Beyond Nostalgia

by Winton, Tom

  It would just be me, Donny, and Jimmy going to Ungy's on Saturday night because Stevey had to go to La Guardia with his parents to pick up his brother Paul who was returning from a one-year stint at an air base in Germany. The bus to Bayside was conveniently routed up Sanford Avenue so we didn't have to hoof it all the way up to Main Street. We caught it right on the corner. When we boarded it around eight o'clock, we instinctively bopped directly to the back. That's always the safest place to drink on a city bus, nobody can sit behind you. In a seat as wide as the bus itself, we proceeded to trade slugs from a half-empty (or half-filled, depending on your nature) fifth of Four Roses that Scully had lifted from his old man's stock. By the time we got off the bus in front of a sprawling discount gas station on Northern Boulevard twenty minutes later, the bottle was empty. Not wanting to be encumbered by it, we left it on the bus. The light on the corner was red, so we expertly dodged and dashed our way across six-lanes of chaotic, night-time traffic before climbing the curb in front of the belly-bomb-factory. I knew the White Castle was on the same block as the supermarket where Theresa's father had been gunned down but didn't realize till now it was right next door. Looking at its entrance, thinking about the tragedy that took place there, and anticipating seeing Theresa again, made my whiskey-warmed stomach twist and turn and flop around deep beneath my belt. I was buzzed but wanted to get drunk, real drunk, real quick.

  As we headed down Bell Boulevard toward Ungy's, we hunted for a liquor store. Just like College Point's Broadway, Bell was lined on both sides with small businesses. Mom-and-pop stores and shops with a generous smattering of saloons, mostly Irish, were here also, extending clear down to the movie theater a good ten-minute walk away. The street was a scaled-down version of Main Street, Flushing, but a few rungs higher on the social ladder. The stores were cleaner. No housing projects here. Hardly any apartment buildings at all. Bayside was more like the burbs, like Nassau County, Long Island, even though the town sits just inside the eastern reaches of Queens. Though we were on a main thoroughfare, we knew from experience that the side streets here were quiet, that they were buffered by high-crowned trees and well-maintained, true middle-class homes, with driveways. To us lowly apartment dwellers, Bayside was high class.

  We found a liquor store and each of us bought a pint of Boone's Farm for eighty-nine cents. With Ungy's only a block away now, we turned the first corner, bagged bottles in hand, and ducked into an alley behind a Greek restaurant. Under the cover of darkness, blocked on one side by a dumpster big as an elephant, we started guzzling. Hell of a mixture, whiskey, chased with apple wine. Back then we'd drink anything. If you were there, you remember the motto, "If it feels good, do it!"

  Soon my body had gone limp and the top of my head went numb. Not the ideal condition to be in when hoping to reconcile with a loved one. But I was tight. What if she and her friends changed plans? What if they decided to go somewhere else? "Come on, guys, let's go," I said, exhaling the last hit off my cigarette, flicking it at the dumpster. "We can finish drinkin' this on the way over there."

  It was getting late and I wanted to get on with this.

  Before we went inside Ungy's, I almost tossed my cookies out front when I forced down the last of my Boone's Farm. My stomach was filled and stretched with the whiskey-wine brew, and it was backed-up to my throat. My head pounded in sync with the music that boomed from the bar out onto the street. All three of us were painted green by the neon 'Ungy's' above the entrance, and I felt green on the inside too. I bent between two parked cars to stand my emptied bottle next to the curb and started retching and gagging over the gutter. I thought for sure I'd get sick. I hoped I would. I knew from experience I'd feel better if I did. I shoved a finger down my throat but still no luck, only a long green string of bile that stuck to my finger.

  Since there was no live band at Ungy's, there was no cover charge, no bouncer at the door checking proof, collecting money, stamping hands. We slithered and slid through a wall-to-wall assemblage of humanity before settling next to a half-wall that separated the bar from the dozen or so tables and the dance floor beyond them. The place was like thousands of others on any New York Saturday night. Young people were everywhere. Beneath a looming, blue, smoke-cloud, they engaged in loud conversations, competing with all the merriment and the 'Rascals' belting one out on the juke about 'Good Lovin''. These were party-animals in their late teens to late twenties, playing hard after a grinding week of school or work, guys and girls wearing bells, polka dots, paisley, army fatigue shirts, headbands and bracelets. Hundreds of them, standing cheek-to-jowl, drinks in hand, rapping away, all squished tight inside this club. Out on the wooden dance floor, that couldn't have been any bigger than our living room at home, there must have been fifty people grinding away to a slow one that just came on, a single, huge, solid mass of human cells swaying this way and that beneath the slo-mo strobe lights. It was obvious that Ungy's owner, or owners, believed in 'supporting' their local fire inspector.

  Striking a match, a new Marlboro bouncing in his lips, Jimmy asked, "Ya see `er?"

  "No, not yet," I said, as if I were only thinking the words while intently scanning the crowd.

  Then, his voice energized like it had been zapped with a thousand volts Donny blurted, "DEE CEE, LOOK!" He threw a finger toward a table fronting the dance floor where couples were mauling each other now to the Stones' 'As Tears Go By'. "Isn't that one of her friends?"

  It is the evening of the dayyyayyyayyy,

  I sit and watch the children playyyayyyayyy...

  "Yeah! That's Regina! Her friend from school! The one we went to the prom with!" My heart was racing, pounding uncontrollably inside its ribbed cage. "She's here, man! She's gotta be!" There were more chairs around the table than it was designed to accommodate, all of them occupied, except two, side-by-side. Was Theresa sitting there with another guy?

  Then Donny jerked his head in the direction of the dancers. "Over dere. I see `er. She's dancing wit' some dude."

  This was it! The alcohol, the blaring music, all the loud background conversations, Theresa there somewhere dancing with another guy, I was frantic. My voice gushing with urgency, I yelled."Where, where is she?"

  "Right behind that asshole wit' the plaid pants and the short hair. Man … you're fucked up … here," Donny said, palming the back of my head, pivoting it in the right direction.

  Sure as hell, there was Theresa cheek-to-cheek, belly-to-belly with another guy.

  Without a word, I started toward them, but Jimmy grabbed my shoulder from behind and said, "Hold on. Where you goin', man? Wait till the songs over, then go talk to her."

  "FFFUCK THAT!" I said, yanking away from my friend's grip, taking off, pronto, through the labyrinth of tables and people. No stopping me now. Instinctively, like any self-respecting, dominant male in the animal kingdom, I was going after what was mine. Amen! Simple as that. I saw and I reacted, pure instinct, forget the thinking process. There was nothing to evaluate. That sonofabitch had his arms around my girl.

  Some short-haired dude and his squeeze were dancing in my path. I stepped left, they swayed left, I went right, they swayed that way, I shoved them out of the way. Clenching each other tighter, for stability now, they struggled to remain upright.

  The chick let out a yell. "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, ASSHOLE!"

  The music played on.

  I sit and watch as tears go by-yy-yy ….

  Theresa and her partner unglued themselves and spun around to see what all the ruckus was about. When she saw it was me, shock flashed across her lovely face, then, just as quickly, those exotic eyes became enraged. She knew there was going to be trouble.

  "DEAN! NO!" she shouted, throwing my name like a warning and a reprimand both, sort of like when you catch your puppy pissing the carpet.

  Then her new friend turned his pretty-boy mug in my direction. He was another short-hair, must have been Mister plaid pants' fraternity bro. He'd turned just in time to see my balled up, boney fist c
oming with his name on it. I connected, his legs jellied, and he went down. Just that fast.

  I thought it served him right. I didn't trust anyone who was still dressing collegiate. My own wardrobe had metamorphosed to the revolutionary clothes of the late 60s, plain clothes that made a statement, told the world who you were, what you thought of the 'establishment' that kept the little man down. This guy was obviously a part of that select group, or his daddy was anyway. Besides being with my girl, I saw in him everything I hated, the type of college boy who had no idea what it was like to sweat tuition, or the draft. Someone who'd never had a toothache in his life. A silver-spooner who never once saw the inside of a mid-week, empty refrigerator, never had to fill his empty belly with triple-decker mayonnaise sandwiches on white. A dandy who probably had a new Vette parked outside and lived out in Port Washington too. But the bottom line was he was dancing with my girl. And no matter how he was dressed, what he had or didn't have, I would have cold-cocked him just the same. Nevertheless, his appearance made my drunken assault that much easier.

  Girls screamed, and the dance floor crowd dilated instantly. Theresa was pushing on my shirt with both hands as I tap-danced on the guy a couple of times with my size elevens.

  "STOP IT, DEAN, STOP IT!" she screamed.

  That's when I felt this beefy arm hook me from behind. Some bear had locked it around my neck and was dragging my sorry ass backwards, on my heels, through a carpet of peanut shells.

  Though I hollered, "LEMME GO MUTHAAAFUCKA!", with my neck constricted as it was, half the volume stayed inside my chest, sort of like Marlon Brando in the 'Godfather'. My eyes were bulging in their sockets and my breath was hard coming.

  Then, two more goons grabbed my arms, helping the force behind me. Amazing how much strength you can muster when you're really, really pissed. Six feet tall and only a hundred and forty-five pounds, I was giving the three of them all they could handle. Jimmy and Donny watched closely. These guys were BIG so they knew to lay low, unless they got too aggressive. If the bouncers would have started hitting, they would have gotten beer bottles or glass mugs over their heads, no matter how big they were.

  Looking back at Theresa as they dragged me to the door, I hollered, "C'MON OUTSIDE, THERESA! GODDDAMMIT, C'MON!"

  But she didn't. She just stood there, hands on her hips, in a scolding pose, watching me get thrown out. But, I could swear that, along with the anger in her eyes, there was also sympathy, that familiar softness. It was as if her angry expression was on the verge of changing.

  But then, just as I was being heaved out the door, she turned her back on me.

  Outside, Donny and Jimmy sat on a parked car and smoked as I paced the sidewalk, giving Theresa time, hoping desperately she'd come to me. Still breathing hard, my hands trembling by their own free will, I stopped intermittently, stealing looks inside the bar's front window. All that was there were faceless people.

  Theresa was not coming out.

  Everything we'd shared was over now. Done and gone. Love, hope, trust and lust, dreams and plans. I'd negated all of it. Sure I'd screwed up but, still, the punishment seemed too stiff for the crime. Hell, I thought as I resumed my pacing, I'm a horny SOB just like every other guy my age. Shit, I didn't kill anyone. She's gonna just ditch me after all we supposedly meant to each other? Commme on! I'm sick of feeling like some pervert, like some twisted, dirty criminal. I was drunk that night!

  And, now I was drunk again, crazier than a shithouse rat, capable of anything.

  What went through my head next was something like 'Dose Guinea bastids throw me out, when my girl's in dere, wit anotha guy! Ah'll show dem!'

  When I first went to the curb, Jimmy and Donny had no idea what I was up to. But when I straightened up and they saw in my hand the wine bottle I'd left there earlier, they knew exactly what was going down. Like Tom Seaver (rumor had it that he actually lived in Bayside around this time), I reared back and heaved the bottle at the face of the building. It was a strike, right square in the middle of the neon 'Ungy's'. The whole thing exploded, a loud POP and glass flying everywhere.

  "That'll fix them!"

  "C'MON. LET'S GET OUTTA' HEEAH!" Donny yelled, grabbing my elbow, dragging me as close to reality as was possible in my condition. While he pulled me down the street, I looked back at the mess one last time, still hoping that Theresa would come out of that door. But she didn't. All you could see was broken glass all over the sidewalk and neon dust floating like fine green snow.

  "C'MON. WE GOTTA' BOOK!" Donny yelled in my ear again, tightening his grip, pulling me with two hands now. Though I barely heard him, I was beginning to realize the severity of my actions and I started beating heels into the darkness with my friends. Heading down a side street that paralleled Bell Boulevard, all you could see was asses and elbows as we made our tear beneath the rows of street lights. Our feet pounding, we raced past five blocks of tidy houses until we eventually came upon the bright shower of light on Northern Boulevard where we slowed to a brisk walk. Breathing hard, hands on our hips, the three of us hunched slightly forward as we checked down the street we'd just come from--nobody in sight. We were safe. Or so we thought.

  Heading up the boulevard, talking excitedly about what had just happened, we suddenly heard what sounded like a whole stampede of pissed off Pamplona bulls gaining on us fast. The heavy footsteps had come out of nowhere. As quick as we'd turned to see what the deal was, they were upon us.

  "HOLD ON MUTHAFUCKERS," came a deep, winded, resonate roar.

  Ironically we were but a block away from that same supermarket where Theresa's father had been killed when we turned to face these guys. I thought for sure we'd die now, just a hundred yards from where he did. What would Theresa think of that, my intoxicated mind mused, but only for a millisecond?

  There was no running now. The four rough-looking Italians had their three-o'clock-shadows right in our faces. They threw their olive-skinned jaws out at us along with four nasty-smile snarls, that mean-ass New York upside-down smile where the lips are pulled tight and the corners of your mouth dip, yet there's still a hint of a sinister smile there. Let me tell you, these guys were no kids. They were solidly-built men in their late twenties and thirties. All of their shirts were opened to their bellies, exposing black pelted chests and the gaudy gold-ropes half buried inside them. Hate and anger flew from their black eyes like a barrage of electrically-charged stilettos. I could feel the heat as we stood face-to-face with these men. It burned my skin. That they had run all the way from Ungy's did nothing to smooth their foul dispositions. All of them were breathing like marathoners on the twenty-sixth mile. With all that hot Latin adrenaline speeding through their meaty limbs, it was obvious these guys were ready to kick some serious ass.

  We didn't have a prayer. Even if this had been even-up, these men were TOO BIG! Even the two short ones had shoulders wider than most doorways, chests thick as sides of beef.

  "OK, you hippy pieces of shit," growled the biggest one, the one who first grabbed me inside Ungy's. He was right in my face, reeking of salami or garlic or something. In his tough guy, staccato style of cutting words, he made his point reasonably clear, "Weeah gonna beat yaw asses!" With that out of the way, he shoved me in the chest, hard. Back-peddling a few stutter steps on the sidewalk, I fought to keep my balance until I slammed, and I mean slammed, back-first, into a parked car. Shit, that really hurt. This bastard's gonna kill me. My hands on the small of my back, quick dashes of biting pain shooting through a network of nerves, I lost it. I blurted, "Big fuckin' man! You got a hundred pounds on me. Gonna make you feel good to beat my ass? Bring it on, tough guy." As I said all that, I was thinking, 'Go head man, put me out of my misery.' I didn't give two shits about anything at this point.

  Then like a lion about to finish off his prey, the guy moved in on me, his impossibly powerful fists balled like two rocks at his sides. The wise guy was waddling toward me, very slowly, for affect. He and I both knew what he was doing. Taking his time, giving
my fear a chance to regroup, drag out the experience as long as possible, adding another dimension to my fear, allowing me plenty of time to contemplate the worst before it actually came.

  By now the other three tough guys were shoving Donny and Jimmy around too.Out on the boulevard headlights were flying by like high-speed white fireflies. You know that dream you have where you're trapped in some horrible predicament and there's no way out? Well this was it.

  But an idea came to me. I thought, 'Freak it man, I'm dead anyway. Might as well go for it!' and, in one single motion, I lunged for the car's antenna and ripped it off the fender. I had the steel rod cocked when the sound of skidding rubber grabbed my attention. A passing car had stopped short, fishtailing in the street, right behind me.