Growing Up Stupid and Mean, Part One
Most Holy Trinity High School in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn was not one of the elite Catholic boys' prep schools in New York City like Regis, Brooklyn Prep, Fordham Prep, or St. John's Prep. Trinity was a repository for the unremarkable Catholic boy whose soul, if not his brain, was nonetheless deemed sufficiently worthy to save from the clutches of a New York City public school or reform school.
About 700 blue-collar, mostly Irish, Italian, German, and a smattering of Black Catholic boys attended Trinity. The school building, fitting vessel for its undistinguished inmates, was an aged and dilapidated red brick building adjoining what had been an old German Catholic church. This grim, mock‑Gothic limestone church still had heavy wrought iron gates and fences surrounding it. They were originally fashioned to protect German‑American worshipers from the wrath of American patriots during the the first two world wars. These German worshipers eventually fled to the suburbs when the latest group of refugees, mostly Puerto Rican refugees, planted their flags.
The absence of girls at Trinity was intended to remove a major distraction from our midst, allowing us to focus more diligently on our studies. But with the full fury of wanton puberty upon us, it was hopeless. Nearly every waking and sleeping thought centered on these fascinating and frightening creatures. In their absence, however, we inflated and distorted the whole idea of "woman" in our fantasies, conjuring mental images of large‑breasted perfectly contoured bodies whose single purpose in life was to seduce us and let us ravish them.
We also inflated and distorted images of our “manly” selves. Amongst our pubescent selves, we spoke of girls as potential bowling pins to be knocked over by our (imaginary, of course) charms and powers. We used boastful hyperbolic language to describe in detail how, once in our thrall, they would be “ours.”
In their company, however, the sky changed: most of us became tongue‑tied, clumsy, agonizingly awkward pimply-faced dolts who could barely mutter a word or an intelligible sentence, never mind muster the nerve to kiss a girl by a fourth date. If we ever managed a fourth date.
The absence of girls from our routine lives excited, haunted, and tormented us. We consequently exaggerated their role in the cosmic scheme, no doubt thwarting our later fumbling efforts to learn that most difficult of tasks: how to love these mysterious creatures, how to live with them in peace, or just how to talk to them.
Some few of us were actually "getting it." Carl Baker, a Black classmate and track teammate of mine, had been getting laid from the time he was eleven. He would playfully inflate one or more of his condoms in the subway and float them around the station while we waited for the train to take us to track practice.
Mike Schoedienst, starting in his sophomore year, ran a porno film operation out of the basement of his home in Glendale, Queens. He would have special showings for some of the pliant damsels in his neighborhood and then propose to them that life imitate art. (Mike subscribed to a fairly uncomplicated aesthetic.)
Andy O'Connell, a star basketball player who looked like a freckle-faced choirboy, spent his weekends with a twenty‑four-year old woman. Andy once recited his confession to a naive young chaplain, Fr. Vincent Mergler, a short, fat cleric we dubbed "Friar Tuck." Mergler had apparently been expecting a confession menu of the usual "took the Lord's name in vain," "disobeyed my parents," "missed mass on Sundays," “had impure thoughts,” from his youthful charges. But, when Andy chronicled the steamy and sordid particulars of his sexual regimen, the priest's head audibly thumped the side of his confessional as he muttered "Holy Shit!" The priest imposed a stiff penance of four novenas, fifteen rosaries, and five First Fridays. Andy's grinning response when he left the confessional: "No fuckin' way."
Andy was a strange looking basketball player. He was about 6'1", but he was pear‑shaped. He had a wide bottom and soft‑looking muscles. He didn't train very hard; he smoked, and he drank a lot of beer in addition to his screwing. But when he was on the court, he became transformed. He was a superb dribbler and a master passer, always knowing where his teammates were and who was breaking to the basket. He could hit them with remarkable accuracy. As a shooter, he specialized in soft, looping outside jumpers, but he also made bold, strong cuts to the basket for layups.
Andy, however, was a truly unremarkable student. He never studied. He plainly didn't give a shit. He knew he would ultimately pass his courses because of his basketball skills. And he knew he would get a college scholarship, no matter how poor his grades. The college scouts, courting him from his freshman year, assured him of this. Indeed, he played guard for four years at Niagara University.
Beyond copying others' homework and cheating on every exam, Andy's only remarkable classroom feat was his ability to fart at will, every day after lunch. As his food began its infernal journey through River Styx of his bowels, Andy would begin leaking, then blowing, serious gas. The stench was horrible if not toxic. Desks would spontaneously scatter from his desk like a starburst. While Andy's classmates held their noses and fanned the offending fumes from their faces, Andy himself would sit, isolated and unconcerned, with a blithe, beatific grin creasing his face. If reprimanded by a teacher, he apologized unctuously, feigning innocence, claiming he couldn't help it.
He said that every day.