Dean was also very different than Mom's other boyfriends in other ways because he seemed to have respect for Lauren and I, and he did not “talk down” to us like so many of her past boyfriends had. He also looked us straight in the eyes when he spoke and seemed sincerely trying to communicate rather than just making up things to say. He also had a good sense of humor that I really liked. Mom liked it too because they were always laughing and looking at each other when they were together. I guess having Dean around will not be such a bad thing; it might even be very good.
I do not know where we are going to move to but no place can be as bad as here. However, I still have to go back to Seton high school on Monday and have three months to go before I am out of school for the summer. I do not know what I will be running into, but I dread the idea of it. Nevertheless, three months is not that long, and after what I have been through for the last ten years, I can deal with it.
Three days later
Well, here it is Monday already and my alarm just went off so I have to get up and get ready for school. The pain is back in my chest, stomach, and thighs and I have no idea what this day will be like, but I prepare myself for the worst. Walking out my Grandmas’ front door, I go down to the front walkway and turn right on the sidewalk. Walking down the block toward my high school, I see Bernie and his brothers also walking to school. They look back, see me and wait for me to catch up to them. That is a surprise. They have never waited for me before.
We walk towards the school together and I know as long as I am with the brothers I will not have to fight anyone. I did not want to join their gang for years because I would then also have to do what Bernie told me to do. However, for the next few months it might be nice to have some friends around. Somehow, they all knew about my dramatic exit from Seton High last Thursday afternoon. Evidently, there were some kids outside the principal’s office when the Sisters and I were screaming at each other. I was so blind with my own rage when I left the Principals office I do not recall who they were.
"Are you going to stay at Seton high?" they asked.
“Yes, but only for a few months”, I said. The brothers exchanged glances.
“Why just for a few months,” Bernie asked.
“Because my Mother is getting married this summer and we are going to move somewhere,” I said.
I told them everything about my Mother's upcoming marriage and about Dean, my soon to be cool stepfather with the 56 Corvette.
Arriving at school, and walking into the classroom, I was looking around carefully and especially at the Sisters face. She looked at me with a pleasant but somewhat sad expression, and said,
"Hello Patrick. How are you today?”
“Fine, Sister,” I said.
The day went smoothly and I was careful to obey all the rules. At 3:30 PM, I was walking home from school, and on my guard, when a tall kid named Tim grabbed me from behind, my anger came quickly and I turned immediately and punched him hard in the stomach. He bent over in pain trying to catch his breath. Darn, that really works well, I thought. It felt good to punch him, too, and that pain is gone.
I walked toward home as fast as I possibly could without running. Arriving home, I evaluated what had been an exceptional day. The other Sisters I had seen all day looked at me with a silent unsmiling expression and seemed to watch me carefully. Some of the other kids seemed to look at me in a different way than they had last week, especially my old friend, Patty. I told everyone that I would be leaving Seton high at the end of the school year because I was moving. Some of the kids seemed surprised but most were not.
I guess the kids had heard about my bad temper because they seemed somewhat careful in speaking to me. I was also careful to be very polite to the sisters and kids. I got through the whole day without anyone grabbing me or touching me in a non-friendly manner, except for Tim, and he lost that one. What a surprise! I also went to school and back with only one incident, and without enduring punches, shoving or even name-calling. The paper route also went well. I finished it in about an hour and a half and went home for dinner. What a great and unusual day!
Arriving home, Mom had dinner already on the table and as the three of us sat and ate, Mom said,
"I talked to Dean today, and it looks like we will be moving to Massachusetts, somewhere near Westover Air Force Base. That Air Force Base is near Springfield, Massachusetts but I told Dean I would rather live in a smaller town, not in Springfield. We also decided we would probably get married in July or August and move to Massachusetts before school starts in September. How does that sound?” Lauren and I nodded and looked at each other. I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Will things be any better than living here?
Lauren had also been receiving bullying from Rick, and some of the same boys that picked on me. This bullying came regularly from Rick and his brothers. Except for Rick, however, I could handle each of the brothers individually including Freddy. The bullying that Lauren experienced was mostly verbal, and not to the physical extent that I received, but it was something that she dreaded. We both had some friends we would miss but enthusiastically looked forward to our move. I can hardly wait!
Chapter IX – Escape to a Normal Life
It is now August and time for the big move. My new stepfather, Dean, has already found a nice three-bedroom house to rent in a small town outside of Springfield. One day, he suddenly appeared with a brand-new, blue and white Chevrolet station wagon, instead of that fantastic Corvette. I was surprised.
“Dean, where is the Corvette?” I asked.
“I traded it in for the station wagon,” he replied.
“Why did you trade it in, why not just keep it?” I asked.
“I needed the money to buy our new car, besides, the Corvette only had two seats, so where would you and Lauren sit, on the roof?” he joked.
“Yes, we are going to be a family now, so we definitely need a bigger car, right?” Dean said.
“Yeah, I guess so”, I said, trying to hide my disappointment.
The logic of trading in that great car made sense to me, but I would still miss it because I had hoped to drive it someday. Oh well, Dean was still the well-mannered, polite, and clear communicating person he had always been since we met him. Now, our new family of four is still the same but it has a brand new light blue and white station wagon, instead.
We prepared for the move with the help of our Mom. Mom told us that we were going to haul all our belongings in a U-Haul trailer pulled by our station wagon so we had to make sure we were bringing only the things we would use. For example, we could not bring our player piano with us or most of our furniture because Mom planned to sell it. We all went to work getting rid of the clothes that were too small and things we did not use any more like old toys. I managed to fit quite a bit of the things I had to take with me like my slingshot, fishing stuff, baseball glove, and other things I wanted to take into my big wooden toy chest that my grandfather made for me years ago. I did not know at the time that I would still have that chest fifty years later.
The big day finally came and we said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa who had sad expressions on their faces and climbed into the station wagon for the eight-hour trip. Lauren and I got in the back with the second seat down and we had a lot of room back there to lie down and read books.
Sometime late in the afternoon that day, we arrived at our new home in Massachusetts. It was a nice looking grey and white single-story house with three bedrooms, two baths on a large hillside lot with lots of big trees in the back yard. This was like heaven for Lauren and me and the very first time we had ever lived in our own single-family house. Lauren and I even had our own separate large bedrooms. Things were looking good, so far.
Now that this move is complete, the big mystery throughout my entire body and mind was, would this really make a difference in the quality of my life as I hoped it would? Since I suffered abuse, humiliation and beatings back in Endicott, why would not the same thing happen to me here? I still w
ake up every day with that pain that anticipates several conflicts that day. I also have all of those passions, a penis that is stiff every morning and many times during the day. The mystery is still with me as to why I am living this uncomfortable struggle story life and enduring the tortures of puberty many times a day. Do not worry, I tell myself. I am a better fighter and still have the guns that I have been close to using many times. If I find out that, even though I am almost sixteen, nothing really changes for me except the location, I will be very angry. Ever since I saw my Father’s dead body many years ago, I have wondered if I would be better off dead than alive. At this point, however, if I have to go there like my Father did, I plan to take many other bullies with me.
In walks around the neighborhood, I did meet a few kids my age and nobody seemed to want to fight or intimidate me. I decided I could lose some weight now because I really may not need it anymore. Therefore, I stopped eating and lost most of my extra 30 pounds before I started school, only about a month later. When I ceased coming out of my room for breakfast and lunch, Mom got very worried, and spoke with Dean about it several times and I overheard their conversations.
“Dean, I am really worried about Pat. He is not eating very much anymore.”
“Marguerite, he is really OK, and if he wants to eat, there is plenty of food around here. He can eat anytime he wants to.”
“Dean, it is not good for his health. He has to eat something!”
“Leave him alone, Marguerite, he is a big boy and he will eat when he needs to.”
I thought, darn, it is nice to have another man around to keep Mom from bugging me all the time. Mom was surprised but seemed to be pleased when she had to buy me several pair of new pants with much smaller waist sizes so I would have clothes for school. I was surprised how easily that fat fell off me and how much better I felt.
When school started in September I went to class for the first time and everybody was nice to me. I was pleasantly surprised and, for the first time, I felt like a normal teenage kid in school. I met some brothers named Tom and Bob who became my friends and we had fun hanging out together. After school, we could go to each other’s houses and play games or do other things. I did not have a paper route so Dean gave Lauren and me a small allowance of a few dollars a week that was enough for both of us. I was very lucky, I thought, and had never enjoyed such a nice life. I just hoped it would last.
Since I really did not care what my popularity level was or how I “fit in”, I kept to similar habits that I developed over the last few years in New York. I had no interest in standing in a group of kids chatting and getting to know people. Preferring to get to school at the last minute and leave quickly at the end of the day, I would time my walk or my drive, after I had my own car, to arrive just as everyone was entering the building. Yes, I made a few friends but I never tried to pretend that I was someone different from who I actually was. “Like it or leave it” was my rule. I figured they could accept me either the way I was, or not at all. It did not matter.
One day in physical education class, the teacher mentioned to us that anyone that wanted to could try out for the football team. I thought that was a great idea because I had never attended a school that had a real football team, or any other sports team other than basketball. If so, I would have tried out for the football and wrestling teams years ago. After signing up for the football team and meeting the coach, I went to practice every day after school. The experience was a revelation in that I had never been through anything this physically demanding. I could see that the exercises I used to do in the basement did seem to help a lot, in terms of my personal strength, but most of the practice exercises for football were new experiences.
The practice sessions, held every day after school, included a lot of running, tackling and blocking the other team. We also practiced a great deal with scrimmages. My position was right guard and I became proficient at blocking someone with power and hitting them as low and hard as I could. I was only 130 lbs. and 5’6” tall so it was a challenge when the player I faced was seven or eight inches taller and outweighed me by fifty pounds. However, I enjoyed it and learned to do this blocking fairly well. This was strenuous and sometimes a little painful, but I was used to pain so it was fun. Since this was a very different experience for me, I really was not good enough to get on the team for any of the games and spent the entire season on the bench. Not making the actual team did not matter because it was an entertaining experience and it made a big difference in my strength, endurance and attitude.
A lot was happening that changed my appearance and attitude from an overweight, angry, cautious and distrusting young person that spent most of his free time hiding in his room or the basement of his home, bathing infrequently and obsessing on various ways to hurt aggressors into, recently, a very quiet, polite and well-mannered person. I began to take showers every day, take care in how I dressed, value my close friends and very seldom, after school started, spend long periods alone or in my room. The guns became just part of my personal stuff and I seldom looked at them anymore. Life changed for this fifteen-year-old boy and was the best it had ever been.
Dean announced one day that the family was planning a trip back to Endicott for a family holiday celebration and that he had some things to do regarding work at the GE plant in Johnson City. It would be necessary for Lauren and I to take a couple of days off from school so we could make the trip before our holiday vacation began. One morning in December, we all got into the station wagon and made the long trip back to Endicott. I had a unique feeling when I arrived back in my hometown. Even though it had only been about four months since I left there in early August, I felt that I was a completely different person, who was beginning to enjoy life for the first time.
The next day, the whole family was in furious activity going shopping and getting ready for Christmas so I decided to take a walk by my old school. As I was walking down Broadway in mid-morning, I felt a little nostalgia walking past the Boys Club, then past St Ambrose School, the Church, and finally arriving at Seton High School on the other side of Washington Boulevard. Today was a school day and I could see that classrooms were full just like any day. Wandering past the front entrance to the school, I arrived at the Gymnasium and saw one of the entrance doors open. Hearing sounds of activity inside, I looked around the corner of the doorway and standing nearby was Father Kennedy.
“Patrick, what are you doing back here, I thought your family moved away”, said Father. Last year, I was in several of Father Kennedy’s religion classes and I liked him and was glad that he remembered me.
“Yes, Father, we did, but we are back for the holidays”, I said.
“Nice to see you, Patrick, do you want to come in and maybe say hello to a few people?” he said.
“Sure, thanks”, I said, walking through the doorway into the gymnasium. Looking toward the activity, I could see many kids from my class last year that I knew. They were throwing a football around. Football, in the gym, I thought. Oh, yes, they do not have a real football team or football field at Seton High so they just use the gymnasium for PE class and sometimes play touch football.
“Patrick, there is something you could do for me. It is about the locker you used to have here last year. You never emptied your locker or took your padlock off it,” Father Kennedy said.
“I guess I just forgot,” I replied.
“Do you still remember the combination?” he asked.
“Sure, I do, Father,” I replied.
“Ok, would you come with me?” Father asked.
Walking across the court, we entered the hallway to the locker room.
“Was this your locker?” Father asked.
“Yeah, it was. I will open it for you.” After two tries, I finally got the combination right and removed the padlock. Inside the locker, I found some shorts and other stuff I left there. As I was putting the items in the carrying bag that I also left in the locker, I remembered that I really had not forgotten about this l
ocker, but, at the time, I decided to leave the contents there forever rather than make one more trip back here to the school that I hated.
“Thanks, Patrick, I have to go now because it is time to start the Physical Education Class. Do you want to hang around and watch for a while?” He said.
We walked back out into the gymnasium and he started the class while I watched.
Father Kennedy assembled the class into two teams and lined them up in the middle of the court to do football scrimmages. I watched them do this blocking against each other while the quarterback paused to throw a pass to the right or left end. I could see that none of these students had as much practice as I had just accumulated just in the last three months of daily scrimmages. I addition, these people were all dressed in basketball shorts and tee shirts with no shoulder pads or helmets. The blocking looks primitive and not too effective, I thought.
I stood along the sidelines. Since we were in the gym, I was lucky that I had put on sneakers this morning because gym rules required them. The male students in the scrimmages were teenagers my age, quite a few whom I had known my entire life since attending kindergarten. After a few minutes of scrimmaging exercises while Father coached, he paused the scrimmage and said,
“Hey, all of you guys know Patrick standing over there, right?”
Most of the people, nodded, and some waved at me.
“Patrick has moved but he is just back for the holidays. Let’s invite him in for a few scrimmages with us, Ok?” he said to the class.
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