Hyper-chondriac (4 page)

By the time seventh grade turned into eighth, the dent in my sternum had turned into a crater. My parents decided that my grinding problem needed to grind to a halt. And that is how I met Dr. Robert Spikol of Mineola, New York. Hypnotist. The first in a long line of charlatans proffering alternative treatments. For a mere $75 a session he would allow me to touch my sternum while I became sleepy.

I sat in a small dark room in the world's most comfortable chair. It was upholstered in soft brown leather—probably made from the planet's three laziest cows—and it reclined and had speakers on the headrest and you just sank right into it like quicksand. I swear to God I would have fucked that thing if Dr. Spikol wasn't in the room. Or if I knew how to fuck.

Dr. Spikol had dark red wavy hair, a closely cropped beard and small round glasses that made him look very clever. His gravelly voice emerged from both speakers as I sat there for an hour, drifting in and out of sleep. I thought it was all a waste of time but figured I needed to try anything to preserve my chest cavity. Plus, this gave my father a chance to do some pen-and-ink drawings of empty chairs in the waiting room.

After our first session, Dr. Spikol shook his head. He had been a hypnotist for twenty-eight years and called me the most hyper, high-strung patient he had ever had—which, thanks to Dr. Tamm, I now know to be a bad thing. But back in eighth grade I thought I had just won a contest and would receive a small trophy.

“You have to learn how to relax or your life is going to be a very short one.”

I didn't realize that the $75 an hour included threats.

“I'm trying to.” Actually, I really wasn't. At that point in my life, calm versus not calm was a completely foreign concept. Plus, the fact that I had recently weaned myself off the Beatles and discovered the joy of punk didn't help any. To me, the late '70s were the glory years of music—the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Clash. The riffs were powerful, explosive and full of energy—in hindsight all of which I could have probably done without. It was impossible to have your alarm clock go off in the morning with a Buzzcocks song playing on WLIR and not maniacally spring out of bed.

 

After several sessions of hearing Dr. Spikol's bleating voice transmitted through the chair, I was given a pair of light yellow foam blocks, each about the size of a cigarette lighter.

“These blocks are essential to your well-being.”

“Uh…what am I supposed to do with them?” I had thought maybe they were magical insoles to insert in my shoes.

“Carry them around with you at all times.”

“At all times?”

“Yes.”

“In my pockets?”

“No. In your hands. You are NOT to put these blocks down unless eating, sleeping or showering.”

“Wow.”

“You need to keep your hands busy in a nondestructive manner at all times.”

“Okay. I'll do it.”

So now I had evolved from the freak with the jackhammer attached to his wrist to the freak palming foam.

I carried those things around school scrunched up in my hands so tightly that I suspect nobody knew I had tiny rectangular palm-sized blocks stashed in there. However, they probably
did
think that I was perpetually angry (which I was), since each of my hands was always arranged in a fist. Which again probably didn't help any with the ladies. It was nearly impossible to be cool around Laura Gesner with both hands empty, let alone clasping foam.

Unfortunately, the forearm bash had not been invented yet, so it was also difficult to greet my friends. Instead, I accomplished this with a mere jerk of my head, as if I were a giant Pez dispenser. Occasionally I would shake hands with someone in the hallway, which required extra dexterity. I had to slyly remove the foam from one hand and slide it into a back pocket, kind of like that one-armed pitcher Jim Abbott when he shoved his mitt under his stub to make a throw.

Once, while I was attempting this maneuver with Lyle Hastings, one of the blocks fell out of my hands and I was forced to explain what they were for.

“My hypnotist gave them to me to keep my hands off my chest.”

Lyle thought it was cool and wanted to sign my foam, as if it were a cast. I turned him down. I didn't need any additional foreign substances on it. Because no matter how often I washed my hands, the blocks continued to get filthier and filthier. I replaced them several times by going to an art supply store and having my father cut chunks of foam into hand-sized pieces, but the mounting grime seemed to accelerate. Not only were they turning black, but I couldn't keep miscellaneous pen ink from infiltrating them, which frequently caused trouble. During tests, teachers would see these ink-stained, mucky, off-yellow pieces of foam on my desk and believe I was using them to cheat. Once they were even confiscated, but swiftly returned when Mr. Lennett determined that none of the random marks of filth had anything to do with Medieval History.

For the most part, I kept the foam in my hands as I was told, and as dumb as it sounds, it worked. Whenever I held the blocks, I felt calm and at peace with the world. And they kept my sternum safe from myself. At least through the summer before ninth grade when I cut my ring finger on a Shasta can and ink and filth seeped into the cut and my hand got infected and I had no choice but to throw away the foam for good.

Luckily I would soon have something else to occupy my hands.

Foam or no foam, women aren't exactly drawn to hyper-chondriacs. And my mumbling didn't help.

I became so self-conscious that in tenth grade I stopped talking to girls in my high school and relegated my search for dates to young ladies from surrounding areas who wouldn't know of my grinding, garbled past. Fortunately, I played in a basketball league with some kids from nearby schools, one of whom had a sister who sometimes came to our games. One night, after not having a sucky fourth quarter, I asked her out. She said yes. Finally, at the age of sixteen I had struck gold! I was in shock. Not only that a girl would say yes but that she actually understood the question I had asked.

Lisa Kulaska became the first girl I would pick up in my cream-colored Firebird, which I'd just hand-waxed. She was tall, lanky and had indecisive hair that didn't seem to know in what style it would settle, and I was desperate to impress her—which is hard to do when you work part-time at the Rusty Scupper washing dishes for $4 an hour.

I didn't want to take her to the typical Long Island teen date place like Friendly's. Everyone did that. It would have to be more extravagant. I arranged for a Friday night at Pizza City East and then the movie
Arthur
at the Manetto Hill Theater. One problem: it was already Tuesday and since all my dishwashing money went straight back into my car upkeep, insurance and gas, I didn't even have enough cash for a slice. I had four days to figure something out. As usual I needed to work fast.

The Hendersons looked smart. Especially Old Mr. Henderson. There was no way on earth that the Dohertys knew more. I was positive about that.

“I'll take the Hendersons for ten bucks.”

“Sure.”

I'd been introduced to betting the previous year during Super Bowl XIII when I put $5 on the Steelers against the Cowboys and won. It was empowering, making me feel like the ultimate multitasker. I could be at the Scupper washing dishes while Franco Harris's touchdown romp magically doubled my hourly wage. But this wasn't football season, so I had to get creative.

I invited myself over to Kenny Feldman's house on Tuesday and had just bet him money I didn't have that the Hendersons would be the winning family on that night's episode of
Family Feud.
The look in Mrs. Henderson's eyes told me I had done the right thing.

“Something that you pack in a suitcase?” bleated Richard Dawson.

“Uh…an iron…” said Grandpa Henry Henderson, who in hindsight looked like someone who didn't do very much traveling.

“A coffee mug…” Henry's daughter, the matronly Donna Henderson, insisted.

“No! No!” interrupted Donna's husband, Morton Henderson. “A throw rug!”

The Hendersons were idiots and now nearly three hours of future dishwashing dollars were down the drain. And, if this kept up, so might my dream Friday night with Lisa Kulaska. After
Family Feud
ended, Kenny and I switched over to
The Price Is Right,
but the results were the same. I lost. Which wouldn't have been so bad had I refrained from going double-or-nothing each time. I took a thrashing in “Plinko.” Got dominated in “The Yodeler.” Wiped out in “Higher or Lower.” Then my debts doubled again on the “Showcase Showdown.” I'd just assumed that the older people would win, since they had more experience buying things. Within an hour, I owed Kenny $160.

With only two more days before my date with Lisa, I now had to pay off my debts to Kenny
and
come up with enough cash for my big night. To compensate for my game-show-betting deficiencies, I was about to pit my father's fantasy world against mine.

As you may remember, my dad had an ever-expanding comic book collection, not to mention a small mail-order catalog of thousands of titles for sale. Some were very valuable. Kenny Feldman just so happened to like comic books. On Wednesday afternoon, I invited “The Feld” over to my house while my dad was at work so I could settle my debt. I let him pick out some comics, like Captain Marvel number 17 or Batman number 21…$160 worth of whatever he wanted that I thought the man who raised me wouldn't miss. I even gave Kenny extra comics to get some cash back for my date. I know. I was an asshole. Thank God I wasn't married at sixteen or I would've pawned Nancy's wedding ring.

 

With Batman money in hand and guilt in my head, I picked up Lisa Kulaska and split a large pizza with four toppings and some tiramisu. Then we were off to watch Dudley Moore act like a drunk for ninety-one minutes. Halfway through the film, I mustered up enough courage to fake-yawn and put my arm around Lisa. And then I felt it, protruding from her body like scaffolding.

“Whoaattaoosa?!”

“It's okay,” she whispered reassuringly. “It's just my back brace.”

What? My first prospective girlfriend and she had a sharp piece of metal the length of her spine strapped to her back with large stiff pieces of canvas wrapped around her chest? No wonder she'd said yes when I asked her out. She was a physiological misfit. Like me!

“Uh…can you take it off?” Everything I did was inept.

“No.”

“Um…uh…” I shouldn't have been worried about the words I chose. The chance of her understanding anything I mumbled was only 30 percent.

“What's…uh…wrong with it?”

“I have scoliosis. But the doctor says if I wear it for the next two years, my spine should straighten out so I won't have to bring it to college.”

“Um…you wear it to class?”

“No. I have to wear it sixteen hours a day so I put it on as soon as I get home from school.”

“So you wear it to bed?” I couldn't stop asking questions.

“Yeah, but I'm used to it.”

I wasn't. How could I have missed the brace? It was as if she were a scarecrow hanging on a metal pole with that thing up the back of her shirt. What a hassle. But I couldn't break up with someone who was handicapped. That would be jerky of me. Then I felt guilty that there wasn't a mechanism that could be attached to my mother to make her walk again. Or at least something she could wear on her legs at night that would slowly rejuvenate them.

One thing for certain, it took all the pressure off what base Lisa and I would get to. I knew I couldn't get much farther than first. I didn't have a tool kit with me. God only knows how she managed to detach that thing from her torso. She probably had to involve her entire family, as if they were an Indy pit crew. As I clumsily leaned in for a kiss, my hands groped her back and my palms moved up and down the aluminum rod steering her spine. At one point I even thought I got a shard of metal in my thumb and would need a tetanus shot, which momentarily freaked me out.

Even though Lisa was a lousy kisser, I would definitely ask her out again. And take her somewhere even nicer, to prove her brace didn't bother me. I'd just have to come up with more money.

 

I was smart enough to realize that Kenny Feldman was out of my league. Luckily Louis Bevalaqua lived around the corner. Louis, a thirteen-year-old with a paper route, was my friend Evan's chubby younger brother. I felt guilty that I was introducing a seventh-grader to gambling, but not guilty enough not to do it. Besides, betting $50 a game on
$10,000 Pyramid
would make him feel like a grown-up.

After an hour of Dick Clark correcting contestants' answers and me losing more money, Mrs. Bevalaqua wanted to watch her soap operas on the family's lone television. So the Bevalaqua runt and I headed off to his basement to see what else we could gamble on. We decided on Yahtzee. And within seconds I became his Yahtzee bitch. No matter what I rolled, it was either a duplicate of something I already had on my score sheet or a useless set of dice that could only go into my “Chance” column. Meanwhile, Louis was rolling not only Yahtzees but four-of-a-kinds and straights. At one point I was so discouraged, I actually put one of the dice to my ear and shook it to make sure there wasn't some kind of trained insect inside that Louis had taught to land on six.

But Louis hadn't rigged anything. He was just a damn good Yahtzee player. After three days, I owed him nearly $850, $832 of which I didn't have—thanks to Kenny Feldman and the non-lucrative world of getting plates clean. There was only one thing to do…

Louis and I went into my basement and I let him pick out a few hundred dollars' worth of comics. A Silver Surfer…an original Human Torch…an old Hawkman. To decrease the likelihood of my father noticing his stock had diminished from “The Feld”'s take, I had packed the tomato cartons where he stored his books with a variety of old mail-order catalogs from Sears and Abraham & Strauss. And if he noticed anything missing, I could always blame it on his shoddy bookkeeping skills. (Or on my grandmother, since she already had a record.) And naturally, I gave Louis an extra Silver Surfer in exchange for some cash. Now I was relying on a thirteen-year-old to fund my dates.

Had Lisa learned that comic-pilfering was sponsoring the mozzarella sticks, fried onion rings and virgin frozen piña coladas she was enjoying on our second date, she probably would have reported me to the police and never spoken to me again. But as far as she was concerned, my dishwashing dollars financed our fancy entertainment.

I should've just written my dad an IOU, quit gambling and put my surplus energy into something more useful…like homework. But I was like the prettiest girl at the dance. Within days every kid in town wanted to bet with me. And who could blame them? Not only did I lose most of the time, but I always took my losses with grace, and on the rare occasions when I
did
win, I genuinely felt bad for the other guy. Maybe deep down I didn't even care if I won; I just liked the companionship, excitement and diversion from my home.

 

Lisa and I had date number three lined up for the following Saturday night, which was why I couldn't say no to Eddie Kunoff. Eddie and I were the perfect match for Mattel Electronic Football. He liked to take advantage of people with uncoordinated thumbs and I liked to mortgage my future. So the two of us played game after game after game for dollar after dollar…few of which I won. Whether the batteries were fresh or just about to die, I was no match for Eddie's nimble fingers. They flicked mightily back and forth on that piece of plastic that looked like a calculator, creating Hail Mary passes through a maze of red dashes and specks. I swear his thumbs were on steroids or something.

Over the course of four days, I lost fifty-five out of fifty-eight games to Eddie. I think the three games I won were only because he was distracted thinking about what he was going to buy with all the money I owed him. Which was now in the neighborhood of $1,700. It was actually in an even more expensive neighborhood, but Eddie said he'd take money off if I helped him with his chores, which included moving some heavy furniture for his mom. Carrying a credenza down thirteen stairs is way harder than it sounds.

When I got home post–credenza carrying, my left testicle was burning and aching. At first I thought I might have a hernia. I didn't know what to do. My father wasn't home and even if he were, we'd always avoided anything even remotely related to sex. Once he and I were watching TV and a beer ad came on in which sexy women in bikinis played volleyball and drank beer. It was the most awkward thirty seconds I'd ever spent with anyone. At the end of the commercial, my dad turned to me and quivered, “I didn't know you were allowed to bring beer to the beach.” So I would have to describe my latest malady to my mother, which, oddly enough, wasn't as embarrassing as I thought it would be.

“Um…I think there's something wrong with my…testicle.”

“What?!”

“It's all lumpy and veiny and burns on one side.”

“Sam!”

I was back at Dr. Torino's office. As he examined my ball, I wondered if he'd prescribe putting a gauze pad over it, as he did my sternum. After pressing his ear to my lower abdominal wall and tapping on it with his hands, he ruled out a hernia. Then he squeezed each of my balls simultaneously, as if he were picking out peaches or mini-tangerines. He looked up at me and informed me that I had a varicocele. I was told to take a lot of warm baths, not lift anything heavy for a few weeks and lie down if it flared up. And, since a varicocele can prevent sperm from passing through, I'd need to have my semen analyzed to make sure I was still fertile. I'm sixteen, for Chrissakes!!! Infertility? From being bad at Mattel Electronic Football and moving a friend's mom's dresser? Fuck! None of this would've happened had I just taken Lisa for a Fribble
^™
and not tried to be a big shot. So in a matter of weeks, I'd become a compulsive gambler, a kleptomaniac
and
had a droopy, veiny ball! Plus I still owed Eddie Kunoff nearly fifteen hundred bucks.