Pins: A Novel

by Jim Provenzano

  When summers came, he saw stories about the parades, with rainbow everything, like the DNA model in Coach Cleshun’s classroom, balloon links, floating skyward, hopeful and stupid.

  One thing didn’t confuse him; the number, one in ten. That meant there was somebody else like him in the gym, at that moment, another Joseph Nicci on every team, with another Dink, Bennie, everybody. He just couldn’t see which one. Why couldn’t it be like Ash Wednesday when all the Catholic kids had smudges on their foreheads, like a club?

  A voice over the loudspeakers: “All one-twenty-six, Cadet, please report.”

  “What’s the plan, Mister Nicci?” Cleshun asked, rubbing Joey’s arms.

  “I’m gonna try a single into a takedown.”

  “Try?” Cleshun switched to Yoda voice. His hands patted Joey’s back. “There is no try. There is do or not do.”

  “Right,” Joey smirked.

  Coach slapped his ass.

  Joey’s eyes got distracted by Pauly’s little tattoo, or maybe his equally cartoon-like grin as he stood out on the mat, waiting.

  Paul E. Coyote crouched, arms in the perfect stance. His yellow singlet with black stripes displayed his angles and bulges to perfection. He wore kneepads, which could have meant an injury, but Joey wouldn’t take advantage of that. The moment after the whistle, Pauly dove between Joey’s legs, grabbed his thigh. Joey went down.

  Not a good sign, he thought. He struggled through a difficult escape, grabbed around to catch Pauly’s arm as the two locked shoulders, fighting for top position. They ended up hip to hip, Pauly sitting almost on top of Joey, trying to get Joey over, but he resisted. They’d both become stronger since their bout the previous year. They kept surprising each other.

  Joey tugged his way to his stomach, he the turtle this time, took a breather while Pauly attempted to pry him over. His shoulders? Erg. His head? No. His hips? No. He released Joey just long enough for him to scoot out from under him to standing.

  Flubbing a half-assed fireman’s throw, which should have landed Pauly on his shoulders, Joey scrambled to get his hips over, or his arm around Pauly’s neck. He at least got Pauly down, got his turn on top. It felt good to be there, just consider his options, the hours of the clock, but Coach Cleshun yelled alongside Fiasole. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, until Fiasole bumped his hips up against Cleshun, showing him. He caught an image outside the circle: Assistant Coach Fiasole’s T-shirt: ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN COACHES.

  Behind him he heard Bennie yelling, “Getcher leg out!”

  Joey crossed his legs, spreading them out wide for support, his hip becoming the third point of his tripod as he shoved into Pauly’s ribs. Keeping his grip on Pauly’s shoulders, he shoved again, slowly, methodically. Pauly resisted, grabbing Joey’s neck. Joey wrapped his forearm around Pauly and yanked, desperately. He almost got him, but Pauly hip-heisted, forcing Joey’s head down, closer to his shoulder, to that funny tattoo, the sharp smell of his armpit.

  The whistle blew. End of period.

  The two boys rose. Joey retreated toward his coaches, sucking in breath. Fiasole gritted his teeth, showed a hand lock, what Joey had tried to do. Coach Cleshun said, “Keep yer butt down. Watch his hips.”

  Joey grabbed the back of his thigh, which began to throb from some shove or strain. When did that happen, he wondered. He didn’t have time to think about that. Choose: which position? He signaled neutral, forgetting to check what Cleshun was signaling, glanced back once, didn’t see any look of disapproval.

  They faced off again, but this time Joey went for the double leg. Pauly jumped back. Joey only got one ankle, but he got a takedown, refusing to let go. He’s hairy down there, just like me, Joey thought with a sliver of pleasure, noticing a few blue-green thigh bruises Pauly must have gotten from previous matches or practices.

  Before lunging further up Pauly’s body to go for a cross-face, they were out of the mat. The ref stopped them to come back to center.

  Pauly dropped down to bottom position. Joey placed his hands on Pauly’s back, ready. He expected the quick escape, but he got hold of Pauly’s torso. They gripped, tugged, figuring each other out, panting, his heart jabbing against his ribs, his thigh jolting with shards of pain.

  There weren’t any more ace moves, no outstanding throws. They were equally matched and exhausted. Neither could overpower the other. Their indecision, their stalemate, seemed to bore the onlookers, who were screaming about some other match beside them, maybe one of the Shivers. Joey concentrated on thinking of an escape, just getting through the period, then just breathing.

  Pauly’s body pressing down the length of Joey’s, twisting sideways around Joey’s waist, gripping, torquing, his other hand forcing Joey’s head down to the mat sideways. Joey’s nose flattened against the mat. Pauly’s hips ground against his back. Drips of Pauly’s sweat fell onto Joey’s neck as Pauly pried him –using his own arm, slowly, almost tearing a few shoulder muscles– open like a clam.

  Like the other boys, he tried to be nonchalant about being up on the winner’s stand, the little steps with 1st, 2nd and 3rd painted below their levels. He’d put his ice bag away, but his shoulder still felt cold.

  Joey watched a moment as Pauly, at Second, raised his hand. Dink’s father stood right in front, videotaping it. Joey realized he felt glad he could at least see a tape of Pauly anytime he wanted, if he could just convince his dad to add a working VCR to the pile of necessities.

  While he shook hands with some kid from Wayne, then Pauly, he heard scattered applause. “Good match, man,” Joey said.

  “You too.” Pauly jumped down, but then some guy waved him back, they all posed again.

  Stepping down, Pauly gave Joey a pat on the back. “See ya next time, huh?”

  “Sure.” As he walked off, Joey muttered to himself, “When?”

  Kids and parents milled about, eager to go home. They knew who’d won. It was no surprise. People cheered for the team scores. Little Falls came in fourth. This was just a formality. Besides, getting wins like these were similar to the results board; lateral. It was moving on, not up.

  Even so, he received his small ribbon for Third Place, wrapped it in his empty sandwich bag, just to make sure it wouldn’t get wet or smelly from his wrestling clothes. He would put it with the other awards, on the shelf in his room, where his mother sometimes dusted, keeping his little shrine to himself clean. He took a breath in as the final awards, hubbub of team points, best player, other trophies went to other boys.

  He took it in, the humming, laughing families trundling down bleachers, the hugs, the last of the Gatorade. Caught in a bar of light that angled through the upper windows of the gymnasium, even floating dust shimmered like particles of gold.

  7

  “My stomach is eating itself.”

  Joey received merely a scowl from Dink, who’d warned him about attempting humor without trained supervision.

  Driven to a nice restaurant in Fair Lawn, Mr. Khors kept trying to cheer up his pouting son. It wasn’t working. Dink’s father kept talking while Dink didn’t, so Mr. Khors quizzed Joey about school, about wrestling, what his plans were.

  “College, maybe,” Joey shrugged.

  “Maybe? Smart kid like you? You could get a scholarship.”

  “Yeah. Coach says a few schools are good for that. Trenton’s top in the division.”

  “So, you hope to get a scholarship?”

  “Yeah, maybe in art if not for wrestling, but if not, then Rutgers or Montclair. Course my mom wants me to go to Montclair so I’ll be close to home.”

  Plane trips. Hotel rooms. Outta here.

  “Rutgers is a fine school. Lovely campus.”

  “You went there?”

  “Um, Columbia, actually, but I visited. Some protest, I think. Back in my radical days.”

  “Dad, he doesn’t wanna hear about that,” Dink muttered.

  “He speaks.”

  Joey felt awkward, caught with Dink on one side, his fathe
r on the other. Mr. Khors let it go, but the silence seemed too much for him. He kept talking.

  “Got any girlfriends? Come to the matches to see you guys compete?”

  Around the restaurant, passing waitresses whooshed by. Old people huddled in booths. Joey searched for an excuse, another lie.

  He considered Chrissie and Kimberly, the faithful Mat Maids. They were about the only girls who ever came to a match, if any. Chrissie seemed sweet enough. Joey couldn’t understand why was she so cheerful all the time. Kimberly seemed more genuinely into the sport, tolerated such cheerfulness with a sense of humor. Maybe he could date her. She didn’t seem like she’d expect much.

  “In my day all the girls went for jocks, didn’t even look at geeks like me, of course . . .”

  “Dad. We don’t date, okay?”

  Joey nearly spilled his soda at that. But then Dink said, “Girls don’t like guys who wrestle. They don’t get it.” Dink couldn’t have really meant it the way it sounded.

  “What about this Melissa girl? Your mother told me she’s very nice.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t believe everything she tells you.”

  “Okay then.” Mr. Khors put his napkin on his plate. Joey figured it meant dinner was over. He’d seen that in movies. He glanced at Mr. Khors, wondering if he and Dink would still be friends when they were Mr. Khors’s age.

  “I’m tired,” Dink said.

  “Why don’t you boys sit in the back when we go home, get some rest.”

  “And you sit up front like a chauffeur?”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  Mr. Khors went to pay the bill. Crumbs, spilled things, forks, napkins cluttered the table. Dink slouched in his chair. “I was beginning to wonder what you were here for.”

  Joey sunk the last bit of apple pie into a pool of melted ice cream. His belly felt like a bowling ball. His neck twinged with a sliver of pain. Every muscle had begun to stiffen. He had to pee again.

  “Hey, whyncha stay over?” Dink sat up.

  “What, your house?”

  “Naw, my dad’s.”

  “In Passaic?” Dink nodded. “I shoulda asked before.”

  “So? We can call ‘em. My dad’s got a car phone.”

  “No, my parents …He didn’t meet them yet.”

  “So?”

  “It’s–” A tightness blocked his throat. His head flooded with possibilities. Stay over. Would he and Dink sleep in the same bed?

  Joey knew he wouldn’t have a problem with the sex, if it happened. He knew it would be fun. But the afterward worried him. Would Dink treat him the same way he treated Anthony when he found out? Toss him away, ashamed, or bored after they’d done it?

  “It’s an Italian thing.”

  “What is?” Dink asked.

  “Your dad’s gotta meet my parents.” Why resist? Why be so scared? If he’d known that morning that Dink would ask him this wonderful thing, that this would be the night, maybe he would have asked Mr. Khors inside to meet his dad, gotten approval, received some shred of the respect that straight kids who dated got to have, some measure of allowance.

  But then Dink would have seen his mother in her bathrobe, his dad probably half-awake, looking like a slob. Maybe he was embarrassed by his parents. Dink’s dad turned his kid into a movie star with his video camera, but his own dad couldn’t even go to all his matches. That would change, his dad promised. “Besides,” he lied. “I gotta go to Mass in the morning.”

  “You still go to Mass?” Dink asked, amazed.

  “Well, yeah,” he lied again. He’d actually skipped a few weeks.

  Dink looked like he wanted to say “Why?” but instead just sighed, “Oh well, that’s okay.”

  “Sorry.”

  Mr. Khors returned, pocketing his wallet, a toothpick in his mouth. “You boys ready to rock?”

  Once they got on I-60, the drowse of the big meal settled in. Mr. Khors turned the radio down low, soft music, violins.

  Dink spoke softly, inches from Joey’s ear. “Hey, what was it like in Newark? Were the brothers awful?”

  “No, they were okay.”

  “Yeah. They were pretty good here,” Dink said as he flipped the lock button with his foot. His other thigh pressed against Joey’s. “Until we left.”

  “Huh?”

  Dink mouthed the word so his father couldn’t hear up front. Di-vorce.

  “Oh.”

  He wasn’t sure if Dink meant they quit going to church afterward, or if they quit being Catholic because his parents got divorced. He didn’t want to ask. He could feel Mr. Khors listening through the violin music.

  “So, what’s your confirmation name?” Joey whispered.

  “Nicholas.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. Mine’s Sebastian.”

  “I know. That card is so cool, the way he’s tied to a tree with the arrows in him.”

  “Actually he didn’t die from them. That was later.”

  “Still, it’s cool. Gothic.”

  He never thought of St. Sebastian as cool. Maybe he was, if Dink said so.

  The dinner in his belly, the soft music, the soreness of getting through seven hours of on-again, off-again exertion in a gym full of jocks, the dream of sleeping with Dink hovering sometime soon finally hit. The boys fell silent.

  The rhythm of the highway bumped under the wheels. Dink began to nod off. Joey felt his head fall, jerk up slowly a few times before he scooted over closer, let Dink’s head rest on his shoulder. Dink nudged him, moving in tighter, until they were touching all along their bodies. An erection crept up, subsided. Otherwise, Joey didn’t move.

  Mr. Khors glanced back once through the mirror with something Joey read as approval. He prayed for it.

  He closed his eyes, feeling Dink’s breath on his neck, Dink’s nose occasionally grazing his earlobe, Dink’s arm reaching closer on his thigh, Joey not at all minding. He thought about how his parents spent every night together, no matter what; his dad’s snoring, his mom’s health problems, being pregnant. They always slept together, always.

  8

  When Joey strained his hamstring some guys called him a wuss, wimp, the usual stuff.

  Injuries didn’t fit into “paramilitary” training. If you were sidelined, go home. Don’t hang around here. Fortunately, Assistant Coach Fiasole wasn’t paramilitary, and recommended Joey take a day off.

  He didn’t mind staying at home, except for his mom, who started up about him “hurting his young body like that,” as if she had proof that wrestling wasn’t good for him.

  After doting on him for a bit, she instructed him to stir the sauce at least once, “if you can manage to get up to the kitchen,” then took off to pick Sophia up from kindergarten. “Adios, amoebas,” he called out, tickled to be alone in the new house for the first time.

  After his mother left, he scarfed some leftover coffee. His pile of homework lay untouched on the dining room table since breakfast. Joey scanned the book. Math. Squiggles. Bars. Forget that. What would he use hypotenuse stuff for, except maybe in college? What would he do in college? What would he do after high school?

  He flipped through the channels.

  $100,000 Pyramid. “These are things associated with skiing.”

  Nine Broadcast Plaza. “What we are saying is that’s killing unborn babies and–”

  Home Shopping Channel. “I’m so glad you dialed in today. A big honk for you–”

  “–not fully clean unless you’re Zest-fully clean!”

  Sally Oprahue. Men. Stripping. Big muscled men with long hair stripping. He dug his hand into his sweat pants, grew hard in a few seconds, trying to finish off the moment a stripper ground his butt into the camera, did a half split on the stage floor. Joey spilled onto his hand as the show cut to a floor wax commercial.

  At school, once, Joey felt like a naked guy on a Greek vase.

  Mrs. Bridges the art teacher was a lot nicer than the prim old nun at St. Augustine’s who coveted paper as if it were mone
y. Mrs. Bridges wanted color, still lifes, figure studies, cartoons. “Experiment!” she announced.

  Sometimes kids got up on the big tables. Everyone would make a few jokes, but then get down to working, making the classmate’s form come to life on pencil and paper. So when Mrs. Bridges asked him to wear his singlet and shoes, he got teased for it, but it felt great with all the different versions of himself pinned up on a bulletin board for weeks.

  He lay on his carpeted bedroom floor, working on a few wrestling poses, positions he’d borrowed from the instruction books Coach Cleshun gave out. Mrs. Bridges said it was okay to “borrow” an image every now and then. He made the outlines, then decided to not draw the singlets.

  His pencil drew erections between the wrestlers’ legs. His eraser censored them. He used his own spit to smudge the lines, making the bodies seem to press out of the paper, sometimes even buckling out from the dampness.

  His drawing shoved safely away, images came tumbling into his head, interrupted by fascinated glances at his own cock. He felt so joyously lucky to have one right there on his own body.

  The remembered smells from practice came to him, then Coach Fiasole’s voice, softly, like the times he’d come in close, showing a move. Fiasole wasn’t married. Coach Cleshun had a wife, but no kids. That could mean something. He’d heard about married guys being gay or getting caught, then divorcing.

  He had to hold back just a few more moments, grabbed one arm around himself, licking, biting his tight biceps as if it were Dink’s or Bennie’s, then Dink’s again, then Paul E. Coyote’s legs, for a moment Dink’s father, a crazy image of himself as a little sperm, then Coach again, the guy in Return to the Blue Lagoon, then the kid who played Sara Gilbert’s boyfriend on Roseanne, but then back to Dink, it always came back to Dink, rolling with him, gripping, tangled up in him.

  He started up to what sounded like the garage door opening, but relaxed a moment, then got up to wash off. False alarm.