“Not me,” I said, causing all of them to turn, surprised, as if they had forgotten I was there. “I banged this girl from Westfield and she’s actually…”
“Bullshit, Ferraro,” Pierce Stone snapped. “Yeah, and Farber lost his virginity at camp two years ago.”
“Still, I think we should get rid of it,” said Silas.
“Okay, Silas, well, guess what? Remember when you and Julie were hooking up this summer? Well, she and the rest of the girls held a blowjob seminar in Rosenblatt’s bathroom.”
“When?”
“When you were back in Africa.”
“She had a bushel of bananas,” said Paxton. “Crackin’ ’em off at the husk like a zookeeper!”
“She never gave me a blowjob.”
“Exactly,” said Pierce Stone.
Tank held the bottom of his shirt to his chin as he flexed in his full-length mirror. “Carina! Turn that shit down! She makes one Puerto Rican friend and now all she plays is fucking Daddy Yankee.”
Carmine, Sonny, and Joey came rumbling down the steps. They had returned from a tanning session—the second that day—at Soleil Sands on Millburn Avenue. I could see the pink underneath where they’d picked at the crackling skin. I’d gone once or twice, but I didn’t like it; the tanning pod was claustrophobic, like an engine was going to pop out the bottom and fire me into outer-fucking-space.
“Eyy ohh!” said Carmine as the three of them came into Tank’s bedroom.
“Look at this guy, flexin’ in the mirror, thinking he’s tough,” said Joey, punching Tank’s shoulder.
“I can’t get rid of this,” Tank said, running his fingers over the little pudge on his lower abs.
“You’ll never get rid of that,” said Carmine. “That’s ‘guinea fat.’ All the pasta dinners and breads and cheeses and everything. You got an Italian mom? You got guinea fat.”
“Vito doesn’t have it,” said Sonny. “Kid’s skinny and cut. Got a fighter’s body. Yo Vito, how do you stay so lean?”
“My ma’s not Italian,” I said.
“Oh, that’s right, that’s why you got those light eyes? Lucky fuck.”
“My dad thinks we might be part Norman, also.”
“Part what?”
“Norman. They were originally Scandinavians who carved out part of France and eventually took over parts of Southern Italy and Sicily. Bohemond of Taranto was a Crusader king.”
“I don’t know what this kid says half the time,” said Joey.
“He’s got that Short Hills education,” said Sonny.
“That was like four years ago. We’ve all been in the same schools since sixth grade. Tank lives in Short Hills. We’re in Short Hills right now!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Carmine.
“Are you calling me stupid?” said Tank, turning away from the mirror. “Carina! Turn that shit down!”
“Yo Vito, you’re coming to Logan’s tonight, right?” said Sonny.
“Yo, I heard that these Chinese kids have been running their mouths. Saying they’re going to take over the neighborhood and shit like that. They’re supposed to be there,” said Joey.
“Yeah, I’m gonna go. I have a private QB lesson in a few hours with this ex-NFL player.”
“Ohhh shit. Yo, Vito is going to take us to States next year,” said Carmine, doing his best imitation of a three-step drop.
Later that night, my father dropped me off at Logan’s house, where I met my paisanos congregating on the front porch. I told him it was a captain’s meeting, but it was actually a Fight Club.
“Why did you guys do your hair?” I asked. “Don’t we wear a helmet during this thing?” They looked at me as if the thought of being in public without doing your hair was some sort of foreign concept.
“I don’t need a helmet. I’ll knock these faggots out one-two,” said Joey, giving Carmine one, then two, punches on the arm.
“Eyy, ohh. That’s my beatin’-off arm!”
Uproar.
We followed the driveway that wrapped around the house into an empty two-car garage that was beginning to fill up with mostly seniors and juniors cracking open Coors Lights and passing around a glass handle of Smirnoff.
“What’s the first rule of Fight Club?!” asked Logan, a senior defensive end who led the team in sacks last year.
“You don’t talk…”
“… talk about Fight…”
“… talk about Fight Club!” shouted the groups in a layered echo.
Our Fight Club wasn’t exactly like the movie that inspired it. We wore helmets and gloves and kept our shirts on.
My paisanos and I wedged into the ring of flesh next to a group of Ukrainian kids wearing matching t-shirts that said Born to be Free. I couldn’t help staring at the empty space where high schoolers would soon battle like gladiators in the ring—only dumping golden sand on the gray garage floor would make it more authentic.
More groups started to flood into the garage—the soccer team with a few members of each grade’s Jew Crew; some Pakistanis; more football players; Tiago and a few of his Brazilian cousins (they used the term as liberally as we did) from Ironbound, Newark; and a handful of the Chinese kids that Sonny said had been running their mouths. Typically girls weren’t permitted at Fight Club, but Logan was close with the basketball captains, so he allowed them to bring their girlfriends—if anything, to make the gladiators fight harder—everyone fights harder when girls are around.
“Hey! Vic!” shouted Julie Fischer, disrupting my concentration. She had come in with Aaron Podhoretz, a senior small forward on the basketball team. “Are you the only freshman guy here?” She scanned the garage, not considering Tank or Carmine in her count. “I think Josh and Paxton and them might be coming later. You talk to them at all?”
Them? I stared past Julie Fischer, hoping Pierce Stone would strut his way through the door and we’d duel it out like Rocky Marciano and whatever boxer the WASP community revered: “Dammit, Ferraro! You knocked my teeth out!”
More basketball players flooded the garage, and Maria DiMonica, a girl from California who moved in with her uncle in the Poet’s Section a few years ago, came in attached to the point guard’s elbow. She was a stellar softball player with the kind of tight body you saw on Olympic athletes. My father would
