Mr. DeFelice didn’t do anything about it.
When we were eight this guy pulled Ed’s bathing suit off. Ed didn’t have a mushroom. He was half Korean. We were scared to fight the big guy who did it. Hulk didn’t know about it, so the kid didn’t get in trouble.
In high school it was mostly white kids. There were only about thirty black students. Some were bussed in from East Palo Alto. Most of them hung out in an area in front of the school library. That was their spot. They got bad grades and wore parkas.
* * *
That night at Mid-Pen we were drunk and tired of walking. Me and Ivan and Ed and Jack stood on the cement-filled tire of a tetherball pole. We held the pole and rocked the tire back and forth and sang drunken songs. The rest of the group left.
We were drunk and we came up with our own songs. We sang about Heebs, and stingy Jews. Not meanly, just loud and funny. I sang loud.
Ute was mad about it, he asked how we could do that to Dave Frankel and Howard, and he left. No one cared. We didn’t care about Howard, he was a fool.
At water-ski camp we made fun of Howard and the black girl, Angela, so much. Late at night we snuck out of our sleeping bags and smoked pot. At campfire one night we dared Howard to push Angela in the water.
We sang “Wimoweh, wimoweh,” and then as everyone walked back to our sleeping bags, Howard shoved her in. She had all her clothes on. She hit her tooth on a log.
We got kicked out.
In high school Ute had so much pressure from his brother, Rain, to have sex. His brother made fun of him, and would get him drunk, and rip off his clothes, and tie him up. Ute finally had sex with Venus. The black guys made fun of Ute and Venus. They all wanted Venus.
* * *
The football players like Sam liked to make fun of Jews. He called people “Heebs” when they “Jewed” him. Sam played center on the team. He was fat and got no girls. He drank a lot of beer. Dave Frankel was Jewish and was on the team. He didn’t say anything to Sam about all his talk.
In History our teacher, Mr. Tyson, did a reenactment of the Anne Frank story. It was an elaborate thing that he did every year. It was staged on top of the machine shop in the storage room. He made the storage room look like Anne Frank’s attic. It was elaborate. Students played the Franks. At the end Mr. Tyson busted through the door dressed like an SS agent. He was pretty convincing.
When they kicked us out of camp, Hulk drove us to the Greyhound bus station in the middle of the night. Howard cursed at him the whole way. He called him a child molester and a little-dicked faggot. Hulk didn’t say anything. Howard kept going for the whole ride; it took about an hour. Howard’s face was red by the end. Whenever Hulk switched gears, Howard told him to “work that stick.”
At the Greyhound station in Redding, Hulk bought us all tickets and put us on the bus. He watched as we drove off. I saw him walk away before the bus was out of sight.
Then we were in the dark bus with the real people, traveling in the middle of the night. Most of the people were Mexican, and were sleeping. We were all quiet; there was nothing left to do.
There was a layover in Sacramento. We got out and wandered around. There was a seedy hotel near the station called the Henderson Hotel. It made us think of a slut at our school called Alice Henderson and we laughed about it. They sold hot dogs and beer in the lobby. The guy behind the counter said that Axl Rose had stayed there once.
It was one in the morning.
When we went back to the depot, Ed and I had both lost our ticket receipts and we couldn’t get on the bus. The woman in the customer service booth told us to go talk to the driver.
We went around to the side of the depot where the drivers had their lounge. Through the small window in the door we could see them. They were all black guys, sitting in there laughing and drinking coffee out of blue and white Styrofoam cups. They looked like they were having such a good time.
Chinatown
In Three Parts
Part I
Vietnam
It was Sunday, at the beginning of summer. I was at Jordan Middle School, playing soccer with the Mexicans on the field in back. They were all in their twenties and thirties; I was sixteen. They were gardeners and construction workers and cooks. It was sticky hot out.
After the game, I saw two girls smoking on one of the portable metal benches the coaches sit on. I walked over. One was an Asian girl with a beat-up face and a nice-looking body. The other was pale white and tall with curly hair. The Asian one passed a cigarette to the pale one. They were my age.
I was sweaty.
“Hi, I’m Roberto.” I put out my hand like a gentleman. The Asian girl smiled and said her name was Pam. We shook hands. The pale one smoked and didn’t say anything, or even look at me. She was like a big drooping plant.
“How’s the smoking?” I said.
“Fucking fine,” said the drooping plant. She passed the cigarette to Pam and looked off, across the field. She blew the smoke out through a little hole in her lips.
“‘Fucking fine,’ that sounds pretty good,” I said. I smiled big. I said to Pam, “Can I try that fucking fine cigarette?”
Pam laughed without sound and handed me the cigarette. The other one looked over her shoulder like there was something very interesting over there.
“Mmmmm, that is fucking good,” I said. “Fucking fine.” The drooping plant was not listening, only Pam was listening. She was pretty ugly, but when she smiled she wasn’t so ugly. And I could see up close that she had a really good body.
“Hey,” I said to the other girl. She didn’t look back. “Hey, here’s your cigarette.” She still didn’t look.
“Her name is Vicky,” said Pam.
“Vicky,” I said. “Vicky the hickey.” She still didn’t look. “Vicky, you remind me of a praying mantis,” I said. “You’re all long, and mantis.”
Pam laughed for a second, and put her hand over her mouth like she shouldn’t have. But then the mantis stood up.
“Pam, I’m going,” said the mantis.
“Don’t go,” I said.
“Fuck you,” she said to me. “Pam, are you coming?” she said.
Pam didn’t stand up.
“Pam doesn’t want to go, mantis,” I said.
“Screw you,” she said to me. To Pam she said, “Pam?”
Pam said, “No,” very quietly. The mantis turned and walked off across the field.
“Why don’t you go pray, and eat some of your mates,” I said to her back.
She walked crookedly and had a funny-shaped ass, like a heptagon.
I took another puff on the cigarette. It was a Camel. Some of the Mexicans called to me. They were carrying their soccer bags and water bottles at the other end of the field. They were waving. I waved.
I handed the cigarette back to Pam. She took a puff.
“Are you from around here?” I said.
She said she had just moved. She was going to start school with me at Paly in the fall. The pale girl worked at Midtown Video and they had met when she had gone in there to rent a video. She was the only person Pam had met so far.
I asked her which movie she rented.
“Pretty Woman.”
“I guess I ruined your one friendship,” I said.
“She wasn’t really a friend, just a girl.”
“I know,” I said. “Want to come to my buddy Tom’s and smoke pot?” I said. She said sure. Tom lived close to Jordan.
At Tom’s we smoked a lot of pot. Tom was there, we were in his room. We sat in a little circle near the open window and passed around a six-inch bong. We blew the smoke out the window. I got really high.
“Look at my eyes,” I said. “I’m Chinese too.”