I figured Dugan would be a problem. We don’t know much about him except he’s Catholic. Nobody was ever in his house. When you’re going someplace, he just shows up.
But Richie had an answer for Dugan too. “Probably does.”
“How’s that?”
“Catholics. They’re usually hairier than Protestants.”
We started to count the guys we knew had hair in our gym classes. The final count was three in my class, four in Richie’s.
“That’s seven,” I said one day. “How many do you think there are in the whole grade?”
“I don’t know,” Richie said. “Maybe twenty. Twenty-five.”
“So how many blacks are there?” We counted them up. “Five. That leaves twenty Italians.” I thought for a minute. “But how do you know which ones they are? Unless you see them in the shower?”
“Their last name ends with i or o,” Richie said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Sorbito.”
“Yep.”
“Well, what about McGinnis then?”
“He must be northern Italian.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“He’s from North Italy.” Richie was pointing, to North Italy I guess. “They’re still Italians but they’re a little bit like us.”
“What are we?”
“Anglo-Saxton.”
I don’t know where his mother’s getting all this stuff. “I never heard of that,” I said.
“Well, we are. We’re wasps.”
“What!”
“Yeah. It stands for White Anglo-Saxton Protestant. W-A-S-P.”
Live and learn. I always thought wasps were skinny bumblebees.
That night I asked my mother, “Am I a wasp?”
“No, you’re a grasshopper,” says Cootyhead.
“Mom?”
“You certainly are,” she says. “And proud of it.”
So the next day I said to Richie, “So if you know everything, what’s the difference?”
“What do you mean?”
“How come the Italians and all get their hair before us?”
“Heat,” he said.
“Heat?”
“Yeah. The hotter you are the faster your hair comes in.”
I knew Richie was stupid. “Sorbito ain’t no hotter than me,” I said. “I’m out in the sun all the time.”
He sneered. “I don’t mean that, hemorrhoidal tissue. I mean near the equator. You ever hear of the equator?”
That’s what I hate about him. He always makes everything into geography. He’s a geography freak. I poked him in the forehead with my finger. “I’m telling ya—”
“So,” he says, “the closer you live to the equator the more hairy you get. Not you. Your—you know—where you came from. Over there.”
“An-something,” I said.
“Ancestors! Yeah. The Italians are south, see, they’re closer to the equator, so they get hair.”
“McGinnis,” I said.
He breathed. “Even North Italy is south to us.”
I gave up on that. “So what’s the equator have to do with it?”
“The heat, I said. The closer you get to the equator the hotter it gets.”
“Heat makes the hair grow?”
“Yeah. Climate.”
“So what about the blacks?”
“They’re the hairiest of anybody,” Richie said. “The sun fries their hair. That’s why it’s all frizzled.”
“They must be from real close to the equator, I guess.”
“Yeah!” Richie goes. “Right on it!”
“Damn!” I said. “Imagine how hot it is there!”
“Sun’s always shining.”
“Not always.”
“A lot, yeah. They never get winter. The equator’s the hottest place in the world.”
“Man! Imagine going around the world right on the equator.”
“Man!” said Richie.
We thought about that for a while.
Richie pulled out a Tootsie Pop. He said, “Some of them get hair by the time they’re six.”
I had the weirdest dream that night. I was in the shower alone with this black guy and he kept soaping up his hair until the whole shower room was filled with suds. Then he’s dragging me across the soccer field and I don’t have a stitch on and there’s a bunch of ninth-graders grinning at the soccer backstop and my heels are making trenches in the ground because I just know there’s a girl behind there.
“I had the weirdest dream last night,” I said to Richie.
“Yeah? What about?”
“Ah, I don’t know. All kindsa junk.” We were in front of my locker, getting ready to go home. “You wanna grow up?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want to grow up?”
“Do you?”
“I asked you.”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his fingers along the lockers. “I guess not.” I felt better. “Do you?”
“Ah… I don’t know,” I said.
But I was thinking this crazy idea: if I could find some way to keep my pubic hairs from popping out, I could stay twelve forever.
Then I hear this voice: “Jason!” And footsteps running.
It was Betsy Heidenbach. She has the hots for George Dermody. She was panting. “Jason, do you have a comb a minute?”
“Why?” I said.
“Jason—quick—I have to get to my bus!” (George Dermody takes her bus.)
“Why?”
“Jay-son!”
I swore I would make her say it. “Why?”
Her eyes got all wide and innocent, like she didn’t know what she was saying. “So I can comb my hair, stupid!” she yells. And she starts going through my locker.
I couldn’t tell her I didn’t have a comb, because me and Richie were too busy cracking up. Richie actually rolled on the floor.
GIRLS
GIRLS ARE KIND OF LIKE GOD. YOU BELIEVE IN THEM BUT YOU don’t really have much to do with them.
Girls think they’re as good as boys these days, in sports and stuff, I mean. But they’re not. Even if a girl was a foot taller than me I could still beat her up, because men are stronger. I almost get dizzy thinking about it, but I could beat up my mother if I really wanted to. Wanted to. (Mothers are actually just girls that had babies.) Sometimes I think if I was attacked by a bunch of girls, even ten of them, I would—Pah! Pah! Yongah!—I would be too quick and strong. Even one hundred of them. It’s just nature.
Besides, girls can hardly even do anything because they might go bleeding. That’s one of the main reasons I wouldn’t want to be a girl. Last year in the sixth grade we were having races in the playground to see who would be in the grade school track meet for the whole town. Some high school coach was in charge, and Susan Tenine couldn’t even finish her race. She started to bleed. I didn’t see it, I just saw this whole bunch of girls heading for the school door. The thing was, Susan Tenine was the fastest girl in school. She could even beat some of the guys (fat ones). So she never went to the track meet.
It can hit you anytime. Imagine: riding your bike, or playing football. Or sleeping! Ugh. You have to start wearing the rag. It’s like a diaper. Who wants to be a baby all over again?
Every once in a while I think about girls and growing up at the same time, and when that happens I can’t help thinking about the uncomfortablest thing of all: getting married. I can’t see myself doing it, no matter how old I am, but I guess I will if everybody else is. I’m not going to fight everything. I don’t go around like some kids saying they’re never going to change. I know when I’m a grownup I’m going to like some stuff that I don’t like now. But there’s two things that won’t change—I swear to God—as long as I’m alive: I won’t stop riding my bike and I won’t get undressed in front of some wife.
Girls scream, throw funny, think they’re great, and don’t have anything between their legs. Girls don’t wear dresses as
much as they used to, but they still cry.
You know there’s a girl in your family if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night in the dark, and you pee on the toilet seat because it’s down.
My sister isn’t a girl. She’s a cootyhead. I call her that because once in second grade she brought home this piece of paper saying to check her head because somebody in the school had cooties. She tries to say everybody in her class got the same note.
Ham always likes to snicker and go, “Someday you’ll love your sister.”
Then he says it to her: “Someday you’ll love your brother.”
It’s the only thing me and my sister ever agree on: “Ugh!”
FOOTBALL
OUR FIRST FOOTBALL GAME WAS AGAINST CRESTHAVEN. WE LOST 19–0. We stink.
I couldn’t believe it. I thought we were good. The coach said so. We were great in practice. Touchdowns all over the place. I thought we could probably do good against the Philadelphia Eagles or somebody. Then: 19–0.
The whole football thing’s been a surprise to me, ever since Richie grabbed my sleeve and said, “C’mon. You’re goin’ out for football, ain’tcha?”
I didn’t know what was happening. I thought they would just give you a football and say, “Here. Go play.” But it’s not like that. It’s not like the street.
First thing I know I’m standing in line along with the other players in my underwear. There’s a doctor up at the head of the line. He gets to sit down.
I thought there was an epidemic. Guys kept coughing. But then when I got closer to the doctor I noticed that the only ones that coughed were the ones getting examined. That’s really stupid, I thought. Why don’t they hold it till he’s done with them? He’ll think they’re sick and kick them off the team.
Then it was my turn. Everything was going okay, and then all of a sudden he grabs me by the gonads and says, “Cough.”
I coughed.
His bald head swung up. His face wasn’t too happy.
“Not on me, please. Turn your head. Cough.”
I turned my head and saw some frosted windows. I wondered if there were girls behind them trying to see in. I coughed.
“Again,” he says.
Jeez, they just don’t give you a break when you’re a seventh-grader. You can’t even cough right.
“Aah—CCHHAAAH!” I go.
I must have coughed good. I got my suit. Number 41.
I didn’t see Richie till next morning in woodshop. I was working on my space station. I designed it myself. Mister Slatter was impressed. When it’s all done it’s going to be as big as a school desk. It will have everything. McDonald’s. Ping-Pong. You name it. A thousand people will live there. Maybe five thousand.
So I’m sawing away on this piece of wood that’s supposed to be a perfect circle, and Richie whispers over, “Wha’d you think of the physical?”
“For football, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?” Richie looked around, then pointed to his gonads. I said, “Maybe he likes boys.”
“C’mon. Why do you think they do that?”
“I don’t know. I ain’t a doctor.” My saw was getting offline. “Maybe they want to make sure you got two.”
“Don’t everybody?”
“Hell no,” I said. “C’mon now, shut up. I can’t saw right.”
I should have saved my breath. When Richie starts asking questions he never stops.
“You mean you know somebody that don’t have two?” he asks me.
“No, dumbo, not personally. What do you think, I go around staring at crotches?”
“So—?”
“So, I’m telling ya, there’s some people that only have one.”
“One ball!”
Mister Slatter’s golden eyebrows went up. “Yes, men?”
“Nothin’. We’re okay,” I told him.
After a while Richie starts up again. “So what about the cough? What’s that have to do with it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe that’s so you won’t notice what he’s doing with his hand.”
Then he said, “Do you think the doctor does it to girls too?”
“Do girls have gonads, genius-head?”
“Well, he must do something.” He put his piece of wood down and thought. “I wonder what he does.”
I was trying to think up a good one, but Richie answered his own question: “Maybe he grabs their tits and tells them to fart.”
By the time I stopped laughing my circle was a perfect egg.
When the coach asked what position we wanted to play, I went over with the linebackers.
“You sure you want to be a linebacker?” the coach said.
“Yeah,” I told him.
“That the smallest suit you could get?”
“I don’t know. It’s what they gave me.”
He sort of whistled. “Okay.”
Then practice started and that’s about the last thing I remember real clear. I know we did about a jillion jumping jacks and pushups and stuff. The worst kind was, you do like a pushup, only at the top of it you throw your arms out and come crashing right down on the ground on your stomach. It’s like getting punched. This grunt pops out of your mouth. The first time I did it I grunted out both ends.
We ran. Around the field? No way. Up the bleachers. My helmet kept falling over my eyes. My shoulder pads were clapping. My kneepads kept banging on my ankles.
Somebody yelled, “Linebackers—over here!” and we started tackling this dummy (not a teacher, some stuffed bag) and then we had to tackle each other and then we ran some more. And then (I couldn’t believe it) they gave us mimeographed papers to take home and study. Like homework! They were the plays.
Next thing I knew I was throwing up in the locker room. I had to crawl home. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t see.
“What happened to you?” I heard my mother say, like through water.
“Football,” I said. And went to bed.
Next morning Richie says, “I heard you barfed all over the locker room yesterday.”
“Who told you that?”
“Kraspel.”
“Kraspel? Who’s that?”
“He’s on the hundred-and-twenty-five-pound team.”
We’re on the hundred-pound team. “He don’t know me,” I said.
“He said it was some real little funny-looking kid,” Richie smirks. “So I figured it was you.”
After I beat him on the head with my biggest book, World Geography, he goes, “Okay. So wha’d you think of practice, huh?”
I straightened up a little. “It was okay. Why?”
“Wha’d you think the hardest part was?”
“I don’t know. None of it seemed too hard to me.”
“Those belly-whompers.”
“So?”
“Running up those stands! Your legs hurt?”
My legs hurt so much that the only way I could keep my knees from buckling under me was to think real hard about them. It was like learning to walk again. I shrugged. “Nah. Yours?”
“Yeah, man. They’re killing me. You musta had it easy.”
Did he really say that? “Easy! I’d like to see you be a linebacker. You’re the ones that got it easy. You dinky little halfbacks.”
Richie made like a jive black. “Ahm gonna score me some tee-dees, Jack.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Running around tiptoeing till somebody touches you with the end of their finger and then you fall down. You call that football?”
“That’s what I call it.”
We stopped and stared at each other.
“It’s pussy,” I told him.
“What?”
“Pussy.”
“So what’s linebackers?”
“That’s football, baby.” I poked him in the chest. “Football.”
“Down in the trenches, huh?”
“Yeah. That’s right. Down in the trenches.”
“Let me tell
you something”—now he was poking me—“you look like an idiot out there. What’re you doing being a linebacker anyway? Eighty-nine-pound linebacker.”
“Ninety-two pounds.”
“So? You still look like an idiot. You’re gonna get creamed all over the place.”
“If you can’t take it, quit,” I told him and got in the last poke.
The only thing that got me through the first two weeks of practice was waiting for a chance to tackle Richie. Line-backer-to-halfback. We’d see who the pussy was.
Then it came. The second strings were scrimmaging each other. Most of the time everything was a mishmash. Fumbles. Guys running the wrong way. After each play twenty-two guys were on top of each other and the ball gained about an inch.
But then came the play I was waiting for, just like I hoped it would happen for days. The quarterback handed off the ball to Richie, and Richie came through this nice big hole in the line, and there we were—nobody between us. Him and me. One on one.
To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised at first at how mean he looked. Mouthpiece showing, like a boxer. His eyes were looking through his facemask bars right into mine.
I got set. I spread my legs, lowered my butt, dug my cleats into the ground. Now we’ll see. I charged forward to ram him back to sixth grade, closed my eyes for the collision, grabbed with both arms—only he wasn’t there. I felt his toe knock my knuckles, and by the time I opened my eyes and turned around he was twenty yards up the field heading for the goal line.
I tore off my helmet and screamed: “Chicken! Chicken! Pusseeeeee!”
Then came the first real game and the 19–0 smear job from Cresthaven. I didn’t get put in till they had their nineteen points, and then all I did was eat a lot of grass and dirt.
Who needs it? I’m thinking. What did football ever do for me? It grabbed my gonads, gave me pants with knees down at my ankles, made me vomit, put me on second string, embarrassed me, put cleat marks on my back and dirt in my mouth.
“I’m quitting,” I told Richie.
“Quit?” he goes. “You can’t quit. We just started.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I wanna play and all I’m doing is sitting on the damn bench. I joined this team to play some football. I’m no bench-warmer.”
“But you can’t quit now.”