My fellow soccer players and I constantly called each other gay. A common conversation would be like “Yo-uh gay.” “No, you ah.” “No, you ah.”
That would last an hour, and would provide at least five minutes of laughs. Every day, as we walked down the hill to soccer practice, we’d have a back-and-forth between the soccer and football teams that the other team was gay. So what developed was this all-out “yo-uh gay” war. I later found that one of my “yo-uh gay” grenades landed on a guy named Joey Grigio. Now, I didn’t know Joey Grigio. I still don’t. But he was from Worcester. He was tough. Liked to fight. He was like a cross between a white Allen Iverson and a velociraptor.
So one day I’m walking down the hill to soccer practice and I’m hit by what feels like a rock on the back of my head. I later found out it was a fist. (I forgot to mention: Joey Grigio had rocklike fists.) And the impact of the hit knocks me to the ground immediately. So I’m on the ground, being hit by the rock-fists again and again, until finally I’m like, I need to run away. I don’t even consider fighting back. I’m just like, I have to leave here . . . This is going terribly . . . This is the worst walk ever.
So he hits me four or five times. Mind you, he’s in full football gear and I am in nylon shorts and shin guards. If he had wanted to beat the crap out of my shins, no dice, but really anywhere else on my body was fair game. So I run down the hill. And he shouts, “Now who’s gay?”
At this point it occurs to me that Joey Grigio actually cared that someone called him gay. It never occurred to me that calling someone gay had any meaning. We called everything gay: the football team, some of our teachers, the water fountains, geometry (in fairness, geometry is one of the gayer maths).
So I try to go on with business as usual, but that day, in the middle of sprints at practice, I start crying. And when the coach asks me what happened, I tell him. So he talks to the football coach. And at this point, I assume Joey Grigio will be punished in some way—maybe expelled, suspended. But he isn’t. He’s suspended for one football game. I was shocked. They caught the guy who attempted to smash my brains in, and they were like, “Oh, don’t worry about old Joey, we’re putting him away for a long time—forty-eight minutes to be exact, plus halftime.”
So Joey gets one less game of football, which I thought was nothing. Apparently Joey didn’t feel that way. So he sent some of his fellow velociraptors after me.
One day I’m at my locker and this guy Bill Murphy says, “Hey Mike,” and I look over and he punches me in the face. Not really hard but enough that it makes the punch-in-the-face noise and he says, “That’s for Joey Grigio.” I was the victim of a walk-by punching, the younger brother of the drive-by shooting. I was stunned. I thought, Wait a minute. This guy’s smaller than me. And I didn’t even fight back. I just thought, I guess this is what my life is going to be like now.
The next day I’m in the computer lab writing an article for the school paper about the aviation club and this guy walks in and he says, “Dave Garson’s looking for you and he’s not happy.” And I’m like, “I don’t even know who Dave Garson is.” This is my situation. I’m the kind of person, who, for fun, writes articles called “Aviation Club Soars into Orbit!” and an unhappy bully I’ve never heard of is sending out envoys.
A detail that made this entirely strange was that during all this violence everyone was wearing a coat and tie. That was the dress code. So these bullies were pretty dressed up. They looked like low-rent child mobsters sent in to threaten people on faulty loans.
Well, I made it through the winter and I decided that I was going to stick it out. Like all great underdogs, I had been knocked down but I was going to make a place for myself. So I ran for class president. And I lost—badly. I came in ninth out of ten. Not ready to throw in the towel, I tried out for the tennis team. And I didn’t make it. St. John’s just didn’t want to participate in my life. And so at the end of the year, I come up with a different plan. Which was to quit.
I ran this by all the adults in my life: parents, teachers, my guidance counselor. And what’s surprising is that not one of them used those clichés they say in afterschool specials: “Don’t do it,” “Stick it out,” “Don’t let ’em get the best of you.” They knew the best of me was off the table. Everyone knew it. Somehow I had become the fall guy for the entire ninth-grade class. I symbolized a certain kind of kid, the kind of kid everyone hates. So I left.
At my new school, we had those first few weeks where everyone’s getting to know each other: “Where you from?” “What was your last school like?” And I decided to omit the fact that at my previous school I had been picked on so badly that I left the school. And you know what? They never found out. Here’s a truth about life that they never tell you in those afterschool specials: running away works—for a while.
Fifteen years later, I’m on stage at the Mohegan Sun Casino. I’m a professional comedian and I’m performing for an audience of professional drunks. It’s actually going pretty well, all things considered. But there is a four-top in the front row that won’t stop talking. It’s two tough-looking guys and their dates. And they’re talking as though there’s no kind of show going on at all. Full volume. Almost distracted by my pesky monologue when trying to make key conversation points. So I politely say, “Hey guys, if you want to talk, maybe go in the other room.” This is my typical strategy for people who don’t understand the etiquette of watching a standup comedy show. I sort of mention it offhandedly as though it’s a misunderstanding.
Well, they didn’t pick up on this social cue and they continued talking. And I tried to continue but every few jokes I’d go to hit a punch line and one of the guys’ voices would peak and the audience would hear some combination of my voice and this guy’s voice, a sort of unintended douche bag duet. So finally I got frustrated and I implied that they might want to leave the show altogether with their dates, who I implied were hookers. By implied, I mean I told them to leave the show with their hookers.
At this point, one of the gentlemen looked me in the eye and said, “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
And I’m looking into this guy’s dark, stern eyes and realizing by the seriousness of his tone and the slickness of his outfit that he is possibly in the mob or into some kind of organized crime activity. It takes a certain type of person to threaten your life in a custom-tailored suit. Fortunately, at this point, the doorman intervenes and asks these folks to leave. Crisis averted. I don’t have to respond to this gentleman’s statement regarding my death.
Later that night, I’m with my brother Joe having drinks at the casino bar.
He’s scolding me for what I said onstage. “You can’t just call people’s wives and girlfriends hookers,” he said.
I said, “I know, Joe. But sometimes I’m up there and I can’t control what comes out of my mouth.”
Right then a couple of women come up to us and say, “You guys lookin’ for dates?” We look up and realize that they were the mobster dates from the show.
They were hookers.
And it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the men in those nice tailored suits had thought about killing me and had the means to do it. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have called those guys’ dates hookers, but I had something to say.
DELUSIONAL
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a rapper, a comedian, a poet, a professional basketball player, a country singer, a break-dancer, or the owner of a pizza restaurant where third graders could hang out.
Break dancing was the least realistic of these early goals. I mean, first of all I’m not good at it. I have no flexibility and very little rhythm. On the other hand, I did have some large pieces of cardboard in the attic above my parents’ garage as well as a mix tape called Awesome Summer ’82. But even if I’d gotten my popping and locking figured out, it’s really hard to pay rent with a day’s worth of nickels thrown at you on a subway platform. But I didn’t know all that on the blisteringly hot summer day in 1984 wh
en my siblings took me to see the movie Breakin’. I was only six, but since I was the youngest of four kids, my mom had finally given up on asking questions like “Is this movie appropriate for a six-year-old?” Instead she just asked my sister Gina, “It’s a full two hours, right?” We climbed out of the station wagon and our mom sped away.
Inside the theater I was instantly sold. I was just like those urban teenagers who break-dance competitively. And besides, my older siblings and I were the only people in the theater aside from a mother and her son. So we danced along with the movie. First we break-danced in the aisles, and when no one objected to that, on the carpet separating the screen from the seats. We break-danced our asses off. Everyone had a great time, but I had an epiphany: I’m a break-dancer! This is what I do. My dad’s a doctor and I’m a break-dancer.
My siblings were completely behind me. The next day they invited their friends over to our house and said, “Mike, show them your break-dancing moves. They’re so good.” And I was off to the races. I started flopping around on the floor, my legs were flying around in the air. And everyone was laughing and having a great time. I was so good I didn’t even need music! It was my first brush with live performance. And delusion.
I was a big dreamer and never particularly good at anything—a real dilemma. I wasn’t terrible. I was just . . . okay. If you’re terrible, you can write everybody off, like, “I don’t know what the hell those idiots are doing?” I knew what those idiots were doing. And I knew that they did it better than me.
In the third grade I was selected to compete in the fifty-yard dash at the town track meet on behalf of St. Mary’s School. The town track meet brought together kids from our town’s three enormous public grade schools—Spring Street School, Patton School, and Beal School—and St. Mary’s, my tiny Catholic grade school. My best friend Matthew Sullivan had won all the qualifying events held beforehand at school, but it was school policy that he could only choose one for the town track meet. That way, more kids could participate. It’s kind of like the same policy they have at the Olympics. Regardless of this technicality, it was a huge honor to be named to the St. Mary’s squad.
For a third grader, the Shrewsbury town track meet is the most cosmopolitan event in your life. There’s an ice cream truck. The black family is there. There are tons of those public school kids that we Catholic school kids had been warned about. From an early age we had been told that public school kids were rapists and people who would stab you for looking at them the wrong way. Public school kids heard from their peers that we were fairies. Unfortunately, the word fairy rhymes with St. Mary. And rapist doesn’t rhyme with anything.
At the time I had it in my mind that I would defeat these stabbers and rapists in the fifty-yard dash, because I was the fastest fairy of them all. No one bothered to tell me that my tiny Catholic grade school was invited to the town track meet only as some sort of token gesture. It was the public school administrators’ way of saying, “We don’t hate you Catholic people. Come, let’s watch our children run faster than your children.” No one told me that my school usually finished dead last. And I wasn’t even the fastest fifty-yard dasher in my class. In retrospect, maybe they were impressed with my tiny legs and tendency to uncontrollably flail my arms. Perhaps Sister Mary Elizabeth thought, Hey, he gets those arms flailing fast enough, something good could happen.
My parents believed in me too. The night before the track meet my mom made a big pasta dinner—because everyone knows that the secret to winning the fifty-yard dash is massive helpings of fettuccini Alfredo, accompanied by unlimited salad and breadsticks. I went to sleep with a dream of victory.
Race Day: on the drive over to the track, my parents stop at the drugstore, not to pick up some performance-enhancing drugs, but to grab some M&Ms. My parents figure the right combination of pasta and candy will allow me to overcome eleven years of physical mediocrity.
I show up at the track meet and the whole town seems to be there. I see the athletes are assembled on the grass inside the track, and I head toward it. A coordinator directs me to my group, and I spot the four people I’m running against. I see that one of them is Calvin Walker. He’s smiling and stretching out his long legs. I can see that he’s wearing special running shoes. I look down at my Zips. I’m concerned. Calvin is not nervous. This is a guy who knows how to run, a guy who has run before, on purpose. And I’m thinking, This is one of those guys who runs for fun, and not just because his older brother is chasing him with a tennis racquet around the backyard or because he thinks he can catch the ice cream man and get a Chipwich.
It dawns on me that I need to reset my expectations. It doesn’t matter how many M&Ms I eat, I am not going to win this race. In fact, not only am I not going to win, but it may appear to the casual observer that I am not even running in the same race as Calvin Walker. People are going to think that I’m some kind of fifty-yard dash equivalent to the ball boy in tennis. At this point, my only hope is that maybe these other losers in the race are slower than me. I even start planning the outcome, like, Calvin will get first, I’ll take second, that guy is third, that guy will take fourth, and that other loser will be fifth. Little do I know that these other losers are thinking the same thing and their reality is much closer to the truth. Because when the starting gun goes off, all those losers disappear, and I’m left spinning in a puff of smoke like Wile E. Coyote.
About twenty yards into the fifty-yard dash, I’m losing by about ten yards. I’ve never been great at math, but I’m losing by twenty percent of the total race distance. So twenty yards into the fifty-yard dash, I do what many quitters and fakers have done before me. I run off the track and grab my toe, hopping up and down in faux pain.
And to make matters worse, I stuck to my story for so many weeks afterward that even I started to believe it. Why had my damn toe given out? Old age? Not enough toe stretching? Whatever it was, I returned to fairyville like most fairies did: trophyless. In retrospect, I should have told everyone that the kids from public school had stabbed my toe.
Every kid who grew up in the eighties in Massachusetts thought they could be Larry Bird. The legend of the Celtics superstar was that he was not a natural athlete. Apparently, he wasn’t even very good at basketball growing up. He was frankly kind of an idiot. As the legend had it, Larry Bird was just some dumb, oafish kid who had put his mind to basketball. I thought, That’s like me! I’m an idiot and I suck at sports too! I’m exactly like Larry Bird! I’m going to be in the Hall of Fame. These legends of Larry Bird failed to mention that Bird was six foot nine and had hands the size of baseball gloves.
So I set my mind to it.
I asked my parents to put a basketball hoop in the driveway. So they did. It was on the garage. And since the cars needed to get under it, they placed the hoop eleven and a half feet high, a foot and a half above regulation. The legend claimed that Larry was the first guy to practice and the last guy to leave, hitting free throws until he was nearly blind. So that’s what I did. I’d hit free throw after eleven-and-a-half-foot free throw until I was blind. Or I should say, until it was dark. I was really good at playing basketball alone: baskurbation. Surely my solo basketball skills would blow the other kids’ minds when I showed them off.
Pat Salazar’s dad was a cop. He was a terse, solid man who looked like he might have played college basketball himself. And when I was in fifth grade, he invited a herd of Pat’s friends to play basketball at Dean Park. It was the first time I’d be able to strut my stuff. Let the mind blowing begin.
Warming up, I knock down a few jump shots. I throw up some free throws. Looking good. Then we pick teams and the game begins. Right away, a new teammate passes me the ball and I attempt a shot, but Nick Spinelli immediately stuffs me. I turn to Mr. Salazar, “Foul?”
“No way. Nothing but ball.”
That must be a fluke. That guy’s a great defender. Nick may just be the Magic to my Larry.
Moments later the ball comes to me again on the perimeter a
nd I throw up another jumper. Stuffed. Turnover. I’m beginning to lose the support of my team. I’m sure Larry dealt with this all the time. After two more of these getting stuffed moments, Mr. Salazar pulls me aside and explains that the problem is my stance. “Look, Mike—you’re about five feet tall and these other guys are about five six, and you’re shooting the ball from just below your chest.” He shows me how to stand and launch the ball from just above my head. “Like Bird,” he says. Now he’s speaking my language. I’ll shoot my jumpers like Bird. Soon I’ll be in the NBA and then the Hall of Fame, and on the side I’ll be a professional break-dancer. All thanks to you, Mr. Salazar!
When the game resumes, I’m passed the ball and I attempt another shot, this time with this new “Larry Bird” style. And this time I’m not stuffed. But a very unusual thing happens. My shot does not reach the height of the hoop nor travel the distance between me and the hoop. It looks like I’m playing a different sport altogether, like volleyball. Or shot put. Or some kind of British sport I’m not familiar with. That’s when everyone starts laughing and I start crying. I find that you really lose the confidence of your fellow basketball players when you cry in the middle of a game. They will not throw you the rock when they see tears streaming down your face.
The next time I call for the ball, shouting, “I’m open!” they give me this look like, We know. We’re well aware of your openness.
“There’s nobody covering me!”
We wouldn’t either if we were on the other team, which we wish we were.
At the next water break, Pat Salazar asks if I’m hurt. I play it off like I am. “Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s my elbow.” But the truth is I’m not hurt. No one fouled me. No one even came close to fouling me. I wish they did. I could have shown off my free throw.
My professional basketball plans may have been cut short by the reality of opposing players, but as long as sharks still rhymed with parks, no one could convince me that I couldn’t be a professional poet or rapper. And when the Shrewsbury police department visited St. Mary’s School to conduct their “DARE to Keep Kids Off Drugs” program, I saw the opportunity to launch my career as a rap star who also happened to hate drugs.
Sleepwalk With Me Page 2