by Wizner, Jake
“Relax,” he says. “I’m sure you’re the only one still thinking about it.”
“I bet Paige told Jody.”
“You’re so paranoid.”
I wipe my nose. “What do you expect?”
“Trust me,” he says. “Paige Blanchard has better things to do than sit around talking to her friends about your runny nose.”
This might be true, but I have no doubt that something bad will come of all this. If there’s one thing my experiences have taught me, it’s always to expect the worst.
I tread warily into history my first day back and try to make myself invisible. I am convinced that everybody is thinking about what happened three days earlier. Every glance in my direction feels like a bullet, every cough or sneeze like a live grenade. At the end of class, I pack my books quickly and try to escape before the rush, but Paige Blanchard cuts me off.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
My face burns. “I’m okay,” I mutter without looking at her. Why is she doing this to me? She’s never spoken to me before.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” she says. “It was just so hard to concentrate.”
Please, stop talking about it. “It’s okay.”
I push on and out of the classroom before any more damage can be done. Obviously, the incident has not been forgotten. People have been talking about it, the story has been told and retold, my social status has been downgraded from sad to seriously pathetic, and I am now destined to spend the remainder of my high school career avoiding Paige Blanchard.
I walk into Mr. Parke’s class. The next chapters of our memoirs are due, and Mr. Parke asks if anybody would like to share what they have written. There is no way I am going to share. I have written about being hit in the face by a baseball at a Yankees–Red Sox game, but the story also includes details of my rampant paranoia, my harrowing experience in a public urinal, my arousal at witnessing a drunken catfight, and—irony of all ironies—my goddamn leaky nose.
“No volunteers?” Mr. Parke says.
I look up and see Rocco Mackey staring at me and smiling. This does not bode well.
THE TIME I GOT HIT IN THE FACE BY A BASEBALL AT A YANKEES–RED SOX GAME
A few weeks before my fourteenth birthday, my father announced that he had bought tickets to a Yankees–Red Sox game. I didn’t want to go, because I was convinced I would get hit in the face by a ball. My father told me I was being ridiculous, that the odds of a ball even coming near me were a thousand to one, and that if, by some slim chance, a ball did come in my direction, I should stick up my glove and try to catch it.
“Do you have any idea how fast those balls come at you?” I asked.
“Shakespeare, millions of people go to baseball games every year. Do you really think they would all go if it was dangerous?”
“Millions of people fly on airplanes, too,” I said.
“Airplanes are one of the safest ways to travel.”
“Come on, Dad, don’t tell me you actually believe that propaganda.”
My father picked up his newspaper, a signal that he didn’t have the energy to argue with me at the moment.
I ignored the signal. “Millions of people own guns, millions of people smoke cigarettes, millions of people swim in the ocean and risk getting eaten by sharks.”
He didn’t look up, so I walked into the kitchen and started to bother my mother.
The reason we were going to the baseball game in the first place was because my father was determined to do all those father-son activities his father had never done with him. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to go. What mattered was that my father had had a lousy childhood, and he was not going to make the same mistakes that his parents had made.
The contempt my parents had for their parents was basically what shaped their philosophy of child rearing. It was simple. They made decisions by doing the opposite of what their parents had done. Their parents had given them common names, David and Sarah, so they gave us the most unusual names they could come up with. Their parents had made lots of rules, so they were raising us with as few rules as possible. Their parents had never taken them to baseball games, so they would take us to baseball games whether we liked it or not.
Actually, my mother decided that my father could take us to the baseball game on his own. Not only did she have no interest in baseball, but she also happened to be terrified of cars, especially cars driven by my father. When she absolutely had to be in the car, she would sit in the backseat with her eyes squeezed shut and a miserable look on her face. If we were going on a long trip, she would wedge herself onto the floor in the back and put her head on the seat, covered by a blanket.
It was a miracle that we made it to the stadium alive. My father is one of those men who thinks he’s a much better driver than he actually is. In fact, I would have to say that my father is probably one of the ten worst drivers I know. At least it was early enough in the day that I knew he was sober.
Neither my brother nor I wanted to sit in the front, so we flipped a coin, and I ended up in the death seat.
We had barely left our house when a car honked at us. My father had switched lanes without looking in his rearview mirror, one of many habits that made me wonder why the state had not yet revoked his license.
“It helps if you look first,” my brother said.
My father turned quickly around. “I don’t need any backseat driving.”
“Will you watch the road?” I screamed.
My dad began to fiddle with the radio. What went through my head was that if we died, at least I wouldn’t get hit in the face by a ball at the baseball game.
“Do the air bags work?” I asked.
My father ignored me.
We hit traffic as we approached Yankee Stadium, and my dad kept lurching into different lanes that he thought were moving faster, and then lurching back when he realized he should have stayed where he was in the first place. It was hard to believe that so many people could be going to one baseball game, and I felt a twinge of hope that maybe the game would be almost over by the time we got there. I said a silent prayer, then grabbed the seat as my dad lurched into the next lane and cursed under his breath as it came to a complete stop.
I don’t know if it was all the traffic or the fact that my father hadn’t had any alcohol yet that day, but he was a jangle of nerves by the time we got to the stadium.
“Stick close,” he said. “I don’t want anyone getting lost in the crowd.”
My dad had a habit of losing me. It stretched all the way back to when I was four and he lost me in a cemetery while he was jogging and I was riding my Big Wheel. Then there had been the incident at the amusement park when I was eight and the hiking trip when I was ten. I wondered whether I should start a list of all the grievances I had against my parents; there was certainly a large possibility that this day would come to figure prominently in my litany of complaints against my dad.
Our seats were in the bleachers, which, my father said, was where the real fans sat. As far as I could tell, these were the cheapest seats in the stadium, and I quickly realized that the people who chose to sit in the bleachers were the people who needed to save as much money as possible for beer.
The game had barely begun, and most of the people around us were clearly drunk. A player for the Red Sox was at bat, and the guys behind us, who were shirtless and had painted their chests to spell out YANKEES, started an obscene chant. I wondered what my father was thinking, but he was completely preoccupied with trying to get the beer vendor to notice him.
“Isn’t this great?” he said once he had paid eight dollars for a plastic cup of Budweiser. “You guys want some hot dogs?”
“I’ll take a wiener,” my brother said, and he started to giggle like an idiot.
“You suck, Red Sox,” the guys behind us started to yell, and everybody around us took up the chant. “You suck, Red Sox. You suck, Red Sox.”
I put my fingers in my ears, but my father
quickly knocked them out. “These guys will kill you if you don’t join in.”
So now, in addition to worrying about getting hit by a baseball, I needed to act like a Neanderthal or risk getting torn apart. On the bright side, if I got killed at the baseball game, at least I wouldn’t have to drive home with my father. I looked over at him and saw he was now licking the inside rim of his empty beer cup.
The game was moving along at a snail’s pace, and I had to go to the bathroom. I had mixed feelings about this. If I went to the bathroom I would be safe from any baseballs flying in my direction. On the other hand, I was likely to get lost if I went off by myself. I decided to wait until my father needed to go, which, at the rate he was drinking, wouldn’t be long.
“Who needs to take a leak?” my father asked about thirty seconds later.
I’ve never liked public restrooms, but this one had to be the worst I’d ever seen. The smells of beer and urine assaulted me as I walked in, beer cups and toilet paper were strewn across the floor, and there was amass of drunk people standing in line waiting to use the urinals. I considered waiting for a stall so I could have some privacy, but I couldn’t risk what might be floating in the toilets.
My turn came, and I stepped up to the plate. The man to my left was making little moaning noises and the man to my right was leaning forward with one hand against the wall to keep himself upright. I pushed myself as close to the urinal as possible and concentrated, but nothing would come. This always happened to me when I had to urinate in public. I tried to block out all the distractions around me, and finally I felt the beginnings of a trickle. The man on my left finished, and my father took his place.
Now, if there’s one thing that I don’t need to see, it’s my father’s penis. He might have considered this a wonderful father-son bonding moment, but I was mortified, especially when I saw that he was trying to sneak a peek at my little friend. I angled my body to block his view, finished as quickly as I could, and stepped away. A few drops of urine dribbled down my leg. Somebody—probably my father—farted loudly.
It was the bottom of the ninth inning and the Red Sox were winning by one run. I was less concerned with the score than with the fact that so far no balls had been hit into the bleachers. By the law of averages, I was now sitting in one of the most dangerous parts of the stadium.
The first batter for the Yankees stepped up to the plate.
On the huge screen broadcasting the game, the picture jumped from the batter to a bunch of hysterical, chest-painted fans holding up a sheet with a bull’s-eye painted on it.
“Oh crap,” I said, swinging around and spilling Coke all over myself.
“Hey, we’re on TV!” my brother screamed.
Everybody around me was waving like crazy for the camera. They were jumping up and making faces and pointing at the screen, and since most of them were totally drunk, they were knocking into each other and creating a scene of total chaos. The camera had already jumped back to the batter, but the commotion in our section was just beginning. One large drunk man accidentally knocked into the drunk girlfriend of another large drunk man, and she began to curse him out at the top of her lungs. Then the drunk girlfriend of the first drunk man stepped forward and began to shout curses back, and all the other large drunk men in the section began to whoop and cheer and scream.
“Catfight!” someone yelled, and the chant was taken up, broken only by a few screams of “Take it off!”
I had never seen women fight before, and I found the spectacle oddly exhilarating. Without realizing it, I had taken up the chant with the crowd and was standing on my seat to get a better view of the action. Policemen were rushing up the aisle, but it was taking them a long time to get throught he mass of large drunk men who had formed a ring around the female combatants.
Nobody around me was watching the game, so nobody saw the pitcher rear back and throw, the batter step forward and swing, and the ball jump off the bat and hurtle through the air. When the crowd roared, we turned to find the outfielders running back. The people around me began to scream and make lunging movements. The ball glanced off somebody’s glove, ricocheted into my face, and fell to the ground. My brother pounced, and suddenly there we were on the big screen, my brother holding the ball triumphantly, and me, next to him, with a dazed look on my face and blood dripping from my nose.
The game ended up going to extra innings before the Yankees finally won. Everybody said it was one of the best games of the season, and they kept showing highlights on all the sports shows. We weren’t there when the game ended, though. My nose was spurting so much blood that my father rushed me to the stadium’s medical station, where they patched me up. My father made some dumb jokes to try to get me to laugh, and my brother even offered me the baseball. The thing is, I wasn’t really that upset. I had been so sure a baseball would hit me and that when I got hit I would lose sight in one eye or break a bone in my cheek that I felt lucky to be escaping with just a bloody nose.
My mother, who had watched the whole game on television hoping to catch a glimpse of us, was beside herself by the time we got home. I let her make a fuss over me for awhile and cook my favorite meal, lasagna. At dinner that night, she sprung the good news. My mentally unstable grandmother had sent mea plane ticket to come visit her in Chicago as soon as school let out.
FEBRUARY
Everything has settled back into place with Neil and Katie. Katie became fed up with Neil acting as if they were a couple, and Neil became fed up with Katie only allowing him to touch her when she was drunk. They both complained to me in private, and I did my best to stoke the fires of discontent without making it too obvious. Now we’re all friends again, and life feels like it has returned to normal.
“Would you rather be blind or deaf?” Neil asks as the three of us sit in Katie’s living room flipping channels on the TV.
Katie smiles. “Deaf. Then I wouldn’t have to listen to you. Would you rather be crippled or a dwarf?”
“Crippled, how?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Paralyzed from the waist down.”
“Dwarf,” I say. “They can still have sex. Would you rather be retarded or weigh four hundred pounds?”
“That’s stupid,” Katie says. “I’d just go on a diet.” She shuts off the TV and gives me a wicked smile. “Would you rather shoot a puppy or masturbate in front of your mother?”
“Jesus, Katie,” I say, and Neil laughs.
It’s a sick game, and deep down we know it, but there is something undeniably enticing about seeing how far we will go, how low we will sink, before one of us cries mercy.
“We should take the game public,” Katie says.
Neil and I laugh.
“I’m serious,” she says. “We should put up anonymous signs around school, each one with a different question on it.”
“Yeah, right,” I say.
“I’m not talking about any of the really bad questions. Just a few of the more harmless ones spread around the school. You know, get people talking about something interesting for a change.”
“It would be funny,” Neil says. I can see he is starting to embrace the idea.
“Are you both crazy?” I look from one to the other. “Are you both certifiably insane? We could get in serious trouble.”
“Nobody would know it was us,” Katie says.
“Of course they would!” I yell.
“Whoa, chill the fuck out,” Katie says.
“Yeah, how would anyone know?” Neil asks.
“How?” I say incredulously. “I don’t know how. But one of us would end up doing something stupid.”
“I’ll bet you ten dollars we don’t get caught,” Katie says.
“Oh my God, that is such a bet,” I say, sticking out my hand.
This is why my life is so disastrous. If Katie had said to me, I’ll give you ten dollars to help me put up these sick and twisted signs in school, I would have said that ten dollars isn’t worth living each day in terror of being exposed. Te
n dollars isn’t worth overhearing the conversations in the hall about what kind of sick, perverted minds would put up such disgusting signs. Ten dollars isn’t worth being called out of class one day with everybody staring and whispering, and being taken to the principal’s office and finding my parents already there. Ten dollars isn’t worth being put in therapy and listening to my parents blame each other for my problems. But now, because Katie bet me ten dollars, I am making signs and planning strategy of where and when to hang them.
Katie comes up with the first one and insists we tape it up in the boys’ bathroom. It says: WOULD YOU RATHER SPEND ONE DAY IN SCHOOL WITH UNCONTROLLABLE GAS OR WITH A PERMANENT ERECTION? The second one we tape outside the cafeteria. It says: WOULD YOU RATHER EAT A FULL PLATE OF YOUR BEST FRIEND’S BOOGERS OR DRINK A FULL GLASS OF A CHAIN-SMOKER’S SPIT? The third one we tape across from the main bank of lockers. It says: WOULD YOU RATHER SPEND A WEEK IN JAIL OR FRENCH-KISS YOUR GRANDMOTHER? On the bottom of each poster, we write: THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO GAME: FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY.
The next day, the school is abuzz. The posters have been discovered and taken down, but not before enough students have seen one or more of them and spread the word. At lunch, everybody seems to be talking about it, and at one table we see students picking their noses and spitting into glasses.
“This is so awesome,” Neil says to me between classes. “I can’t wait to put up some more.”
“We’ve got to be careful,” I say. “Now they’ll be on the lookout.”
We decide to lie low for a day or two, though it takes tremendous self-restraint. Katie, in particular, is itching to put up more signs, and I realize that I have never seen her so enthusiastic about anything before.
“This is so fucking awesome,” she says as we stand by the lockers after school. “Next time we’ve got to figure out a way to put up posters that won’t get torn down so quickly.”
“Krazy Glue,” Neil says.
I shake my head. “You’re insane.”
“Do you have a better suggestion?” Katie asks.
