Sitting in the pews, penance done, I watched the short line of confessors getting smaller. The monotonous whispers of the prayers around me turned to sheep and flew to the heavens to be counted and slept on.
What I Would Think About During Mass
The football games I was missing.
The woman’s hair in front of me.
Who I would have to shake hands with at the “offer each other a sign of peace” part of the service.
Should I make my dad wonder what I’ve done by not going to communion?
Is it a sin for minors to drink the “blood of Christ”?
Are my pants too baggy?
Is the person behind me staring at my ass?
The person’s ass two rows in front of me.
I wish they had chocolate-dipped communion.
It must be embarrassing being an altar boy.
Should I really try to sing, or should I moan along with everyone else?
I wonder what kinds of donuts they’ll have in the basement after the service.
Am I going to miss the halftime highlights?
Physical
“Flip me some shit, boy. C’mon, flip me some shit.”
After the P.E. soccer game we all ran back to the locker rooms to shower. I had accidentally kicked Farrell in the knee. Two of his friends ran beside him as he taunted me. He didn’t need backup though. It was widely believed since grade school that Farrell was probably the meanest and biggest kid in our grade. With only Chongo being arguably tougher.
“You think you’ll be okay in the shower, boy? I wouldn’t want you to slip or anything,” said Farrell. His friends smiled, then he tried to trip me.
Once inside, he leaned against my locker. “I don’t think you got any friends in here, do ya? Nobody’d give a shit if I flushed your fucking head down the toilet. They’d probably laugh.” What frightened me most about him saying this was how he said it slowly and calmly, as if discussing what was on the lunch menu.
High Dive
I never took swim lessons when I was a kid and (though I didn’t announce this fact to anyone) I was terribly afraid of any water. Perhaps it was my imagination going crazy, but it seemed to me like there was a drowning at the public pool every year. When I first started high school there was a quiet Asian kid— maybe he was even a foreign exchange student—who drowned while swimming in P.E. Some kids said that his body sat at the bottom of the deep end for a good fifteen minutes before anyone noticed.
I think the
Our public pool was right across the street from my high school, so we had a couple of weeks each year where we swam and played water polo during P.E. class.
We practiced diving too. Going up the ladder was the dizziest part for me. I always wanted to turn back, but there were people in the way. I had no choice but to jump. I plugged my nose and dove to the right, so that I wouldn’t have to swim so far to get out. I paddled like a dog. I suppose I could have learned the breaststroke but I never wanted to put my face in the water. I thought I’d open my mouth at the wrong moment and water would flood into my throat and I’d be done for, plummeting to the bottom, my lungs exploding.
One of my friends made fun of me—“Here doggy-doggy.” I’d laugh along, scared for my life. When I was out of the pool, I noticed how white my feet looked. I almost wanted to swim with my socks on. I sat in a plastic chair and draped a towel over my lower legs.
When I got older, I eventually taught myself how to swim a little better and, though I was still wary of rivers and lakes, I actually enjoyed going to swimming pools. But one day while I was at a Portland pool, I must have stepped on a small piece of glass or something. I sat down on a lawn chair and noticed blood shooting out of my right big toe like a little squirt gun. I couldn’t figure out what was causing this blood fountain, but it stopped after a few minutes, only to start up again at various random times for the next few months. I went to a foot doctor and he said it was probably a tiny pebble that sometimes shifted and caused the blood to pulse out. He offered to give me a shot to numb my toe, make a small cut, and peel the skin back to see what the problem was. It almost made me sick just to hear him describe the procedure. I said no thanks and decided to see if it would fix itself. A couple of months later, whatever was in there finally came out. I was healed.
Korea
Darren and I wanted to feel the skin of the cashier at the Mayfair Market.
It was cold outside and I had just gotten two ski masks from my brother Russell, who was stationed in Korea. They were Christmas presents, and I think they had trees on them—red trees on white stitching. In black letters it said KOREA on the back. Darren and I thought ski masks were funny looking, and we knew from watching TV that only people in Antarctica or guys robbing banks wore them. I gave one to Darren and we wore them on our heads but never pulled them down over our faces.
Behind the grocery store were some doctors’ offices and a pharmacy. By the pharmacy was a big generator. One afternoon, we hid the two Korean ski masks behind the generator, where nobody would find them.
That night, after the store had closed, we hung out by the telephone booths. Five minutes, then fifteen, passed. Darren took a lap around the store and looked in the windows to see what the cashier was doing. She was still there and so was a yellow Volkswagen in the parking lot.
We had no knowledge of being watched, but we were. Across the street in the dark lot of a Chevron station was a police car with its lights off.
After Darren got back to the telephone booths, we talked about the girl and made a decision. As we started back to get the masks by the generator, we saw the police lights. We told the police we were looking for a cat (we whispered this alibi to each other as they got out of their car). They wrote down our names and phone numbers and asked us to show the tread on our shoes. They told us to go home and got back in their car to watch us walk away.
When I got home I remembered the ski masks by the generator. Then I quickly tried to forget.
Braces
One of my first girlfriends had braces and thick glasses and was not thought of as pretty or even anything resembling “friend” material. In fact, even though I told some people I had a girlfriend, I made sure no one saw her. I was sixteen, she was thirteen. When I had my first car (a cheap Chevette) I’d go to her
