Everything Is Wrong with Me

by Jason Mulgrew

  Petey was a gambler. I’m not talking about cards or casinos here, but about sports. Pro and college football, baseball, pro and college basketball—hell, even figure skating, swimming, and gymnastics—there wasn’t much Petey wouldn’t bet on. Normally, this type of behavior could land a man in a lot of trouble. After college, I spent several years working in homeless shelters throughout the Northeast, * and many of the sad stories of the shelters’ residents started with gambling problems. But Petey was good at gambling. Nay, Petey was sublime. Gambling, he’d tell us time and time again, was not about luck. It was about science. And Petey was a scientist par excellence.

  Petey was also a bookie. For a percentage of the winnings, Petey took bets for someone. Petey was the neighborhood point man for that someone, taking bets over the phone and in person from guys in our area. Each week, Petey would collect and account for the all bets and money that he had handled during the week and pass this on to that someone. That someone might pass them on to someone else, who would then pass them on to someone else, all the way up the line to I-don’t-know-what. I’d rather not think about that and I’d certainly rather not explore this here, lest I wake up in the morning with “Slow your roll, fat chops” painted in pig’s blood on the door to my apartment. So let’s just leave it alone for now.

  Excellent gambler/bookie was an entirely acceptable profession in my neighborhood. It was even looked upon admirably. Nobody I knew grew up to be a doctor or a pilot or an inventor or anything cool like that. Once you graduated from high school, the laws of the neighborhood dictated that your career choices consisted of longshoreman, electrician, mechanic, roofer, or something similar. Each is a worthy profession in its own right, but not exactly what us kids aspired to be. If you could spend all day taking bets, studying sports, and yelling at horses, well, that’s not a bad gig at all. It sure beats tarring a roof on a hot summer day or driving a forklift on a pier in windchills hovering around zero.

  Being a gambler also gave you a certain neighborhood cache, for two reasons. One, it’s a social profession. It requires you to be friend, confidant, and consoler to many people. Because Petey wasn’t running the operation himself, he was never the bad guy. He was just taking the bets for someone else. He commiserated with those who lost, because he knew that feeling, too (although in most cases, considerably less than they did). Because he was so affable, he developed friendships with those from whom he took bets. And like your local dry cleaner, dentist, or barber, his business grew from referrals. Word of his charisma spread and eventually he was handling many, many bets, which in turn meant greater neighborhood “fame.” Second, Petey made a lot of money doing what he did. And in a working-class neighborhood, few things garner respect or power the way that money—spent properly—does. Money was a tricky thing. If you spent it on extravagant things like nice cars or jewelry or big fur coats, you would be ostracized, called arrogant, and branded with the worst insult of all: someone who forgot where he came from (possibly because you dress like a pimp). Petey didn’t wear jewelry or furs or drive around in a brand-new Cadillac; he had “The Bull,” a mid-’80s Chevy Nova with peeling black paint and a “plush” red interior. By being down-to-earth and not living a garish lifestyle befitting a successful gambler and bookie, Petey showed us that it’s okay to have money, but you have to spend it wisely.

  But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have fun with it. After all, what good is money if it can’t provide at least a small measure of happiness? And what is fun if it’s not taking your nephew’s twelve-year-old friend to play video games against grown Puerto Rican men for obscene sums of money? What about using money as bait to watch some kids and buddies try to eat one of the hottest peppers on earth? That’s fun, right?

  As I mentioned, one of the main things we did at Uncle Petey’s house was play video games. We often escaped to Petey’s to get out of our houses, and since he didn’t work, he was home all the time just hanging out. Screech would bring us over and we’d spend hours in front of one of the two TVs in Petey’s living room, battling each other while Petey made calls, wrote down bets, or yelled at whatever player was fucking up his over/under bet by missing open layups.

  This was the early ’90s, before the souped-up video games that are on the market now. These were the days when sixteen-bit graphics were groundbreaking, when Nintendo was just about to give way to Sega Genesis, and before John Madden had figured out how to make himself (even more of) a multimillionaire by lending his likeness and voice to a video game. We weren’t able to amuse ourselves with punching hookers in the latest Grand Theft Auto incarnation, so we had to stick to the basics. Mario was still King. And Luigi, well, he was always kind of off, right?

  As a kid, I was a video game god. It may sound like I’m bragging here, but this is a statement of fact, pure and simple. You’re probably surprised at this revelation: an unathletic smart kid, good at video games. Shocking, I know. Though I couldn’t field a fly ball or make a layup, I could do some serious damage in RBI Baseball and I would take you to school in Double Dribble. Not only that, I could conquer the nonsports games as well. Give me a rainy Saturday morning and I would have Link and Princess Zelda kissing by dinnertime. While you might gape when after beating Metroid for the first time you learned that he was actually a she, this wouldn’t surprise me, since I beat the game before you (and once last week, too).

  This continued into my preteen years, but by then I had dropped the other types of games and stuck only to the sports games, where I really made my mark. I imagined that I played these games with such fervor and would savor each victory so intensely precisely because I was—to put it mildly—the worst athlete in the history of the world. In the video game realm, I found my calling and my escape. What I could not achieve in reality, I could achieve in virtual reality. In Nintendo or Sega Genesis, I could hit eight three-pointers in a half or grab the winning touchdown and do it with grace and aplomb, visions of camera bulbs flashing in my head and snippets of my postgame interviews replaying on all the local newscasts. In this way I could prove to my friends that I was worthy of respect, an athlete in my own way and a force to be reckoned with. But like many superior athletes, my incredible prowess went straight to my head. It wasn’t long before I became unbearable to play against, as I ran up scores, taunted opponents during the games, and gloated after victories. And it wasn’t long before Petey picked up on my abilities and decided he could make some cash off them.

  Believe it or not, this kid was really good at video games. In a related story, he would not lose his virginity until he was almost twenty years old.

  South Philly as we knew it was very segregated. The Irish Americans lived on the south end of Second Street and the streets surrounding it; Polish Americans were scattered just north of the Irish Americans; the Asians—a mix of Cambodians, Koreans, and Vietnamese—lived above Fifth Street; the blacks were just north of them. But nestled in the middle of the Irish neighborhood was one street, a single street, full of Puerto Rican families. The non–Puerto Ricans in the area were unsure how this street came to exist, but it developed into its own small community (read: it had a grocery store and a bar, really the only two necessities in our neighborhood). Though whitey was not discouraged from walking along this street, it was usually avoided if possible. Petey, on the other hand, dealt with and knew all the Puerto Ricans, as gambling knows no race, creed, gender, and, um, however the rest of that line goes. More important, Petey knew how seriously they took their video games, often having daylong tournaments, betting on games, and partying.

  The way Petey explained it, it would be very simple. He and I would head down to Little Puerto Rico, I’d play a couple of video games against the guys there at his friend Ricky’s house, I’d win, and I’d get some money. “’Cause you’ll win, right?” Petey asked. Yes, I said, but I was too dumbfounded to say anything else. Besides, we were already outside Ricky’s house by the time Petey told me of this plan, so I didn’t have much of a choice.

&nb
sp; The preferred game in Little Puerto Rico was Sega’s newly released NHLPA Hockey ’93,* the revolutionary game that would spawn annual incarnations over the next dozen-plus years. This game was eons better than Nintendo’s Ice Hockey, which had previously been the hockey video game, famous for allowing the game player to pick his or her combination of fat player/medium player/thin player in his line. Nowadays, video games are so advanced that consumers are hard pressed to be truly blown away by any single release (the only recent exception I can think of is the aforementioned Grand Theft Auto series). But NHLPA Hockey ’93 introduced actual NHL teams and players, with much better graphics and increased maneuverability. When it was released, it truly was a watershed moment for video game enthusiasts like myself, probably the greatest day of my life to that point.**

  I won’t get into the irony of a bunch of Puerto Ricans playing and loving a hockey video game—that’s like my white friends and I getting really into a video game called Prison Yard: Fight for Survival—but they were very serious about it. Petey and I entered Ricky’s house as two guys were playing Hockey ’93, and to a chubby twelve-year-old white kid like myself, it was an intimidating scene. Hell, to a chubby twenty-nine-year-old white guy it would be an intimidating scene. Since it was summer, every guy in the house had his shirt off, showing off both his flashy gold chains and his tattoos, the latter of which could be divided into two categories: a) female names or b) Jesus. The room was cloudy with smoke, a little tobacco, a little pot. Everybody was drinking beer while watching the two players on the Sega Genesis. I stood quietly next to Petey. No one even noticed I was there. If they did, they certainly didn’t question it.

  I was introduced to Ricky, the proprietor of the establishment. Ricky had a broad, welcoming smile and fingers the size of sausage links. With his easygoing manner, he could have been nicknamed “The Mayor.” What was different about Ricky was that unlike the rest of the Puerto Ricans, he was wearing a shirt, probably because he was ginormously fat. For this reason I liked him—I was afraid that it might be a house rule that everyone had to take their shirt off. But despite our chubby kinship and his friendliness, I still wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

  Ricky turned to Petey after saying hello to me and the two of them started talking gambling shop. I watched the two guys playing Hockey ’93 to see what they were all about. Like real sports, in sports video games you can gather what an opponent is capable of doing, his inclinations, his strengths, and his weaknesses, by watching him. Truth be told, both of these guys sucked. Though one was beating the other handily, they both played the same way—selfishly. They kept going for the big check or the big breakaway goal, never passing the puck. Though five guys per team were on the ice, it was like a constant game of one-on-one. Screech, Jimmy, and Chuckie played this way, too. Sports video games lend themselves to this type of play. They are primarily exercises in role playing, as the user pretends to be the star of the team. In the name of glory, sound play is compromised for the exciting goal, the long touchdown pass, or the high-flying dunk. But while this type of play is certainly entertaining, it doesn’t always lead to a victory.

  In no other sports video game is sound play more abandoned than in hockey. This is understandable, since there’s not much cooler in the video game realm then scoring a goal on a breakaway or crushing your opponent with a monster check against the boards. But a seasoned video game vet like me knew this type of play was flawed and very easy to exploit. Above all else, patience is key in hockey, and I used my patience and their lack of it to my advantage. While an opponent would recklessly send player after player at me, I would try to move the puck around as quickly as possible. All the movement on his team’s behalf would eventually create an open shooting lane and then—bam! That’s when I would unleash a one-timer, a shot made in hockey just as the pass from a teammate arrives in front of you.* If done properly, it rarely fails to score a goal in video games. And you can bet that I almost always did it properly.

  Even though I knew their style of play, since my friends played the same way, I was nervous as I sat down to start. I drew Francisco (called Franky), the victor of the game I had watched. Franky was wearing a loose-fitting tank top, exposing his muscles, which were not insignificant. I sat to his left and could see that his left pec read like a scroll of papyrus, listing names of people, men and women, who I presumed were close to his heart. Despite this seemingly sensitive body art, Franky was a total dick to me. I’m not sure why a twenty-year-old shirtless Puerto Rican guy would feel the need to talk shit to a kid, but he started into me as soon as I sat down. My favorite of his barbs was that since I wasn’t “jacked” (muscular), I would suck at the game. Because scientists have long noted the correlation between physical fitness and video game ability. Fucking asshole.

  But I didn’t listen to his chatter and it was extra special for me when I had the opportunity to embarrass him in front of his friends, running up goal after goal as Petey screamed in the background, “I told you! I told you!” I don’t remember much of the game; it was just a beating, plain and simple. Franky’s buddies started breaking his balls about how he was getting busted up by a kid, and they were cheering me on, calling for more blood, as the familiar sound of the goal siren blared from the television. At the end of the game, Franky sulked away without looking back at me. After I won that game, I played another. My next opponent was much nicer and didn’t talk shit to me, but I still dispatched him easily. All told I played four games, going 4-0. Cómo hace ese gusto, bitches?

  While this was arguably the greatest athletic achievement of my life, Petey was also having a ball, laughing it up each time I scored and after each victory. I’m not sure what he enjoyed more about that night, that I was winning or that he was making money. He had made a series of bets on the games and was raking in the cash after each win. I don’t know how much he won that evening, but I did get a cut of the winnings, a nice fat twenty-dollar bill. And I mean this sincerely. Twenty dollars for playing four video games was not a bad day’s work for me, almost a week’s salary delivering papers. I could get used to this.

  But before I had to concern myself with reporting this new income stream to the IRS, our arrangement fell apart. I only returned to Little Puerto Rico two more times, getting twenty bucks for each visit. Prior to entering Ricky’s house the second time, Petey pulled me aside and gave me a little pep talk. “I want you to really beat the fuck out of them. Score as many goals as you can.” I guess the spreads were increasing with each victory. The results were the same on both return trips: big victories. After the third visit, I was in Petey’s house and asked him when we’d be heading back to Little Puerto Rico. He said, “Nah, we ain’t going back no more,” adding, “But good job…jerk-off” and handing me another twenty.

  That was as close to a seal of approval that one could get from Petey and I happily accepted it. I put the money in my pocket and headed up to Screech’s room to discuss the news of the day. I was feeling down that our little adventure was over, but I knew it was only a matter of time before another came along.

  The Scotch bonnet pepper is native to Jamaica and Belize. The pepper, which is about the size and shape of a below-average adult male’s tightened scrotum, changes colors as it ripens, going from green to yellow to orange to red. But don’t let its funny shape and pretty colors fool you—it is a badass motherfucker.

  What makes a pepper hot is the amount of capsaicin it contains. Capsaicin is the nasty lil’ chemical that makes you feel like your lips, tongue, and mouth are on fire when you have that first “nuclear” buffalo wing. While most people rely on the counter girl at their local chicken place or the big board hanging behind her when deciding on how hot they want their wings (mild–medium–hot–nuclear–the universe collapses onto itself and life ceases to exist for the remainder of eternity, etc.), there exists a scientific construct used to measure the heat of peppers: the Scoville scale. According to Wikipedia*:

  [The Scoville scale]
is named after Wilbur Scoville, who developed the Scoville Organoleptic Test in 1912. As originally devised, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until the “heat” is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable even undiluted.

  An example to help explain. Your typical jalapeño is in the bottom third of the Scoville ladder, coming in at 2,500 to 8,000 units. As Wikipedia points out, that means that its extract has to be diluted 2,500–8,000-fold before the capsaicin, the heat of the pepper, can no longer be tasted. Conversely, our friend the Scotch bonnet is near the top of the Scoville ladder, measuring anywhere between 100,000 and 325,000 Scoville units. Therefore, it needs to be diluted up to 325,000-fold before you can’t feel its heat. That’s some serious fire.*

  How a case of these peppers ended up in Petey’s hands is unknown. One could buy them at a gourmet grocery store, but there were no gourmet grocery stores on Second Street. And I don’t think Petey grabbed some on a trip into Center City, Philadelphia’s downtown, while picking up the ingredients for his famous red wine reduction, since I never saw Petey actually make anything, although once I did see him microwave a pack of cigarettes when he was drunk after an Eagles game. Most likely, some came in “through longshore.” This means that a ship carrying the peppers docked on a port on the Delaware River. I can see it now: a produce ship from South America (or wherever the hell Belize is) comes in and the crew tells the local longshoremen about the legend of Scotch bonnet, La Pimienta del Diablo. After getting a complimentary case of the peppers,* one neighborhood guy thinks to himself, “I know a guy who’d have some fun with these…” And once Petey got a hold of the Scotch bonnets, in his infinite mischievous wisdom he devised a contest. The word quickly spread through the neighborhood. Anyone who could eat the peppers and go an allotted time (thirty seconds, sixty seconds, etc.) without drinking anything would get cash. Simple as that.