“All right, enough,” said my father. “I’m sick of hearing this story.”
My mother collapsed into her chair, crying into her hands, tomato sauce and strands of spaghetti clinging to her fingers. “I have to hear the truth from a complete stranger!”
The minutes slowly ticked by without anyone saying a single word. I thought of the shoe-box dioramas we made at school; we looked like one you might call My Italian Family Arguing at Dinner. Eventually, my mother’s tears subsided, and the rest of us eased out of our catatonic states. Slowly we returned to our former selves and became a normal family eating dinner again. Even my mother somehow managed to finish her food. We all did. Despite everything—the tears, the yelling, and the constant threat of violence—my family always managed to eat a good meal.
Friday night, my mother held true to her threat, and I found myself riding in her Cadillac back to St. Sylvester’s. My red knapsack rested on the backseat, bulging again with too much clothing and my makeshift mess kit. Earlier that day, a gnawing pain developed below the center of my rib cage. It grew steadily all afternoon. By the time we arrived at the parking lot, I felt like someone had stuck a hot poker in me. Watching all those boys preparing for the long journey ahead reminded me of how I felt the night before the last day of summer vacation.
Since the campsite was located in New Jersey, over two hours away, it was necessary to pack extra equipment and provisions for the weekend. Getting out of the car, I said good-bye to my mother, grabbed my knapsack, and looked for my patrol. Once my mother pulled away, I felt the full brunt of my anxiety. Jonathan caught my eye from across the parking lot. He smiled as he was ushered into a station wagon.
Davis did a double take when he saw me. “Spinelli, what a surprise!”
“Hey, what can I say, my original plans fell through.”
“Ha-ha,” he said. “We’ve already been assigned cars. You better go and tell Mr. Castro you need a ride.”
On the other side of the parking lot, I found Mr. Castro holding a clipboard in his hand. He looked harried. I walked right up to him. “Spinelli, how can I help you?” he said. “Do you have a ride?”
Spivey trudged up right next to me. “Out of my way, Spinhead,” he said, shoving a box into my side and knocking me backward.
Mr. Castro shook his head disapprovingly. “Spivey, just put that box in my trunk so we can get on the road. Spinelli, is there something I can do for you? I’m pretty busy here. Go find your ride so we can all leave. You have one, don’t you?”
Staring at Spivey as he walked away, I hesitated and then said, “Yes.”
All around me, car engines started up and headlights switched on. One by one, they formed a line moving toward the parking lot exit. I backed up into the darkness next to the scrubs that lined the school. My decision had been made. I wasn’t going on that camping trip. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending an entire weekend trying to avoid Chris Spivey. When the last car was out of sight, the pain below the center of my rib cage finally faded.
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN UNUSUAL TO LEAVE A SCOUT BEHIND, but that was exactly what I told my parents when I called them from a pay phone. Within fifteen minutes, my father arrived and drove me back home. My mother was waiting on the landing of the second floor when I entered the house.
“I don’t believe you,” she said before I even had a chance to explain. “Was there anyone there, Angelo?”
“No.”
“You mean they left you there by yourself?”
“I told you what happened on the phone,” I said softly. “Since I decided to go at the last minute, they didn’t have room available in any of the cars.”
“Where was Bill?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t there.”
My mother stared skeptically at me for several more seconds before she turned around and walked into the kitchen. I slipped my knapsack off and stood there weighing my options. My father retreated into the den to watch television. There was nothing my mother could do. At best, she would learn the truth on Monday, but by then, it would be too late. Carrying my knapsack into the den, I collapsed on the couch and pulled my sweatshirt hood over my head. Upstairs, I heard my mother rummaging around in one of the kitchen drawers.
What followed happened quickly. I heard the sound of the rotary phone dial. At the same time, my father turned the volume up on the television to drown out the sound of my mother’s voice. I began pulling the strings on my hood, alternating from left to right. After several minutes, my mother set the phone back down onto the receiver.
“Angelo,” she cried out. “Angelo!”
“Goddamned woman,” he mumbled as he got up from his chair. “What do you want?”
“Get up here now.”
From downstairs I could hear them whispering. My mother was having words with my father, hysterical words I couldn’t make out. Then my father called out, “Frank, come up here.” I got up and walked to the landing. They were staring down at me from the second floor. My mother was holding her black telephone book in her hand, an excited look on her face.
“Everything is taken care of,” she said. “I spoke to Bill.”
“Bill who?”
“What do you mean, Bill who? Bill Fox.”
“You spoke to Bill Fox?” I repeated.
“Yes, Sharon gave me his number,” explained my mother. “Bill said he had to work a late shift and that’s why he wasn’t there tonight. He said if he’d been there, none of this would have happened. So to make up for it, Bill is going to pick you up tomorrow morning and drive you to camp himself. Isn’t that nice of him?”
I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying.
CHAPTER 18
Boy Bonding
THE NEXT MORNING, my mother woke me up before dawn. Startled, I realized in a matter of seconds that I was going to camp. Then the anxiety returned, and I felt the pain below my ribs again. Quickly I dressed in my uniform and waited by the front door, staring out at the street and chewing on an English muffin.
Bill arrived on time and beeped his horn. I yelled good-bye to my mother. Walking into the cool morning, my backpack heavy on my shoulders, I yearned to be in my warm bed again, snuggling under the covers and waking up late. As I reached Bill’s truck, he leaned over the passenger side and opened the door. “Put your backpack in the rear,” he ordered. I walked around to the back. When I opened the door to place my knapsack on the floor, I was shocked to find the walls were lined with wood paneling. There was a large tabletop in the center with benches built along the sides. In the far corner was a small black-and-white television. The interior looked like a miniature meeting room at a Knights of Columbus hall.
I closed the door and climbed inside the truck next to Bill. Settling back in the passenger seat, I held my hands up to the vent. “You’ll be warm in no time,” said Bill as he pulled away from the curb. I smiled but gave no reply. I was nervous, thinking he was going to ask me what happened the night before. I hadn’t yet made up my mind what I was going to say if he did.
Bill took the Staten Island Expressway and followed the signs to the Outer Bridge. Within twenty minutes, we were in New Jersey.
“So, they left you behind last night?” he asked once we passed the tollbooth.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Well, that’s inexcusable,” he said. “Wait till I speak to Castro.” I felt a twinge of pain tightening like a knot below my rib cage again.
“It’s not his fault,” I offered. “He didn’t know. I thought I had a ride, but I was wrong. Then, when I figured it out, he was already gone.”
“That’s still no excuse.”
I began massaging the area below my ribs with my fist to ease the pain.
“So, how do you like it so far?” asked Bill.
“It’s okay.”
“Did you make the rank of Scout yet?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone makes Scout.” He laughed. “They practically give it to you for joining. When are you goin
g to make Tenderfoot?”
“Soon.”
“Have you gotten any merit badges?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, I almost have one.”
“Which one are you working on now?”
“Music.”
Bill looked at me and scowled. “Music?” Then he turned and focused on the road ahead. “You should be able to get all your merit badges on these hikes. Were you on the last one? I don’t remember seeing you.”
“I was sick.”
Bill turned his head to look at me again. “Sick, huh?”
I nodded.
“You know, before you’re promoted to Tenderfoot you have to be interviewed by the Scoutmaster in a private meeting. Did you know that?”
“A private meeting?”
“Yes, a private meeting with me,” he said. “You really need to read your Boy Scout Handbook, Spinelli. Everything you need to know about life is in that book. How old are you?”
“Eleven,” I said. “Don’t you remember you came by my house to take me for ice cream right before my eleventh birthday?”
“How much do you know about life, about the birds and the bees?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared out the passenger window, watching the scenery whip by. It suddenly felt very warm in that truck. I unzipped my sweat jacket and considered opening the window.
“Are you hot?” he asked.
I nodded.
Bill reached over and turned down the heater. I felt his hand brush up against my knee. It seemed to linger longer than it should have. “Have you gone through puberty yet?” he asked. “That’s what I meant when I said, ‘the birds and the bees.’ ”
I remained quiet, concentrating on the sloping green fields just outside the window.
“Don’t be embarrassed. You can talk to me.”
I looked over at him. He was still staring ahead at the road. He turned quickly to catch my eye, then redirected his attention back toward the highway. He was grinning. “Come on,” he said. “You must have reached puberty by now. I see you have a little mustache. Do you have hair down there yet?”
I remained impassive, sinking deeper into the seat and wishing I could disappear. I prayed he wouldn’t look at me again and see me cringing. My face felt as if it was burning.
“What’s the matter? No one ever talked to you about sex? It’s all there in your Boy Scout Handbook.”
I couldn’t find the words to respond. Sex was a topic we never spoke about at home. My parents treated sex as something sinful we should hide. My mother forbade my sisters from wearing their bathing suits in front of my grandfather, for fear of insulting him with their bare skin, and my father instructed me to change out of my pajamas before I came to breakfast because he didn’t think it was appropriate for a boy to show up at the table in anything other than pants. Nudity, or even the suggestion of sexuality, was something to conceal. So when Bill began speaking about sex, I was startled. A tingling sensation ran through my body, as though I had been walking on carpet in my socks and touched the television.
“Okay, do you jerk off then?” he asked.
I ignored his question and continued focusing on the sloping fields.
“You know what jerking off is?”
I lied. “Of course.”
“Well, what is it then?”
I had heard that expression only once before, when my cousin Anthony took me for a ride in his car. He was a seventeen-year-old high school dropout who smoked cigarettes. My mother hated him. That day we drove around his neighborhood and picked up his friends. They started talking about this girl Stephanie, whom Anthony referred to as the Slut. The last time he took her out, Anthony said she was having her period, so she jerked him off instead. I had no idea what that meant, but I figured it was something sexual.
“You don’t know what jerking off is?” asked Bill.
“It’s like fucking,” I mumbled finally. Saying that word “fuck” out loud to an adult felt strange.
“Fucking! No, jerking off has nothing to do with fucking.” Then Bill laughed loudly. “Jerking off is when you play with yourself.” Then he held up his fist and motioned up and down. “You must jerk off?”
I lied again. “All the time.”
“Thank God. I was beginning to wonder about you,” he said. “Hey, do you and your buddies ever get together and jerk each other off?”
“No.”
“No?” he repeated. “Oh man, we have a lot to talk about when we have our little interview before you make Tenderfoot. Your dad hasn’t given you a proper education. That’s a shame. This is all a part of growing up. Jerking off, hanging out with your buddies, and jerking each other off—it’s all part of boy bonding.” Then Bill looked directly at me and flashed a smile that made me feel he was someone I could trust. “You know, maybe if you came on more camping trips, you’d understand that. But don’t worry, I’ll make a man out of you yet, Spinelli.”
FOR THE REST OF THE WEEKEND, I obsessed over my conversation with Bill. I became a detective searching for clues: At the mess hall, I listened to other Scouts’ conversations, hoping I’d learn more about this mysterious boy bonding. Around the campfire, I watched as they roughhoused. On the two-mile hike, I carefully monitored their behavior to see whether they attempted to make secret signals. Yet I found no evidence that the other boys were meeting privately to masturbate. It all seemed unimaginable to me, yet my source was someone I thought knew boys better than anyone.
By that night I still had found nothing to suggest that boy bonding was occurring. As I lay in my sleeping bag, listening to Minitoni snore, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why didn’t I know more about boys? Was it because I didn’t have any brothers? Just then I heard voices approaching outside. It was James Mendola. “There’s room in here.”
Mendola unzipped our tent and stuck his head in. I cowered in my sleeping bag, hoping he wouldn’t notice me. Through my eyelids, I felt the beam of his flashlight scan the interior.
“Hey, what’s going on?” asked a sleepy Minitoni.
“Shut up, fatso, and mind your own business.”
“Fuck, man. I don’t want to sleep with Minitoni,” whispered Metheny. “He’ll probably blow farts all night.”
“There’s no other place to sleep,” argued Mendola as he unzipped the entrance to the tent. I heard Metheny groan as he followed in after him. “Move over, fat boy.”
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” asked Minitoni.
“Mind your own fucking business,” said Metheny. “And no farting.”
They laid down their sleeping bags on the other side of the tent. I sighed with relief, knowing they couldn’t see me over Minitoni’s body.
Stanley Metheny and James Mendola were both in the same eighth-grade homeroom at St. Sylvester’s. In our limited interactions, neither was as mean as when they were with Chris Spivey. He was the evil link that completed their chain of cruelty. Luckily, Spivey attended public school.
As they settled into their sleeping bags, I relaxed once I was sure they hadn’t noticed me. From my vantage point, I could see the silhouettes of their faces in the dark, illuminated by the moonlight through the entrance of the tent. Mendola was half-Filipino and half-Irish with a dark complexion, a wide nose, and full lips. Metheny was 100 percent German, with blond hair, hazel eyes, and angular features. Even though they came from different backgrounds, there was something very similar about them. They styled their hair the same way, parted in the middle and feathered back on the sides. They were both the same height and loved AC/DC. At school they were inseparable, and any girl with the slightest interest in boys had a crush on either one or both. Resting on my side, I listened to them talk in the dark while everyone else slept.
“Did you see the latest Playboy?” asked Metheny.
“No, why?”
“Fucking Marilu Henner has an awesome spread,” he continued. “She’s wearing these tight Spandex pants and this tight, tight, tight pink shirt that buttons up
the front. What a rack! You can see her tits popping out and her bush is bulging in those Spandex pants . . . It’s so fucking hot! I nearly came in my pants.”
“That sounds fuckin’ awesome,” said Mendola. “Hey, did you ever get anywhere with Anne Marie Bonaventura?”
“She let me feel up her tits, but that’s all.”
“Fuck, man. I’d love to suck on her titties.”
“Fuck! Now I’m getting a boner just thinking about it.” Metheny laughed.
“Me, too.”
“I’m telling you, you have to get the new Playboy. I flipped through it naked on my bedroom floor. I rubbed my boner so hard up against the rug that I came like a fucking racehorse.”
“That’s fucking hilarious.” Mendola laughed. “Remind me not to walk barefoot on your crunchy carpet. I’ll stick to coming in my gym sock.”
Then they laughed so hard the others in the tent began to stir. Only I remained as still as a corpse, with one eye open, straining to see whether they were going to jerk each other off there in the dark. Their conversation continued for another fifteen minutes before I heard them both snoring softly. I stayed awake most of the night wondering whether this was what Bill referred to as “boy bonding.” In that moment, it was conceivable that, if boys talked about sex as freely as Metheny and Mendola, they also met in private to masturbate.
Boy bonding suddenly made sense.
ON SUNDAY MORNING, THE CAMPSITE WAS DISMANTLED WITHIN A MATTER OF HOURS. The mess hall was deconstructed once breakfast was served. Tents were disassembled, rolled up, and then piled onto cars to be transported back home. Each boy was responsible for rolling up his own sleeping bag and packing his knapsack. I noticed a hole in the bottom of my knapsack, as though a mouse had eaten its way out, and I worried that it was going to get even bigger due to the weight of my clothes and that damned frying pan.
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