Still Pitching

by Michael Steinberg

  The kids who got on the bus after Beach 100th street were predominantly Irish and Italian Catholics. Most lived in dilapidated old wooden homes with two or sometimes three other families. The Blacks and Puerto Ricans lived in the city funded housing projects close to the El.

  A lot of the white guys belonged to street gangs like the South Arverne Boy’s Club and the Hammels’ Raiders. They took special classes like automotive shop and woodworking. Many were just biding their time until they turned sixteen and could legally quit school.

  We all knew better than to mess with them. Like the characters in The Amboy Dukes, they had slicked back DAs and wore the same uniform each day: black motorcycle jackets with upturned collars, tight black T-shirts with cigarette packs rolled up in the sleeves, Garrison belts and dungarees, or pegged pants with white stitches running down the sides, and black shit kickers (steel-toed boots with straps and buckles).

  The girls frequently came to school with curlers in their hair. They wore breast-hugging black sweaters, tight black wool skirts with slits down the side, black nylons with seams running down the back, and open-toed flats. Some had black cloth jackets with club names, like Pink Pussycats embroidered on the back. Most of them smoked and chewed gum.

  The greasers and their girlfriends sat in the back of the bus, their feet up on the seat backs, smoking and cursing loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  The school bus was a microcosm of the junior high social hierarchy—a pecking order that had even more sharply defined boundaries than those we’d established in grade school.

  Up front were the guys in the clique—who I now thought of as Archies and Reggies. They preened and held court with their Betty and Veronica girlfriends. The kids in the clique were clean-cut preppies. The boys—future class presidents and G.O. leaders—had VO-5-styled crew cuts, and they wore blue oxford button downs, khaki pants, and dirty white bucks. Their companions—would-be cheerleaders, baton twirlers, and boosters—were well-scrubbed, pony-tailed girls who dressed in starchy white blouses, plaid pleated skirts, and white bobby sox with saddle shoes.

  Sitting behind them was a most unusual group, comprised of four guys I thought of as “genteel greasers.” All four were from my grade school, and none of them were athletes, big brains, social movers, or even hardcore hoods.

  Their leader was Manny Angell—a ruggedly handsome Sephardic Jew whose father was rumored to be in the Jewish Mafia. Manny was tall, lean, and broad-shouldered, with a chiseled profile and a thick mane of dark, unruly hair. He had a brooding insolence that was reminiscent of a young Marlon Brando or the James Dean character in Rebel Without a Cause.

  Manny’s comrades—Stuie Issacs, Jerry Shapiro, Paul Goldman, and Larry Ramis—were always in some kind of trouble it seems. The buzz back in sixth grade was that Manny and Larry had already been to reform school. They’d got caught hot wiring other people’s cars and taking them for joy rides in the Riis Park parking lot. I also heard that all of them smoked reefers, and that Paul and Larry raced souped-up Harleys. But the most titillating rumors were the ones about Manny and Stuie “going all the way” with the rich high school girls from the Five Towns—an exclusive enclave of gated villages just across the Queens county line.

  I was thinking about those guys while I was reading The Amboy Dukes in the summer. Back in grade school, Manny and Stuie played punch ball with some of us. Both lived a few blocks away from me, so occasionally I’d walk to school with them.

  On the school bus, they had an air of defiance that bought them a kind of unspoken respect. The greasers, I noticed, never taunted them like they did everyone else. And the girls who hung around with the clique would steal furtive glances at them when their boyfriends weren’t looking.

  The most hapless group was the losers and outcasts. They had no choice but to sit near the back between Manny’s boys and the greasers. Poor Eli Rubinstein and Bernard Schoenberg still had Vitalis-trained hair and wore blue or brown gabardine pants and Buster Brown shoes. The girls, Stephanie Sterner and Francine Leibler, were both overweight and had oily skin and acne. They wore grey felt poodle skirts to school. At dances and make-out parties they’d always wind up doing the Lindy Hop with each other.

  The greasers and their “gun molls” taunted the two guys unmercifully, sometimes calling them “kikes” and “dirty Jews.” I felt sorry for them, and yet, like everyone else, I kept my distance.

  Where did I belong in this deviant hierarchy? As ambivalent as I felt about the clique, I still held out hope that those guys would someday warm up to me. I sat right behind them on the bus, listened in on their conversations, and tried to put in my two cents worth every so often. But not one of them went out of his way to include me in the group’s activities—either the Friday night make-out parties or the after school pick-up basketball games in Frank Pearlman’s driveway. The snubs were painful, of course. Yet the more indifferent they were toward me, the more I courted their approval. Whenever I asked myself why I was so desperate for their attention, all I had to do is look at the circle of popular girls and guys who were also vying for their attention.

  I’d been at P.S. 44 for less than two weeks, and already I was an invisible nobody. Writing the sports column and playing on the sixth grade softball team were the only things that had brought me any recognition. But even those possibilities were closed. The junior high newspaper had been disbanded a year ago. Lack of interest, I was told. I thought about trying to enlist some help to revive the school paper. I even posted a notice on the announcements bulletin board. No one responded.

  To my chagrin, the school also didn’t have the budget to support any competitive sports—football, basketball, or baseball. That left only softball in the spring. And according to those in the know, the school team was a virtual nonentity.

  Back in sixth grade I could share my misery with Peter or Mike. But since junior high began we’d all been drifting apart. We had different homerooms, class schedules, and teachers.

  Complaining to my parents wasn’t even an option. Because of unexpected setbacks, they’d been struggling to make ends meet. Three years before, during the summer when my grandmother died, my father and Hymie had a falling out. My grandfather then sold his share of the pharmacy to his nephews Abe, Sam, and Mickey Neiman, and moved in with my aunt Ruthie and her family. My parents assumed responsibility for the mortgage. Which meant that my mother had to work a half day at the pharmacy, while my father took a second job as a clothing salesman in a department store.

  I could feel the tension between them whenever I was home. My mother blamed my father for driving Hymie out. She also resented having to work. My father tried to explain that it was only a temporary setback. I felt embarrassed and sorry for them. But what could I do? I was too preoccupied with my own troubles. I’m sure I made matters worse by moping around the house all the time.

  To distract themselves from their hardships, every Wednesday night my mother played mahjong in the living room with her friends, while my father presided over the pinochle game in the smoke filled kitchen with the other husbands. On Saturday night the card games shifted over to the Platts’ house. What little spare time my parents had, they spent over at the West End Temple Men’s and Women’s Club. It seemed like they were moving in separate orbits.

  Lately I’d noticed that my mother had lost interest in reading, which left us little to talk about. My father and I had been growing apart ever since the summer, when he broke his leg sliding into second base. I remember the exact moment it happened. I heard the bone snap just as his foot jammed into the bag. When I ran out on the field, I saw the fractured bone protruding from his ankle. It made me sick to my stomach.

  After a slow, painful rehab, he quit playing. Then he stopped watching the Giant games on TV. Without baseball to talk about, we didn’t have a lot to say to one another.

  I couldn’t look to my brother for companionship. He was only seven. And as soon as school started, we weren’t playing street games anymore. That was abo
ut the only thing we had in common.

  So I began to brood and withdraw. After dinner, I’d retreat to my room to read or do homework. As a diversion, I listened to music. I wasn’t much of a Your Hit Parade fan. The Perry Comos, Guy Mitchells, Patti Pages, and Eddie Fishers seemed unexpressive and bland. The songs were too old-fashioned and sappy for my tastes.

  But after midnight, I’d listen under my pillow to the Al “Jazzbo” Collins show. The music’s soaring leaps and abrupt transitions, the unpredictable chord changes, the complex riffs and improv solos surprised and delighted me. Even the musicians’ names—Bird, Monk, Duke, and Diz, were personal and fraternal—like the nicknames of professional baseball players.

  The music conjured up images of a downtown Manhattan nether world—an arcane universe of smoky lounges and Bohemian Greenwich Village clubs where artists, musicians, and writers all congregated. It was an exotic, fascinating universe that I dreamed of being a part of someday.

  At best, I was a neophyte jazz buff. But knowing even a little bit about this music made me feel a bit like I did when I hobnobbed with the aficionados at Ebbets Field. Jazz lovers were a select aristocracy of sophisticated, informed hipsters who appreciated the music and who, on cue, could cite its history and invoke its dignitaries. The problem was that, aside from Peter, there was no one else I could share my enthusiasm with.

  The only class I looked forward to was Language Arts. The reason I was so taken with it was because of my teacher. Whenever Mr. Aaron lectured on an assigned book, he’d close his eyes and wave his hands around like an opera singer belting out an aria. I loved watching him get all cranked up about whatever novel we were reading at the moment. I knew exactly what it felt like to be so enthralled by something I’d read.

  Mr. Aaron’s freckles and buzz cut made him seem almost boyish looking. He was tall and wiry, and his shoulders were too wide in proportion to his slender frame. Danny Ocasio, the class clown, called him “the human coat hanger.” Two of the more savvy greasers, Martin Ackereizen and Vinnie Kay, poked fun at Mr. Aaron’s first name.

  “Oh Marvin, could you help me with my homework?” Ackereizen would say when Mr. Aaron was out of the room.

  But everyone—even the one-book boys—respected him. That was because he didn’t let you get away with anything. It didn’t matter who you were. If you cut class or didn’t do your homework, he’d take it off your grade. If you mouthed off or he caught you daydreaming, he’d write up a pink slip and send you down to assistant principal Sanders’s office.

  I too respected his tough, fair-minded ethic. It was like my father’s belief that you have to earn what you get. But Mr. Aaron wasn’t just a disciplinarian. During tests or grammar quizzes he’d walk around the room and put his hand on your shoulder. It was a disarming gesture. I also suspected that it was his way of checking to see that no one was cheating.

  Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were the first two books we read in seventh grade. I’d read both a few years earlier at home. But I was only nine then. This time I saw them in quite a different light—especially Huckleberry Finn.

  I identified with Huck’s struggles to be more like Tom Sawyer and his gang. It was like wanting to be part of Manny’s group. And I understood Huck’s ambivalence about trying to please his Aunt Polly and the Widow Watson while also wanting to be part of Tom’s mischievous gang. Though I didn’t fully grasp Huck’s moral dilemma, I still cheered his decision to help Jim escape from slavery. I was glad he’d subverted his guilty conscence, even if it meant that Huck would probably go to hell.

  Like me, Huck was a lonely outsider. And so I tried to emulate him. While we were reading the book, I had a daydream fantasy where Otis Smith, one of the poorest black kids in class, became my best friend, and I became his protector. I’d take him home for dinner, and we’d pal around at school. It was like having an imaginary companion who relied on me to be his advocate and ally.

  Mr. Aaron saw me as a model student. He was always praising my book reports and papers, which only made me want to work harder to please him. When he gave my Huck Finn paper back, he handed me a hardcover novel, The Catcher in the Rye. He suggested I read it and then write a personal response for extra credit.

  “If you liked Huck,” he told me, “You’ll really get with this Holden Caulfield character.”

  His gesture caught me off guard, the same way Mrs. Carlin’s had the year before, when she chose me to write the sports column. Both teachers had obviously seen something in me that each wanted to encourage. I’d disappointed Mrs. Carlin the year before. This time, I promised myself I’d follow through.

  Holden quickly became my new role model. He seemed to embody my own deepest yearnings. I understood his angst and self-imposed isolation, identified with his compassion for all the losers and outcasts, and shared his disdain for the “phonies.” For weeks, I went around imitating the hip, witty way he talked. I even wrote an unmailed fan letter to J. D. Salinger.

  Back then I idolized certain writers the same way I worshipped professional baseball players. They were Olympian gods whose powers sprang from some magical source that would always remain elusive to me. But it didn’t stop me from wanting to write. For my project, I did a series of Holden Caulfield knockoffs—short sketches that plumbed my deepest fears and secret prejudices. I wrote about dark thoughts and harsh, judgmental attitudes I harbored toward classmates, teachers, friends, my family, and myself. These were things I’d never fully acknowledged before.

  I felt strangely elated, even liberated by what I’d discovered. Yet when it came time to turn the paper in, I hesitated. Maybe, I’d revealed too much of myself. But Mr. Aaron, bless his heart, praised my candor. He even urged me to show the sketches to the school yearbook editors. I was flattered, but I wasn’t sure I could show anything this personal to strangers. Suppose they hated it? What if they wanted to publish it? Then everyone would know what I was thinking.

  I’d always been somewhat intrigued by Rita Caselli and Sarah Broomfield, the yearbook editors. I’d observed them in the halls and in the cafeteria talking to their Bohemian friends. Both were eighth graders who looked older and acted more sophisticated than any of the other girls. Both had dark, braided long hair, and they dressed like identical twins: loose fitting black cable knit sweaters, black wool scarves that hung down to their knees, baggy black skirts, black socks, and either black boots or Indian moccasins. Their faces were pale and washed out looking, and they never wore makeup or lipstick. They always looked like they’d stayed out all night at some jazz club, smoking reefers and drinking hard whiskey. I could imagine them five years from now studying literature at Mount Holyoke, Smith, or Radcliffe.

  Both girls seemed deliberately standoffish. If they deigned to talk at all, they’d speak with affected British accents. Their presence, to say the least, was unnerving. The girls in the clique referred to them as eggheads and bohos. In turn, the two characterized the popular girls as bourgeois conformists.

  Their pretentious airs put me off. But their pseudosophistication appealed to me. Whenever I’d see them in the cafeteria, they’d be hanging out with a small entourage of eighth grade girls who looked and dressed just like they did. I’d sometimes eavesdrop while they spoke in hushed, serious tones about the books they were reading and the hip musicians who were “gigging down in the West Village.” They’d shake their heads and sigh, as if they were privy to profound ideas and arcane theories that the rest of us were too obtuse to comprehend. They dropped words like abstruse, esoteric, and recondite like they were part of everyone’s normal conversation. For people who claimed to be nonconformists, it sure seemed that they dressed and acted a lot alike.

  I wasn’t “far-out” enough for this crowd. Yet, except for Peter Desimone, these girls were the only peers I’d encountered in seven years of school who even talked about books and writers. Moreover, their impressions of the clique were right on target—just like Holden’s knack for spotting the “phonies.” For a moment, I en
tertained the notion that perhaps they might even like my sketches.

  I knew where the yearbook office was. But I couldn’t just barge in there and say, “My teacher, Mr. Aaron, told me to give these to you.”

  The yearbook “office” was at far end of the third floor, right next to the fire escape. The room was a converted supply closet that reeked of stale cigarette smoke, Clorox, and coffee grinds.

  For all its grunginess, the place had kind of musty old bookstore charm about it. The chipped peeling walls were covered with black-and-white posters of writers from the ‘20s and ‘30s: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Steinbeck.

  When I peered through the half opened door, the two girls had their backs to me. They were leaning over a scratched old oak desk that was strewn with sheets of wrinkled, typewritten pages. Both were chain smoking and sipping coffee as they passed pages back and forth. I could hear faint muted strains of music coming from a radio. It sounded like the jazz I listened to late at night.

  I felt a sharp pang in my chest. I pictured myself sitting with Rita and Sarah at some imagined jazz club in the West Village, smoking, talking about our favorite books and writers, and intermittently downing shots of Scotch.

  After a week of worry and procrastination, I finally put my sketches in a brown manila envelope and wrote my name and homeroom class on the front. Then I held onto the envelope for two more days. On a Friday afternoon when I knew everyone would be gone, I slid the envelope under the office door. I immediately wanted to take it right back. I even tried to slide my hand under the door crack before giving up.

  I fretted for days over what they’d think of my writing. Then one morning during homeroom, a hall monitor handed me a coffee stained envelope. The stains had blurred all but my last name. I could barely make out the homeroom number. I knew it was bad news. Why else would they be sending back the envelope? My ears burned and my heart was thumping so loudly that I was sure everyone could hear it.