Tank’s older sister, Carina, blared the same pop songs all night from down the hall and always used the phone line to talk to boys—always older ones from different towns, like Union, Springfield, and New Providence.
“Hey Tank, do you believe John Thompson when he says he’s seven inches?”
“Seven inches, what?” said Tank as he covered his shirt in Axe body spray for the third time.
“Oh, uh… you know. What the girls asked us the other day?”
“Yeah, I guess I believe him. Why would someone lie about their penis size?”
“I don’t know. Is bigger better?”
“I think so. Carina, stop playing that fucking song! It’s the fifth time already!”
During the half of the lunch period we spent in the auditorium—recess stayed with Glenwood—we sat in clusters, with the prime real estate being as close to John Thompson as possible. I rarely sat right next to John, despite the fact that we were friends and football captains together; I refused to be glued to his hip like Paxton, Pierce Stone, and the “Jew Crew”—a self-given moniker. It seemed that every grade at MMS had a Jew Crew, as if the details of running such an organization were passed down in a weathered tome. Being Jewish, however, was not a prerequisite for admittance into the Crew.
When Julie Fischer (unanimous number one on the hot list) posed the question, “Do you know how big you are?” I happened to be only two seats down from John Thompson, wedged between Paxton and Mitch Farber. The query conflagrated throughout the boys’ cluster like wildfire as we turned to each other, seeking approval on how to answer. But John, taking charge of the pandemonium, said “seven” so assuredly that you’d think he had measured during fourth period. “Five and a half. Five and a half. Five and a half,” began the Greek chorus, as John had made the ceiling, and anyone going over would be pressured into dropping trou right there in the theater to prove themselves.
I’m ashamed to say I joined in the yelps of “five and a half”—“Be a leader, not a follower,” my father would tell me—without ever actually measuring. That day when I got home from school, I grabbed an old ruler that changed images of dinosaurs depending on how I tilted it, and measured myself sitting on the toilet. Does it go from… from the side? Or underneath my stugots (translation: testicles, balls)? Knocks berated the door.
“Hey Vic, you almost done in there?” said my brother. Tony had moved in with us two years ago so he could attend Millburn High School. It had been the best day of my life. “Are you still sitting down to pee? I thought you were over that?”
I threw the ruler into a drawer and opened the door. “Hey Tony, is bigger better?”
“What? Like your pisciali? Vic, don’t ask me that. That’s gay.”
“Who’s sitting down to pee? Not my son,” said my father, coming out of his room. “Did I ever tell you boys about the Ferraro family crest? Oh, you’ll love this. It’s Saint Bernard micturating into a wine glass. Isn’t that something?”
“No way that’s true,” said Tony.
“What’s ‘micturating’?”
“Hey, don’t you guys forget that we’re going to the hardware store tomorrow.”
Groans.
“Yes, I don’t want to hear it. You haven’t seen Nana in a while and I need to speak with Uncle Shorty. He’d love to see you, Vito, and wants to come to one of your games. You know your Uncle Shorty played football and baseball at the University of Miami? They’re all jerks now, but they used to have class. You know he had a tryout with the Yankees?”
“I suck at baseball.”
“Hey! Language. And you don’t… stink. You just can’t hit. Ferraros were never great hitters. That’s why your Uncle Shorty never made it to the pros.”
I led my Little League team in getting hit by a pitch.
Our TV still had the crack, larger now due to a raucous WWF reenactment, and was never cured of that five-minute load time. Whenever I could, I slept on the pullout couch, flipping through the channels with an unsupervised, reckless abandon I wasn’t permitted when my father or brother were around.
“Hello, my lovelies.” I stopped flipping. Tom Jones Cleaver sat in his cream white suit in front of a burgeoning fire. “Listen up and listen close.” Next to Tom Jones Cleaver was a friend, Pastor Palmer, who frequently made guest appearances on the show. “I was asked recently about our jet. You remember that, Pastor?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“I was asked, Pastor Cleaver, ‘Shouldn’t that money go to the poor, the destitute, the meek, and the indigent’?’ and I said, ‘No! We preach that you plant your seed, you reap what you sow. God has given us our jet.’”
“That’s right.”
“And it is in the Bible that we are given precedent. The Gospel of Matthew 26:10, in which Jesus rebukes his disciples…”
“He does.”
“And says the poor will always have you and therefore she should use her perfume for my body, instead of selling it and giving that money to the poor. You see, my lovelies, we need our plane to reach you, our flock. I spoke to God yesterday on the plane…”
“On the plane?”
“On the plane. I stood up and I said, I said, ‘Lord, I need the strength to reach my flock because my flock neeeeeeeeeds me…’”
“You couldn’t speak to God on Delta.”
“No, I could not. You see, we need our jet, because, well, you see, we were in Charlotte one day, and then Nashville, and then Las Vegas, and then Sacramento, and then Las Vegas, and then Spokane, and then Denver, and then Las Vegas, and my lovelies, we just couldn’t do that on a commercial airline.”
“No, sir.”
“Listen to me, my lovelies, because the Devil will lie to you.”
I shuffled for the remote,
