear numerous times over the years we can remove and sell to a jeweler upon his death. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.
Right about now, any reasonable listener would expect a moral to the story. Perhaps something like “Don’t jump headfirst in shallow water when you’re drunk” or at least “Be sure to measure the bay before you get bombed and dive into it.” But my dad spins it a different way, concluding, “And you know what? To this day, I never got that twenty dollars back from Charlie Edwards. If he hadn’t borrowed that money, or at least given it back to me on time, I would have been down at Moore’s drinking with the guys from Third and Durfor. I wouldn’t have been sitting at home and never would have broke my goddamn neck. And he still hasn’t given me that damn money. Christ.”
[smokes cigarette, watches television]
“Son of a bitch.”
[shakes head, smokes cigarette, watches television]
Not the best way to spend a summer, especially with twenty less dollars in your pocket.
Stories like this one are the kind of stories I grew up with. Many of them started with “I remember one time when we found this box of horse tranquilizers . . .” and ended with “And that’s when I learned that it’s good to know Spanish in jail.” Unlike a lot of people my age, I never heard about my dad’s high school football glory days and his big interception in the Catholic League championship game. I didn’t learn about how my Uncle Joey won the science fair in eighth grade with his project about the moons of Jupiter. My mom never told me about how she and my dad met at the local ice cream parlor and over a root beer float fell madly in love. I didn’t get the stories about how my grandfather worked hard at the mill after the war to support his growing family.
Because none of this happened in my family. My dad did play high school football, but he was more interested in booze and petty crimes than the nickel defense. My Uncle Joey never won any science fair, but he did get arrested on Thanksgiving—twice (I’m not sure what that has to do with science, but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless). The first time my mom laid eyes on my dad, he had just been stabbed and was bloodied but was too drunk to care or really even notice. And my grandfather, God rest his soul, was officially a small-time grunt running numbers for Philly’s Irish mafia and unofficially one the greatest entrepreneurs in the whole neighborhood.
Growing up, I thought this was all normal. I didn’t know any better (hey—I was just a kid) and my friends’ families, though maybe not quite as colorful as mine, certainly had their fair share of characters and stories. That was just the way it was. It wasn’t until high school that I began to realize that my situation was unique. Because I was a nerd,* I got a scholarship to a private high school outside the neighborhood. It drew students from all over the Philadelphia area—students whose parents were pharmacists, lawyers, teachers, and bankers; who lived in houses with lawns and swimming pools; whose families didn’t steal cable and who had never seen their father fistfight another man at a sporting event or on a random Tuesday. Hell, their parents didn’t even say things like “motherfucker” and “prick” and “This shit is for real” in front of them. Strange, but true.
But life was never boring because we always had stories. And really, isn’t that what it’s all about in the end—the story? the memory? the ridiculous experience that you lived through, that you rehash to hungry audiences at parties and in bars and in holding cells? Stories that make everyone around you gape in delight, howl in amazement, buy you drinks, and yell for more? I think so, and I’m sure my dad does as well. And I hope you do, too, especially if you just shelled out money for this book. Because otherwise, you’re totally beat for that cash. So let’s just try to make the best of it, okay?
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Also by Jason Mulgrew
Everything Is Wrong with Me
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236 POUNDS OF CLASS VICE PRESIDENT. Copyright © 2013 by Jason Mulgrew. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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* Apparently, I am only familiar with popular duos from before 1980.
* It never occurred to me to visit a pound and get a rescue dog. I don’t know if this is because of a rebranding campaign by the ASPCA over the last decade, but it used to be that the pound was not a place you went in order to save a dog’s life after being inspired/guilt-tripped by a Sarah McLachlan commercial. Back then, the pound was dog prison, where bad dogs who couldn’t behave went to . . . well, you know.
* Nor is it a very good sentence.
* We called the penis “bird” in my family. I think this is a Philly thing, but if you grew up outside of Philly and called your dick your bird growing up, please email me at jason@jasonmulgrew.com. Perhaps we can get together for a beer.
* You could also combine the techniques as you saw appropriate—e.g., a lefty-invert or an invert-stranger. The lefty-invert-Jersey Stranger was just too complicated, however: way too many moving parts.
* A word about moisturizers and other masturbatory lubricants: if it says “for external use only,” put that shit down immediately. I still get tingles in my dick every few months because of a beat-off session back in ’96 dur
ing which I was a little too generous with some SPF 70, some of which was lost down the rabbit hole. So stick to hand cream or Vaseline, and be sure to read every word of the label of anything you plan to slather on your penis. You’re welcome for the best advice you received today.
* Maybe even millions: not a big science guy.
* I wonder if the Prep still uses this nomenclature to differentiate the sections of classes, or if a more politically correct nomenclature is used, like the “Green Group” and the “Red Group.” Similar to “MG,” what were administrators thinking back then—only ten or twenty years ago? Fifty years ago, did they have “Group Smart Kids” and “Group No Chance”?
* My God, I’m proud of that sentence.
* I don’t know if women (or men) name their dildos, but if you do, I beg you to consider calling yours “Big John Studd.” Really, I can’t think of a better name for a dildo:
GIRL 1: “What’d you do last night?”
GIRL 2: “Oh, I had a great Friday night. I stayed in and drank a bottle of malbec, and then Big John Studd came out and shit got real.”
* Previous book plug #1: For these and other stories, please check out Everything Is Wrong With Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong. Available online and at fine bookstores everywhere.
* Yes, Wikipedia is the extent of the research I’m willing to put into this project. Get used to it, because you’ll see it again.
* My dad will often tell me the name of a person, a person I’ve never met or even heard of before, and expect me to know him. It’s like he assumes that I know every person that he does, even if that person is some guy he shared the bus with in high school for a few weeks.
* Please note that I made most of this stuff up. I googled “coming-of-age rites and rituals” and got, like, two hundred thousand results. I can’t be expected to comb through all that. C’mon.
* Previous book plug #2: For an explanation of why I used the word properly, I refer you to Everything Is Wrong With Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong by Jason Mulgrew. Available online and at fine bookstores everywhere.
* Coors Light cans were known as “tin hoagies.” They got this name in Veterans Stadium, the former home of the Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies, where one could bring food but not alcohol into the stadium. So people would pack their coolers with cans of Coors Light wrapped in sandwich paper to pass off as hoagies to any security guards. I don’t know why this term applied only to Coors Lights, but the nickname endures to this day.
* Technically, five. Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense in a minute.
* Mariah Carey’s “Love Takes Time” was our song: it was the first song that we danced to together. Even today, when I hear this song, my hands immediately get sweaty.
* I know, dear reader, that you may be thinking that I said similar things about, or had a similar reaction to, Shannon, another cute blonde for whom I developed feelings. But my feelings for Shannon were not the same. Shannon had been ephemeral, and there is something inherently romantic about that which is fleeting. A relationship becomes all the more dramatic when you know that it will end sometime soon, for reasons beyond your control. I’d known Shannon for a few weeks; Alison I’d known for years. Shannon was like a shooting star, burning brightly for a moment but then disappearing back into the heavens. Alison was the motherfucking sun: there, all the time—and hot as shit.
* You’re probably looking for more here, but I don’t have an answer. A buddy who worked in the theater department found a big faux fur, Viking-style cape in storage, figured I’d like it, and gave it to me, and I began wearing it around the halls after school. The good news is that if I have a teenage child, out, there is almost nothing that he or she will be able to do to weird me out. I wore a goddamned fur cape, for chrissake.
* Not in the way that I would have preferred.
* It was only three murders. And I didn’t so much “commit” them as watch them from the car and masturbate.
* My favorite was when Arlen Specter, then-senator from Pennsylvania and the former Warren Commission staffer credited with devising the single-bullet theory of JFK’s assassination, spoke at our school. I captioned his photo, “You see, it was a special, magic bullet.” This was my first and last foray into political satire.
* Sorry. I came while writing that—and also each subsequent time I tried to finish that thought. So you’re just going to have to accept it as is.
* Editor’s note: This is a Notorious B.I.G. reference. Jason assumed that everyone would get this, but we made him let us put this in.
* To this day, I’m not exactly sure what longshoremen do. I think it has something to do with taking cargo from ships that come into port on the Delaware River and putting half that cargo in warehouses and selling the other half to your friends on the cheap. Also, there is a lot of cursing, napping, drinking on the job, and complaining about your wife involved. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s the basic gist of it.
* Whether this is because North Wildwood had more bars per square mile than any other shore town in New Jersey is unknown, but presumed.
* Albeit an angel with a juvenile criminal record.
* My father would not get his first legal license until he was twenty-nine, despite driving a truck part-time for four years in his twenties. Don’t ask, because I don’t know.
* When I first started hearing this story, it was twenty years of practice. Soon it became twenty-five. Recently, I’ve heard it as high as thirty-five. By the time my children hear this story, the doctor will have been 110 years old with eighty years of experience under his belt and possibly there will be a shaman involved.
* Still am.