Man of the Year

by Lou Cove

  “Who’s the trash mouth now?” I ask, scrambling to my feet to face down the little shit. “And you’re a girl … I think,” I say to The Thing looming over me, arms thick, and covered with an unnatural amount of hair and a skin eruption that isn’t quite acne.

  Uli grabs my pant leg. “He’s just kidding,” he says. “He’s from New York.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve seen him. You should kick this cocksuckah’s ass!” Minnie says, pointing at me.

  “Charlene,” Uli tries to intervene again. What’s his problem?

  “Shut up,” Charlene says, low.

  “Seriously,” I chime in. “She’s a stupid…” the word girl flies somewhere up over the Clifton crypt, along with the part of my tongue I just bit off. My body spins to follow my jaw, my feet fly out from under me, and I hit the dirt at the door of the tomb, breathless as whoever’s left inside there.

  “Charlene! Quit it!” Uli’s up and yelling. Minnie grabs my feet and starts dragging me back away from the crypt so I’m an easier target for The Thing, whose arm is drawn back, fist balled, ready for strike two.

  “Did you … Did you hit me?” I still can’t believe it. My tongue, raw and wet, tastes like chicken soup.

  “I’m gonna hit you again, you fahkin’ fag.”

  She grabs my sweater as I scramble up and away. I feel it rip before I duck through the wrought-iron fence and start running like hell through the schoolyard, spitting blood.

  “Kick his ass!” Minnie shrieks. My legs wobble under me and my head seems to be wobbling, too. Whether it’s a concussion or simply bad judgment that led me up the service ramp at the back of the school, it doesn’t matter. The heavy door is padlocked and chained and the drop over the side, though I’m prepared to take it, makes me pause just long enough for Minnie and The Thing to catch up and corner me.

  And now the pummeling really begins.

  “Kick him in the balls! Kick him in the balls!” Minnie cheers. I curl up, huddle against the attack, open my eyes and see the little one perched on the rusty railing, bouncing up and down and smiling that fucking smile again. There’s no way I’m going to hurt The Thing—I can’t get away from her thundering bombshells—but if I break away, even for a second, I am going to knock that puny freakin’—Uggghhhh!

  She kicks just above my stomach, my back arches, exposing me to her big right meatfist, which doesn’t hesitate. She crushes my balls with one pound.

  “GetthefuckoffhimCharlene!” Uli issues a battle cry. From my resting place in the grit of the concrete platform I look up to see him riding The Thing, fists flailing, raining down on her as she spins. Minnie jumps away before The Thing smashes Uli against the railing, and uses the opportunity to try and kick me in my screaming nuts, but I grab Minnie’s foot and she goes down lightly.

  “Run, Lou! Run!” Uli’s holding on, tearing hair, punching at her ears, bucking the bronco. I stagger down the ramp. “Run!” Uli yells again and I do. At the corner of Winthrop and Broad I look back over my shoulder to see him racing toward me. Minnie and The Thing howl at the edge of the cemetery, but stop. I start running again and don’t stop until we’re back at my house.

  *

  “Who the hell was she?” I ask, unable to breathe, wanting to cry.

  “Charlene Smutch.”

  “How do you know that freak?” I ask, but Uli’s looking away. “And that little runt. Is that her sister?” I puff on my inhaler and the mist stings the wounds in my mouth, but my lungs open at last.

  “No, they’re best friends. Same age, actually.”

  “No way.”

  “I know.”

  I survey my torn tongue in the rusty bathroom mirror of the third-floor guest room. Deli meat. And my balls. My balls. My balls.

  “She’s not so bad. She just comes from a bad home.”

  I turn to him, exasperated. I might cry, but I won’t. “Are you kidding me? She’s a psycho. She’s a psycho mutant.”

  “She wasn’t always like that. I’ve known her since second grade.”

  “How big was she back then? Did she have a beard?” I try to find my edge. Uli sniffs and looks away. His neck has deep red scratches on both sides from where The Thing tried to claw him. “Seriously. Look what she did to you. I can’t believe … A girl…” The pain in my testicles shifts from hammering to humming and a deeper, more lasting kind of mortified agony emerges.

  “We used to be friends. She didn’t look like that. She was kinda pretty, in a way. I mean, she was pretty. More nice.”

  Anger replaces humiliation and it’s empowering, even if I know in my core I am more powerless and wimpier than I ever realized. “More nice? What the hell are you talking about? She’s like The Rhino on gamma rays. Or The Blob. Or Kingpin…”

  “Can we just not talk about it anymore?”

  I take off my shirt and count the rising bruises in the mirror. “Hey, I don’t want to talk about it at all. I don’t want to talk about it ever. I just got beat up by a giant girl. You know, New York is dangerous, but we don’t have those walking around. I look out for muggers and rapers and stuff. You can spot those ones. But why are you defending her?”

  “I defended you!” Uli’s voice cracks in a weird way. I turn back to him.

  “I know,” I deflate. “I just. What the fuck?”

  “We kissed,” Uli whispers.

  “You kissed?” Silence. “You kissed that? That?”

  “She was pretty. She changed later, but back then she was nice. She—”

  “You kissed The Thing.” I laugh helplessly. It hurts. Oh, it hurts.

  “I’m glad you think it’s funny.” He stands up and starts to leave.

  “Hey, stay. I’m sorry.” He sits back down. “And thanks for helping me out. She was going to kill me.”

  “I know.”

  I don’t know what hurts more: the image of Uli kissing The Thing or the memory of The Thing kicking my ass. How would it feel, to pummel the first girl you kissed? To ride her bronco, feel her Ben Grimm brawn against your chest and try to hold back those tree trunks from pounding on your new best friend?

  “Wanna sleep over?” I ask. Uli nods, and that giddy grin surfaces again.

  *

  Uli’s still beaming through my family’s dinner conversation. It’s embarrassing. I hurt in every part of my body, but he just smiles, bounces his knee nervously under the table next to me, hoots loudly whenever Papa says something, funny or not. Amanda keeps her eyes on Uli the whole time but he doesn’t seem to notice her. He’s focused on Papa’s mustache, the bow tie he’s loosened but not shed, and his perpetual, driving conversation.

  “Let’s talk music,” Papa declares. “Uli, what’s your taste?”

  “I like Blondie.”

  “I like Blondie, too,” Papa says. “‘Heart of Glass,’ right?”

  “Uh huh,” Uli nods, smiling so his lips curl back until he’s all gums. “I can’t believe you know that. My dad wouldn’t know that. That is so basil.”

  “What does basil have to do with anything?” Papa asks, staring out the window.

  I giggle, then wince. Every place The Thing punched me feels like it’s being punched all over again, from the inside out.

  “What’s wrong?” Mama asks.

  “Nothing.”

  Papa zooms in now, scanning me intently. Why does he choose tonight of all nights to pay attention? “You have a stomachache?”

  I nod, not wanting to say a word. If Howie were here, I could tell him. He knows all about getting whacked, and he wouldn’t judge me for it. Or for who did it to me.

  “You’ve been talking funny,” Papa presses. “And you look swollen. What’s happening to your face?”

  Uli’s smile evaporates. I stare at my plate.

  “They got in a fight,” Amanda says coyly before I can fabricate a response. “I heard them talking.” She looks away from me, knowing well the penalty for spying.

  “What fight?” Mama asks. “We don’t fight.”

  “I
hope you won, at least?” Papa says.

  My mind is racing. I can’t make anything up. Uli hammers his knuckles into my thigh under the table and it hurts like the purple in the core of my bruise—but not like the other hurt welling up fast again. That is the deeper pain of humiliation. And then I can’t help it and I start to cry right there at the table, right into my stupid peas.

  “We got beat up,” I choke. “We got beat up…” I start again, looking at Papa’s face. He looks back with concern, and anticipation. “By a girl.”

  Amanda cackles and I burn to murder her, but the confession is out and the oozing puss of exposed feelings eclipses my anger.

  “We didn’t start it!” Uli jumps in. “She wanted to kill us.”

  “I couldn’t get away,” I blubber. “She was so big, and she kept holding me down and punching me. I wish we never moved here. I hate it here. I hate it.”

  “OK, OK,” Papa interrupts, holding up his hands. He’s heard enough. “Look, this happens. You don’t have to feel bad about it. I know what it feels like to get beat up. Everyone does. You can’t beat yourself up after, understand? But you can do something different the next time.” He leans toward me and puts a hand on my shoulder, leveling his gaze in a way that always precedes an important disclosure of fatherly knowledge. So rare, and so precious. If it takes getting smashed in the testicles to earn this, I may be willing to do it again. I look at Papa, nodding, waiting. Uli is wide-eyed.

  “The next time, you need to defend yourself, you understand?” I nod again.

  “Peter,” Mama tries to intervene, a steady voice of logic and calculation, not emotion. But Papa holds up a hand.

  “The next time,” he says softly, looking me directly in the eyes, “you kick her in the cunt. And then you run.”

  “Peter!”

  “What’s a cunt?” David asks.

  “Oh, God,” Mama drops her head.

  “You get it?” Papa beseeches us and we nod. “You get it?” He presses and I feel protected, like I’ve always wanted. Just when I think I don’t need him anymore, he proves me wrong again. I need him so much.

  “So, Uli,” Papa continues over the din, “is the girl Blondie or is the band Blondie?”

  New Traditions

  The last day before Christmas break, after weeks of Penny insisting, I finally bring a copy of Howie’s issue of Playgirl to school. We huddle in a gamy old stall in the boys’ room and flip to the center.

  Maybe this was a bad idea. Even clothed, I can see the soft folds of my stomach, the absence of chest or arm or pit hair. Only a few sprouts down below, but they don’t constitute pubes exactly. They’re more like sprinkles (in Salem, they call them Jimmies). Jimmies in my jammies, in other words, and not much else. Hard to imagine anyone wanting a centerfold of this. And here is Penny, spending far longer than I would like, lingering over the pictures of Howie in the buff.

  “I didn’t realize he was so … muscly,” she says softly, slender fingers tracing his image, breath held. “You just told me he was a hippie. I was thinking of something different.”

  “Well, he … you know, he was working out a lot. It’s because of my dad, actually.”

  “Uhhhh … I’ve seen your dad. Your dad’s not built like this.” More importantly, I’m not built like this. Next to Howie, I might as well be Nusselballs.

  “No, but he inspired him,” I say, playing the passion card. “He convinced him to work harder on his body because … Anyway, you know, they grease you up for the pictures, too, so it makes you look more muscly than you really are. If he was here right now he wouldn’t look like this.”

  She nods, flipping back to the beginning of Howie’s section.

  I reach gently for the magazine. “We probably need to go back to class.”

  “He almost looks like Leif, don’t you think? The way they did his hair? Can I keep this one?”

  “Is there a girl in here?” a boy asks, from the urinals outside.

  We stop talking. Penny grabs my hand and squeezes, smiling brilliantly. My skin burns hotter, and I shift closer to her on the wobbly toilet seat. She stands up and sits back down on my lap, eviscerating all the bad feelings that had begun to creep into the stall with us. She lifts my hand to her mouth, bites my index finger in mock anxiety. I lean in to her, trying to shift in such a way that our chests might touch. The witch shop incense smell draws me to the nape of her neck and I try to kiss the pulsing bit of her throat that moves as she swallows and pulls back, shaking her head slowly and smiling, pressing a finger to my lips.

  “Hello?” the kid calls again. He’s debating whether or not to pee. After a long pause he walks out without doing any business.

  “Why not?” I ask. “I don’t like anyone else but you.”

  “Gretchen?”

  “Ugh. She’s always following me around and showing up at my house without asking. And she talks like—”

  “What about the girls from New York?” she asks, a little pout forming on her lips. “They’re much better than I am.”

  “I don’t live in New York anymore. And besides, I didn’t like anyone there. I like you. I think we should be boyfriend and girlfriend.” There. I said it.

  “I don’t know. You’re kind of my best friend. I don’t want to mess everything up.”

  “Just kiss me and see. Just try. Once.” Her face broadens, open to possibility.

  Penny leans forward, bringing her face as close as possible to mine, Bubblicious breath and sandalwood filling my nose. “You know what the thing is about boyfriends and girlfriends?” she asks, searching my face.

  “No,” I whisper.

  “They don’t last.” And she pulls back, the spell broken. “But friends last forever. Everybody else could just disappear for all I care, as long as we can still be friends.”

  Ugh. The December chill seeps back into the narrow wooden cubicle that, only a moment ago, had been as hot as the sun. It is that special Salem chill, the one that rides the sea wind and smells of headstone lichen and wet black cat.

  But she did say forever. I imagine myself in a loincloth, rifle in hand, and Penny clutching my chest as we ride a horse across the desert. Lady Liberty sinks in the distance, buried in the sand, but up ahead is a world all our own. Her rejection is a no with a maybe wrapped around it. I shake off the chill and try to keep the flicker alive. “We’ll always be best friends,” I promise. “Forever.”

  “Great,” Penny brightens, stands up from my lap, rolls the magazine into a tube, and wedges it into her back pocket. “I’ll give this back to you at the end of the day, OK?”

  When the bell rings, she’s nowhere to be found.

  *

  Bagels on Sunday and a Christmas tree for Hanukkah: this is the extent of traditions in the Cove household. Thankfully, the first of eight boring days happens to fall next Monday, Christmas Day, so we get to do presents then, like normal people. But the evening of The Thing turned out to be the start of an entirely new tradition: a secret Friday night ritual for Uli and me.

  Mama and Papa make the holiday party rounds, filling the void left for them when Howie and Carly left for Pittsburgh. I miss them. They hardly call, and when they do it’s brief, flecked with long-distance static and unfamiliar voices competing in the background. Meanwhile, my parents are making new friends in Salem: artists and judges, writers and priests. They host often, including a party they threw for the entire neighborhood and “anyone who can sled, ski, or snowshoe to our house” during a blizzard when the roads and schools were closed for days. We played all four sides of Saturday Night Fever over and over, all night long, while guests smoked cigars and joints and raised glasses of brown liquor on ice. There wasn’t anyone who hadn’t turned bleary-eyed and silly or just left by ten o’clock. And not many people left.

  As disruptive as this parade of strangers can be, I take some comfort in living in the place that people think of when they want to shuck their calloused Salem shells. And Papa is happy to provide. The more, the mer
rier he is. Spike the punch bowl and dance.

  When my parents do look elsewhere for their good times, they want to put me in charge to save money on sitters. I call Uli as soon as they leave, move the clock in the kitchen ahead to persuade Amanda and David to go to bed extra early, swipe a pinch of weed from the cigar box in my parents’ closet, and let the ritual commence.

  When we stuff the towel under my bedroom door and light the first bowl, I feel an unfamiliar sense of routine and belonging.

  For this round, Uli arrives early with five new records. I pull five of my own. We agree on a playlist, check the Salem Evening News listings to see if the TV lineup has changed and who the guests are on Donny & Marie (George Burns, Chubby Checker, and Evel Knievel) and on Johnny Carson (Johnny Mathis and Mel Brooks), divvy up the pile of porno mags Howie left behind and stack them on our respective bunks, and position our respective cum rags for later use. Then we hit Steve’s Corner Store before dinner.

  We load up on Ding Dongs, Big Wheels, Fruit Pies, Fritos, Cheetos, Doodads, and one giant box of forbidden cereal apiece. I go Apple Jacks. Uli always frets over the big choice: Count Chocula or Boo Berry? We get a half gallon of milk each and spend the rest of our money (raided from the trench coats and cluttered purses in the hall downstairs) on comics.

  Steve busts us when we try to switch from browsing the twirly COMICS FOR ALL AGES wire rack to eyeing the adult titles behind the counter. He stops his habitual pencil drumming on the counter and yells at us before we’re close enough to make out anything more than the titles. And Steve never yells. But this time he’s waving a copy of the Salem Evening News wildly at us, open to a page with an article titled “Aid Sought in Smut War,” and shaking his head.

  “Cease and desist, junior jerk offs. This guy, Connelly? Acting city marshal?” Steve smacks the article with the back of his hand, “‘I’m doing an “out-and-out crackdown on smut,”’ he says. Cops! Like that’s the big problem we got in this town. Not robberies. Not gangs. Skin flicks and Hustlers. You know how much of my business is girlie mags?”

  We shake our heads.

  “Enough that I ain’t gonna lose my license ’cause you horny wharf rats get me hung out to dry. This guy’s a crusader. And nobody likes a crusader. Especially a Salem crusader.”