Everything Is Wrong with Me

by Jason Mulgrew

  Therapist: “What was your mom’s biggest problem with your dad?”

  Week Sixteen

  Therapist: “How are you?”

  Me: “I burned down some churches and threw a hooker off a bridge. Then I got all coked up and ate most of a couch. Also, I’m not coming here anymore.”

  Therapist: “Do you think your relationships with women have been affected by your parents’ relationship troubles? And please keep coming. I’m putting a library in my house and I’m making a killing off you. It’s cedar.”

  I’m generally a fatalistic person, I think in large part because of this experience. Everything happens for a reason, my parents’ divorce being the prime example. The ends justify the means, and the end in this story is pretty good. Now older and (supposedly) wiser, I have a very simple and stripped-down view of my parents’ relationship and divorce. It was bad, they split, it slowly got better, and now everything is fine. They are friends and both remain a major part of my life and my brother’s and sister’s lives. Case closed.

  It would be at this point that my therapist would ask why I use such simple clichés and sparse language to describe a complex series of events and emotions. “Don’t you owe it to yourself,” she’d probably say, “to explore these feelings rather than dismiss them with something as trite as ‘Everything happens for a reason’? A divorce is a traumatic experience for a child and yet you seem to be brushing it aside without a second thought. Why do you think that is? And anyway, aren’t you writing a memoir? Don’t you think this is something important to dig into for the book? Or have you reached your required word count and are just looking to wrap the whole thing up?” Hearing this, I’d look up at the ceiling, let out a big sigh, and then put my head in my hands for the remaining time left, cursing the science of psychology under my breath. But since I have not, in fact, reached my required word count, I’ll explain myself.

  My buddy Will, himself the child of divorced parents, jokes about his parents’ failed relationship, rhetorically asking them, “How could either of you have ever thought it would have worked between you two?” I feel the same way about my parents. To me, it’s fundamentally simple. They were (and still are) two very different people incapable of living with each other. While my dad would probably describe himself as “laid-back,” my mom would call him “indifferent.” My mom might think of herself as someone who “takes care of business.” My dad might say she’s a total nag. Opposites may attract, but differences more than likely will ultimately divide.

  This may sound too cut-and-dried and it may make me sound closed off, but that’s how I feel. If you were to ask the eight-year-old version of me how he felt about his parents splitting, he would probably feel much differently from how I do now. My life is not defined by my parents’ ill-fated relationship, nor was my childhood defined by it. My life has been divided by it, meaning the history of my childhood is split into three parts: before the divorce; during the divorce, when we lived at my grandmother’s house for those two-plus years; and after the divorce. But ultimately, it is something that happened and it was something that was overcome.

  My parents got married because they were in love. They got divorced because they couldn’t live with each other, which may have caused them to fall out of love. Now they’re friends. There is no great mystery here. I remember everything. I carry it with me. I don’t obsess about it. I don’t even think about it. And I won’t use it as an excuse for how I turned out, for my behavior, or for any flaws that I might have.

  And tonight, I’m headed out to party with my new buddy, Carl. I met Carl at a recent mixer organized by the New York Society of Damaged Individuals and, as it turns out, his parents are divorced, too. He suggested that we hit up a titty bar. I like the cut of his jib.

  Chapter Five

  Athletics, Sports, and Crap

  From an early age, my dad encouraged me to get involved in sports. My dad was an athlete himself—though not an exceptional one—and he realized the importance of athletics and wanted to make sure that sports played a large role in his own firstborn son’s life. My mom supported him on this, mostly because she wanted to get me out of the house, and to make me stop watching cartoons and/or playing video games. But the first sport that my dad would try to teach me about was not outdoors. Instead he and I would head down to the basement, where a blue punching bag hung from one of the beams.

  Boxing, my dad reckoned, was the best sport to teach a young boy. Not only would it keep him fit and in shape, it would teach him self-defense. Learning the art of boxing wasn’t so that I could hurt others, however. And it wasn’t really about making me a tough guy. Just as he wasn’t an exceptional athlete, my dad wasn’t really a tough guy—at least compared to the some of the other dads in the neighborhood who’d go out drinking on Saturday nights and get in fistfights with guys they’d known since grade school, only to make up a few hours later. It was very important in the neighborhood (and by extension, in life) to not take shit from anybody. Neighborhood logic went something like: “If you take shit, you aren’t respected. And if you don’t have respect, you don’t have anything.” So you’d better learn how to throw hands.

  When I was about five, my dad and I went down to the basement for the first time to face that punching bag. There he would teach me (or at least try to teach me) about the mechanics of pugilism. The goal was that after two years of weekly sessions, I would be a lean, mean fighting machine.

  My lessons lasted five weeks.

  “The first step is learning how to throw a punch,” my father said in the first week. “Let’s see what you got.” That was my cue to unleash a hail of mania and fury the likes of which that punching bag had never seen. I started punching with abandon, tiny fists flailing in rage, but after a while I got tired of the punching, and would kick, elbow, shoulder, and bite the big blue bag, while my dad stood nearby, smoking a cigarette and shaking his head. He had his work cut out for him.

  Over the next few weeks, my dad tried to impart his boxing wisdom to me. How you move your feet is just as important as how you use your hands. Be sure to properly follow through with your punches—you maximize your energy this way. Never buy cocaine from a man with one testicle. Make sure to twist your fist just slightly as your hand makes contact with his face—this tears the skin on impact. Learn to read your opponent’s face and body language for the first sign of pain or weakness and take advantage of that. The man who invents a toilet for a motorcycle will become very rich, but will die alone. Boxing is 75 percent mental and 25 percent physical; street fighting is 90 percent intimidation and 10 percent ability. Determination trumps all.

  But there was just one problem: I didn’t care about boxing. I didn’t see any practical use for it. Whenever I got in fights with my friends, short skirmishes over toys or other stupid stuff, I followed a simple plan: Grab and squeeze until the other guy says “stop” or lay on top of him until he gives up. If I were on the losing end, this tactic would change to “Try not to let him hit you in the face. After he walks away, throw something at him and run into the house.” Why then did I have to learn all this stuff about keeping my feet moving and using a frequent lazy jab to lull an opponent to sleep so that I could throw a thunderous combo? At the age of five, the only “combo” I cared to know about was a tube-shaped cracker filled with cheddar cheese.

  So my interest in boxing quickly faded, if it ever existed at all. This was a crushing blow (no pun intended) to my father. He tried to show me the ropes of other sports, but I didn’t take to them. I liked football, but it seemed too complicated, what with all the plays and different positions. I also liked to shoot hoops, but actual basketball games required way too much running. To this day, I still don’t know how to skate, so no hockey. And no one played golf or soccer or any of those rich-people sports in my neighborhood; I don’t even think I knew those sports existed until I went to high school.*

  By the time I was six, and most likely because he figured I was a lost cause, my dad had
given up teaching me about sports. Perhaps he realized that in order for me to truly become interested, it would have to happen organically. Or perhaps he was just lazy. Whichever, really.

  But fortunately for him, there was one sport that I was drawn to on my own. What started as a passing interest grew first into an obsession and then into a lifelong love affair. After taking in a few games in person and on television, I made a simple decision: baseball was the greatest of all sports. And I wanted in.

  Prior to actually playing Little League baseball, I was certain that Little League was simply the necessary first stop on my inevitable trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame. At the age of seven, I already had the rest of my life figured out, and Cooperstown was one of its last stops. After a successful stint in Little League, I’d move on to high school baseball, where I would break no less than six school records and be the first player in school history to start varsity all four years. My incredible baseball prowess would be responsible for my first sexual encounter, which would come during my freshman year after class in the biology lab with two sexually adventurous seniors: April, a redhead who bore a striking resemblance to Tawny Kitaen, and May, a blonde who bore a striking resemblance to any chick from any Poison video (or, I suppose, to one of the guys actually in Poison). They would pull me into the lab and ask, their breath sweet with green Life Savers, “So…what’s your favorite month?” I’d look back at them slyly and say, “June.” They’d laugh, but their laughter would dissolve into a hushed awe as they looked down at my bird, standing straight and proud in my baseball pants, which they would then take and do whatever it was that girls did with guys’ birds (I hadn’t figured that part out yet). Then they would tell the rest of the school what an incredible lover I was, and the remainder of my time in high school would be filled with make-out sessions and masterfully unhooked bras, perfect grades and perfect SATs, and game-winning hits and adoration, adoration, adoration.

  Of course, my mother would cry at graduation when, during my valedictorian speech, I announced that I was turning down the big baseball schools and instead choosing the academic scholarship to Harvard, where I could both make her proud in the classroom and lead their once-proud but now-faltering baseball program back to glory. And of course, that is exactly what I would do. After an 0-28 season the year before, the team would finish with a 26-2 record in my freshman year (one loss coming when I had to play the entire outfield by myself because my teammates were involved in a minor bus accident and the other when I was momentarily hampered with dysentery; even in my fantasies I was a hypochondriac). We would never lose again on my watch.

  After my freshman year, the Phillies, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and pretty much every major-league team would come calling with offers of big money, fast cars, and loose women. But I’d brush them all aside because I had another dream to attend to first. In addition to being a stellar athlete, I’d be an equally stellar student. And for my honors thesis, I’d have an ambitious goal to perform the first ever heart-liver double transplant—in front of a live studio audience. It would be a success, and afterward three girls would make out with me at the same time, thus concluding my college career.

  And then on to the majors. You know how the rest of the story goes. First overall pick by the hometown Philadelphia Phillies. A rookie year featuring the Rookie of the Year Award and a World Series championship, earning me the nickname Jason “Midas” Mulgrew, since everything I touched turned to gold. Then sixteen Gold Gloves, eight MVP awards (the writers would eventually turn against me), almost 800 home runs, and a career .340 average. Later, I’d be up there on the podium at the Hall of Fame, giving my speech. It would be similar to the speech that I’d given to the Nobel Prize people only a year before, but more about baseball and less about peace/medicine/literature/physics/general awesomeness. I’d look at my mom and dad and thank them for all their support over the years. They’d smile and nod with appreciation, and then look at my brother (the convict) and my sister (the telemarketer) and shake their heads in disapproval. Then I’d look at my wife, Cindy Crawford, and thank her for always being there for me, through all the wins and losses, slumps and hitting streaks. She’d smile and wink, and I’d blush. Then Cindy and I would go back to the hotel and do whatever it was that a guy and a girl did when they were in a hotel room together.

  So surely I would take to Little League very quickly. This wasn’t even in question. I had never played fast-pitch hardball before, but I wasn’t concerned with this.

  No one I knew played fast-pitch hardball, because that required resources that we didn’t have access to. For one thing, grass and open space were both pretty hard to come by on Second Street. If we were feeling ambitious, my friends and I could head down to “the Rec,”* the park down at Third and Shunk that had two baseball fields, some basketball courts, a public pool, and a lot of grass. But going to the Rec was a ballsy move, because we ran the risk of being hassled or picked on by older kids or some of the Puerto Rican or black kids from the surrounding neighborhoods. I loved baseball, but I loved not getting wedgies and not having to run from a large group of Puerto Rican kids who wanted my glove even more.

  Instead, as city kids, we improvised, playing various baseball-type games that were easier and more accessible to us. There were five variations:

  Wiffle ball: This was Played in a schoolyard with as little as two players with your standard Wiffle ball and yellow bat. There were no bases. One strike and you were out, three outs per inning. Anything over the fence was a home run; anything that got past the pitcher was a single; anything successfully fielded (even a grounder) was an out. Play until you have to go home or your arms fall off. Keep score dutifully. Most likely fight with opponent about the score.

  Stickball: Similar to Wiffle ball with three differences: 1) played with stick and rubber ball; 2) a strike zone is drawn behind the hitter against the wall of the school, and the hitter now has three strikes per out; 3) fighting over scoring more intense than in Wiffle ball, due to the more fast-paced nature of the game.

  Halfball: Same as stickball, but played with a tennis ball cut in half. My least favorite baseball-derived game. (Why would anyone cut a perfectly good tennis ball in half?)

  Streetball: Played with full teams in the street/schoolyard, with bases drawn in chalk on the asphalt/cement. Like real baseball, except with tennis ball and loaded Wiffle-ball bat (a Wiffle-ball bat cut open, stuffed with newspapers, and taped up). Also unlike real baseball in that someone’s mildly retarded younger brother will be required to play and a fight will usually break out between the older nonretarded brother and the younger somewhat-retarded brother. Hilarity will ensue, Sunny Delight will be consumed, purple stuff will be eschewed.

  Killball: Like streetball, but a mix of 90 percent baseball and 10 percent dodgeball. A hitter can be called out if the fielder catches his ball, throws it at him, and hits him with it when he is not on base. It was with the birth of this game that many of us realized that our testicles were sensitive things to be respected, rather than decorations dangling below our penises.

  I spent the early part of my youth playing these games religiously. By the time an opportunity to play in Little League presented itself, I felt like I was ready to take that next step.

  Yet I don’t want to give the impression that I was just some kid playing the game because he had nothing else to do or because playing Little League is just what you’re supposed to do as a kid. I loved baseball—a lot—not just to play, but to watch and enjoy as well. Every day I’d pore over the sports section of the Daily News, analyzing the box scores, noting how many hits Mike Schmidt had, whether or not Juan Samuel had stolen a base, or if Steve Bedrosian had picked up the save. I collected baseball cards with a frightening obsession/compulsion that would meet its equal later in my life only when a) I discovered masturbating; b) I discovered getting drunk; and c) I discovered sex.* Collecting baseball cards was not just a hobby, it was a lifestyle. My mom inadvertently ruined the second half of 1988 for
me when she got me some lame-ass OshKosh B’gosh overalls for my birthday instead of the Donruss-brand Jose Canseco rookie card that I so desperately wanted. ** I spent hours lusting after prized cards in Lou’s Cards & Comics on Broad Street and whole afternoons and evenings in my room studying the statistics on the backs of the cards. If you had asked me how many hits Wade Boggs had in 1983, how many home runs Dale Murphy hit in 1985, or how many strikeouts Doc Gooden had in his rookie year, I could tell you instantly. * If I had put half as much effort into schoolwork as I did studying these cards, I would have graduated from grade school in four years and would now probably be a Ph.D. touring the country lecturing on the reproductive habits of the cnidarians of the South Pacific. Instead it took me eight whole years to graduate and now I couldn’t tell you which president is on the twenty-dollar bill.** Stupid baseball obsession.

  I wasn’t just a stat nerd; I watched a lot of games, too. Baseball became my first love in large part because it was (and still is) the most accessible of sports. First and foremost, there are 162 freaking games, double that of hockey and basketball and ten times that of football, allowing for plenty of time to get familiar with the sport. Not only that, the bulk of baseball is played during the summer, when kids all over the country are off from school and driving their parents crazy by telling them things like “Dad, it’s a long story, but the air conditioner caught on fire” and “Mom, I’m not sure how it happened, but Dennis is gone—can you make me another little brother?” as soon as they get home from work. So when not being tremendous pains in the asses, my friends and I enjoyed nothing more than sitting in front of the television watching the Philadelphia Phillies play some of the worst baseball in the major leagues. And we had ample time to do so.