Chapter 5

            Boricua Monomania. Or even just Latina Monomania (they didn’t have to be Boricua, though Boricuas were my favorite Latina ethnic group.) The ecstatic siren song of my life (and I would never have it any other way.) Almost anything other than them was/is superfluous. Some people like money or fast cars? Ha!

            Let us now fully examine the roots of this Boricua/Latina Monomania; the latent seed sprouted from the most unlikely soil: that fat “Mexican” from my Sophomore Math class.  

For the purposes of this “Dendrology/Genealogy of Boricua Monomania,” we must travel back further still to the Fall of 1990.

M.C. Hammer ruled the charts and Broccoli-hater George H.W. Bush waged his NeoCon war against Saddam Hussein. I didn’t eat broccoli either. I preferred the collar of my shirt, just as a nervous dog prefers its own neck. Saliva withered the collars and stained them in shades of gray and brown. Chew… Chew… Chew…

            Judy Blume would have called me more (or rather less) than a “Fourth Grade Nothing.” Maybe a “Fourth Grade Non-Entity” or a “Fourth Grade Sub-Nothing.” A “Fourth Grade Black Hole” (I was just as enigmatic and ineffable as a black hole, but not as glamorously titanic.) In Hindu caste terms, I wouldn’t have even been an untouchable because “untouchable” implies the possibility of being touched. I would have been a “Fourth Grade Void Particle.”

            I was not the “kid picked last,” but the kid not picked at all. Cruel classmates did not offer me the option of playing kickball. If I had forced my way in, they would have stopped the game altogether and played something else, like basketball. And if I had followed them to the basketball court, they would have moved back to the kickball field.

            Millennials today have no idea what things were like back then. Most grew up under the mandated rubric of various anti-bullying programs and “no kid eats alone” initiatives. Ha! Where were the protective educrats and inclusive snowflakes when I needed them? The only snowflakes that fell on me were flurries from gray clouds that blocked the sun.

            If I had gone to school in the 2000s, perhaps people would have pitied me the way a cheerleader pities a kid with Down Syndrome. She would have asked me to the dance. In full view of a large audience and an ABC 7 News crew. My tears of gratitude would have gone viral on Youtube and flooded the virtual world like a Biblical rain of binary code!

            This could have been me:

            Lucky mongoloid! She is so hot! I was born about a decade too early! Like most Alt-Liters, I am on the autism/schizotypy spectrum! My various issues and disorders never helped me to score a hot babe like the one pictured above! What about me? I’m a mentally-disabled person too!

            None of my peers felt sorry for me because this chapter takes place in 1990. In fuckin’ New Jersey (where the weak are “killed and eaten” as the tee-shirt says.)

The Garden State! Dark and dingy most of the year. ‘Twould rather live in the sun, literally and metaphorically! In Florida or California. With superior women who would love and accept me. They wouldn’t exclude me from their games!

            Being excluded hurt my feelings, but I did not like sports anyway. Nothing could have been more boring than kickball (or any other sport.) What was the point of kicking a ball? I preferred thinking of sex, death, and other big questions. What a little existentialist I was, the young Woody Allen from Annie Hall! A goy neurotic enough to have heeb characteristics. I never learned how to change a tire either (and my dad was a car dealer!) Weak… And they are killed and eaten.

            A shout from the kickball diamond. A “homer.” Fucking faggots. Fucking morons. Yet I wanted the faggots and morons to like me!

Leaden clouds. Sky as orange as a candy corn. Freakish New Jersey weather. Did odd, uncanny plays of light and tropospheric phenomena loom and gloom over sunny California too? Yes, they did. But this was 1990 and I still had my “California Dreamin’.” David Lee Roth singing about bikini babes on Venice Beach and all that. The blonde bikini babes would love me! They weren’t provincial hick-brats like the girls in my class! Sheltered suburbanites. Children of the petty bourgeois who did not notice or consider me or any of my qualities.

Florida or California. Anywhere seemed to have better people and weather than the tundric tri-state.

Distant voices. The kickball dullards argued over a controversial call.  

            Old lady wind licked the exposed small of my back (at least she wanted me, but would she just freeze me to oblivion already?) Oh, California… (or what I thought it was back then.)

            A toothpaste-stained b.u.m Equipment sweater (an early 90s brand) insulated the rest of my upper body. The sweater didn’t hang low over my backside and for good reason. The last time I had used the toilet I had accidentally wiped my bottom with both the baby wipes and the tail of my button-down shirt. I had walked around all day with a shit-stain tucked into my spandex-waisted pajama pants. Fortunately, none of my classmates caught sight or smell of the mark. That would have branded me with the name of “shitboy” or a nickname even more clever, shameful, and indelible. From that point on I wore near-girly belly shirts and sweaters to avoid the recurrence of such a mishap.

            Whoooooooosssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh…

            My trusty tough-material pajama pants sans softener rebuffed another October gust. A Southwestern Hopi print zig-zagged from ankle cuff to elastic waistband (the Hopis believed in infinity as much as I did.) The faux-Native designs suggested the comparatively mild temperatures of adobe New Mexico (where Billy the Kid rode with the Regulators – if only I could have been as cocky and aggressive as Billy.) Even the Wild West seemed better than the then-present time and place.

            Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

            The wind whined (just like us outcasts) but did not stir my pin-straight hair. The natural grease of my messy, uncombed mop held my Einsteinian hair as stoic as a piece of petrified rock in a Utah desert.

            Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww…

            A near-gale picked the trees clean of leaves. Lovely state. It was probably 80degrees in Orlando. Oh, but what about the melancholy romance of the Northeast? Its colonial coziness? Episcopal churches from the late 1600s and whatnot? Did people in Florida cuddle their cats? I cuddled mine. I loved them. More than I loved mother. I had once fought a kid because he had made fun of my cats.

            What if the wind blew me away? I had developed phagophobia (the fear of swallowing), which had resulted in a drastic weight loss. The only thing I ate a lot of was my shirt collar.

            I sat on the swing set (Boreas of the North rattled the chains) and watched the kickball court on the other side of the windswept playground. The rest of the class kicked and fielded the rubber kickball. Baseball without a bat. Miserable town. Miserable fucking people. I would have loved them had they only loved me. I would have even pretended to enjoy sports. Even kickball. I would have loved and accepted them had they only loved and accepted me.

            I hugged myself to keep warm (some of us aren’t meant for the cold) and daydreamed of Danielle.

            Danielle, the prettiest and most popular girl in the 9^th Grade. What did she look like? Well, she looked like this person:

 

            The goddess of the 80s. ‘Nuff said. It was only 1990 and the ulcerous Kurt Cobain had not yet farted his damp Seattle gloom all over the rest of America. Women like Danielle were still ascendant, but wouldn’t they always be? What real man ever fell in love with Courtney Love? Pun intended!

            How did a “Fourth Grade Nobody” like me even know or know about Danielle, the 9^th Grade Queen Bee of Wall High School? How did the center of the universe (every woman a man really loves is the center of the universe) enter the loneliest of orbits?

            Genetic luck. Danielle was best friends with my cousin Myra, the co-Queen Bee of the 9^th Grade.

            My dad (remember, he was the imperfect yet “human” parent), loved Myra and her older sisters, Jess and Christine. They were the children of his favorite brother.

            Mother liked them as much as she was capable of liking anyone. Even sociopaths are drawn toward those who are young, pretty, popular, and charismatic.

            “Those girls are spoiled as cat shit, but they are my nieces.”

            Why did she call them “spoiled as cat shit”? Such a gross turn of phrase, a verbal skid trail from a diarrhetic tomcat’s ass, maligned both my cousins and the feline species. Having a mother who talked like that smeared me in felid feces. Gross guilt by yucky association.

            Gross, farting bitch.

            I had seen Danielle exactly three times over the past year. Was she as spoiled as cat shit too? Her dad sold Porsches for a living, so she must have been spoiled as tiger turds.

            Myra’s birthday was in coldest February (the most frozen-ground month of all where even the dead turn blue.) Danielle was there, helping. She had set up the table, inserted “14” candles in the spongy cake, and assisted my dear cousin in ripping open her many presents, most of which were from less popular friends aiming to curry favor with school royalty.

            My next “date” with Danielle was chaste as could be! It took place in St. Denis’ Catholic church, a semi-modern monstrosity (the architect couldn’t make up his mind between Frank Lloyd Wright and 12^th Century France) sunk in the mud and reeds of Manasquan swampland. 

            Myra, a nominal Catholic at best, walked down the aisle and accepted her confirmation as one of God’s non-practicing flock. Danielle, a secular Jew, tried to follow along with all of the many gesticulations peculiar to the church of Rome.

            She had asked me how to cross herself! Then, in my panic, I had forgotten what hand goes where! Right shoulder first or left shoulder first? Like sex, crossing oneself becomes complicated as soon as one thinks about it too much! The sweat poured from my pointed palms as I settled for right shoulder first. My precious Jewess would not know the difference anyway. Holy Terror!

            I showed her the probable movement and then swallowed my own dry throat! God didn’t live in the sacristy or in the virginal loins of some gay priest, but in my interaction with Danielle. Danielle’s people (especially Martin Buber) were right! God was active, alive, and most present in I-Thou relationships.

            My more nervous than usual demeanor (and that was saying a lot) betrayed me at each event. Danielle knew I had a massive, all-consuming crush on her and she thought it was the cutest thing ever. I’m sure she said to all of her popular girlfriends: “Myra’s little cousin has a crush on me and it is the cutest thing ever…

            She went out of her way to be nice to me. And unlike popular Millenial girls, her benevolence toward me (a special needs boy lol) did not require the presence of a local t.v. news crew!

            Danielle had chosen me for the honor of sitting with her at Myra’s 8^th Grade graduation party that June.

            “Come here, Will. Sit next to me!”

            She sat on the scratchy couch in Myra’s den, a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler (remember those?) in her well-manicured hand.

The coolest, most popular 8^th Graders circled her like electrons around a nucleus.

“I want to sit next to Will…!” she whined/shouted for emphasis.

And so, I made my way through the hordes of cool 8^th Grade graduates, all of them drunk and raucous. A typical popular kid “family” graduation party. The “friends only” party (their parents allowed them to do just about anything) would start much later and involve substances more potent and exotic than Bartles & Jaymes. From what Myra had told me, various herbs and fungi would be consumed!

 I placed my butt on the scratchy couch. Oh my God! Danielle was prettier up close! Make-up and even a pock mark here or there! Gold hoop earrings… Girls like her look different up close. Not just pretty, but dangerous… Dangerous…

My rabbit heart pounded like I was caught in the jaws of a hungry wolf! This would have been fun if not so scary! Oh no! Oh yes! Oh no! Oh yes! Sitting next to Danielle could not be fun or non-fun – both adjectives would trivialize a moment greater than any description of a religious experience. Sitting to the side of Danielle was the one and only end in life!

I tensed my knees to make sure they didn’t knock against hers. I didn’t want to take advantage of her kindness by being “fresh” (accidentally or on purpose.)

            “How are you, Will?”

            “I’m good. How are you?”

            I had to ask her how she was doing too. She more than deserved my politeness and outright enthusiasm. Of the many boys there, she had chosen me to sit next to her! My “hare heart” continued to flip-flop and flitter-flutter.

            “I’m great. I’m a little wasted. How was school this year?”

“Good,” I lied. I didn’t want to seem a Debbie Downer. School sucked. While Danielle might have been the coolest girl in her grade, I was probably the least popular boy in my class.

“Who did you have?”

Wow! Unlike my parents, Danielle seemed genuinely interested in my life.

“Mrs. McCann.”

“Oh, I had her back when I was in Central. She was a fucking bitch!”

Danielle had cursed in my presence! She treated me like I was an older kid – like her!

“Yeah, she was,” I half-laughed. Or fully-laughed. Did I laugh just enough, not too little or too much?

            Mrs. McCann was a mean old lady. Danielle thought so too! We had so much in common.

            Mom, dad, Kayla, and I left Myra’s party early. Hours before the “friends only” weed and shrooms. The four of us attended few family events, but when we did we were always the last to arrive and the first to leave.

            We piled into mother’s van, the one that smelled just like her Jansport purse.

            Mother put the keys in the ignition. She tilted her head toward my dad and said:

            “So, do you think Will enjoyed seeing Danielle?”

            “He hates seeing Danielle,” said my dad in his sarcastic preacher voice. “He thinks she’s ugly!”

            How embarrassing that my parents knew about my crush on Danielle.

            “Will has a crush on Danielle,” said Kayla the Mediocrity, pointing out the obvious. As always.

            “Ha!” said mother. “You wouldn’t know what to do if Danielle wrapped those long legs around you!”

            Yes, I would.

            A hot June night. Crickets chirped outside. Cricket… Cricket… All of nature breathing. A membranous, monistic organism thriving – thriving – with or without me. To quote the Ray Manzarek character from “The Doors” movie: “I can feel the universe functioning perfectly, but I am locked outside of it. Instead of oneness I feel isolation.”

            The crickets chirped. Cricket… Cricket… I tossed, turned, and popped unresolved boners against my mattress. On a different side of town, Myra, Danielle, and their friends ingested entheogens. As I lay there, sweating and squirming against my clammy sheets, Danielle could have been doing God knows what with God knows who…

            Cricket… Cricket…

            Perish the thought of what she was probably doing with some undeserving douchebag; a guy who already had everything. When it comes to sex the rich always get richer. A sexual King David, but devoid of righteousness. The wealthy man of many sheep taking the one and only ewe that I cherished.

            Cricket… Cricket…

            But she was nice to me. Danielle and I lived together in a higher Platonic-Erotic realm.

            I hugged my pillow that night and pretended it was her. Oh, Danielle. Not only was she pretty and popular, but she was kind toward me. Oh, Danielle.

“Oh, Dee Dee… I love you…” Her friends called her “Dee Dee.” I guess I was her “friend” – and I wanted to be so much more.

“Oh, Dee Dee… You’re here with me right now.”

I French-kissed my pillow.

A bitter chill brought me back to the playground swing set. I hugged myself and said to myself “Oh, Dee Dee… You’re here with me right now.”

WHAP!

A rubber kickball whapped against my cold-numb face and broke me from my reverie. A shocking and unwelcome return to reality.

“Hey, Will the Still! Hugging yourself, fag? Didn’t you hear Mrs. Maliff blow the whistle? Recess is over! It’s time to go back to class!”

Mikey O’Brien half-hovered in front of me (he was too small of stature to full-hover.)

Short, scrawny Irish fuck. A carrot-flame orange afro (yes, some white people have them too) framed his pale, thin freckly face. One blue eye and one brown eye (genetically-deficient fuck, inbred white mick fuck.) Thin, livid, drool-covered lips. In a better age they would have put him to work and compelled him to dig the Lincoln Tunnel for pocket change.

“Wake up and smell the coffee, Will the Still. Or should I call you smear the queer?”

I balled up my fists.

“Fuck you,” I mumble-whispered. “I’ll kick your ass…”

The “I’ll kick your ass” trailed off into a timid whimper.

“Do it then, faggot!” shouted Mikey.

I kinda-sorta got up and almost charged, but the overture to physical violence was not sincere – and Mikey (with his gift of understanding the nuances of many different social interactions) knew I wouldn’t tackle him.

“Ha! Faggot!” shouted Mikey.

If only he knew that I was less of a faggot than anyone. To paraphrase the Lewis Skolnick character from “Revenge of the Nerds”: all he ever thought about was sports and all I ever thought about was sex – with Danielle. Nothing could be gayer than sports.

Why didn’t I kick his ass? I was bigger and stronger than him, but I never knew how to throw the first punch. A paralysis crippled my strong arms. Why? What inhibited me? Even cunt mother had given me permission to fight back against bullies. Was I a coward? I was good at fighting back after someone else threw the first punch, but I always had trouble making that first move. It was just like kissing a girl would turn out to be. The first kiss was always the hardest part, but once it was on it was on!

Mrs. Maliff blew her whistle.

“Will, Mikey! Get back here! It’s time to get back to class!”

Mikey did a somersault (another physical stunt I was too timid to attempt) and ran back to the school building, a quaint two-story brick rectangle. I walked back, albeit at a brisk pace.  Why did I display such concern for the orders of Mrs. Maliff? She was just an old recess supervisor. Why couldn’t people -including her - just leave me alone and let me daydream of Danielle? Why couldn’t I just be “Will the Still” (best Zen name ever.)

Mikey and I lined up behind the 20 other kids in our class. Mikey – Mr. Cool – slouched against the wall of the above-ground boiler room opposite the back entrance to our Fourth Grade classroom. If only Freddy Krueger worked at our school! He could throw Mikey into the furnace! Bratty white fuck. Bratty white fucks. The girls too… Except for Danielle. She was the only one who was nice to me!

The girls in my class loved Mikey. What a bizarro world! Mikey was indisputably an ugly little Hibernian. Ugly. Ugly and mean. Covered in constellations of reddish freckles, some of them small and clustered and others as large as birthmarks, the size and shape of small countries on a classroom map. The ugly fuck had a miniature sienna Australia on his white chin! Freckly bastard! He was a ratty, raggedy, threadbare, malformed, misshapen little punk, as red as a Golden Retriever, but without the easy-going temperament.

Mikey had a nasty disposition, so did he win them over with his social confidence alone? The girls loved him, and I couldn’t figure out how or why no matter how hard I tried. I must have been born on the wrong planet. Would a spaceship rescue me from my loneliness and take me to a planet where tall, blonde, handsome boys were considered attractive? A place where superior beings like me could be loved instead of the freckly-faced descendants of potato peasants (though my Polish ancestors ate potatoes too, when they had anything to eat at all.) But my potato-eating people were better-looking. Euro-model types like Melania Trump! Looks, however, seemed to do nothing for me in terms of girls and popularity. Mikey made the ginger from “The Sandbox” look like Brad Pitt! And they fuckin’ loved him! “You’re killing me, human race!” Or he even looked like Eric Stoltz from “Mask,” but much uglier.

And the girls liked him.

The October wind whirled dead leaves, a mini-tornado (a far cry from the F-5s of Oklahoma.)  Even early Fall was too harsh for me. Some of us are just made to sit by the pool with gorgeous girls. What would be the point of doing anything else?

What was Halloween like in Miami or Fort Lauderdale or Los Angeles? (I did not yet know that L.A. is cold and rainy in February, but probably just dandy in October.)

Halloween fast approached, but the American public barely noticed.

As coalition forces bombed Baghdad, the rest of us tuned into ABC’s TGIF (a cavalcade of family-friendly sitcoms) every Friday night. “Family Matters,” an African-American sitcom (but much less preachy than “The Cosby Show”) had just soared in ratings with the introduction of the Steve Urkel character. Steve, a nasally-voiced black nerd, harbored an unrequited crush on the Laura Winslow character (a crush like the one I had on Danielle.) The Urkel character, clumsy and unintentionally obnoxious, moved American viewers to roars of belly-shaking, tear-jerking laughter.

“Oh, that Steve Urkel character is funny!” said, well, everyone at Shoprite and Kmart. My classmates watched the show. Our teachers watched the show! They talked about it with both colleagues and students. “Oh, that Steve Urkel character is funny,” said everyone every Monday morning around the water cooler; water libation dispensers all the way from an auto body shop in Alabama to a board room on Wall Street. Everyone watched and loved Steve Urkel!

Especially me.

I had taken to imitating Steve Urkel’s voice and mannerisms. As a gifted mimic, it did not take me long to master both his gait and his high-pitched voice.

I practiced his catchphrase “did I do that?” until it became reproduceable, as good the first time as the trillionth time.

“Did I do that?” I screeched as I lurched around my bedroom on a bleak Sunday afternoon.

Someone knocked on my bedroom door. I opened it. Dad stood there, his beloved Asbury Park Press (Sunday edition) tucked under his arm.

“Are you watching ‘Family Matters’?” he asked.

“No, dad. That show is only on on Fridays.”

“That’s you doing that Steve Urkel voice?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good! Do it again.”

“Did I do that?”

My dad laughed.

“Do that again.”

This time I lowered my eyeglasses to the tip of my nose, slouched my back, turned my neck and squealed an even better “Did I do that?”

“Ha! You look just like that little nigger! Have you picked out a Halloween costume yet?”

My dad and I – just like that – reached an unspoken agreement. I would be Steve Urkel for Halloween that year. Any other costume would miss the “zeitgeist,” the “cultural moment,” the “Kairos,” the whatever the hell you wanted to call it.

And for the sake of authenticity, I would have to wear blackface.

“Hey warlord,” he said to my mother. “Do we have any black shoe polish?”