A Drinking Life: A Memoir

by Pete Hamill

  Wanna do it again? Arnold said.

  Nah, I’m too tired. Maybe tomorrow.

  Arnold went back to bed and then the tent was very still. Boys shifted in their cots. Then one boy moaned. And another. Arnold laughed. Away off in the mountains, coyotes howled. The night breeze made the tent flaps billow and sigh. Under the army blanket I reached down and touched my hard penis and thought about the Dragon Lady.

  I learned to talk the way the others did, using “fuck” and “shit” and “prick” for punctuation and rhythm, saying “dis” and “dat” instead of “this” and “that,” dropping my g’s, removing t’s from other words (“bottle,” for example). I practiced walking like the tough guys, in a rolling way, putting the weight on one foot while the other dragged behind. I stopped saying “excuse me.” I spit a lot.

  Twice more, Cappy and I sneaked away to drink wine with Arnold in the woods, but I did this more to show that I could be as bad as anyone rather than for any real desire for wine. To me, the taste of wine was as sickly sweet as the taste of beer was sour; I wished I had a bottle of Frank’s Orange. And though I felt a tingle in my head from the wine, and an odd thickness in my hands, I felt no ache to have a bottle all to myself. I much preferred hitting a softball past the third baseman.

  Then one night near the end of the second week, I was awakened from a deep sleep. Arnold was beside me in my bed, his hard prick up against my rectum.

  Hey, I said. What —

  Come on, baby, Arnold whispered. Open up your sweet white ass.

  I turned. His penis was against my hip now. His breath had a stale sweet smell, like dried wine.

  Get the fuck outta here, Arnold, I said.

  Come on, baby, he purred. Make Arnold happy.

  I pushed him away, but then his voice changed and he locked an arm around my neck.

  Do what I say, he whispered coldly. I got a knife and I’ll cut your motherfuckin’ white throat.

  I panicked at the mention of the knife, and shoved him hard, kicking at him as he fell on the floor, and then Cappy was awake, followed by the other kids. I kept punching and kicking at Arnold as if my life depended on it. Cappy looked astonished. But my fury must have convinced him about who was right, so he kicked at Arnold too and stomped on his knees. And then the lights came on. The counselor stood there in his underwear. His hair was mussed, his face rumpled and irritated.

  Okay, he said, what’s going on in here?

  Arnold stood up slowly, his hazel eyes wide in righteous anger. I couldn’t see any knife.

  This fuckin’ white boy is a faggot! he screamed.

  His nose was bleeding, his lower lip split. He pointed at me, spitting out the words: I’uz sleepin’ real peaceful and he gets in bed with me, tries to fuck me inny ass!

  That’s a lie! I said, rushing at him again. The counselor grabbed me and spun me around. I was crazy with rage. He’s lying! He’s a motherfuckin’ liar!

  All right, watch your language …

  Then Arnold looked at me from those eyes, a sneer on his face, and made a slicing sign across his neck with a finger. The counselor must have seen this too. He turned to the other kids and asked them if they’d seen what happened. There was a long silence. Nobody wanted to be an informer. Arnold smirked. And then one boy spoke. It was the boy who learned to masturbate from Arnold.

  He tried to do it to me, too, he said.

  Who did?

  Arnold.

  Then another kid cleared his throat and whispered: Me too. The counselor looked around at us, studying our faces, and then turned to Arnold.

  Pack up, Arnold, he said. And come with me.

  They went off to the main building, Arnold limping on the leg hurt by Cappy’s stomping. He looked as if he were under arrest. But as he vanished into the dark, carrying his small cloth bag, I felt neither relief nor triumph. Instead, I lay awake in the dark for a long time. I felt like a rat. A stool pigeon. A creature even lower than a wino. It didn’t matter that Arnold had lied about me and I had answered him back. I had collaborated with the enemy.

  The next day, Arnold was gone from Fox Lair Camp.

  9

  WHEN I CAME HOME from Fox Lair Camp, I was a changed boy. I felt tougher, older, suddenly conscious that I was moving toward becoming a man. After all, I had traveled hundreds of miles to the distant Adirondacks, far beyond the frontiers of the Neighborhood, an immense distance from New York itself, and I had made that journey without the protection of my mother or father. In the great mountain gathering of the New York tribes, I had survived. I thought I knew about sex now, that immense blurred mystery. I had drunk wine. And fought off Arnold. Softball and wild strawberries were marginal to the journey; I had learned to walk in the world, with no help from anyone. It didn’t matter that I could not explain much of this to my mother. These were three weeks in my life, not hers, and certainly not weeks in the life of my father; that journey belonged to me alone.

  In some ways, the trip to Fox Lair Camp was my first true opening to consciousness. And drinking was a crucial part of it. Drinking wine in the woods wasn’t simply another sensual pleasure, like eating ice cream; it was an act of rebellion, a declaration of self. The camp had rules and I was breaking them. It was also an act of communion, with Arnold, with Cappy. Both states of consciousness would remain with me through years of drinking. Through the agency of Arnold, I also discovered Evil. I don’t mean that sex was evil. That, and drinking, were only part of a generalized negation that flowed from Arnold with a dark steady force. He made me afraid. The fear he inspired wasn’t physical; it was deeper and darker than that. Arnold lived by his own rules, not the rules I was learning. Nothing could persuade him from his desires except force.

  That summer, I was converted to the creed of machismo, although I would not hear that word for another decade. On the street when I was back from camp, I began to talk tough, sprinkling my language with “fuck” and “cocksucker” and “prick.” I could be as tough as the other kids on Twelfth Street; from the start, language was part of the pose. At home, my mother corrected my slide into “dis” and “dat,” “dem” and “dose,” but I reverted to them when I hit the street, wearing the Brooklyn accent like armor. I walked in the rolling gait I’d picked up from the bad boys at camp. I talked about girls and asses and tits. Much of this was a mask, but I was quickly making myself comfortable behind it. And of course I wasn’t alone; in that neighborhood, looking like a hard guy was part of the deal.

  On the roof next door to ours, Mr. Sicker and Mr. De Saro built a pigeon coop that summer, talking with passion to anyone who’d listen about “tiplets” and “homers” and the intricacies of flight and habit and instinct. They spent hours on the roof, watching their flocks gliding in tight formation around the sky, as happy in their intensity as I was with my books and comics. Their passion impressed me, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t share it; there was something disturbing to me about the gurgling, swallowing sounds of the pigeons. Besides, if you could fly like a homer, why would you ever come home?

  A few buildings away from ours, I met Mr. Dexter, a change clerk in the subway. He went to work before the morning rush hour and came home in early afternoon. Every afternoon in the good weather, he appeared on his roof to lift weights. Mr. Dexter was small and wore glasses, but his upper torso was ropy with muscle. I asked him if I could try lifting the barbell and he said sure. I was stronger than I thought I was. He showed me how to do curls and presses, how to adjust the bells with a small wrench, how to create daily routines of “reps,” the same exercise repeated dozens of times. Soon, I added weight lifting to the rhythm of my days.

  At some point, I started going to the Police Athletic League gym on Eighth Street to watch the amateur fighters. Again, I saw how important repetition was to learning; on the floor, the fighters repeated the same punch over and over again, while time was chopped into three-minute segments by an automatic bell; then the punches were joined to others in combinations, with the flat-nosed pa
unchy trainer shouting his instructions: Jab, bend! Double the jab, bend! Now punch outta da bend! I was still too young for the boxing team, and too shy to insist (and afraid of getting hurt). But back home, alone on the roof, or crouched in front of the bedroom mirror, I would practice jabs and hooks and right hands. I would bend at the knees after the jab. I would double the jab and throw the right hand. All the while breathing hard through my nose, my mouth clamped shut into a hard mask.

  On the street, boxing was as much a part of our talk as baseball. In the summer of 1946 everybody in New York was talking about Rocky Graziano, who was knocking out all comers. Rocky, the tough middleweight from the East Side, Rocky, who talked like a lot of the kids from Fox Lair Camp. But my father didn’t care much for Graziano. He fights little guys, he said. He’s the best middleweight in the welterweight division. Or put another way, he never fights anyone his own size. My father’s favorite was Willie Pep, a featherweight like himself, fast, fresh, audacious, a champion of the world. I was sure that if my father had legs, he’d box like Willie Pep.

  But even Willie Pep wasn’t the best. One day, my father showed me a picture of a black fighter in the Daily News, handsome and slick and lean. That’s Sugar Ray Robinson, he said. He’s the greatest fighter who ever lived. There were no qualifications; he described Robinson in the same flat way he would use to describe Mount Everest as the highest mountain in the world.

  How would he do against Graziano? I asked.

  He would knock Graziano out in four rounds, he said flatly.

  When they did fight years later, Robinson knocked out Graziano in three.

  In the streets, we still played the now forgotten games of the New York summers. Stickball was the supreme game, a kind of tabloid version of baseball, played with a broom handle as a bat and a pink rubber ball manufactured by the A. G. Spalding Co. In every street in New York, this ball was called a spaldeen. The spaldeens had vanished during the war and the game was played for a while with hairy tennis balls, until even they had disappeared. But coming home from Fox Lair Camp, I felt a special excitement spreading through the neighborhood: Spaldeens are back!

  From out of Unbeatable Joe’s and Rattigan’s and the other bars, the men and the veterans came piling into the streets again, taking our bats, once more playing the city’s greatest game, whacking spaldeens past trolley cars and over rooftops, running bases on heat-softened tar, making impossible catches, dodging trolley cars and trucks, almost delirious with joy. The war was over. The fucking war was finally over.

  Stickball ruled us. On Saturday mornings, the older guys played big games against visitors from other neighborhoods or went off themselves to play beyond our frontiers. Money game! someone would shout, and suddenly we were all moving to the appointed court and the great noisy fiesta of the stickball morning. The players drank beer from cardboard containers on the sidelines and ate hero sandwiches and smoked cigarettes. They were cheered by neighbors, girlfriends, wives, and kids. And standing on the sidelines during those first games were the veterans, holding the spaldeens, bouncing them, smelling them in an almost sacramental way.

  The men played on summer weekends; we kids played every day. There were still very few cars on the streets in that year after the war, so the “court” was always perfectly drawn, with sewer plates marking home and second base, while first and third were chalked against the curbs. The rules were settled before each game: one strike and you were out; off the factory wall or off a passing trolley car was a “hindoo” — which meant the play didn’t count. The great hitters could hit the ball at least “three sewers,” and it was said of Paulie McAleer of the Shamrock Boys that he once hit a ball an incredible five sewers. In memory, the games seem continuous and the days longer, richer, denser, and emptier than any others in my life. We did nothing and we did everything. You would wake, the radio playing, the rooms thick with the closed heat (and sometimes the sour smell of drink), grab something to eat — bread and butter covered with sugar, a piece of toast — and then race down the stairs, to burst into the streets. On a perfect Saturday in August, Twelfth Street would be wet from the water wagon, the air fresh, nobody else around, the tenements brooding in Edward Hopper light, and then a door would open and Billy Rossiter would appear with the bat and the spaldeen, and that was all we needed. We’d play off the factory walls until the others came down; we’d play ten hits a piece until there were enough players to choose up sides. And then we’d play until dark.

  After stickball, or wedged between the ball games, there were other games too: kick the can, off the point, box ball and punchball, Johnny on the pony (Buck buck, how many borns are up), and the greatest of all: ring-o-Ievio.

  One Saturday, we were playing ring-o-levio on Twelfth Street and one of the players on the other side was Frankie Nocera. He was a lean black-haired wild-tempered kid who lived in one of the corner tenements. A few years earlier, hitching a ride on a trolley car, he fell off and his foot went under a steel wheel; he lost the tip of his right foot and became known as No Toes Nocera. Winter and summer, he wore an ankle boot with a steel tip that replaced the missing toes. Because of my father’s leg, Frankie and I should have been friends. Frankie, after all, was a cripple. For some reason, he had become my nemesis, the way Dr. Sivana was the nemesis of Captain Marvel or the Joker of Batman. On Thirteenth Street, Brother Foppiano was my nemesis. Now, on Twelfth Street, it was No Toes Nocera. It must have had something to do with the great struggle between the Irish and Italians. Or maybe it was just chemistry.

  Unlike Arnold, Frankie didn’t make me feel that I had opened a curtain and glimpsed Hell. But he was always there, pinching, leaning, nudging, harassing. I’d be playing marbles in the lot and he’d grab a peewee and walk off; if I went after him, he’d drop the marble, or roll it toward a sewer, and laugh. I’d be on a stoop after a game, reading a comic book, and he’d snatch at it, run away, force me into a losing tug-of-war over the comic, as if sensing that I wouldn’t risk tearing the cover. He’d squirt water pistols at me; he’d ask for a ride on a scooter and go off for an hour; he was one of those kids who was always grabbing your hat. He wasn’t bad. But he was a misery.

  Naturally, when we played ring-o-levio, Frankie was on the opposing team. The rules of the game were as primitive as warfare. We divided ourselves into two teams, or sides. After a coin toss, one team went out, scattering around the immediate neighborhood, looking for hiding places. The second team would then hunt down the first, capturing each opponent and returning him to a pen whose walls were marked on the tarred street with chalk. The pen was called home. When the last man was captured, the sides switched roles, the hunters becoming the hunted. Imprisonment, however, wasn’t permanent. If you were one of the hunted, and could elude capture through guile or deception, you could make a sudden dash, race directly at the wall of defenders around the border of the pen, crash through them, shout the magical phrase Home free all! and liberate all members of your side. Most of the time it was impossible to breach the wall of defenders, who stood there with arms locked. But if you succeeded, it was a moment of sheer power and glory.

  On this day, I was the last man out. I had evaded all my pursuers and then, gathering strength on the slope above Seventh Avenue, I started my run for home. I dodged left, feinted right, zigzagged, and twirled, never stopping; saw the crowd of defenders guarding home, under the lamppost in front of Mr. Dix’s house; saw my side waiting inside the pen, all of them tensing, the defenders crouching, then stepping forward, Frankie Nocero among them; saw them forming a human wall; saw them getting larger as I came closer. And then I leaped, high and strong, feeling that I could fly, saw a blur of bodies and faces, rammed into shoulders and elbows and torsos, and was through! Shouting Home free all!

  My side scattered into freedom. I whirled to escape. And then saw Frankie Nocero rising from the tangle of defenders. Saw Frankie’s eyes wide in rage. Saw him coming at me. Then felt a numbness in my face as a punch hit my nose, then a sharp pain on the side o
f my head as he threw another.

  I backed up, numb, my ears ringing, the world suddenly filmy, and he threw another punch and missed, and someone yelled Right hand. I threw the right hand and hit him. Then threw it again, and missed. And again, and hit him, still backing up, Frankie making a snorting sound, his teeth bared, his hair all spiky. Someone else yelled: Jab, jab, use da jab. Then I remembered the PAL gym, and Graziano, and the pictures of Sugar Ray, and I raised my hands in the boxer’s stance; and when Frankie came at me again I speared him with a jab and threw a right hand behind it. For the first time in my life I heard cheers. A crowd was now gathering. I saw them as a blur, a presence, heads and bodies and no faces; but they were there, and they made the fight even more important. I couldn’t be humiliated in front of a crowd; I couldn’t run; I absolutely could not cry. I remember coiling into an almost ferocious concentration. I jabbed and hit Frankie, and jabbed again, then feinted the jab and threw the right hand and amazingly, Frankie went down. I went down on top of him, battering him with punches, until he started screaming Stop stop I give up stop okay stop.

  I got off him then, rising slowly, my hands still fists, afraid of a trick, and then heard more cheers, and suddenly my brother Tommy was there and Billy Rossiter and Billy Delaney and they were hugging me and clenching fists in approval and then I saw the crowd of men outside of Unbeatable Joe’s and they were clapping and laughing before going back to the bar. I had fought a street fight and won. Not with kids from camp whom I’d never see again. Here at home. On the court. In the Neighborhood. And men cheered. I hoped they would tell my father what I’d done.

  Then I saw Frankie Nocera walking into his building. He was holding his face. There was blood all over the front of his shirt. Very red blood. He was absolutely alone, limping on that gimpy foot. I started to go to him, suddenly feeling sorry for him. I wanted to be gracious, the way winning prizefighters were after boxing matches. But Frankie vanished into the dark hallway. We all went to Sanew’s then and bought bottles of Frank’s Orange or Mission Bell Grape, drinking them greedily, passing them around. Soda had never tasted better. And someone said, That Frankie, be needed a good fuckin’ beating and you sure give it to him. But even in triumph, something bothered me about the fight.