Lunchmeat Read online

  I played football, basketball, and lacrosse, at school and on travel teams, and attended sports camps throughout the summer. I got moved to quarterback, and my dad set up private lessons with this ex-NFL player who coached in Morristown. “Promising” was the word they usually used to describe my talents. And “he’ll grow into his frame,” to which my father would insist I show them my hands.

  Eighth grade was a spiraling vortex of sports and sex—the former occupying my weekends and afternoons, the latter occupying my mind. I couldn’t make it through ten minutes of American History class without drifting off to a candlelit tower, naked and alone with Jessie Levinson; I was so desperate I fantasized about my girlfriend!

  “Millburn and Livingston don’t have sex until at least sophomore year—that’s just how it’s always been,” she would say, as if the two suburbs had signed a chastity pact.

  You could see the effects in the halls, where an oversized textbook was strategically held at the waist to hide one of the fifty random boners experienced that day. You wouldn’t call out the poor guy, as you implemented the same strategy, and instead simply gave a nod of solidarity, as if to say, “Godspeed, comrade.”

  The girls were quite aware of our affliction and compounded our suffering when they would pile into the bathroom in Rosenblatt’s basement and practice giving blowjobs on condoms filled with water. “We’re practicing for next year,” they would say, as if Blowjobbing 101 were a freshman prerequisite for their eventual application to Vassar or Tufts. But that was just the order of things—the freshman girls blew the upperclassmen, and you just had to wait it out until your ascendance to the top of the fellatio chain.

  Of course, this Elizabethan sexual morass was only applicable to this particular group of girls, the “popular” ones, to use a trite term that almost seemed comical now after the release of Mean Girls. Other groups of friends were fucking and sucking and blowing each other in bacchanalian orgies, like it was Woodstock. Lara Caponero would blow Ricky Matthews in the bathroom during fourth period every Thursday, and Mark Goldring had a threesome with Olena Lazarenko and her cousin visiting from Odessa (Ukraine, not Texas).

  I wanted in on it. I wanted to take my grandfather’s katana and slice through the red tape sealing me off from my sexual liberation. So I jumped ship. No more roses or sonnets or debilitating concerns regarding chivalry. What a difference two years can make, I thought as Michaela Silves undid my belt and zipped down my fly.

  We were at Tank’s house celebrating Carmine’s birthday. Carmine, Joey, and Sonny (DiRossi, Lampedusa, and Zito, respectively) were all cousins who lived down in the Little Italy section of Millburn—my father said he wanted to move down there but he couldn’t get a big enough backyard for me to practice my footwork or run sprints. Joey and Sonny were sophomores at the high school, but Sonny had his license already because he was old for his grade. To clarify, they weren’t really cousins. None of us were, but we all called each other cuz, cuzzo, or paisan (Translation: compatriot, comrade, brother-in-arms) in a type of Southern Italian solidarity that you really only saw with the Ukrainians living in Little Moscow, the apartment complex across from the high school—I suppose “Little Kiev” didn’t have the same ring to it. All of Essex County was inhabited by families of Avellino—from humble roots, I presume—so we figured we were related somewhere down the line.

  Carmine had that olive complexion and brown eyes that made it easy to convince people his family was from Sicily—I had conducted extensive investigations of our family tree to see if my affinity for the island life came from Sicilian roots, but to no avail—we were strictly from the boot.

  Knock, knock, knock, knock. Tank left the table covered in pizza boxes and Coors Light cans to answer the door.

  “Oh, hey, Carina isn’t here yet,” said Tank. “Come inside and have a beer with us.”

  Michaela Silves appeared in front of the group in high boots and a skirt that was as long as the width of my outstretched hand—yes, I’m aware I had big hands, but this was all that was covering the girl from waist to boots.

  “Yo, you guys know Michaela, right? She’s friends with Carina.”

  “Hi, Vic,” she said, pushing her hair behind her ear.

  “Eyy, she called you by your ameriganz name!” shouted Carmine as he poured out a few shots of homemade limoncello he stole from his grandmother. “Here, here, take another one with me. Here, Vito, this one’s yours.”

  I had embraced “Vito.” I introduced myself as Vito and even wrote it on my tests and essays for school. My mother hated it. “I didn’t name you that!” she would say; my father’d laugh and shout, “He’s embracing his roots!”

  “I don’t think I can do another one of those. That shit burns,” said Joey.

  “Hey Freddy, where is Carina, anyway?” asked Michaela.

  “She’s coming back soon. I think she went to pick up some friends from West Orange.”

  “She still hanging around with those mulignans?” (Translation, literal: eggplant; colloquial: black person, black African-American.)

  “Yeah, they hang out sometimes,” said Tank.

  “Eyy oh, why do mooglis have white palms? Ehh? Ehh? Because everyone’s got some good in ’em,” said Sonny.

  Uproar.

  “Eyy, I’m not white,” said Joey. “Italians aren’t white. That’s like Wonder Bread, motherfuckers.”

  “Henri and Pierre are good dudes,” I said.

  “Hard to believe that,” started Sonny. “My father’s old neighborhood is all mooglis now. He said the entire block used to be guineas and Polacks.”

  They used “guinea” with pride, similar to the way Pierre and Henri said “nigga.”

  “Jessie’s dad complains about that too,” I said, staring into my limoncello shot with the fear of God. “He says Weequahic used to be all Jewish. That this writer Philip Roth went there, who wrote this famous book about this girl from Short Hills. Goodbye, Columbus, I think.”

  “I love Short Hills girls. Got this snobby ’tude and shit. Love it,” said Joey.

  “Eyy Michaela, you got that Short Hills attitude? Tank, your sister kinda does,” said Carmine.

  “Hey, so Vic. Are you and Jessie still hooking up?” she asked.

  “Well… I guess. I haven’t talked to her in a while. She didn’t respond to my text either,” I said, opening and closing my RAZR phone.

  “Ohhh, ya know what that means!”

  “She’s sucking face with the Jew Crew!”

  Uproar.

  I glanced at Michaela and could see a little smirk appear. When our eyes met, she rushed to the fridge and grabbed a sparkling water.

  “Eyy, have some of this swill instead. It’s been marinating in my Nana’s cabinet for a hundred fuckin’ years!”

  “Is it any good?” she asked.

  “No, but it’ll get ya nice and sauced.”

  The liqueur hit Michaela like a ton of bricks. We probably should’ve cut her off after the third shot, but by 10:30, the girl had taken her shirt off and tossed it on the floor and wasn’t stopping her tight skirt from popping over her butt cheek.

  We stopped salud-ing (translation: cheers! Sláinte! Kanpai! À la vôtre!) and went rogue with our drinks. The crack of shot glasses on the wood table started to form an avant-garde percussive rhythm, like a tribute to Thelonius Monk. Joey left to puke in the bathroom, even though he didn’t want to admit it—his bloodshot eyes betrayed his stiff upper lip.

  “Eyy ohh, Michaela, you gotta give my boy here a birthday present,” said Sonny as he shook Carmine by the shoulder.

  “Hey Freddy, do you… do you know when Carina is getting back?”

  “My Nana says that you never show up to a party empty-handed. Hey sweetheart, you listenin’ to me?” said Sonny.

  “She can’t even keep her eyes open,” said Tank.

  “Hey Michaela,
you okay?” I said, putting my hand on her back to keep her from falling off her stool.

  “Look at us. We’ve barely put a dent in this piss and we’re all wasted,” said Carmine.

  She leaned in and rested her head on my shoulder. “Do you want a present, Victor?”

  If I was single, I would throw you on the sofa and rip your clothes off and attack you like a mad dog.

  “Eyy ohh, Vic ain’t the birthday boy,” said Joey as he cracked open a Coors Light.

  “Hey Victor,” she whispered, “when’s Carina getting back?”

  “Eyy, what’s she sayin’ over there?”

  “I’m saying I want to give Victor a BLOWJOB.”

  Uproar: “Eyy! Ohh!”

  “Vito’s got a girlfriend. Eyy Vito, she ever blow you? I heard the Jewish ones don’t suck on the pisciadool (translation: dick, penis, pisciali),” said Joey.

  “That’s why I only date girls from Union,” said Carmine. “The Portuguese will treat ya right. Gotta get a girl with a similar heritage—baccalà (translation: cod) people.”

  “I think that if anyone is gettin’ their braciole tasted, it should be Carmine,” said Sonny. “You only turn fourteen once.”

  “I will only do it if I can also give Victor one.”

  Uproar.

  “Look at this, she’s serious!”

  “Carmine, ya can’t turn this down.”

  “Michaela, aren’t you Portuguese?” I asked. “With some family in Brazil, right?”

  “Victor, I want to suck your dick.”

  “Look at him. He’s trying not to smile,” Sonny pointed.

  I hadn’t smiled in fourteen months—the streak continued.

  “And what about Tank, huh? I mean, he’s the host. He needs to get some too, don’t ya think?” posited Carmine.

  “Okay, fine, Freddy… I mean Tank… and Carmine. Then Vic, okay?”

  “Okay,” they said in unison, then turned to me as if they had just sealed a business negotiation in my favor.

  “But I’m with Jessie.”

  “Yeah, then where is she? Come on, cuz, if you keep pickin’ the Jewish girls, ya never gonna get that pisciadool slobbed,” said Sonny.

  Tank and Carmine argued over who would go first—Carmine eventually won out by playing the “birthday card” hard. He took Michaela by the hand and I watched the tops of their heads disappear as they descended the steps that led to the basement and Tank’s bedroom.

  Joey poured out a round of limoncellos, and we shot the shit until Carmine appeared at the top of the steps, grinning ear to ear.

  “You up, cuzzo,” he said, patting Tank on the back.

  Tank practically slid down the steps, as if he were on a skateboard grinding the rail.

  I shot Jessie a text: I think we should break up.

  Another round and Tank was ascending the basement steps, sporting—eerily—the same exact grin Carmine had after his appointment with Michaela.

  I don’t know why I thought she’d come and get me like a psychiatrist greets their next patient, one foot on each side of the doorway: “And how are we feeling today, Mr. Ferraro?”

  The lights were off at the bottom of the stairs and each step down creaked, and I tripped on the last one and almost went crashing into Carina’s door. Turning the corner, there was only a sliver of light emanating from underneath the bathroom door in Tank’s bedroom. I tapped on it with my index knuckle. “Michaela, you in there?” As if she would be anywhere else.

  “It’s open, Victor.”

  The vanity was overflowing with colognes and body sprays and an uncapped, curled-up tube of Crest. Michaela sat on the brim of the bathtub, her skirt rolled up to her waist like a belt, her knees purple like the galaxy.

  “Remember when I asked you on a playdate in Ms. O’Donnell’s class? I just wanted to kiss you, Victor. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

  I should’ve told her she didn’t have to go through with it. That we could just go back upstairs and wait for Carina or that she could go to bed—I’d even say that she did it so she wouldn’t catch any flak from the guys—but I didn’t do that. I stood with my bulge at eye level, waiting for her to undo my belt and zip down my fly just like the girls always did in the clips on pornacopia.com. Not a rose in sight—what a difference two years can make. Then she started.

  When it was over, I left her in the bathroom and shut the door behind me as she searched the vanity for mouthwash. I could hear girls cachinnating as I ascended the stairs to the kitchen. Carina and a couple of friends—all in shirts with “bebe” bedazzled across the chest—had joined the paisanos in clanking rounds of limoncello.

  “Eyy ohh!” called the group.

  “Victor! Hey baby! Where were you? Is Michaela down there?” Carina asked as she pulled me in for a hug. Michaela rose from the depths of the basement, squinting and covering her eyes against the kitchen’s florescent lighting. “There she is! Hey girl! Jeez, Michaela, you look like shit. Ha! What the fuck were you two doing down there?”

  “Vito and Michaela got bored waiting, so they started the party without you,” said Joey.

  “Jesus.” She tugged Michaela’s skirt down as far as it would go. “I thought you had a girlfriend, Vic. What about Jessie?”

  “They broke up,” said Carmine.

  “Hey, ‘Silves,’ that’s a Portuguese name, right?” asked André as he poured out a row of vodka shots.

  I threw open the door to the bathroom and puked, barely making it to the toilet.

  “Oh, Victor, honey,” said my mother, dropping to a knee and rubbing my back.

  “But… but… he’s home from the hospital?”

  “Yes, he is, but that’s not because he’s gotten better, Victor. It’s because he’s… well… It’s so he can be with his family in his home… until the end.”

  Mr. Geiger had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and I had believed his return to West Road was a sign of total recovery.

  “Vito, pal, I think you and Tony should go hang out with the boys,” said my father, standing in the doorway. “They need your support right now. When Tony gets home, why don’t you two go over together? He should be back any minute.”

  I heard my brother’s RAV4 cruise up the driveway, serenading West Road in the screeching chorus of the homegrown Jersey basement band Thursday. I waited in my room, meticulously rearranging my bookshelf and trophies and other sports memorabilia like I was a child again, procrastinating doing my long division worksheets.

  “Hey,” my brother said as he opened the door, his frame artificially broadened due to his royal blue and white varsity jacket. “Mamadelle (translation: stepmother; literal: little mother) and Dad told you about Mr. G, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think we should go hang out with Karl and George.”

  “But Mr. G is home. Why wouldn’t he stay in the hospital if he wasn’t still sick?”

  “They didn’t explain that already?”

  “No, they did. I just thought maybe you’d tell me something different.”

  About halfway up the little hill that separated the Geigers’ house from our own, I began to sob—big, wet, breath-eating sobs. Tony put his arm around my shoulder and began to basically carry me up the hill. Mrs. G greeted us at the door with a hug. I rushed mine and headed straight for the basement.

  “I love you guys,” she said.

  “I love you too!” I yelled, sprinting down the creaking stairs.

  George was sunken into the couch, legs rested on the ottoman, channel surfing the premiums. Karl, shirtless, sat at the computer and didn’t turn around. I was the only one crying.

  I figured this could be a good sign. Perhaps my parents had been too dramatic. My mother was always getting worked up while she watched Fox News from the kitchen sink—my father had to remind her th
at, yet again, the sky was not falling.

  “What do you idiots want?”

  “Good to see you too.” Tony opened the fridge. “No Stewart’s?”

  Neither of them answered.

  “Pepsi it is then.”

  He handed me a soda and joined us on the couch. George flipped to HBO, where the opening credits of The Sopranos showed Tony making his way out of the City and into Essex County.

  “I think they filmed one of the upcoming episodes in the reservation,” said George.

  “Yeah, yeah, you were sayin’ that,” said my brother.

  “Bet they whacked someone.”

  “Probably.”

  Is Mr. Geiger going to die, like, soon? Why won’t anyone say anything about it? We’re allowed to talk about our feelings. That’s what they always tell us.

  I wanted to go and give Karl a hug, wrap my arms around him and pull him in tight. I didn’t care if he wouldn’t turn around from the computer.

  I couldn’t help but consider if my dad had been upstairs, dying. How are they not crying? Why am I the only one crying? Sure, I had always been the emotional one—“My sweet Victor, you’re cut from a different cloth,” my mother would say—but I thought that had ended by the time I turned fourteen. I stopped apologizing to the trees in the backyard when my brother would hack at the roots with a pickaxe so we wouldn’t hurt our knees and elbows. I stopped crying when all the pretty horses got lanced or shot full of arrows in the movies—“Leave the horses out of it!” I got a blowjob from Michaela Silves, drunk, and didn’t even offer her a glass of water or a rose. But that vulnerability of childhood (I considered myself “in my youth” at fourteen) came bubbling back to the surface, and it wasn’t even my father up there!

  Karl! Karl! Turn around, Karl!

  Fathers are supposed to be invincible. Cancer: taking the planet’s superheroes one father at a time. I hated cancer. I hated that I was born on June 29 because my zodiac sign was cancer. I personified the disease as a gelatinous, expanding sludge, like the abomination overrunning Neo-Tokyo in Akira.