Later that night, while I was studying, the phone rang. It was Amy. She didn’t waste time.
“Ned, about the other night—it was late, and I’d been talking to so many people, and I’d had a little too much to drink. I forget exactly what happened. Did I say I’d loan you my body?”
“Pretty much. You said that several times, actually.”
“Oh, Ned, I’m so sorry. I mean, when I said it at the party you seemed calm. But your message was so nervous. I wanted to make sure your invitation for lunch was just for lunch, you know?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
“I’m so sorry. Embarrassed, really.”
“That’s okay.”
“As for lunch, I’m pretty busy now. How about we set aside time next Saturday to get lunch and go to a movie?”
“Sounds cool.”
After I hung up, I folded my arms behind my head and smiled. It was an innocent party joke for Amy. But I got a sexual thrill, an ego-boosting apology, lunch, and a movie. For once, an adult had messed up and I had done everything right.
*She was considerably more graphic with her terms, but to keep things PG, I’ll use the base system.
*By now I had been writing for New York Press for a few months, so they let me come to their catered soiree. I was the youngest writer there. I probably would have been the youngest busboy, too.
**Ben was jumping up and down saying, “I’m a froggy,” and the teacher got so mad that she grabbed him and started strangling him. She was fired that day.
*Once again, Amy was a bit more graphic, but you get the idea.
**You don’t get it? Go look at yourself in a mirror and mouth those words. You’ll see.…
*Yes, I brought my backpack to the party. I brought that backpack everywhere. I was terrified of losing it and failing high school as a result.
NO BIG DEAL
I can’t bargain. I’m awful at it. And bargaining isn’t just some marginally useful secondary skill. It’s an important part of successful living. My friend Ike never pays the asking price for anything. My brother Daniel is the same way: he’ll haggle down a candy bar. But me? My bargaining always goes like this:
Me, at some sale, cupping an overpriced object: “Uh, how much for this?”
Shifty-eyed merchant: “Five bucks.”
“I’ll give you three for it.”
“Five bucks.”
“How about three?”
“Five bucks.”
“Four?”
“No.”
So, it was pure lunacy for me to buy my family’s Christmas presents at the local flea market. I went anyway, thinking I could improve my bargaining skills. (Besides, our family has a history of cheap, strange Christmas gifts. When I was one, Dad’s big present for us was a TV—an RCA XL-100 with a busted antenna—that his friend John found on the street. It worked, but barely; the reception was so bad that Dad sprang for cable. Fourteen years later, that RCA still sat in our living room, providing us with hours of slack-jawed peace.)
On a December Sunday, I headed for the playground at P.S. 321, the public school in my neighborhood. P.S. 321 hosts a weekend flea market, where capitalism runs wild and five bucks can net you a unique and demented gift.
In the past, I hadn’t bought Christmas gifts for my family because I’d been too cheap, lazy, and young. But Mom had begun complaining that she never got anything from me. (“Well, it’s not that I want a Christmas present, Ned, but it would be nice.”)
Pacing through the market with a pocketful of nineteen dollars and ten cents,* I found that about 60 percent of the goods were made of china—the cheap, blue-on-white Dutch kind with pictures of windmills. It was among these that I found Mom’s gift: a spoon holder.
You know when you stir coffee and pull out the spoon, and it has that little droplet on its convex side? Then, when you put the spoon on your countertop, it leaves that oh-so-small circular stain? The spoon holder fixes that. It’s a block of china with a spoon-shaped depression. When you finish stirring, you rest the spoon in its place; your countertop is spared. Mom’s a practical lady, dangerously practical, actually—the kind of woman who’d rather get a spoon holder than a long-stemmed rose. I was sure she’d love it. Four dollars.
Dad was next. He likes books. Big, thick books with the phrase “World Civilizations” in the title. There weren’t any of those at the flea market, but I did spot a ragged 1932 edition of The Rubaiyat, this Persian love poem written by Omar Khayyam around the turn of the twelfth century. I had studied it in school. The book was thin, but the language was imposing. Dad would appreciate it. Seven dollars.
Next, my sister Nora. Eight years old and partial to foreign coins. I stopped to see the coin man, who displayed his wares in a leather binder. I browsed. Every coin cost more than five bucks.
“Anything cheaper?” I asked. Timidly.
The coin man—little face, big chin, long cigarette—pulled out a shoe box full of pesos, lire, shillings, and Francs and plopped it on the table.
“Twenny-five censh easch,” he offered, cigarette drooping. He was trying to light up, but the wind was too strong.
I bought eight foreign coins—probably worth twenty-three cents—for two dollars. I made sure to get the ones with queens on them. Nora liked queens and was angry that U.S. coins were so male.
I had six bucks left. I was debating who to spend it on. I considered my brother Daniel,* but my present to him was not beating him up regularly. I chose to spend the money on Ike, who had introduced me to the flea market. I walked over to the army man’s table.
The army man is big, with lots of skin tags. He sells patches, buttons, belts, canteens, bullets, knives, and shells. I decided to buy Ike a grenade (it wasn’t a live one). The army man peddles them—spray-painted gold, complete with serial numbers—for six dollars each. I paid him, and he put the grenade in a paper bag, saying, “We don’t need anybody seein’ this and gettin’ scared, heh, heh.”
I called Ike soon as I got home. “Hey, I got you a present.”
“Yeah? At the flea market?”
“Uh-huh. It’s for Christmas. You want me to tell you what it is?”
“Well, if you don’t, I might buy it myself.”
“It’s a grenade.”
Silence.
“You don’t like grenades?” I asked.
“Ned … I love grenades!”
“Yup, I bought gifts for my whole family, too. Except my brother. But we kind of have an understanding.”
“How much did you spend?”
“Nineteen bucks,” I said proudly.
“Too bad, man,” Ike sighed. “I could have gotten it all for ten.”
*By this time, I’d earned a little money from my writing, but I put it all in the bank and never touched it. So I was still cheap.
*Daniel and I never bought presents for each other. We shared our video games, magazines, and clothes, so it was pointless to give each other stuff. Basically, anything I bought for myself was a present for him.
BACK CAR
It’s 10:30 P.M., just before Christmas, and I’m exactly where I should be—sitting in a nearly empty subway car. My bass guitar is nestled between my legs, and my Magic cards are spread out on my lap. I’m sorting the cards; it keeps my hands and mind occupied. I’m in the back car. Unless I’m going to school, I ride in the back car—because I’m guaranteed a seat and because that’s where the weirdos are.
Tonight there are two. One is a husky man, sitting across from me, drinking from a bottle in a bag. He has a bald head, huge sideburns, and big square sunglasses. Standing next to him, wobbling as he clings to a strap, is a lankier guy. He’s wearing a yellow headband with a big red jewel pinned to it. They’re talking about Jimi Hendrix.*
“Man, you have to understand,” Husky says reverently, pointing, “when Jimi was around, the electric guitar was just invented! Nobody knew what it was; nobody knew how to play it—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Lanky cuts in.
> Husky continues, “But Jimi was a natural, see? No schooling, nothin’. He was a natural. The sounds he made—nobody can make them anymore.”
“That’s the one thing I wish—that I coulda seen Jimi play,” Lanky says, swinging sideways as the train takes a curve.
“You know how Jimi played?” Husky takes a swig from his bag to accentuate the question.
“How?”
Husky leans forward, almost whispering, “He played his guitar like he was doin’ his mama.”
I laugh. Oedipus on the number two train. I laugh so hard, my Magic cards fall from my lap and I have to pick them one by one off the brown patterned floor. The two men glare at me.
“You’ve got a guitar right there,” Husky says, gesturing at my bass. “How are you gonna laugh? You ever heard Jimi play?”
“No.” My voice cracks.
“Well, if you were doin’ your mama, how would you play?”
“I’m not sure,” I mumble.
“Well, there,” Lanky reasons, “you’re not Jimi.”
I can’t argue with that. The train pulls into Fourteenth Street; Husky rises and shuffles through the doors.
“Merry Christmas,” he tells Lanky. He turns to me. “Yeah, and you, too.”
“Thanks,” I say, looking up from my cards.
Lanky seems lost without his Husky. He sits down, mumbles some more about Jimi, and hawks loogies as the tunnel lights flash by. We both have a real phlegm problem, and there’s no one else in the car to stop us, so for a few stops there’s this dialogue of “Haaauck—ptooey.”
Lanky gets off at Wall Street, and stereotypical passengers get on: a college-age double date, a bearded guy trying to look smart, a frog-eyed woman eyeing him lustily. This is the back car, though—something has to happen.
At Clark Street, a foul stench enters the train, followed by a homeless man. His rotted black jacket lies in tatters on his chest. Dark stains dot his brown corduroys. He’s wearing decent-looking New Balance shoes but no socks, which gives me a dead-on view of his hairy ankles. But his most striking feature is his scent. The college girls pull the tops of their shirts over their noses and giggle.
“Go back to sleep, nosy!” he yells at them. They burst out laughing.
“Hey, man,” says one of the college guys, standing up. “You’re stinking up this car. How about you go to another one?” The girls think he’s so cool. I think his head should explode.
“Shut up, nosy!”
“Hey, look, I’ll give you sixty-five cents if you go to another car. That’s a lot of money.”
“No, nosy!”
One of the college girls rolls a quarter across the floor—the homeless guy cocks his head as he hears it spinning on the ground. He stares at the coin as it spirals to a stop. It settles on the floor. We pull into Borough Hall. The homeless guy takes one last look at the quarter, dismisses it, and strides confidently from the train. The college kids are silent. They know he’s beaten them—he didn’t take their orders and he didn’t take their quarter.
I grab that quarter before anyone else can. My pride’s worth a lot less than twenty-five cents.
“Hey man, give me that,” the college guy barks from his seat. I flip the coin to him, but I’m not a good flipper; it ends up on the floor again. “Someday some kid is going to put that quarter in his mouth,” I think.
The college guy eventually picks it up and pockets it. The train pulls into Grand Army Plaza. I stow my Magic cards and sling my bass over my shoulder, to impress the college girls. One of them is nice to me. “Merry Christmas,” she says.
“Yep.” I zip my coat and pull my collar over my mouth. My breath moistens it, and by the time I get home, the moisture has turned to ice.
*Seminal psychedelic rock guitarist.
LET’S BUY BEER
I finally came home drunk. I was happy about this because Matt Groening,* in Work Is Hell,** lists the twenty-five steps to manhood, and “first time drunk” is number seventeen, right after “first compulsive masturbation” and just before “first car accident.” I had to do it sooner or later.
It wasn’t even my fault—blame it on that clerk at the Mini Mart. I stopped at the Mini Mart by my high school almost every day; this was where I bought Nacho Doritos, Original Pringles, and orange Hostess cupcakes. I bought a porno magazine there once, too, but I felt like such a loser afterward that I threw it out on the way home and never bought one again.
One Friday afternoon, I strode into the Mini Mart following a butt-numbing day at school—one of those days when, by the end of classes, I was slouching so low that my spine lay on my chair, and my eyes were level with my desk. I was with my friend Owen, who was doing his best to cheer me up.
Owen was a pudgy little bug-eyed, dark-haired, filthy-minded Russian kid who I met sophomore year. He thought of himself, in turns, as a master computer hacker, rock star, sexual savant, philosopher, skateboarder, DJ, and Gucci-wearing highroller. You could only believe a quarter of what he said, especially if he was talking about money or girls. But he was a hell of a guy.
“Hey, Ned,” he chuckled, as we entered the Mini Mart, passing the potato chips. “Let’s buy beer.”
My mind weighed the options. Worst-case scenario: I get busted for public drinking and start a criminal record. If you have a criminal record, you can’t become a doctor. But I’d already decided against that profession.
“Okay,” I said, standing by the beer fridge. “How?”
“You could probably do it with your Stuy I.D.”
I’m not sure how other schools handle identification, but at Stuyvesant, we had these little white cards. Each one listed your name, your date of birth (but the year was first, and there were no slash marks—which made it very confusing), and a bar code.*
My Stuy I.D. was a plastic casualty. I’d left it in the back pocket of my jeans for two years. It had been through the wash countless times; it was ripped in thirds and held together with Scotch tape; and it said on top, in big scripty letters, “Stuyvesant High School.” There was no way that any clerk could mistake it for anything legitimate.
I showed it to Owen.
“Dude, it’s cool,” he said. “It just looks like it’s been used a lot.” At this point, we were pacing in front of the beer fridge like two stooges planning a jailbreak.
“Owen,” I mumbled, pacing, “stop pacing.” He stopped.
“Okay,” I took a fast breath, put my hand on the metal door handle, and pulled.
It didn’t budge. It was a sliding door. I smiled, slid open the door, and grabbed a Corona.
“Corona, Corona,” Owen chirped, impersonating Beavis.
“Huh, yeah, Corona,” I responded, as Butt-head. I do a decent Butt-head.
I proceeded to the cashier; Owen bravely stepped outside to wait for me. I put my Corona on the Lotto placemat and plopped two dollars beside it. Would two dollars pay for a twenty-two-ounce beer? I had to look as if I’d done this before.
The cashier was a scruffy Hispanic guy who sat on a stool all day watching black-and-white TV. I respect that. He turned away from the set and stared me dead in the eye. I stared back.
“I.D.” He rose from his stool and held out his hand.
I reached into my pocket, tugged it out, and slapped it down in front of him, as if people were always asking for my I.D. and it was a real nuisance.
He picked it up and ran his fingers over it for a long time. Then, without warning, he took my money and rang up the sale. He put the Corona in a brown paper bag. I picked it up and left. He was already back to his TV.
Outside, Owen was fidgeting. I marched up to him.
“It worked?”
On cue, I popped the beer open with my Swiss Army knife.*
“Aaaaaaaah, yeeeah!” Owen actually jumped in the air and hugged me.
I drank some beer. It was like apple juice, in that it was yellow-brown and, if you drank fast enough, you didn’t taste it for a few seconds. When I finally did taste it, the beer
was bitter—like dirt mixed with tap water. Every gulp I took made me thirstier, until all I really wanted was a Coke. Owen and I walked to a more secluded street, sat on the curb, and passed the bottle back and forth until only froth remained. Then we bought another.
I had always thought alcohol was a ruse. That is, adults are never actually drunk; they just use liquor as an excuse to bump into things, have sex, and do whatever else pleases them. I assumed I’d have to put on a big show for Owen, acting stereotypically drunk. I didn’t expect the beer to have any real effect on me.
The slurring began after two bottles. Light at first, then heavier as Owen and I sampled lower Manhattan’s permissive Mini Marts. I knew what I wanted to say, and my mouth seemed to work fine, but the last few words of each sentence mushed together. Plus I had no volume control; I talked like someone wearing headphones.
I mentally gauged inebriation, comparing it to other forms of mental unrest, like smoking pot* and spinning around for a while in the living room. The loss of motor control and speech was interesting, but the overall effect was fatigue, and it wasn’t fun to be tired.
I turned to Owen. “Okay, man, is there anywhere you want to go?”
“I know a place, yeah,” he said.
Owen led me uptown, through the Village, to a rundown side street—no cars but too well lit to be an alley. In the center of the street was a telephone pole, lying sideways, as if a tornado had just blown through. Circling it were punks—real, ridiculous, leather-pants-all-ripped-up, scabs-on-their-necks, skin-that’s-pasty-white-where-it-isn’t-filthy punks. They scared me. I stumbled behind Owen, pretending to be invisible.
Owen strode by the punks and sat down on the telephone pole. I followed. The punks—seven guys and one girl—eyed us angrily. They each had distinguishing features: an exposed nipple, a big spike sticking out somewhere, a deformed finger.
We simply sat. Nobody talked. Finally, the tallest punk, a guy with a wool hat and a dark bruise over his eye, walked up to Owen and gestured at the bottle.