As the summer of 1995 drew to a close, Eric’s father and his siblings rented out a camp at a local lake near the beach. Labor Day weekend was a big gathering for Eric’s extended family, and I was happy to find out I was invited. Upon arriving, Eric and I went to the beach, where Eric told me that he had just masturbated for the first time the day before. I didn’t reach puberty until tenth grade, so I would often lie and say I was masturbating, but I really wasn’t. It was the only topic Eric would talk about that weekend.
The next morning I fell into the bathtub really hard, and the sound echoed through the house. A couple of Eric’s aunts rushed into the bathroom because they were worried that I might have passed out. Luckily, I survived with minor injuries. One night the whole family had clams for supper. I accidently started chewing on a shell. One of Eric’s aunts ordered me to spit it out, and in front of at least fifteen people, I gagged it up. The last night the family was there, Eric’s two uncles were drunk and got into a fight. A couple of Eric’s cousins got up out of bed to try to stop the fight and I tried to do the same, but Eric yelled from his bed, “Luke, sit down! You’re not going to do shit.”
It was still a fun weekend.
The following week I entered the seventh grade. I spent most of my afternoons with Eric and Gary. Gary loved to throw huge Super Bowl parties. In 1996, the Dallas Cowboys would win, but I wouldn’t know this until later because Eric and Gary decided to put me in a cardboard box, big enough for a Christmas tree, and throw me into the closet during the final two minutes of the game.
A typical Saturday night for my friends and me would be going out for pizza, then staying overnight at Gary’s house watching episodes of Red Shoe Diaries, a soft-core porn series, until the wee hours of the morning. One sleepover, Eric and I had to share the same bed. Gary always had to fall asleep listening to music, which irritated Eric immensely. About three o’clock in the morning, after everyone had fallen asleep, I awoke to Eric putting on his shoes. I asked where he was going, and Eric replied that he was going home because the radio was too loud. After Eric left, I was still awake, so I just decided to turn off the radio. I could never understand why Eric just didn’t turn off the radio while Gary was asleep.
My house was another place where we would spend the night. At one party, Eric and everybody else started throwing Jenga pieces at one another. Even though Eric had a morning paper route, he would stay overnight and my mother would wake up early Saturday mornings and help him deliver the papers. Eric was always ungrateful, though, and never acknowledged my mother’s help, which made me extremely mad at Eric. I never said anything to him, though.
Seventh grade was also the year I decided to join the cross-country running team at school. I have no idea why I did this, as I wasn’t athletic at all. I was consistent in most of my races—out of one hundred boys or so, I almost always came in last. Eric was on the team for a short period of time but then faked spraining his ankle so he didn’t have to compete. I remember one race in which I was battling for last place with this wheezing, overweight boy. I decided to cut across a playground. The overweight boy started yelling, “He cut! He’s a cheater!” Nobody could hear us. The next track meet he came up to me and said, “You better not cut here.”
Later that season, I got to go down to Manhattan College and compete. Once again, I came in last place. As I was running down the hill, I fell and scraped my knees and elbows. Then I was surprised to hear a rush of noise behind me, thinking, I didn’t notice anybody after me. The girls’ race had started fifteen minutes after ours, and I was being ambushed by a bunch of female track athletes. I made it across the finish line, bleeding.
The highlight of seventh grade was my thirteenth birthday party. My mother told me that since I was a teenager now, I should invite some girls. Her only fear was that we would play a kissing game like Spin the Bottle or Seven Minutes in Heaven, and she would have to break it up. Her fear didn’t come true, though, since we had a massive food fight instead of a make-out contest. Gary threw a mini-bagel dog at one of the girls, and it ended up in her overalls. “Well, at least now you have something there!” Gary screamed at her. Seventh-grade boys could be so cruel.
Other highlights of the night included orange soda spilling all over the carpet; my cousin ripping Eric’s jeans so that Eric had two huge holes in them by the time he left; kids breaking two pool sticks; and somebody anonymously picking his nose and leaving it on the cellar door to dry. I yelled at everybody, “Nobody is leaving this party until I found out who put his booger on my door!” Nobody ever admitted to it, but it was rumored that Greg, another friend of Eric and Gary’s, was the culprit. I had met Greg a year earlier. He was very small and energetic, and was known for his intelligence and the rattail he wore down his neck. In twelfth grade, only weeks before we were supposed to graduate, I got up the courage to ask Greg if he actually
