Little Boy

by Anthony Prato

  Occasionally Kyle would get to the table late only to find that Rick or Paul had slyly sat across from me at the end of the lunch table. Rather than make a seen, Kyle would zip by the table, almost as if he didn’t notice, and sit with another group of people. This infuriated The Family, but I always thought it was so cool.

  Lunch time was a load of laughs for all of us. Except for Paul—he didn’t really have a good sense of humor. I don’t know why, but he didn’t click with the rest of us too well. Paul’s sole reason for being there was me. Generally, however, I ignored him and focused instead on Kyle. Kyle and I always led the discussions. Always. And why not? We had better stories to tell, mine usually about girls, Kyle’s about masturbation or alcohol or some other off-the-wall topic.

  As usual, Kyle was the first one to ask about everyone’s weekend. It’s not that he really gave a shit; he just wanted to hear everything first so he could prepare to make fun of us. Not in a mean way, though; Kyle wasn’t like that. He just liked to joke around.

  “I spent the weekend cleaning our apartment,” Paul said.

  “Sounds like fun,” said Kyle. “Hope you didn’t forget the cheese between your toes.” Everyone laughed.

  “No, really,” Paul said. “We cleaned the whole apartment. It’s springtime, you know.”

  “Oh, so it was Spring Cleaning Day at the Hannon residence!” I yelled. Everyone laughed again.

  “Ha, ha, ha. Very funny, L’Enfant.” Everyone in high school called me A.J., except for Paul, who always said ‘L’Enfant.’ Nobody ever called me A.J., except for Maria and my parents and sister.

  Rick told everyone about a date he’d had with some girl I introduced him to. She was a real ugly chick, but Rick didn’t go out with many girls, so just having a date was a big deal. He met her at a party I had at my house a few months before, when I was dating Lynn. Actually, she was one of my sister’s friends. And this girl’s father owned a restaurant that we all went to called Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This place had tremendous seven-ounce hamburgers. I haven’t had one of them in so long, but god they were so good.

  Apparently, Rick and this girl went out to—guess where?—Jackson Hole, Wyoming for dinner over the weekend. He got his license before any of us, so it was real easy for him to go out at night.

  “You have a license, and a car, and all you did was go to her father’s fucking restaurant?” I asked.

  “What did you eat there?” Kyle said. “Did you eat…her?” We all had a good laugh. Rick told us a few more details about the evening, but there was nothing much left to make fun of. Despite the dissing, we were all proud of Rick for having the balls to take a chick out when he had so little experience.

  Mike’s weekend was as unexciting as usual. His parents had a cabin in Upstate New York, and they went up there every weekend during the spring and summer.

  “Did you do anything exciting this weekend?” I asked Mike.

  Before he had a chance to answer, Kyle interrupted: “I masturbated with my guitar this weekend!”

  We all laughed again. “How was it?” Mike asked.

  “Pretty good,” Kyle replied. “But now it’s all out of tune.”

  Kyle played the guitar a lot and he was pretty good. He’d been playing for years, without ever having taken a lesson. He was real smart, too. But he never got good grades like me. It’s not that he never learned anything—hell, he was one of the smartest guys I knew. He just never bothered to memorize what he needed to ace the tests. He went completely on memory, and still managed to get B’s and C’s.

  It wasn’t the way he dressed that was funny; it was that he didn’t care what anyone thought about it. No matter what happened—no matter how mediocre his grades were, or how badly someone might’ve insulted him—he always responded with the same retort: “I always win.” I never understood what that meant, until recently.

  Kyle wanted to become a musician or comedian, so I guess he figured he didn’t need good grades. I don’t know, Kyle was always happy. And he was always different from the rest of us in a certain way. He was the only left-handed guy we hung out with, for example. I know that’s trivial, but it’s just an example of how different he was from the rest of us in every possible way.

  I still don’t understand how he never got caught when he stirred up trouble. I mean, he did crazy stuff all the time. He’d say the most offensive stuff and play practical jokes on everyone possible. And I was usually in on them, too. But he always managed to avoid hurting people, and avoid getting caught.

  The best practical joke, however, never actually happened. It was a great idea, though. We’d planned to convince Mike that I was dead. I know that sounds dumb, but Mike was really gullible, so fooling him like that was always fun. We had this thing planned out to the letter. We’d get my sister to call Mike on the phone and say I’d committed suicide, and that he should go to this funeral home near his house for the wake. It was all perfectly planned out, except for one thing—at the last minute, Kyle wouldn’t go along with it. After all the hype, Kyle figured that Mike’s parents would intercede, and maybe call up my family to express their condolences or something. And that, of course, would ruin the whole joke. So a few hours before we were going to do it, Kyle called it off. It was fun to think about, anyway.

  Kyle was my best friend in high school. We never actually stated we were best friends, but our personalities were so similar that it was obvious. We both told a lot of dirty jokes and talked about things that nobody else in The Family had the balls to talk about. One big difference between me and Kyle was that I always had a girlfriend and he never had one. Almost every day I’d try to bust his balls about never having a girlfriend. But he’d always respond, “All I need are my left hand and my guitar.” And then, almost immediately, he’d throw in his catch phrase: “I always win, A.J. I always win.” Nothing ever phased Kyle.

  The Family and I were unique in my high school. Like most schools, the jocks ran everything. For some reason, they were always the ones to get the girls. They smoked pot and drank a lot, and were popular with everyone. I despised them. Most of them had blonde or light brown hair—usually long hair. It wasn’t long in the back, because that style was out. It hung over their eyes. Most of them looked like fag models, but girls seemed to like them anyway.

  One of these guys was Rob Forman. I’m pretty sure he was St. Ann’s valedictorian, the asshole. He was a star on the basketball team and really popular with students and girls and teachers. He was tall and tan with blonde hair and green eyes. He was a remarkable science student, and I think he went to Duke on a scholarship.

  The reason I hated him was that everyone knew he smoked tons of pot but liked him anyway. He went to a park near my house on weekends and smoked up with all the other jocks and a bunch of girls. He got so crazy and high sometimes that people called him Stormin’ Forman. But all the teachers and students kissed his ass. Either people didn’t realize that he was a low life, or didn’t give a shit. Like I said, what an asshole.

  Then there were the nerds. My friends and I were all smart, but the nerds were super-smart. These were the people who basically had no lives outside school. They’d hang out in the library before school and study; they’d hang out in the library after school and study. They were on the speech and debate team, too. I was also on the team, but I wasn’t anything like them. In fact, I was really an outsider on the team, and nobody else could figure out how I always won all the time. The nerds, I think, hated me the most. It was probably because I was almost as smart as them, but I had friends and girlfriends and actually had a life.

  There were also these weird guys that really didn’t fit into any category at all. They were that people that didn’t dress well, the ones that I don’t think even took showers as often as the rest of us. For example, there was one guy named Luis. One day Kyle and some other guys took a bottle of Snapple and dumped it on his head. Luis didn’t fight back or anything; he just said something like “real funny, guys,” and walked away. Thing
is, he made no attempt to remove this shit from his hair. I mean, the guy just walked around all day with wet hair, and never even tried to get it out. That’s pretty much the way all these people were—they just didn’t care. Another guy actually showed everyone a cigar burn that his father gave him as a punishment. It was almost like he was proud of it. I think a lot of them came from broken homes. Nobody really talked to these people, but they all talked to each other.

  But the group of people I hated the most—the ones I absolutely wanted to kill—was the hoods. They didn’t call themselves hoods, but everyone else did. Anyway, these guys were like the bullies of my high school. It’s not like they beat people up after school—though, on occasion, that happened. They just went around acting like they were.

  Most of them had slutty girlfriends. And the ones that dated halfway decent girls, girls like Maria, treated them like crap. They always wore oversized hooded sweatshirts, and big, loose-fitting jeans that always fell halfway down their asses. I guess they got the name because of those sweatshirts. These were the guys who smoked cigarettes during lunch hour outside the school, right in front of the teachers. They smoked pot, too. And most of them were either black, Italian, or Hispanic. But they came in all colors, really.

  Anyway, it was during lunch time when I brought up my date with Maria. I hadn’t told anyone about it beforehand; I wanted it to be a surprise.

  It was the first time ever I was really honest with the guys about a date. I had a tendency to exaggerate, as do all teenage boys when it comes to chicks. But I was so proud just telling The Family that all Maria and I did was walk around the park and talk, that we’d only kissed once. They couldn’t believe it.

  “Did you bang her?” Kyle said, prompting everyone to laugh.

  “No, I told you, I only kissed her once.”

  “Good for you, A.J. ” Paul said. He was genuinely happy for me, I could tell.

  I was elated that day. I was with my best friends telling them about a girl I truly loved. Now there was a word I’d never really thought of before I met her—love. I thought: Could I love Maria after only one date? I was so high, I was flying. To think that Maria might be The One!

  “Guys,” I told The Family, “I think she’s The One.”

  “Yeah, right,” Rick said, “you say that about all the girls you go out with.”

  “Piss on you, Rick.” Everyone laughed.

  “Gahdfaddah,” Kyle began, imitating Tom Hagen perfectly, “Gahdfaddah, if you say dis is dah one, den dis is dah one.” Then he genuflected before me, right there at the lunch table, as a sign of respect. It was pretty funny. Kyle was the best when it came to imitating the actors in The Godfather.

  Mike laughed at Kyle; but, then again, Mike always laughed at everything Kyle did. Paul and Rick sat there, respectfully, waiting for me to finish.

  “No, really,” I said,” I think she’s The One. I don’t want to ever date anyone else again. She’s perfect.” Then they started to take me seriously, because they’d never heard me talk like that before.

  They knew about The One, though. They knew that my ideal girl—and this was my ideal years before I even met Maria—was a short Italian chick with big boobs, black hair, and brown eyes. She was a girl I wouldn’t only be physically attracted to, but emotionally and mentally as well. They knew that I was always on the lookout for The One, and that I never really thought I’d find her. I always talked about The One, even when I was dating other girls. For example, when I was dating Rachel, I remember telling my friends how she jerked me off during the dance, adding, “but she’s not The One.”

  I told them about how perfect Maria was, about how beautiful she looked, and how well we got along. I told them how she’d opened up to me in Central Park, and that my kiss with her was the best I’d ever had. As a matter of fact, I told The Family that I’d be happy never even sleeping with Maria, and just kissing her for the rest of my life. And, most importantly, I told them how much I respected Maria, because I did respect her so much.

  She was beautiful, smart, and funny. She was wonderful. I felt like I’d been struck by a lightening bolt on our date, and I was still charged up. I told all my friends this, and they couldn’t believe it. I could tell by their faces that they’d never seen me so intense. My arms were crossed in front of me, close to my chest, as I recounted the entire date to them. Oh, how I wanted to hold her right then and there!

  When I was finished telling them about the date, my friends stared at me in silence. Speechless, they simply nodded, because they really were happy for me, and so surprised at how much I liked her. Then the bell rang, signaling that lunch was over and that classes would resume in five minutes. We got up from the table and were about to take off, when Paul leaned in toward me and said firmly: “Be careful, L’Enfant. Don’t screw it up.” What a jerk.

  ***

  The following weekend was the first of the summer. School had just ended and I’d planned on celebrating by seeing Maria, but I forgot that I’d already made plans to go Upstate with Mike and Kyle.

  Almost every weekend during the summer, Mike drove Upstate with his parents to the country and slept in their cabin for the weekend. Kyle and I had always made fun of Mike, saying that he couldn’t afford to go on a real vacation. But we were only joking, so when he invited us to go up there with him, we gladly accepted. The only bad thing was that Mike’s parents had to drive us, even though me and Kyle had just gotten our licenses. We ragged on Mike for that, but it wasn’t too bad. Mike’s parents were cool; they’d let us do whatever we wanted, as long as we stayed out of serious trouble.

  It was a great weekend. We had so much fun on the way Upstate that me and Kyle and Mike decided that we should secretly form our own family within the existing one.

  “What should we call it?” I asked.

  “How about the Mets?” Mike asked.

  “How about the Mets?” Kyle said, imitating Mike with a goofy voice. “What are we, ten fucking years old?”

  “You have a better idea?” Mike asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We play lots of jokes on Paul and Rick. We need something to indicate that, secretly, just to ourselves. How about the Con-Men?” Mike smiled and signaled a thumbs-agreement; Kyle, however, disapproved.

  “I don’t like it—too negative. And besides, we don’t con people; we just joke around with them.” Kyle said.

  I glanced at Mike for support, but he changed his mind and said he agreed with Kyle.

  We never did think of a new name to distinguish ourselves from the rest. It’s too bad, because I really liked my idea. At least, I thought, I was still the leader of whatever we were.

  We had a lot of fun at the cabin that weekend. But there was one thing in particular that still makes us all laugh to this day. Kyle, Mike, and I had a Physics teacher named Mr. Dick junior year of high school. That’s not a joke—that was really his name. And even though Mr. Dick really wasn’t that bad a guy, me and Mike used to make fun of him all the time.

  First of all, Physics was hard. We all did horribly Dick’s class. The last day of school we got our final grades, and I got something like a sixty-nine average in the class, my worst ever. Mike and Kyle almost failed, too. And second: How can you not make fun of a guy named Mr. Dick?

  Outside Mike’s cabin, we threw our Physics books into the campfire. Then we danced around it like injuns, yelling “Goodbye, Dick! You fucking dick!” We tore off each page of each book meticulously, slowly lowered them into the fire, and watched as each individual leaf singed. I would never have to be in his class again.

  I always like to burn bridges like that. Once something bad is over, I try to do something to end it with a bang. Mr. Dick’s class actually ended rather undramatically. Until I suggested to the guys that we should burn the books, we’d planned on toasting marshmallows, not much else. But for some reason, I felt the need to issue Last Rites. That way, I’d never have to feel bad about it again. No, it was so I’d never feel regret about it a
gain.

  The funniest part of the evening, however, was when I got up to go to the bathroom. I was going to go inside the cabin, but then I thought of an even better way to do it. When we were all finished burning up the books, as the fire crackled in the chill of the night, I pulled down my pants and said, “Adios, Mr. Dick!” and pissed all over the campfire. Mike and Kyle were laughing so hard that they almost choked. I took a long, proud piss. But the fire didn’t go out.