Ham On Rye

21

Then I started attending Mt. Justin Jr. High. About half the guys from Delsey Grammar School went there, the biggest and toughest half. Another gang of giants came from other schools. Our 7th grade class was bigger than the 9th grade class. When we lined up for gym it was funny, most of us were bigger than the gym teachers. We would stand there for roll call, slouched, our guts hanging out, heads down, shoulders slumped.

"Jesus Christ," said Wagner, the gym teacher, "pull your shoulders back, stand straight!"

Nobody would change position. We were the way we were, and we didn't want to be anything else. We all came from Depression families and most of us were ill-fed, yet we had grown up to be huge and strong. Most of us, I think, got little love from our families, and we didn't ask for love or kindness from anybody. We were a joke but people were careful not to laugh in front of us. It was as if we had grown up too soon and we were bored with being children. We had no respect for our elders. We were like tigers with the mange. One of the Jewish fellows, Sam Feidman, had a black beard and had to shave every morning. By noon his chin was almost black. And he had a mass of black hair all over his chest and he smelled terrible under the arms. Another guy looked like Jack Dempsey. Another guy, Peter Mangalore, had a cock 10 inches long, soft. And when we got in the shower, I found out I had the biggest balls of anybody.

" Hey! Look at that guy's balls, will ya? "

"Holy shit! Not much cock but look at those balls! "

"Holy shit!"

I don't know what it was about us but we had something, and we felt it. You could see it in the way we walked and talked. We didn't talk much, we just inferred, and that's what got everybody mad, the way we took things for granted.

The 7th grade team would play touch football after school against the 8th and 9th graders. It was no match. We beat them easy, we knocked them down, we did it with style, almost without effort. In touch football most teams passed on every play, but our team worked in lots of runs. Then we could set up the blocking and our guys would go for the other guys and knock them down. It was just an excuse to be violent, we didn't give a damn about the runner. The other side was always glad when we called a pass play.

The girls stayed after school and watched us. Some of them were already going out with high school guys, they didn't want to mess with jr. high school punks, but they stayed to watch the 7th graders. We were known. The girls stayed after class and watched us and marveled. I wasn't on the team but I stood on the sidelines and sneaked smokes, feeling like a coach or something. We're all going to get fucked, we thought, watching the girls. But most of us only masturbated.

Masturbation. I remember how I learned about it. One morning Eddie scratched on my bedroom window.

"What is it?" I asked Eddie.

He held up a test tube and it had something white in the bottom of it.

"What's that?"

"Come," said Eddie, "it's my come."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, all you do is spit on your hand and begin rubbing your cock, it feels good and pretty soon this white juice shoots out of the end of your cock. That stuff is called 'come."'

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Eddie walked off with his test tube. I thought about it awhile and then I decided to try it. My cock got hard and it felt real good, it felt better and better, and I kept going and it felt like nothing I had ever felt before. Then juice spurted out of the head of my cock. After that I did it every now and then. It got better if you imagined you were doing it with a girl while you whacked-off.

One day I was standing on the sidelines watching our team kick the shit out of some other team. I was sneaking a smoke and watching. There was a girl on either side of me. As our guys broke out of a huddle I saw the gym coach, Curly Wagner, walking toward me. I ditched the smoke and clapped my hands.

"Let's dump 'em on their butts, gang!"

Wagner walked up to me. He just stood there staring at me. I had developed an evil look on my face.

"I'm going to get all you guys!" Wagner said. "Especially you!"

I turned my head and glanced at him, casually, then turned my head away. Wagner stood there looking at me. Then he walked off.

I felt good about that. I liked being picked out as one of the bad guys. I liked to feel bad. Anybody could be a good guy, that didn't take guts. Dillinger had guts. Ma Barker was a great woman teaching those guys how to operate a submachine gun. I didn't want to be like my father. He only pretended to be bad. When you're bad you didn't pretend, it was just there. I liked being bad. Trying to be good made me sick.

The girl next to me said, "You don't have to take that from Wagner. Are you afraid of him?"

I turned and looked at her. I stared at her a long time, motionless.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked.

I looked away from her, spit on the ground, and walked off. I slowly walked the length of the field, exited through the rear gate and began walking home.

Wagner always wore a grey sweatshirt and grey sweatpants. He had a little pot belly. Something was continually bothering him. His only advantage was his age. He would try to bluff us but that was working less and less. There was always somebody pushing me who had no right to push. Wagner and my father. My father and Wagner. What did they want? Why was I in their way?