Hi, I’m Felton Reinstein, football player on the outside; Squirrel Nut Donkey Ass on the inside.
Of course, I didn’t come up with the solution. Aleah did.
The last Saturday of June, we watched Casablanca in her/Gus’s basement. We watched that particular movie because her dad was writing a paper about it and had the DVD. When Rick, the old dude in the movie, kissed the young beautiful one, Aleah totally grabbed me and kissed me. Then we kissed for a while until we heard Ronald get up and walk across the living room.
Then Aleah stared at me and said, “Haven’t you wanted to kiss me?”
“Yeah, I think about it all the time.”
“Why haven’t you kissed me?”
“Uhh, I didn’t want to seem like a dork?” Of course, I totally seemed like a dork by saying that.
“Don’t worry about being a dork with me,” Aleah said. “I’m a dork.”
“Okay.”
Then she got really serious. “When you ask me questions, do I hold anything back?”
“I don’t think so.” She clearly didn’t. She talked about everything.
“You hold back though. Is that because you’re worried about being a dork?”
“I don’t hold back. I talk! When don’t I talk?”
“When I ask how your mom is, you just say fine.”
“Because.”
“Because?”
“Because she’s fine.”
“And when I ask how exercise went…”
“Weight lifting.”
“Whatever! When I ask how that was, you say pretty good.”
“It’s just lifting crap. It isn’t very interesting.”
“I’m interested.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you.”
“Why?” Here we go, Gus. I’ll give it to you.
Aleah paused. She looked at me and didn’t say anything.
“Because I’m mysterious and you like mystery?”
“No. Because you come from a musical family and…”
“I’m not musical, Aleah.” This isn’t good. If she knew about my family.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I like you because you’re really gentle and…”
Blood rushed to my face. My eyes watered. I was so embarrassed. What kind of kid am I that a girl would call me gentle?
“You’re blushing.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Don’t be embarrassed, Felton. After the year I just had with my mom, I really love gentle.”
I looked down.
“I don’t mean you’re weak because you’re not. I know you’re not.”
I looked back up.
“How do you know?”
“Because what you went through with your dad and how you just seem like a normal kid who likes football, and you’re not all messed up. That’s strong.”
Then Aleah touched my face. Then she kissed me again. I was really aware of her face being so close to mine. Her face was right up against mine. She smelled like lilac bushes. We kissed for a while longer until Ronald, her dad, called down the stairs, “Getting real late, kids.”
I biked home through cool 2 a.m. air thinking about being gentle and about how I’m strong.
***
When I got home, I found Andrew awake with junk spread out all over the basement room where the TV used to be.
He looked up at me. His face was pale. He had dark circles under his eyes.
“I don’t think there’s a single picture of our father in the whole house, Felton,” he said. “Jerri got rid of him.”
This wasn’t news to me. I knew that. I remembered the bonfire.
“So?” I said.
“So?” Andrew snarled. “You don’t care what happened to our dad? That’s repulsive. I’m going to ask her. I’m going to ask.”
“Ask what? I found him hanging. I know what happened.”
“I’m going to ask her the hard questions!” Andrew shouted.
“Do whatever you want, Andrew.” I slammed the door to my room and put on music.
I didn’t feel very gentle.
CHAPTER 26: THINKING ABOUT COMEDY AGAIN
People who don’t like you don’t find you funny. (For example, when nobody liked me in seventh grade, they booed when I did Jerry Seinfeld.) People who like you find you funny, sometimes even when you’re not trying to be funny.
How do I know? Suddenly, lots of people laughed whenever I made a joke (and sometimes when I didn’t make a joke). Aleah laughed. The honkies? I seriously made them cry. Even a poop-stinker lineman or two would crack a smile when I joked in the weight room.
If Ken Johnson didn’t show up at weights, which was about half the time, I’d joke along with Karpinski (bad jokes). So a bare-boobed blond with a parrot on her shoulder walks into a bar…I’d spend most of my evenings driving around with Cody and Karpinski, letting whatever ridiculous stupid dumb thing that popped in my head slide right out. I called Karpinski FishButtBoy because his name sounds like Polish for fish butt. He didn’t think it was funny, but Cody did, so I called Karpinski FishButtBoy all the time, repeatedly, over and over, even whispering it under my breath when no one else was talking. Like when all the honky backs and receivers were at Steve’s Pizza or at Subway or out at Walmart and were eating, not talking, me chewing and whispering at the same time—FishButtBoy—until Karpinski freaked and grabbed my head and told me he was going to punch me in the nuts if I didn’t shut up (everyone just dying).
Repetition, I realized, is the key to honky humor (if the honkies like you—Gus probably wouldn’t have success with this technique). Be annoying! Don’t stop at any cost! FishButtBoy FishButtBoy Fish Butt Boy. The honkies would die laughing.
I’d become a honky, so it was funny.
With Aleah, I had to use a subtler, smarter humor—well, maybe not that subtle.
“I used to think pianists had something to do with penises, like the fact Andrew wanted to be a pianist meant that he’d be touching himself all the time. I pictured him on stage playing piano with no pants on, and when he’d stand to take a bow, he’d throw back his head and hands, revealing his privates, and the crowd would ooh and ahh because he’s such a great pianist.”
“Shut up!” Aleah shouted, laughing.
Aleah constantly laughed and told me to shut up. She’d cry from laughing.
“You should be a standup comic,” Aleah said one night while we sat on her couch, while I made jokes, while tears of 100% pure blueberry joy rolled down her pretty face.
“I used to think that,” I said.
“No, you really should!”
***
People who don’t like you don’t find you funny, and chances are you don’t find them funny either. Like Gus, for example (not that I don’t like him, but I was mad—and he was mad). After two weeks of not hearing from him at all, he wrote: why you never say a word? you just replace me?
I responded: you only say stuff like girl who would like me must be cow! i have serious problems in my house! i have fire pirate brother and psycho jerri! and you tell me only a cow would like me???
what you talking about? are you trying to be funny? i don’t get joke. Is all he wrote back.
I didn’t even respond to that. I wasn’t joking. I was telling the truth, but Gus wouldn’t listen. Maybe that’s what I mean—people who like you listen to you?
***
I was serious about Fire Pirate and Psycho.
One night in early July, I came home from watching Aleah practice piano, which she let me do on occasion (I’d sit next to Ronald while he graded papers, she’d play, I’d get hit by giant waves of music, which blasted my Jew-fro down to my head). As I biked over the hill on the main road above our house, I could see a glowing orange. I stopped and focused. It was a fire. A very large fire raging in the distance. It was obviously on our property. Oh, shit. Oh, no.
It had to be Jerri. Jerri burning. That’s all I could think. I pictured Jerri in her yoga clothes, soaki
ng herself with gas like I’d seen an Indian monk do on TV. (Om shanti shanti shanti, she says.) I pictured her lighting herself up. (Good-bye, boys.) Oh, God.
I took off on my Schwinn, jackrabbit, toward the house. By the time I got to the end of our drive, I could see the huge fire was at least contained in our fire pit, which meant the house itself wasn’t burning, which was a relief. Still, the fire was too big, roaring and lighting the side of the house and the yard around it. It actually made a roaring sound like a windstorm.
Also lit by the fire was Andrew. He stood there in his glasses and his tighty-whitey underpants, reflecting orange in the flame. He had no clothes on otherwise. He looked so skinny and bony. He poked a long stick, more like a tree branch, into the flames. I dropped my Schwinn and ran up to him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting rid of my baby clothes and other artifacts of my past.”
In the fire, I could see the collars of the dorky polo shirts Andrew always wore. I could see pairs of his little jeans burning. I could see all his striped socks and his Mozart sweater and also a picture he’d drawn in art class last year that Jerri really liked. There were other papers burning too.
“Jesus Christ, Andrew. You’re crazy! Is that all your clothes?”
“Definitely,” he said, stirring the fire from ten feet away.
“I’m telling Jerri.”
“Mother knows.”
“Jesus!”
I ran into the garage and into our dark house, not a light on, up the stairs into the hall and to Jerri’s room. She half-reclined, covered up in the bed, no light except from the TV (my TV) in front of her. She was half asleep.
“Jerri! Andrew has gone crazy.”
“No,” she mumbled. Then she tried to look around me to the TV, which was playing some kind of crime drama.
“Uh, yes. He’s out there naked burning his clothes, Jerri.”
“I know.”
“You going to let him be naked? Is he going to school naked in the fall?”
“He bought new clothes today. Could you move a little to your right, Felton?”
“He’s not wearing them!”
“I’m trying to watch TV,” Jerri yawned.
“You’re crazy!”
“Get out of here, Felton,” she said, not mean, not angry. She was totally mumbling.
I turned and stomped out of the room and back down to the basement. Andrew was coming in from the garage. He had no hair on his head (to match his clothes-less body). Of course, I already knew about his hair. A couple of days earlier, he’d shaved it all off.
“I’m getting a hot dog to cook,” Andrew said, which would’ve been a funny thing to say if I thought he was funny. “Do you want one?” he asked without laughing.
“Where’d you get hot dogs?” That’s all I could come up with.
“I bought them.”
“When?”
“After I stole Jerri’s wallet and walked to the thrift store to buy some pants and a shirt, I went grocery shopping at Kwik Trip. The hot dogs will be quite good cooked on the fire,” Andrew said, again without laughing.
“They’ll taste like the bugs in your clothes.”
“Duh, Felton. Fire burns all the germs away.”
“I was making a joke.”
“Yes. I know,” Andrew stared at me.
I stared back and then said, “I’m going to bed.”
I heard Andrew banging around for another couple of hours before I actually fell asleep. To relax, I tried to imagine Aleah still playing the piano, with her dad still on the couch reading poetry essays. But I didn’t sleep until the house was silent.
***
I was a little late on the paper route the next morning. Aleah waited for me in her yard, with her little Walmart mountain bike lying on the grass next to her. (She determined it would be good for her to get her own bike so she got some exercise instead of having me do all the work; because he’s an attentive dad, Ronald bought it for her immediately.) She sat up, wearing her dorky tiger-striped bike helmet. She said, “Good morning. I was just thinking that we should watch a movie at your house this weekend. It’s kind of rude to make you come to me all the time.”
“I prefer to come to you,” I said.
“But I want to!”
“No, you really don’t. Andrew has gone utterly psycho, and he might kill us both if you come over,” I laughed.
“Really?” Aleah said, eyes wide. “But he’s so cute!”
“No! He’s a pyromaniac, and I don’t even know what horror he’s capable of!”
“You’re funny,” Aleah giggled.
Hilarious.
***
When I got home, Jerri was out of the house for maybe the second time in a week. She was covered head to toe (hat, sunglasses, long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, socks) lying on a lawn chair in the yard, about ten feet away from the scorched fire pit. Next to her was the giant weed-infested jungle garden. The thistles were five feet tall. Other weeds climbed the thistles, flowering, shading all the vegetables below. But really, at least she was out of the house. I stood looking at her for like a minute but didn’t speak to her. She was so still.
In the house, I found Andrew rifling through the rock CDs in my room. He was wearing a pair of black trousers (I can only describe them as trousers) and a black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it. I grabbed his arm and squeezed, “What do you think you’re doing, you jerk?”
He pulled his arm away and glared at me.
“Taking Dad’s CDs,” he said.
“You midget pirate,” I shouted. “Drop ’em!”
“Eat crap,” he shouted, then pushed past me carrying my CDs.
“Goddamn it! Bring those back,” I shouted.
Andrew didn’t respond.
I could’ve stopped Andrew. Easily. But I didn’t.
The voice in my head said: Be careful. Be careful. You could kill him.
I wanted to wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
I changed clothes, left the house, and walked to the road, where Cody picked me up.
Even though Andrew dressed like a pirate and cooked hot dogs on a fire fueled by his own socks, I didn’t find Andrew funny.
***
When I came home from lifting weights two hours later, Jerri was still in the yard in the same place as she was when Cody picked me up.
“Your mom still resting?” Cody asked, dropping me off.
“She probably did a lot of work while we were gone,” I said.
“Didn’t mow the lawn, did she?”
“Ha ha ha. No.”
While I lifted, Andrew’s piracy had sapped all my energy. What was happening to him? He scared me. I couldn’t concentrate.
As Cody pulled away, I decided to seriously address the Andrew situation with Jerri. She’s his mother after all. I walked up to her.
Jerri stirred as I approached.
“What now?” she said.
“What now?” I asked.
“What. Now,” Jerri spat.
“Andrew stole Dad’s CDs out of my room,” I told her.
“He took my wallet yesterday,” Jerri mumbled.
“We’ve got problems.”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Me? Nothing,” Jerri said.
“You have to,” I said.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“I’m just a small part of a much larger problem. Remember when you said that, Felton?”
Yes, I remembered saying that. It was part of the conversation a few weeks earlier that ended with her calling me an f-bomber. That wasn’t what I was talking about.
“Jerri, you’re his mom. You have to do something.”
“You’re his son. What are you going to do?” she hissed.
“Andrew’s son?”
“Shut up, Felton.”
“What do you mean?”
“Shut up.”
“Your stupid kid is turning into a disaster and a pirate, and you have to do something, Jerri,” I shouted.
“Maybe I’d rather my kid turn into a pirate than a damn tennis player.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Shut up, Felton.”
“Mom.”
“Go away. I have to weed the garden,” she trailed off.
I started shaking.
“You can’t do that on your fat ass, Jerri,” I shouted.
“Shut up, asshole. Shut up!” Jerri screamed, struggling to sit up.
I turned and ran to the garage. I grabbed my bike and biked so fast. I tore up the hill.
Comedy, it seems, is a lot about situation and who you like and don’t like. Sometimes, midget pirates who cook hot dogs on their burning socks aren’t funny.
CHAPTER 27: 4:38 A.M.
Why in the hell am I doing this tonight?
I can’t help it.
But I should be happy and asleep, letting my beat-up body heal.
I don’t like dark tales. I like funny stuff. Gus says funny stuff is always dark.
Is this funny?
Here’s that to-do list again:
Lift weights with Cody.
Get driver’s license.
Consider giving up comedy, as comedy isn’t even funny anymore.
Stop talking to Jerri and Andrew.
I definitely did number one. I considered number three a lot (I still am, except I do think comedy is funny). Coach Jones gave me the form to get started on two, but I needed to get Jerri’s signature to get the permit, which she wouldn’t give me, and then she’d have to have teach me to drive—which also wasn’t going to happen. It was at this point in July that I tried to implement number four.
CHAPTER 28: THE ROAD RUNNER RUNS UP CLIFFS
That day Jerri called me asshole out in the yard was the first day I ran up the Mound (the same one Dad ran up).
Let me describe it a little.
This Mound is a seriously huge-ass hill on the east side of town. It’s a county park, so anyone can go there. A really long time ago, college kids whacked down a huge tract of trees on it and made this huge M on its side out of big rocks. Then they painted the rocks bright white so the M can be seen from like a thousand miles away, if you’ve got the right view. Every few years, the engineering department from the college goes up there and paints it white again so it’s always really white.
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