Everything Is Wrong with Me (26 page)

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I’ve gotten better though, thanks mostly to tequila.

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Going “up the mountains” meant a trip to the Poconos, just as going “down the shore” meant a vacation in North Wildwood, NJ.

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Not me, though. Really, any and all girls were okay with me. As much as I liked masturbating on the bathroom floor, I aspired to bigger and better and warmer things.

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The girls of the ASP would eventually grow up to be beautiful women. Perhaps I’m just bitter because while I was at my sexual peak at the ripe old age of twelve, they were more interested in boxing out and foul shots than they were in getting felt up by me.

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The boys were also divided, into the Pretty Boys and the Roughnecks. The Pretty Boys were like their female counterparts; they wore Drakkar, put gel in their hair, and wore gold chains. Basically anybody who wasn’t a Pretty Boy was considered a Roughneck, a wide group that encompassed everything from jocks to aspiring drunkards/stoners to normal guys. I was a Roughneck.

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A year or two earlier, a new cineplex had opened in the neighborhood. This was a modern technological marvel and for a few months after its opening, everyone became serious moviegoers. Prior to this cineplex’s opening, we had to travel over the Walt Whitman Bridge to Jersey to find the nearest movie theater. More important, next to the theater opened a rock-’n’-roll-themed restaurant with fifteen-cent wings and twenty different kinds of milkshakes. Then it burned down. I miss that place.

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Sweet, sweet youth!

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Wawa is like the Philadelphia area’s version of 7-Eleven, but much, much cleaner.

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In addition to being a horrible writer, I’m also a really bad musician.

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I don’t really believe this is true. I hope to milk my childhood for at least two, possibly three or four more books.

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I have no idea whether this is true and it was early only in terms of my “final” deadline, after I missed my previous two deadlines. Whoops.

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I wasn’t a crier, but more of a shrieker.

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When Billy and his first wife divorced, she married a man from around the corner, a real bruiser named Joey Gilpatrick. She justified her choice of new husband by saying, “Well, Joey’s the only guy around who can beat up Billy, so I really didn’t have many options.” This line has been repeated thousands of times and has become part of neighborhood lore. On a personal note, I can only hope that my wife chooses to marry me based on my ability to beat up her ex (or exes). I can’t think of a better compliment.

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This is another story in itself, since the grain alcohol was routinely stolen from a nearby liquor distillery plant. As it was told to me, all one had to do was walk into the compound, go to up a spigot, and pour the alcohol into an empty soda bottle. Though I have heard this from several people, I have no idea how this was possible. I can only assume that in the late ’70s “security” hadn’t really caught on yet.

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Also, a group of my friends have taken to calling me “HH” (“Hooker Hunter”), which is imminently cooler than “HW” (“Hooker Watcher”). So
hooker hunting
it is.

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I don’t know why he did this; one thing my dad and I do not talk about is cars, since he spent his whole life working on them and I still sometimes get the gas and brake pedals confused. So we usually leave that topic alone.

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Unless I hit a major dry spell. But it’s gotta be major—we’re talking nothing for a solid two–three months. And not counting my bachelor party, of course, should I have one. I mean, duh.